When You're Searching For Meaning | Allah’s Names | Dr. Omar Suleiman | Ep. 3

When You're Searching For Meaning

Adam, the new school... I mean, there's no need to tell them about your trip from Gaza and your uncle taking you in and all this stuff, right? Speak of the devil, the school is calling. They're excited about you, if they know. Hello? Hi there, is this Joe? This is Joe.

I was just looking over Adam's file. We noticed his visa was issued, but... Actually, his immigration visa was issued last week, but he only entered the country two days ago. So, should we expect you both after the holiday? No, no, no, no.

We're on our way. We should be there in, like, less than an hour. Perfect.

Yeah. And he's excited, too, to meet you. We're sure Adam will love it here.

Look, look. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid, my love.

Don't be afraid, my love. In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds.

The Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Master of the Day of Judgment. It is You we worship and You we ask for help.

Guide us to the straight path. In a hadith Qudsi, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says:

(Sahih Muslim, Book 45, Hadith 21)

O My servants, all of you are astray, except those I have guided. So seek guidance of Me, and I will guide you.

The Nature of Guidance

You were designed to want clarity of purpose and an unambiguous God. But you have to choose that want and prove that you're worthy. The first deflection ever regarding guidance came from Shaytan himself.

He said, My Lord, because you misled me. He blamed Allah to excuse himself, basically shifting his blame upwards so he doesn't have to look inwards. And his followers who led others astray will recycle the same excuse at the end when people rush towards them in hell.

And they will say:

If Allah would have guided us, we would have guided you. Now Allah does say:

He guides whom He wills, and He leads astray whom He wills. Yet when He introduced Himself to you, He named Himself Al-Hadi, the guide, not Al-Mudhil, the misguider.

You see, guidance is His gift when you insist on turning back. Misguidance is His justice when you insist on turning away.

When they turned away, Allah turned their hearts away.

But Allah promises that if you take responsibility for your pursuit, He will never turn you away. How can you seek the guide and He doesn't guide you?

Those who strive in our way, we will certainly guide them to our paths. He already opened His door.

The Parable of the Straight Path

But just like with Al-Wahid to Al-Ahad, you have to shut the other doors along the way before you get to His. And one of the most vivid images the Prophet ﷺ drew was this parable of guidance. He said, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala strikes a parable of a straight path.

On both sides are walls with open doors covered by curtains. A caller at the head of the path says, O people, enter the straight path altogether and do not go astray. Whenever someone reaches to lift a curtain on one of those side doors, another caller from above says, Woe to you! Don't open it! If you open it, you'll fall into it.

The main path is Islam. The walls are the limits of Allah. The doors on the side are the things He made prohibited.

The caller at the entrance of the path is the Book of Allah. And the caller from above is an admonition from Allah that He put in the heart of every believer. Think about that imagery.

The first step into one of those paths never feels like a big deal. But one step in and suddenly you can't see the main road anymore. Shaytan doesn't care which door you take as long as he can create distance between you and the guide so that maybe you spiritually die in a spiritual dungeon.

So if you're stuck in the clutch of a sin, the only way to get back is to call out to Al-Hadi, the guide, to pull you out of there. And even when you're not caught off the path, the most frequent du'a of the Prophet ﷺ was:

O Turner of Hearts, make my heart firm on your path.

And all along, Allah calls to the home of peace and He guides whom He wills to a straight path.

The Universal Guide

Al-Hadi means the guide who did not create you or anything else without guidance.

Our Lord is the one who gave everything its creation and then He guided it. Every atom in existence already knows its orbit.

The baby who can't even see yet still knows how to find its mother's chest. Birds migrate across continents without a compass. And we too know how to make it back home to Him and to Jannah.

When Adam ﷺ was sent to Earth, Allah said to him:

When guidance comes to you from Me, then whoever follows My guidance shall have no fear, nor shall they grieve. You begin the Qur'an with الحمد لله رب العالمين All praises to Allah the Lord of the worlds. And then immediately your core asks, اهدنا الصراط المستقيم Guide us to the straight path.

And then you end in Jannah saying, الحمد لله الذي هدانا لهذا All praises be to the one who guided us to this. It's like from the first page of the Qur'an to the final stage of paradise, your story starts and ends with guidance. And then thanking Him for it when He gives it to you.

And if you recognize what a gift guidance is, then you'll fall in love with the gift giver. The word هداية and هدية, which means gift, actually share the same root in the Arabic language. Because when someone gives you a gift, your heart inclines towards them.

From Guidance to Direction (Rushd)

And then if you act upon that guidance, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala takes you to the next level. It becomes instinct. It's when you don't just know what's right, but right actually feels right.

That's called رشد, direction. And Imam al-Ghazali rahimahullah said, رشد is when Allah guides you even without signs. Basically, you no longer need the GPS because of how often you've driven the route.

Or you're already anticipating what the teacher wants from you based upon what you know of the teacher and previous instructions. And that's why the rightly guided khulafa are called الخلفاء الراشدين المهديين. Because they didn't just have rightful guidance, but they clearly knew the directions.

But Allah has made faith beloved to you and beautified it in your hearts. And He has made hateful to you disbelief and defiance and disobedience. Those people are الرَّاشِدُونَ Those who are rightly guided.

So رُشْد is when Allah not only guides your mind, but He rewires your desires. He makes إيمان sweet and sin bitter. The Prophet ﷺ taught the father of Imran ibn Hussain to say this du'a when he became Muslim.

He said, say:

Oh Allah, inspire me with my right course and protect me from the evil of myself. Allah says about Ibrahim ﷺ:

We gave Ibrahim his رُشْد earlier and we knew him. He knew what was in Ibrahim's heart so he made direction his nature.

And then you become more capable of leading others as a result. Think about a مُرْشِد in Hajj or Umrah. That's the guide who knows the place like the back of his hand and has done it so many times to where they can walk you through it without missing a beat.

You can read and watch as many videos as you want but you need someone who has been there to walk you through it. So both obedience and disobedience become second nature based on where you're showing Allah that you want to go. Then all those other doors on that path shut and you just pursue the one ahead and that door is light.

The Light (An-Noor)

Allah calls himself the light of the heavens and the earth and he takes you out of ظُلُمَات many darknesses in the plural إلى النُّور into that one singular light. There are countless ways to get lost. There's only one way to get home.

So now instead of just trying to avoid alternate paths you're also trying to remove every veil of light so that you can see more and more of his beauty النُّور the light and not everyone gets the same light exposure. Physical light lets the eye see physical forms. Spiritual light lets the heart see meaning and then expands.

إِذَا دَخَلَ النُّورُ الْقَلْبُ اِنْفَسَحَ وَانْشَرَحَ When light enters the heart it expands and opens. Think of being in a dark room. You have no idea how deep it is.

When Allah turns the light on for you you keep seeing more and more of the path light up and there is never enough of that depth. You can read the Qur'an, the book of light a million times and derive benefits every single time as Imam Al-Shafi'i said. Because your heart is expanding and Imam Malik said knowledge isn't knowing many narrations.

It's a light that Allah places in the heart and it's in accordance with your steps towards Him. So as you walk towards Him the path beneath you keeps lighting accordingly. And that's why the Prophet ﷺ would say as he walked the path to prayer:

Oh Allah, place light in my heart light on my tongue light in my hearing light in my sight until He got to واجعل لي نورًا and make me a light.

And when he would face the darkness of hardship ﷺ he would say:

I seek refuge in the light of your face by which all darkness is dispelled. Whether it's the darkness of desire or despair Allah's light brings you out of it. So Al-Hadi guides you out of your confusion.

Al-Rashid programs you to act with clarity. And Noor expands your heart and perspective and path with light. And then you start to see the evidence of God in everything around you.

The Evident One (Al-Mubeen)

Hence his final name here Al-Mubeen, the evident. Who makes everything evident. Al-Mubeen is clear to anyone who's looking for his signs.

There has come to you from Allah a light and a clear book. Al-Mubeen placed signs in every corner of creation so that you could not forget him. And then he filled his revelation with proof so that you could not deny him.

And depending on how much light you have you can extract so much more from those evidences all around. And that's why two people can read the same ayah of Quran. One of them skims and shrugs.

The other one trembles in awe. One person looks at the stars in the sky and just shrugs. The other one looks at it and says SubhanAllah.

Enlightenment in Islam is not some elitist concept. Al-Mubeen, the self-evident makes himself known to the illiterate Bedouin or to the super intelligent professor but based upon how dark it is inside their hearts. But then how come guidance sometimes seems to come suddenly to a person who's actually walking in the opposite direction? It's like a button gets pressed and then it's as if Allah suddenly turns a person back to him.

Umar radiAllahu ta'ala anhu left home to kill the Prophet ﷺ. And then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala turned him towards him and he never looked back. And now he's buried next to the Prophet ﷺ. Think of it like Allah flipped a switch that he already wired inside his chest. And a man had the nerve to see him and say Allah would guide the donkey of Al-Khattab before he would guide Umar.

But look what happened. And then some might say but on the other hand there are people that seem so good humanitarians and great friends and great people. But for some reason they die astray.

Allah knows best who is most fit for His guidance. We see the surface. He sees the heart.

You can invite people to Islam. You can weep for their salvation. But only Al-Hadi knows what's in the hearts.

You don't guide whom you want. And by the way on the Day of Judgment we're all going to be surprised. You'll have a scholar and a martyr ruined by hidden intention on one hand.

And then you'll see an adulterous woman who no one expected to get into Jannah completely forgiven for her sins because she gave water to a thirsty dog. Because Allah sees deep sincerity where we only see surface level. So ask yourself what is Allah seeing in your heart right now?

Du'a for Guidance

Guide me when my heart forgets the way.

Pull me back from every turn that leads me astray. Let your guidance feel closer than the doubts in my chest and steadier than the voices that confuse me.

Teach me to see truth instinctively.

Make faith beloved to me. Make righteousness feel natural. And let sin feel heavy on my chest and hated by my every breath.

Inspire me with wisdom that protects me even from myself.

Light every darkness I carried or carry within. Let your light pour into my heart and onto all my other limbs.

Until you make me a light and everything I see reminds me of you.

Make your signs clear in what surrounds me and what is within me. Reveal the lessons hidden in every trial.

Let me never lose sight of your signs again. Ameen Ameen