The Moment That Made Pharaoh Panic | Nouman Ali Khan | Story Night

The Religion of Fir'aun

I am very excited to be back in Jakarta, الحمد لله.

I want you to do me a favor, all of you, quick du'a that I'm able to do justice to the story tonight, إن شاء الله تعالى. And I pray that Allah accepts this evening from all of us, and we walk away with something new and beautiful about the Qur'an. Everybody can hear me clearly? Good? Okay, good.

We're going to start from somewhere very strange. I'm going to teach you not about the religion of Islam. I'm going to teach you something about the religion of Fir'aun.

This is important because you cannot understand some parts of this story if you don't understand some things about the religion of Fir'aun. So for a few minutes, this is going to be a shirk class, not an Islam class. So we're taking an orientation, you became a new citizen of Egypt, and they're giving you a welcome certificate, welcome.

The Mythology of Ancient Egypt

And now they're giving you an orientation on how to become a proper mushrik. So this is the part of the course. Okay, the stars in the sky that you see at night are all living gods, all of them.

They control the universe. They move around, they're watching us. All of those stars are watching us.

One of those stars every now and then has a child, a half-human child. He's called Fir'aun, the pharaoh. He's actually a child of one of those stars.

So when a baby Fir'aun is born, he's half-human, half-god. The job of the stars is to make sure there's harmony in the sky. There's harmony in the sky.

The job of Fir'aun is to make sure there's harmony on the earth. So they take care of the sky, he takes care of the earth. But there's a problem.

The problem is the earth needs the sky. We need the rain from the sky. We need the sun from the sky. We need the winds from the sky. So Fir'aun has to make sure that the other gods are happy, to make sure things are running properly. So part of that is, to make those gods happy, you have to build really amazing temples, beautiful temples, to do the special kinds of worship so that each of those gods stays happy.

If you make them unhappy, maybe the rain will stop coming. Maybe a disease will spread. Maybe there'll be a flood. Maybe there'll be some kind of other war. Something will happen. So you have to make sure that those gods stay happy.

The Temple System and Priesthood

Now, how do they do that? Number one, they build these temples. By the way, those temples are so amazing, they're still around today. Egyptian homes, no longer around. Egyptian government buildings, many of them no longer around. But Egyptian temples, still around today. Tells you something, they invested a lot of money building those temples. They were the most expensive part of the government projects.

Now, the only people who can go inside the temple are called the priests. This is important shirk education, so remember this. This is going to be part of your citizenship test later. What are they called? Priests. These priests have another name. They're also called magicians. The priests and magicians are one group of people. They're not two separate groups of people. They're the same group of people.

Only they are allowed to go inside the temple. And even when they go inside the temple, they have to wash their hands a lot of times with some special rituals. Before they can touch anything inside the temple. Because everything inside the temple is sacred. So they have to have these special washing rituals. And only the priests can touch them.

Now, what do they do inside these temples? Sometimes they take crop, like maybe they grow a lot of rice, for example. They'll take some of the rice crop inside and they will burn it. To make those gods happy as part of the sacrifice. All their sacrifice and animal to make those gods happy. But only those priests get to do that, okay? And they do that on behalf of Fir'aun. They do that on behalf of the pharaoh, okay? You understand this shirk mythology well? Okay, this is all going to be important.

The Divine Status of Fir'aun

Now let's come to Fir'aun. What do you know about Fir'aun so far? 50%... 50% what? Discount? No, no, no. 50% human, 50% god. That's what Fir'aun is.

Fir'aun sits with a throne, with a crown on his head. Maybe you've seen it in museum pictures and things like that. It looks kind of like a helmet almost. With a snake on top. It's got a cobra on top, okay? The snake means nobody can attack Fir'aun. Because whoever attacks Fir'aun will have to deal with the divine snake. The snake will destroy you if you come near Fir'aun. So attacking Egypt is attacking Fir'aun. And this heavenly snake is going to destroy you. So that means don't mess with Fir'aun. The helmet means don't mess with Fir'aun.

Fir'aun also holds a staff in his hands. Usually the historians say he had two different staffs. But we should know, we'll pretend it's one. The staff is two things. One, it is the power of Fir'aun. And two, it is the guidance of Fir'aun. Fir'aun guides his people. He's their shepherd. He's their shepherd. And a shepherd has what in his hands? A stick. And the mighty one has a stick in his hand. So the staff of Fir'aun represents his power. And it represents his guidance.

Last part of your shirk education. InshaAllah I'll teach you more shirk later. But for now, one more thing. One last thing. And that is that Fir'aun was considered the source. This is important. He was considered the source of truth and guidance. Or truth and justice, sorry. He was considered the source of truth and justice. So whenever Fir'aun speaks, it is the truth. And whatever Fir'aun decides, it is justice. Truth and justice come from Fir'aun. I will expect you to remember this in a few minutes.

The Confrontation Begins

Now, tonight, we are going to learn something about this story from the time, actually, that the magicians became Muslim. You remember the part of the story when, you know, they threw their sticks and Musa عليه السلام threw his staff? We're going to go from that point onwards. But we need to do a little bit of recap.

So now the recap is going to begin. Previously, on Musa. Okay? Some things you need to know.

The First Miracle in the Palace

Musa walked in. To the Egyptian palace for the first time after many years. What was in his hand? It was a staff. Who usually has a staff inside the palace? Fir'aun. What does the staff represent? This is your shirk quiz. Power and guidance. What is on top of Fir'aun's helmet? Ah, snake. And Musa throws the staff. And what does it turn into? A real snake.

Not a snake. Now the snake on top of Fir'aun's head looks like he bought it from Balai Kartini. Right? It no longer looks authentic. It looks like a Temu's snake now. Because now everybody sees a real snake.

So now the people in the room who believe religiously that the snake is sacred, it's from the heavens, have seen a snake in front of their eyes. And they see that Fir'aun has a staff in his hand. But the staff of Musa has more power than the staff of Fir'aun. So they're having a religious crisis.

What just happened here? We used to think Fir'aun controls the snake. Fir'aun controls the staff. Musa came and took over our religion in one second. We no longer have control.

So the priests start thinking, maybe this staff is one of the sacred staffs from the temple. Who's supposed to touch the staff? Only the priests. And they cannot just go touch it. What do they have to do first? They have to wash their hands.

Musa puts his hand in his pocket and takes it out. And what happens? It turns pure white. They've never seen a hand this pure ever. Even that part of their ritual, no matter how much they wash their hands, it will never be like the hand of Musa عليه السلام.

So basically what I'm trying to tell you is that in a few minutes, the entire religion of Fir'aun was destroyed not just by words but by this small demonstration inside the palace. Now the story is broken.

The Unity of Religion and Politics

Before we go any further, in the ancient world, politics and religion were not two separate things. They were one thing. Why do people believe in the government of Fir'aun? They believe in the government of Fir'aun because the river Nile runs, the crop is good, the military is strong, there's lots of wealth in the nation. And why does he have that wealth? Because the gods bless him and he pays tribute to the gods with the temples. And that's why society runs properly.

He made a story, the pharaohs made a story and they sold that story to the public. And that's why people respect their government. If people believe Fir'aun is just any other man, he wouldn't have that kind of control. He has to be believed, they have to believe he's part man, part god. Like Qur'an says:

I'm your highest god, I'm your highest lord. That's part of his story. But now the story is breaking.

The Gathering of the Magicians

What does Fir'aun do next? If he looks like he's a pretty good magician, Fir'aun is a pretty good what? Or Musa is a pretty good what? Magician. But I told you before, when I was educating you in shirk, for them, magician was the same as what? A priest. So now they're saying, maybe Musa is one of the priests, and he just learned some of the secret magic. But he's not something special, he's just another priest.

Now the thing about priests, I told you, where did they spend most of their money? We could see even today, on their temples. Which means that the priests were very high profile people. They're very important people in that society. They're extremely elite members of society.

In our Prophet's life, when the Quraysh called our Prophet a magician, that was an insult. But when the Fir'aun and the people of Egypt called Musa a magician, that was not an insult. They were actually saying, I think he's actually got some pretty good priest status, and maybe he's connected to one of the gods. Because there's lots of them, right? What did they believe the gods were? The stars. So it must be one of them, and he's connected to one of them, and he's a pretty good priest.

So they were impressed with him. But they're like, well, if he's a good priest, we need to bring the best priests from the country, collect them all together, and then attack him all at once. So we know what happens next.

Fir'aun gathers all the religious leaders, I'm not calling them magicians anymore, what am I calling them? Religious leaders. He gathers all the religious leaders from all over Egypt that were in charge of all the different temples, all together to the capital to challenge Musa.

The Great Conversion

Now, imagine for a moment that you live in one of those villages, and they have a temple, and the temple has a shaytani imam, right, he has a mushrik imam, and now he's being called by the government because there's a federal requirement to go challenge Musa. So he has to leave. This person is the most respected person in the village, isn't it true? Because he's in charge of the temple. Now he's going to go challenge Musa. And he goes there.

And all of these magicians get together, and they challenge Musa عليه السلام. And in one minute, you know what happens? All of those priests fell into sajdah and rejected all of those stars as their god, rejected all of their temples, rejected all of their past religion, and accepted the Lord of Musa and Harun. They became Muslim.

So in one minute, the entire religious leadership of Egypt converted to Islam. Not regular people, not regular people, the people in charge of the temples, the religious leadership became Muslim.

The Crisis of Faith

Now when they become Muslim, imagine for example, there's a church in Texas where I live. There's a church. And the church has a pastor. It has a junior pastor. It has a youth pastor. There's like four or five categories. All of them become Muslim. You know what would happen in that? There will be a lot of confusion. What just happened? People will be having a faith crisis. People will be confused on what to do. How do you handle this situation?

So there's going to be a faith crisis everywhere because people learn their religion from who? The priest. Their whole life. Their whole life they respected the priest more than anybody else. And all of a sudden, he's become Muslim? Not only does he become Muslim, Fir'aun immediately makes a decision, we're going to torture and kill all of them and hang them publicly. We're going to chop their leg from one side, arm from the other side, and hang them in the streets.

So your whole life, you respected this religious leader. And then he got called by the government. And then in a day, he changed his religion. And on the same day, he's hanging like an animal from the streets. Would this create a crisis in Egypt? Yes.

Because now people are thinking, if the priests are gone, and they don't even believe in the stars, and we have all of these temples, we're not supposed to go inside the temple because we're not what? We're not pure. We're not supposed to go inside. How are we going to get the blessings from the heavens? The gods are going to be angry with us. This is a crisis.

So now people don't know what to believe anymore. And of course, people believed in Fir'aun because Fir'aun makes sure that the sky is happy. But now the people who make the sky happy are all, they're all dead. They've all been killed. So what in the world is going to happen now? So far so good.

The Emergency Meeting

There were two kinds of VIPs in that society. Religious leadership, military leadership, two. Religious leadership and military leadership. I already told you what happened to the religious leadership. Gone. Overnight, gone. Who's left? Military leadership.

And military leadership sees that the public is asking questions. Military leadership says, people are starting to yell and scream. What happened to our leader? Why did you kill him? Why did this happen? Explain yourself. People are starting to ask questions. And when the public starts getting angry, the military starts getting nervous.

So they hold an emergency Pentagon meeting. They hold an emergency meeting and they want to hold the meeting with the president. Who's the president? Fir'aun. Our story begins with the emergency meeting.

Story Night, Pharaoh Shall Drown is now available to watch exclusively on Bayyina TV. Navigate to Library, Stories, and enjoy this chapter in the life of Musa عليه السلام, along with all the other stories, together with your family and friends.