The Meaning of the Black Stone
By Abdal Hakim Murad | 2026-01-13T22:48:45.132518+00:00 | Topic: Iman
The Meaning of the Black Stone
Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad
Opening Khutbah
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Peace and blessings be upon you.
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the most honoured of Prophets and Messengers, our Master, our Master, our Beloved, our Intercessor, Muhammad, and upon his family and all his companions.
Introduction
An honour, of course, to be named after one of Allah's sanctuaries, very much in the headlines and in our thoughts and in our hearts in these times. So happy that on my last visit, the Ramadan before last, as far as I could see, the biggest international contingent visiting Haram al-Masjid al-Aqsa was the South Africans. May Allah increase them in himmah and in service for the deen and for their solidarity with the encircled and besieged population of the holy city.
The Mystery of Sanctuaries
A sanctuary is a mystery because a sanctuary is the place of the sakina, which is the calm and calming indwelling presence of the divine. Immediately this imposes upon us a puzzle and a paradox. Is not Allah with us wherever we are?
"He is with you wherever you are"
Is he not wherever we turn?
"Wherever you turn, there is Allah's face"
So what does it mean for there to be places where his presence is particularly eminent and felt? What is a holy place, a sanctuary? What is Quds, Qadasa, Maqdis? It's to do with the fundamental paradox of the divine nearness.
The Divine Names in Pairs
Allah gives himself names in his book that often come in pairs that seem to be opposite to each other:
- (الْمُحْيِي وَالْمُمِيتُ - Al-Muhyi wal-Mumit) - He gives life, he gives death
- (الْخَافِضُ وَالرَّافِعٌ - Al-Khafid wal-Rafi') - He brings down and he brings up
- (الْقَابِضُ وَالْبَاسِطُ - Al-Qabid wal-Basit) - He compresses and he expands
Creation is set up generally through a dynamic interplay of opposing principles.
But where he says:
"When my servants ask of me, say, I am near"
He never gives himself an opposite name. Nowhere does he say that he is ta'eed, distant.
Rather it is we who are distant. He is always (قَرِيبٌ - qarib) and can't be anything other than (قَرِيبٌ - qarib).
"Closer to man than his jugular vein"
The Light and the Shadows
And let us recall this as we are in this place that is named after that great sanctuary. The Divine Presence is present. (وَهُوَ مَعَكُمْ أَيْنَ مَا كُنْتُمْ - Wa huwa ma'akum ayna ma kuntum) - He is with you wherever you are, he is the one who alone is.
We are little shadows that come flitting across the stage of our little history. A few years, a few decades, and then we're gone. But the light remains.
"Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth"
And this world, this dunya, is just shadows in themselves, nothing at all. Totally dependent upon the light.
"Allah is the protecting friend of those who have Iman. He takes them out of the shadows into the light"
We are but shadows, our lives are flitting, fleeting, unreal things. We are half asleep or completely asleep, waiting for a truer experience. This world is as mysterious as a dream.
But (الْحَقُّ تَبَارَكَ وَتَعَالَى - al-Haqq tabaraka wa ta'ala) the truth, He is the truth of every situation. He is the one who is truly the establisher of every situation. (قَيُّوم - Qayyum) - Self-sustaining, but also the one who sustains every other thing.
The Nature of Divine Presence
Our little beings are reliant absolutely on His being. If the light were not there, how long would the shadows last? So (الْقَرِيبُ - al-Qarib) - And the believer remembers this in his du'a, in his dhikr, and also in his perception of everything in the created world.
Everything in this world can be seen as just more flitting shadows, mysteriously interacting with each other. Or it can be seen as things that the light is doing. The one who is (نُورُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ - nur us-samawati wal-ard) - the light of the heavens and the earth.
The kafir, the one who is spiritually blind, sees only the shadows. And the mu'min, the one whose eye is open, sees what the light is doing with and through the shadows. And the kafir is agitated because of the strangeness of this great theatre, its immensity, its depth, its complexness, its mystifying order. And the believer is at peace.
Signs Everywhere
The more the believer sees, the more the believer feels calm and at peace. Why? Because there is nothing that is not a sign or a signpost. However deep the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope might penetrate, however clever the Large Hadron Collider might be to explore smaller and smaller, newer and newer, stranger and stranger particles, infinitely smaller, even than the smallest atom, you will never see anything that is not just one of his signs.
And all of this holds together in the most beautiful form:
"You do not see in the creation of the Compassionate any fault"
It's all upholding this brilliant order.
The Message of the Quran
And this is part of the message of the Qur'an. So when the believer sees, the believer knows that he is al-Qarib, even though we cannot see him. And when even Sayyiduna Musa alayhi salam asked for that, the Lord manifested his might to the mountain:
"When his Lord manifested to the mountain, He made it collapse in dust, and Musa fell down in a swoon"
This tajalli, this mazhar, we can't see that. But the majesty of this world, all of our practices, all of the arkan of our religion, all of these five things on which Islam is built (بُنِيَ عَلَى خَمْسٍ - buniya 'ala khamsin) have only one function, which is to take us away from false gods and confusions and misunderstandings and ignorance towards a way of seeing how things truly are.
The Purpose of Islamic Practices
Allah subhana wa ta'ala is calling us to what gives us life and is calling us to be people who see, not people who are blind. To see with the eyes, yes, but to see with the heart, to perceive things truly.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala in his generosity and notes that when speaking of this illaliable ordering of the cosmos, the constancy and vibrancy and symmetry of its physical laws and principles refers to himself as Ar-Rahman.
And in the great ayahs, that great thundering sequence, where Allah subhana wa ta'ala is asking us:
"Which of the favors of your Lord will you deny?"
Surat Ar-Rahman begins with Ar-Rahman. This is the first of the names that are unfolded to us in Revelation. And the first hadith that we learn is the hadith:
Sahih al-Bukhari
"Those who show mercy, the all-merciful shall show mercy to them"
The Experience of Divine Nearness
This is the experience of the one who sees Al-Qarib, the near in all things. The world is nothing other than the outpouring of the limitless wine glass of the divine beauty and the divine compassion. There is nothing other than that.
There is no other wine glass. There is no other source of being. There is no other source of signs. All comes from Him. So here is Ar-Rahman. And in certain places, He has made that easier to discern than in other places.
The 99 Names and Creation
So perhaps this is a way into our question about Quds, about sanctuaries, and about why the subject of my lecture there is this black stone, Al-Hajar Al-Aswad in the greatest sanctuary, the Ishmaelite sanctuary. That this world is, as it were, woven from the 99 names.
Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim, Al-Malik, Al-Quddus, Al-Salam, Al-Mu'min, Al-Muhaymin, those majestic, superb qualities, each of which reaches our hearts as well as our ears and the heart within says, (بَلَى شَهِدْنَا - bala shahidna) - we bear witness.
This perfect description of the ultimately indescribable But true names, because they are names that He has given Himself. And so true are these names, that simply by enumerating them and by mentioning them, we gain the flavor and the fragrance of Paradise.
May Allah give us all a love of His names and a love of the road which these names comprise. And these names, as I've said, are like the warp and woof of creation. They are like the fabric from which the great tapestry of manifestation is woven.
The Manifestation of Divine Names
We know that without one of them, we wouldn't see the perfection of the whole. The world would not be its magnificent self without Al-Adl or Al-Hakam or Al-Khabir or Al-Latif. They are all part of the whole, just as all of the colors are part of the spectrum which reduces ultimately to the one light.
The Pattern of Divine Names
And we know that these names appear to us in different degrees in this world. This again is part of (فَرْق - farq) the fact that the world is not the same as the Divine. The world is in a state of multiplicity.
It's (كَثْرَة - kathra). It's not (وَحْدَة - wahda). It's (أَغْيَّار - aghyaar). It's not Allah subhana wa ta'ala. It's (دُنْيَا - dunya). It's the lowest thing.
Seems to be the furthest thing from His Presence. And here we are creeping about on it like little maggots for a few years trying to understand. Sometimes he doesn't feel (قَرِيب - qarib).
But if we understand the texture and the pattern and the perfection of this tapestry, which is the work of His fingers, then we can start to see. But just like a great carpet is not the same color throughout, it has different patterns, different symmetries, all part of its perfection.
The Varying Manifestation of Names
So too the Divine names in this world while always entirely present are not capable of being blocked by anything because they are His names and nothing can overwhelm them. Still sometimes in some situations they are more apparent to our limited capacities than are others.
In a certain situation when we feel overwhelmed it might seem that the name Al-Jabbar, Al-Muntaqim, Al-Aziz, Al-Azim are nearest to the surface of things. Other situations might remind us of Al-Latif, Al-Haleem, Al-Jameel.
And this whole world is as it were is tapestry with this pattern of different names coming and going like colors flashing in a kaleidoscope. The pattern is perfect, but the colors and the patterns differ.
The Three Sacred Sanctuaries
So we might say, when we speculate on the mystery of how a place can be sacred, how Al-Quds can be sacred, in the Hadith that defines it as the Holy Land between the Nile and the Euphrates, the big
Palestine, and the city itself.
When we consider what that might mean when he is Al-Qarib everywhere, what does it mean to step from a world that is not Haram into a space that is sanctuary? We might say that it is in the sanctuary where the names are evidently to our senses most perfectly balanced.
The Unique Character of Each Sanctuary
And then some will say, but when I go to the Haram in Medina, the spirituality is different from that spirituality of the Haram in Mecca or in Al-Quds. And this is true.
Mecca is where you feel the majesty of (تَجْرِيد - tajrid) the divine otherness, the (أَلَسْتُ بِرَبِّكُمْ - alastu bi rabbikum) the first shahadah.
Medina, the city of the second shahadah, where the Holy Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, is still amongst us in ways that the ulema have affirmed and experienced but which always transcends our mean intellect but which is a reality. The city of Sharia, the city where the rules unfolded, where Islam became a social reality. The city of (مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ اللهِ - Muhammadun Rasulullah)
Al-Quds - The Third Sanctuary
And then this third sanctuary, so much in the headlines, so much on our minds, in our concerns, in our hearts. This is where our story is defined as the conclusion of the prophetic stories of the Bani Israel, of the Yahud, and also of the Nasara.
It is the place where the prophets were and the place where Islam demonstrates its ethical perfection in including rather than excluding. The Bani Israel do not accept Isa alayhi salam or Sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The Nasara do not accept Sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
So both of them are in a sense (نَاقِص - naqis) when they are in that holy place because they don't accept all of its great figures. The figures whose greatness defines even the geography of the old city. But we, when we are there, we are not saying no to their holy figures.
The Inclusive Nature of Islam
We are not saying no to what is best and most true in their stories and their heritage. Instead we remember the (إسْرَاء - isra') of the Holy Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he led all of the other (أَنْبِيَاء - anbiya') in prayer. This beautiful inclusiveness of Islam.
We alone can do that. No other religion goes out of its way in one of its most sacred and critical moments to say yes, we include, we include. Those great sequences in the Holy Quran where we are told about all of those earlier (أَنْبِيَاء - anbiya') is part of the beauty of Islam. It includes and it doesn't exclude.
The Hadith of the Three Mosques
So when we enter the Haram of Al-Quds, the seminary of our South African brothers who have been given the tawfiq to do in recent years, we are reminded of its connection and its consummation of the ancient forms of worship and the particular forms of barakah that were associated with those old (شَرَع - shara') and its complex.
But it is certainly a haram defined as such by the Holy Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in the famous hadith:
(Sahih al-Bukhari)
"You can only guide your beast to three mosques specifically"
There may be other places in your deen and your dunya where you can go to for particular spiritual benefits or particular forms of learning or to help somebody or to visit the sick and the orphans. That is also a legitimate reason for travel and moving. But for Masajid, those three in particular are singled out.
So in those places we find even though each of the three has a specific flavor and fragrance which the believer perceives and a very distinct history, that in those places the Divine Names (أَسْمَاءُ اللَّهِ الْحُسْنَى - asma'u-llahi-l-husna) are as it were to our perceptions most perfectly present and balanced that we experience all of those names and that is why we experience those places as particularly holy.
The Story of the Kaaba and the Black Stone
Be that as it may, our conversation this evening is to be about one of the many mysteries (آيَات, بَيِّنَات - ayat, bayyinat) clear signs which are also mysteries, deep things to do with the original haram. The first house established for mankind which is that in the valley without cultivation in that extraordinary place far to the south of Palestine to which Sayyidina Ibrahim directed through some unimaginable Divine inspiration with such incalculable outcomes Hajar and his son Ismail.
The Descendants of Ismail
Let's just pause before we consider the story of the stone itself to think about that story. We are the (بَنُو إسماعيل - banu isma'il) the descendants, spiritual descendants at any rate of that elder son. (إسحاق - ishaq) is the one who laughed and the Hebrew scholars discuss why exactly (إسحاق - ishaq) is said to be the one who laughed or maybe it was his mother who laughed and (إسماعيل - isma'il) is he heard God" or "God heard him" - it's what we say when we pray we incorporate that in our worship.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala by directing the steps still in his infancy of the patriarch's elder son the evident heir to covenant towards that distant sanctuary is making a vast statement about sacred history of which we should be aware.
The Precedence of Makkah
What's the relationship between the holy city of Jerusalem and the holy city of Makkah? We are often asked this and we should really be able to explain. Well, the sanctity of Makkah predates the sanctity of Jerusalem. The sanctity of Makkah predates you might even say the formal coagulation of the universe as matter insofar as what it represents is what the Kaaba seems to represent and what the heart the beating heart of every reverend (خَاشِعَة - khashi'ah) Muslim feels as he or she walks around it with his heart nearest to the Kaaba represents the infinity of God.
The Mystery of the Kaaba
The mystery, the dark shrouded form of Allah's ancient house (بَيْتُ اللَّهِ الْقَدِيمِ - baytu-llahi-l-qadim) in many ways the strangest building on earth hardly a building, hardly architecture it has no form, it has no features no decorative anything just the outward black mat fabric which may be decorated by various dynasties but that's not the point of it it's to do with the divine (تنزيه - tanzeeh) the divine otherness the first shahada that as you are close to his house with your heart almost touching it you remember that he is (قَرِيب - qarib) but you also remember the presence of the veil however close you get the veil remains.
The Symbolism of the Veil
Veil is such a symbolic value. The veil is there to honor something that is sacred and precious a (مظهر تجلّي - mazhar e tajalli). Some of our ulama and awliya in our history even the men would sometimes veil their faces because of the strength of the spiritual light that would shine from them they say this even of Sayyidina Musa in a number of accounts that people can be sent into strange spiritual states just by seeing the (تجلّي - tajalli) of Allah's lights upon the face of a perfected one.
And so it is with the kaaba that this mystery is a veiled mystery and it is out of (أدّب - adab) that we don't see it even when they replace the (كسوة - kiswah) they do it strip by strip by strip they don't take all of it off at any time and again the believing heart beating as it goes around on its (طواف - tawaf) knows this and recognizes this.
The Ancient Origins
What more perfect symbol of he who is subhana wa ta'ala beyond any symbol could there be perfection transcending all culture the kaaba ancient, (عَتِيق - atiq) before architecture itself seems to bespeak a time before there was human culture and an adamic culture the stories of the earliest prophets even Adam according to al-Azraqi the earliest historian of Mecca worshipped there when it was just just a little red mound or hillock.
The Place of Adam's Repentance
This is the place which is near the place where Adam received the words Adam received words from his
lord and relented towards him which according to most of our scholars takes place at the plain of Arafat which is why Arafat is the hajj because it's a it's a recreation of and we hope a guarantee of that original generous (توبة - tawbah) in our hearts.
If you're not going to make (توبة - tawbah) your once in a lifetime hajj in Arafat when the tears are falling and a million people are weeping and you don't make your (توبة - tawbah) then and you say yes lord I finally admit it help me to be strong not to avoid that thing again then where else are you going to find a place a (خَلْقِن - khalqin) for your (توبة - tawbah) it is a great gift for the believers a great liberation.
So many thousands of burdens are lifted on Arafat each year. Allah says to the angels on the day of Arafat: "They have come to me dusty with their hair messy suffering from thirst I call you to witness that I have forgiven them." So may Allah encompass us in that forgiveness and in the prayers of those who are at Arafat each year because that is a real prayer that is a real place of sincerity.
The Black Stone Itself
So many signs but the black stone where we begin the (طواف - tawaf) the (طواف - tawaf) that again is something ancient that speaks to our hearts that we certainly can't rationalize but we follow it because the holy prophet showed us the way and we know that it has something to do with the adoration of the angels at an infinite distance above the angels as they circle the infinite lights of the divine throne unimaginable but still our hearts respond to the idea.
And so in our (دنيا - dunya) with our dusty feet we retrace that at this very very low point of the created hierarchy we are there and we benefit even though he is (قَرِيب - qarib) we are busy with our mobile phones or looking after our children all the things that we manage to do even in that extraordinary place the (حَضْرَةُ الْقُدْس - hadratu-l-quds) and the point where we begin according to our (مَذْهَب - madhhab) is at the point where the (حَجّر - hajr) is located.
The Accounts of the Stone
And there are so many stories of the (حَجّر - hajr) and how it was removed and lost in a flood, they found it again they replaced it, the (قرامطة - qaramitah) took it away but always replaced, always the same (حجر - hajr) and always the same mystery really a mystery, what is that?
The kaaba can be understood even though it's beyond understanding as a symbol which melts the hearts of the infinity and the beginninglessness of the creator and it gives us a sense of eternity as we walk around it and one of the benefits of the walking around of the (طواف - tawaf) is that we after a while become as it were disoriented and forget the point of the compass and the outside (دُنْيَا - dunya) our spatial recognition is at an end and we're not quite sure where everything is where we left our shoes, where the chicken shop is outside we're kind of disoriented and that's part of the wisdom of it so that just focus on the (قِبْلَ بَيْتُ اللَّهِ الحرام - qibla baytu-llahi-l-haram) his ancient house of course and the black stone, the mystery.
The Account from Sayyidina Umar
Well there's an account which is a kind of key to understanding this and remember all of these things like (عَرَفَات - 'arafat) the (مَقَامٌ إِبْرَاهِيم - maqamun ibrahim) and the (صفًا - safa) and the (مروة - marwa) and all of these things that are unique in the hajj are mysteries and the mind struggles to understand even though the heart kind of eats them up with delight from spiritual appetite recognizing the value of these practices but the mind struggles.
This is in the histories, the holy prophet used to kiss the black stone abundantly and then in his reign as (خَلِيفَة - khalifah) عمر kissed it then he said and then عمر says:
(Sahih al-Bukhari)
I know you're just a stone and you can't help me and you can't harm me and were it not for the fact that I saw the holy prophet kissing you, I wouldn't kiss you"
And then he wept until his sobs could be heard. So this is the second, justly the second of the (خُلَفَاء الراشدون - khulafa'u-r-rashidun) with his humility absolute following of the (سُنّة - sunnah) and an admission that he doesn't know what this is he doesn't understand that's a high (مقام - maqam) submission to the unseen, to the (غَيْب - ghayb).
The Explanation from Sayyidina Ali
And then he turned behind him and there was (عَلِيُّ بْنُ أَبِي طَالِبٍ - aliyyu bnu abi talib) may Allah ennoble his face and he said oh commander of the faithful he's (خَليفة - khalifah) now is it does help us and it does harm us. He said how? He says:
"Allah, when he took the covenant from the descendants of mankind he fed this covenant to this stone and so it bears witness to the faithfulness of the believer and bears witness to the infidelity of the unbeliever"
So here's another way of being right, this is a spiritual one this is not an insight of this is his own inner (کشف - kashf) his own revelation of what this means and again human language can't be taken quite literally what does it mean to feed something to a stone this is symbolic language, something deep something to do with a spiritual reality beyond the normal four dimensions.
The Day of Alastu bi Rabbikum
What's the covenant, what's the (ميثاق - mithaq) When God took the (ميثاق - mithaq) from mankind he fed it to this stone it's a strange conception, well the (ميثاق - mithaq) is the day of (أَلَسْتُ بِرَبِّكُمْ - alastu bi rabbikum) and everybody says (بَلَى شَهِدْنَا - bala shahidna)
"When your Lord took from the descendants of Adam, from their descendants, and caused them to bear witness about themselves, 'Am I not your Lord?' and they said, 'Bala shahidna' - that was lest you should say on the day of arising, 'We were ignorant of this, we didn't know anything about it'" (Quran 7:172)
So in this, again mysterious verse, and of course it's mysterious because it's somehow before the creation of the usual things that make sense to us Allah subhana wa ta'ala brought us into his presence what does that mean? before we were babies, before anything we can't imagine that, but we're told it and something within us kind of understands and made us bear witness about or against ourselves, am I not your Lord and at that point, how could we say anything else?
No shadows as it were at that point, there he was, everybody said even (فِرْعَوْن - fir'awn) and (نِمْرُود - nimrud) and (أَبُو لَهَب - abu lahab) they all said yes, we bear witness because you can't do anything else no spiritual blindness there so we all have this within ourselves and this is somehow in this very mysterious way in the black stone.
The Nature of Spiritual Presence
That's not an (في - fi)-ness that's like any other (في - fi)-ness that you might expect, the coffee is in the coffee pot or the idea is in my head, no it's a different kind of thing, it's a subtle, non-dimensional spiritual attachment that this thing represents but truly represents.
In other words, the (حجر - hajar) one of its names is (يَمِينُ اللهِ فِي الْأَرْضِ - yaminu Allahi fil-ard) - Allah's right hand on earth and in traditional systems the right hand of the king is what you kiss in order to show your loyalty it's your (بَيْعَة - bay'ah)
The Symbolism of Bay'ah
So by kissing the stone, we are as it were saying we accept the (شَهَادَتَيْن - shahadatayn) we accept the (أركان - arkan) we accept the (رسالة - risala) Sayyidina Muhammad and we remember, we are saying (بَلَى شَهِدْنَا - bala shahidna) and the (لبيك - labbayk) is about a repetition of that, the hajj is about the journey to the center, the outward journey that enables us to activate the journey within Allah giving us so many signs and helping us despite our weakness, through the rigors of the hajj to remember and we have that symbol.
So the ka'bah the symbol of Allah's measureless antiquity and majesty and (جَلال - jalal) the might of the house with this at its corner a piece not of this world but as the hadith says:
"The Black Stone is from the stones of Paradise" (Sahih at-Tirmidhi)
A ruby of paradise this is the beginning of our journey and the journey that takes us back to our first beginning, which is when we said (بَلَى شَهِدْنَا - bala shahidna) which for every member of (بني آدم - bani adam) every member of (بني آدم - bani adam)
including the insane including the criminals, including the babies that die in the womb we all said this, (بَلَى شَهِدْنَا - bala shahidna) yes we bear witness.
The Universal Human Covenant
And this is why we would characterize our tradition as being profoundly to use the modern word, humanistic in other words, if we were all there together at the deepest level the sons and daughters of (حَوّاء - hawwa') are part of some single thing this is what in the Hanafi tradition they call (عِصْمَةُ الْآدَمِيَّة - 'ismatul-adamiyyah) every human being has certain inherent rights irrespective of later religious adherence that are theirs because they are from Adamic heritage.
So for instance, the right to property you are entitled to your property whether you are not a Muslim in (شريعة - shari'ah), the right to honor the right to marriage, the right to so many things these are essential things and this gives us a much stronger and deeper and more meaningful discourse about human rights than is possible in a secular context which doesn't know about Adam, which doesn't know about intrinsicality, which doesn't know that rights are part of a divine legislation and hence really sacred but just produces them as the result of a particular consensus at a particular point in the evolution of its civilization.
Now we believe that these come from (الحق - al-haqq) the true the source of all truth and therefore the source of all moral truth, so when we are at the stone, we recall the fundamental essential unity of human beings and this is why we are called upon in our all embracing religion to incorporate the others.
The Inclusive Message
"For every people there has been a guide" (Quran 10:47)
A Muslim can travel somewhere in northern Australia where you might think no Muslim has ever said the prayer before, but the Muslim knows these people at some point in their past because they are also beloved of (الرَّحْمٰن - ar-rahman) because they have also said (بَلّی شَهِدْنَا - balli shahidna) because they also have within themselves this desire to repeat those words there is much that is worthy of respect here and at some point they had their guide.
So this is real humanism this is an optimism, this is a determination always to see the best in other people and in their traditions and it's the way of our (عُلَمَاء - ulama') always when they meet people who are not like themselves, not even Muslims to see what is best in those people rather than to complain about ways in which they are different from ourselves and this is the mark of the true believer because the true believer knows that in every human heart there still beats at some level, maybe buried under a lifetime of evil deeds the miracle words (بَلَى شَهِدْنَا - bala shahidna) every human being gives that his or her ascent.
The Continuing Challenge
So Allah is giving us the stone as a reminder of this and as some mysterious enigmatic esoteric sign we don't know exactly how these آیات work but they do work because the hajj makes a difference to our lives and we revere the stone but for the rest of our lives the question remains I know that I once said, yes we bear witness (بلى شهدنا - bala shahidna) we gave our ascent, we made our (شهادة - shahada) at the time when we couldn't do anything else but now I'm feeling a bit distracted by all of these shadows and the world is really confusing and I'm getting a hundred emails a day and the phone is ringing and business is busy and things are yes I know (بَلَى شَهِدْنَا - bala shahidna) but there's this other stuff as well.
And this is a problem for us moderns because we live as believers in a society which is not really interested in bringing to life again the deepest aspects of our spiritual humanity but is trying to live life often brilliantly and hedonistically on the surface we're not really at home in the environment and we feel that this inner desire for nourishment is not being satisfied that we need feeding and modernity has the wrong kind of food.
It just tells us to buy a new telephone and we'll be happy or to listen to the latest hit single and we'll be happy or whatever it is it doesn't quite seem to work there's something within us that craves something beyond that as مولانا رومي says we were born to be companions of the angels we used to live among the spheres of heaven let us go there again my friend because that's our homeland.
And الإِمَامُ الْحَدَّادُ says this (دُنْيَا - dunya) is not the place where we're going to remain this (دُنْيَا - dunya) is not the place where we're going to remain it's just a road back to our native land it's just a road back to our native land.
The Need for Constant Remembrance
The believer knows this and the unbeliever feels it and everybody feels discontented and uncomfortable that things don't quite fit but they don't have the language and they don't have the space and that's why we need to remember our Lord in whatever way works for us if it's within the paradigms of what the shari'ah permits
"Those who remember Allah standing, sitting on their sides and think about the way in which the heaven and the earth are created" (Quran 3:191)
(ذكر - dhikr) and (فكر - fikr), we need to be people of this and we shouldn't think, oh that means that next Wednesday at 6:30 I'll get down on the floor with my friends and my and we'll recite something that is an important thing to do and it will recenter you and it will open up your heart but (ذكر - dhikr) is not just for those situations because if he is (القريب - al-qarib) and is never anything else then he is truly with us and can be remembered and must be remembered at all times.
So if we're going to be true to our (بَيْعَة - bay'ah) of Allah true to the (تلبية - talbiyah) true to the (بَلَى شَهِدْنَا - bala shahidna) that's within ourselves we need to have conversations within ourselves each and every believer aware of our own lifestyles, our own circumstances our own possibilities, our own bad habits and think, how can I increase the number of times every day when I remember (القَرِيبِ الْحَقِّ الْوَاسِعُ الْمُحِيطٌ - al-qarib al-haqq al-wasi' al-muhit) the one who is with us at all times remember this (بَيْعَة - bay'ah) how can I do that?
The Quality of Prayer
I shouldn't do it in some formulaic way and say, oh well I just did my prayer and I'm going to pray again in an hour's time so I'm alright, no, those things are precious things and essential things but unless within them there is the remembrance of (القريب - al-qarib) they're just a way of moving your body and satisfying religious rules there's something disrespectful to the creator about a tongue that's saying (لا إلهَ إِلَّا الله - la ilaha illallah) dancing around cleverly in the mouth, when the heart is thinking about something else when you're facing your creator but not really showing correct (أدب - adab) and it's just empty.
"Man has of his prayer only what he's conscious of" (Hadith)
Everything else is just a rather strange way of passing your time, maybe it's good for your back I don't know, but otherwise it's just (عادة - 'ada), not (عِبَادَة - 'ibada) so we need to be anxious about this and remember that the roads to God are as many as the breaths drawn by living creatures yes, we have and we have the five pillars and we have the (مِنْهَاج - minhaj) of Islam and we have the boundaries, the (حلال - halal) and the (حَرَام - haram) which are all expressions of the divine mercy and divinely designed to keep us out of the trouble that our egos would get us into if we didn't follow these boundaries, they're only there for our protection so we need to be saying (الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ - alhamdulillah) or (شُكْراً لِلَّهِ - shukran lillah) constantly.
Individual Spiritual Needs
But there's also individual souls have different needs some people need to read a lot of literature in order to feel at ease with beauty and they can find a spiritual peace that way other people need to be alone in the mountains other people need to be with certain kinds of people and this is naturally the case every human being has his or her own (مَشْرَب - mashrab) so we should strive for self-knowledge all of those people kissing the black stone maybe two or three million in a few hours each one is a separate human being coming from a separate place and they may look identical in their (إخرام - ikhram) but each one is very different and each one as it were has his own relationship to Allah's house and we need to have this (محاسبة - muhasabah)
What am I good at, what am I bad at what things bring me closer to God what things seem to be (حلال - halal) but in fact distract my heart we need to have this inner wisdom because life is short, soon runs away the sand through the hourglass and it never moves in the opposite direction we are all heading towards our
date of death not one of us here is moving away from it but Allah knows when that will be and it could be close and let's use these times so that however many hours or days or seconds we might have left we use those times richly we make sure that we get the best out of the irreplaceable miracle of each moment.
Living in the Present Moment
That we are sons of the moment not distracted, daydreaming, idly hoping but instead aware of the irreplaceable blazing perfection and genius of the moment that God has made and remember him in it and think how we would be if we remembered him constantly how different we would be, how different our communities would be all of those disputes, all of those difficulties, all of those problems with relationships all of those arguments with neighbours they would go because people would be so grateful, so thankful so dazzled by the beauty of what God has made at each moment.
Remembering (القريب - al-qarib) is the key to the success of this أمّة distance from him, absent mindedness forgetfulness, heedlessness, (غَفْلَة - ghaflah) bring veils across the heart and it's those veils that make us find the inherent bitterness of disobedience to God to be something sweet very strange perversion that we find ugly things to be beautiful that we find disobedience to be attractive that we find things that agitate the heart to be things that bring rest to the heart.
This is a sickness, how do we overcome that sickness by bringing the heart to life by remembering him and remembering him in every possible situation there is no moment, at least when we are awake and adult and sane when we cannot put that moment to a usage that is truly angelic and amazing sitting on the train, driving to work starting up our computer at the beginning of the day making a cup of tea for a colleague, all of these apparently ordinary things if we remember (الْقَريب - al-qarib) in those moments and we constantly remind ourselves to be doing that what rich and beautiful times we will have.
The Beauty of Remembrance
To be with him, to (بركة - barakah) to Allah in the workplace, makes the day just sail by makes us beautiful people to be with because what makes us disagreeable is the stupidity and darkness of the ego the one that says me, not you and what makes us beautiful people is our ability to see the beauty in other people to want to know them, to want to help them to want to hear about their experiences this is where the (تَأْلِيفٌ القلوب - ta'lif al-qulub) comes about the softening of heart, which is why people loved the Holy Prophet because he cared about them when his (أُمّة - umma) was distressed when his (أُمّة - umma) was distressed when a widow was distressed when an orphan was hungry he would feel it personally.
So many times in the سيرة of the Chosen One when he wept I don't know of any great historical personage of whom it is recorded so frequently that he used to weep one of his خصائص that he was so soft-hearted that he wept, not for himself but for human suffering people who were sick, people who were bereaved people who were alone, people who were ignorant people who were in the darkness of misguidance he felt for them because he wanted to help them.
Why? Because he was so rich in his Lord so connected to his Lord, so dazzled and ecstatic with the nightly conversations he had with his Lord that he was so strong in himself that he could give and he could pay attention to others and didn't need anything from them he had this (اِسْتِغْنَاء - istighna') this autonomy that comes from just loving God.
True Self-Knowledge
Those are remarkable people who wouldn't want to be with somebody who never thinks about himself but wants to look after everybody who he's with this is how the believer ought to be unfortunately nowadays we have this idea that we'll become nicer to others if we have high self-esteem and if we overcome our self-esteem issues and become proud of ourselves and love ourselves, this is problematic the believer loves God and the self is what it is if you have a knowledge of yourself, you'll know your weaknesses and you may have lost count of how many there are.
Other people, they might seem to have weaknesses but you're not they, you don't really know what their weaknesses are maybe they have a good excuse for all of the strange things they seem to do but you know your own weaknesses so on the basis of that, connect to the divine be strengthened by that infinite voltage and then you'll see with how much energy you embrace (بني آدم - bani adam) and this is how the believers ought to be a source of light.
And in this age where everything is about me, me, me the self, looking good, being cool, having the latest stuff all of this ego stuff which leaves people hungry really, spiritually hungry, we should be above that not contemptuous of them, but perhaps feeling a little bit sorry for them because they've just got stuff whereas the believer has (الْحَيُّ الْقَيُّومُ - al-hayy al-qayyum) who goes on forever (الْغَنِيُّ - al-ghaniyy) the one whose wealth never runs out.
(Sahih al-Bukhari)
"Wealth is not from a multiplicity of belongings the holy prophet tells us wealth is richness in the heart"
But people who compete for دنیا they just want more and more:
"Rivalry and mutual, worldly increase has distracted you until you visit the graves"
You seem to have forgotten the (بَلَى شهدنا - bala shahidna) and what's really important you're spending your life collecting the shadows this is rather a futile pursuit and you'll always want more.
(Sahih al-Bukhari)
"If a man had a valley full of gold he would want to have two valleys full of gold but at the end of his life only dust will fill his mouth"
Closing Du'a
So we ask Allah subhana wa ta'ala to fill our hearts with light and with remembrance of him with forgiveness and love of others that inshallah our last words will be (لا إله إلا الله - la ilaha illallah) and that inshallah we'll be people who truly say with everything that we do rather than just as a dim memory in our hearts (بَلَى شهدْنَا - bala shahidna)
الْفَاتِحَة
تمَّ بِحَمْدِ اللَّهِ وَتَوْفِيقِهِ