Dinner blessing muraqabah, and for the love and affection ...sitting in muraqabah, and for the love and affection of Dr. Aliyah, and we pray for her health. We ask You, Allah, for

Shaykh Ahmed abdur Rashid March 2, 2013 www.circlegroup.org Saturday Suhbat

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The Stories of Prophet Musa (as) and Egypt Today: Purifying the Self of the Inner Pharaoh

Dinner blessing: O Allah, thank You for the blessings of the trip, and for the safe

return, for the good works being done by good people, for the efforts of everyone

here in our community to make this work happen, for the fulfillment we feel, and the

fulfillment others feel. Thank You, Allah Swt, for the blessings of two new people

sitting in muraqabah, and for the love and affection of Dr. Aliyah, and we pray for

her health. We ask You, Allah, for the health for the members of our community, and

special prayers for Abdus Salaam and his family. We ask you Allah to give us

strength and means to expand the work and to keep our community whole. Amin

Suhbat: It’s fitting on my return from Egypt that I should be talking about the

Prophet Musa (as). When the Prophet Musa stood at the Red Sea with the less than

benign Pharaoh and his army following him, a corrupt individual at the end of a long

line of Pharaohs, I came to a conclusion while in Egypt about the whole pharaonic

culture, [based on] the very, very good history lesson I was getting from a 22 year

old boy named Abdul Halim. When Prophet Musa (as) stood in front of the Red Sea

with the pharaonic army behind him, my conclusion about the pharaonic culture in

general was that it’s only about death. Everything was preparation for death. Dying

didn’t mean anything except in the upper class people. The different cults would

change: sometimes of the sun, sometimes of night and darkness. Nonetheless, they

were all preparations for death.

Life was only this interruption in eternity. You only had this brief life in order to

prepare for death. In a strange way, one can look at this in a positive sense from an

Islamic / Sufic point of view. But the whole culture to me was very negative in the

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sense that there was a disregard for life, as opposed to an affirmation of life. I won’t

get into the spaceships that brought the pyramids here…! At that time, as we

understand it, some of the people with Sidna Musa (as) began to question and

separate themselves. Some looked behind and saw only defeat. The Qur’an said:

“And when the two bodies saw each other, the people of Musa said, ‘We are

sure to be overtaken.’” But Musa (as) saw with the eyes of firasa, basira. Through

spiritual eyes, he saw through the illusions of all the difficulties, and the potential

obvious upcoming defeat. With his qalb directly connected to Allah Swt, in the midst

of an impossible situation…which was not uncommon among the ambiyā; we find it

with the Prophet Muhammed (sal) also… he saw Allah and said, “By no means. My

Lord is with me and He will guide me through.” And that is what happened.

Allah says in Qur’an:

Then We told Musa by inspiration, “Strike the sea with your rod.” And so

it divided, and each separate part became like the huge firm mass of a

mountain, and We made the other party approach thither. We delivered

Moses and all who were with him, but We drowned the others.

I just came back from Egypt. The Red Sea has gotten “bigger.” Pretty much everyone

in Egypt now is standing in front of the Red Sea. I don’t know if you want to call him

a tyrant, but there are those forces with an army standing at the back of the good

people. There are some who are very sanguine. Some are very negative about the

future; they don’t see any hope. I talked to some of those people and they say, “Well,

there’s nothing we can do.” But most people feel there’s hope. There are those who

are trying to see through other eyes, through the wall that is across the path of hope

and change. There are some who, even with the different tyrants at their back, as if

the Pharaoh had split into factions (the Salafi, the Iqwani, all the tyrants that are


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there), there are those who said to me, not exactly in these words but definitely

indeed: “My Lord is with me and He will guide me through.”

At this crossroads in history as least in Egypt, it’s a good time to re-tell the story of

Musa (as). And to realize that things that happened historically in many places in

the world are relevant to today. I wish we were seeking more relevancy today about

what is happening in our own country. Going back just a few hundred years in our

history would be good; but we are not. Again, we are faced with the reality that

these stories are not just stories. These prophetic stories have lasted three, four

thousand years. They are not just stories, and they are not just metaphors. They are

analogical. They are relevant to today because the problems are not unique. They

come in every generation. These stories are an ‘āyat, isharat, as I was telling the

people the other day in Egypt, pointing us in a good direction, giving us a lesson for

the time and place we are living in.

In the next ‘āyat, Allah says: “Verily, in this is a sign, but most of them don’t

believe.” He’s telling us, this is not a story to be told; it’s a sign. Allah knows it will

be told as a story. After all, it’s not every day an ocean separates. It’s a sign of many

things. It’s a sign of the reality of the Divine. It’s a sign of the secrets of the world. It’s

a sign that evil doesn’t win, but is finally overcome, and that all obstacles we are

facing as individuals, challenges, crossroads in our lives are only illusions. They are

there to test us and test our will, and to test our resolve to be good spiritual human

beings, good Muslims, good Sufis, and good servants. They are also there to train us

in how to act, because those who came before us gave examples. And they are also

there for at-tazkiyat, to revive us and purify us. But most of all, they are signs that

goodness and success and fulfillment come from Allah Swt, from surrendering and

trusting in Allah Swt, from accepting that your fate is written to make good choices.


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Trust in Allah Swt and do not be so attached to the world and worldly things; to the

worldly worries and the worldly desires; to the desires that are justifiable, and the

ones that make perfect sense; to the ones you feel you can have “along with,” or “in

addition to” the spiritual life. Know that the spiritual life always suffers unless you

put it first. And when it suffers to a certain degree, you forget about it. When you

forget about it, you are no better than the Pharaoh. When you forget about it, it is

your firstborn who will be taken. We see that many first-borns were taken in the

last 15 years in the wars in the Middle East that our country was fighting; and many

first-borns will be taken in the future, unless people surrender to Allah and trust in

Allah Swt.

It’s a vision of how one can meet the challenges and come to success, no matter what

the odds are, no matter what it seems to be; especially at the times when you think

your back is at the wall, or to the sea; when you are trapped and defeat is imminent,

when you have very little power against the armies that are assailing you. That’s

what it really seems to be for us. If we are really on the side of Allah, why does

victory not come easily? Some wonder why Allah doesn’t just give the good people

ease without struggle and without sacrifice. Everybody says, “It’s hard. It’s a

struggle. I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can face this.” But the answer

is given by Allah. Allah tells us, when we are at these times in our lives—whatever is

driving it: our need for work, surety that we have to do something other than what

we are doing, or go somewhere we don’t really want to go—Allah says, and we

should pay attention:

And We did not send a prophet in a town but we overtook its people

with distress and affliction, in order that they might humble themselves.


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Unless we reach a state of tadaru / humility, we can’t really understand what this

path is about. It may have been over 3,000 years ago with Prophet Musa (as) and

the Pharaoh, but it is also today in someone’s life or in many people’s lives. There is

a purpose to hardship. It is to reach that state of tadaru / humility before Allah. It’s

not just simple humility. To understand the real concept of tadaru / humility,

imagine that you are in the center of a vast sea, and you are all alone on a boat. A

huge storm is coming, and the waves become like mountain surrounding you. Then

you turn to Allah at some point, and you ask Allah for His help. In that state of

submission/islam, in that state of need, awe, or total dependency and total

humility… what degree of need and humility and dependency and awe would you

really be in, if that were the situation for you? That’s tadaru. Your back is to the sea.

Whatever is bothering you: that is the sea, that’s what is coming at you.

Allah Swt says He creates hardship in order to grant us this gift of humility, and He

says, “Inna m’al ‘usri yusrā.” We have to understand, then, that ease is humility.

Ease is not just making things easy. With hardship comes ease. What is ease? Ease

is not necessarily the situation changing, or that the answer comes right away. Ease

is you become humble before Allah. When you become humble before Allah,

whatever the problem is goes away or it is solved. Allah says He creates hardship in

order to give us this blessing of humility, but it doesn’t need to make things hard for

us. He creates those situations in order for us to understand our qadr/ destiny, and

for us to reach a state of nearness to Allah, which otherwise we probably wouldn’t

even attempt to reach. Everything would seem okay. We might think we are a near

as one could come. We might not even think about Allah if everything is fine. That

unique state of humility, and nearness, and total reliance on Allah Swt is probably

what the Egyptian people today are being blessed with, being pushed to, back to

history.


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Allah also tells us there are other reasons for hardship and struggle. He says:

And We divided them throughout the earth into different groups. Of

them, some of them were righteous, and some of them were otherwise.

We tested them with good times and bad that perhaps they would

return to obedience.

This is also the story of the people of Musa (as), the Bani Israel who become

dispersed throughout the world. Where there should be, under normal

demographics, about 500 million at this point in history, there are only 13 million

throughout the whole world. That’s a whole other story. In Surah al-Imran, Allah

Swt says:

If a wound has touched you, be sure that a similar wound has touched

others. Such days of varying fortunes We give to men, and men by

turns, that Allah may know those who believe, and He may take to

Himself from your ranks martyr-witnesses [to Truth]. And Allah loves

not those who do wrong. Allah’s object also is to purify those who are

true in faith, and to deprive of blessing those that resist faith. Did you

think that you would enter heaven without Allah testing those of you

who fought hard in His cause and remained steadfast? (3:140-142)

So, what do you want? Most people opt for ease. Eventually, you realize you have to

make a choice between the spiritual life and the worldly life. If you choose the

worldly life, the spiritual life goes away. You might pray, put your head on the

ground, but the spiritual life goes away. Your reliance on Allah goes away. If you

choose the spiritual life, the worldly life doesn’t go away, because you are living in

this world; but your worldly life is balanced, fulfilled. And whatever comes to you,


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you slowly learn to trust in Allah. It’s much better than thinking you are a victim. In

this ‘āyat from Surah al-Imran, Allah tells us the purpose of hardship as being

“tamhis.”

Tamhis is the word that is used to describe when you heat gold to purify it, when

you remove the dross. If you don’t heat it, the gold will be full of impurities. By

performing tamhis, it is a process sort of like making ghee out of butter, the

impurities are removed and this is what Allah Swt does with the believers. Through

hardships, believers are purified. If you understand that, you will realize that the

gold comes from inside of you, from the hardships and the difficulties. Instead of

trying to live life running in between the raindrops, and thinking that something is

always wrong when something is difficult or painful or confusing, try to remember

that it is just tamhis/ purification.

Maybe today that is what is happening in Masruh (Egypt). Think about it. Our image

of young people in Egypt before the revolution is this: the best of them went to

college or some technical school, but couldn’t get a job. There was nothing for them;

it was hopeless. Nobody saw any future for them. The regime wasn’t giving them

any help; nothing was happening that was good for them. They were over-educated

and couldn’t get a job, couldn’t find housing, couldn’t get married. Housing was so

expensive. Now, housing is not that expensive, because nobody is coming there. I

was trying to imagine what it was like when all the tourists were there; when the

traffic was already so bad we went 1 foot in 10 minutes. There were people who

thought the young people would just live their lives on the streets, flirting with girls

and sitting in Internet cafes, smoking sheesha. Everybody smokes sheesha, especially

the women.


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Let me tell you something about sheesha. We met with Dr. Mohammed Abdul Tagy;

he’s come back from Sante Fe to work in a new foundation and base his business

there. We mentioned that we saw all these women smoking sheesha, and how the

culture has shifted. Women used to smoke it in private, if they even did. He told me,

“Now they put everything in aluminum to make it easier so you don’t have to clean

out the clay. But the heat heats up the aluminum, and nano particles get released

into the smoke. So people are getting nano particles of aluminum in their bodies, the

more they smoke sheesha.” If I were to tell you what the symptoms of alumina are,

you’d be really blown away. Look up the mental symptoms of Homeopathic

alumina if you want.

In a strange way, the pharaonic culture used to take people who were alive, and

make them dead. Now this new pharaonic culture is taking young people who were

potentially dead, having nothing to spend their lives on, and through this revolution

has given them purpose. Dina is working from here, Khaled is commenting, others

are involved. They all have a new sense of life. This is the story of Musa (as) in the

modern day – at least part of it. When people stand in the streets in defiance of the

tyrants, or on their knees praying—and they are not extremists but moderate

Muslims—and they are calling out to Allah, not blaming religion or shoving religion

down someone’s throat; and they are commenting on the people in power today; or

when they stood in front of the tanks, and when those in the square defended the

Christians, then this is a new life being brought into an old land.

Instead of leaving with all this hope, I should also tell you that it’s slowed down a lot.

Just like there were hardships in the desert following the Red Sea opening. They

went through; they get on their way to the Promised Land, and they wander for 40

years in the desert, with lots of hardships and doubts and idolatry. Let’s remember


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that Musa didn’t get his Divine mission until he was in the Sinai after some years. He

went up to the mountain and that’s when he gets his Divine mission. Allah says:

Say, who is it that sustained you in life from the sky and from the earth?

Who is it that has power over hearing and sight? Who is it that brings

out the living from the dead, and the dead from the living? Who is it that

regulates all affairs? They will soon say “Allah.” Say, “Will you not then

show piety toward Him?”

Somehow, in that beautiful ancient culture, where people are very nice and sweet

people, so many people not only maintained their piety, but gained piety during this

time. We see in this country young people who are either leaving Islam because they

just don’t get it, or they are making it all about Sharī’ah and fiqh. I felt the spirit of

Islam in the young people in Masrah. I felt it in the Christian church, also. I felt it

with the Coptic priest, and with Mary Samir Ibrahim. I felt it with those young girls

who swarmed all over us, physically, to get their pictures taken. Every two minutes

this one girl was in front of me. I recognized her by this special blue jacket she was

wearing. I said, “You’ve had your picture taken 6 times!” And she just smiled at me.

Then Mary chased them away saying there were well-behaved until they started

taking pictures.

We shouldn’t think that there’s no purpose in these stories of Sidna Musa (as). We

will talk about the story of Musa and Khdir. We will talk about the companion on

that boat. We don’t usually talk about the companion on the boat, but he had a

companion with him. There is freedom in this hardship, and there is democracy in

this hardship. For how many decades had people lived a life of fear and oppression,

to the point where they don’t even feel they were oppressed anymore, most of the

time. They found some comfortable place, but the fear was still there—whether it’s


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the Iranians and the fear of the Basiji and the Revolutionary Guard, or the wonderful

Ministry of the Interior which is now a charcoal slab next to the Museum of

Antiquities, which is now the National Party Office. I’m surprised the Museum didn’t

burn down. (People made a human shield with water to protect it). I guess what the

prophets do is make us face our fears and overcome them, at least that is one of the

messages.

Allah makes the Prophets face their fears and overcome them; then they make us

face our fears and overcome them. Certainly, the Prophet Ibrahim had to face his

anxieties and overcome them. Certainly, Nūh had to. Adam had to apologize. And

Prophet Muhammed (sal) came down from the mountain shaking and afraid. Then

he gives strength to others because he found his strength. In a strange way, you

could say that Allah Swt has freed the people of Masrah today, like he freed the Jews

at the time of Musa from the tyranny of Pharaoh. The question is how will people

stay free? We have the keys to be free as Sufis, to make meaning out of our lives, to

live a good life, to have good things, to live in a good way, to have good friends, to

have good marriage partners, to have wonderful children. We have this choice, if we

choose it. Or we can choose to live in anxiety and fear.

The Israelites were freed, but it took them a long time to feel free. A lot of people

died; tribes were destroyed. And guess what? It’s come around again, and they are

not so free. Why? I think because it’s a very secular society. People have lost the

meaning of the dīn, in that case, Judaism, and they have only kept the culture and the

outer accoutrements of it. Let’s see what happens with the people of Masrah,

wandering around in the desert. There was talk that the government might let

Mubarak go because he is sick. In a certain way, he should be thanked. He was the

means through which the Egyptian people may have found their freedom from fear.

He was just this tool.


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Analogically, we see the same disease throughout Islam. We see the tyrants that are

rulers. We see the rules they make that are nothing Islamic. They built a toilet over

Khadija’s house. They will destroy more of the history of Islam. They have their

reasons and explanations and dogma and justifications. Just like every one of us, as

individuals, have for what we want, to stay in power over our own lives. But you can

see that as you purify yourself, and as inshā’a-Llāh Egypt purifies itself, and Libya,

and Tunisia, and maybe without battles and too much pain, maybe Jordan and

Morocco and other places, maybe this is also a chance for the whole ummah to

become purified and get the prophetic message to move away from autocratic

regimes, ignorance and intolerance, bigotry and bias.

I think it’s very fitting that what started in Iran, and then a year later comes to Egypt

after Tunisia, waking up the young people; I think it is very fitting that the global

ummah might get a prophetic message from what happens in Egypt. It’s possible.

We have to ask ourselves, what is it we are striving for, individually and collectively?

What are we asking Allah? What are we afraid of? What do I stand for? Do I stand

for that just for myself, or for the sake of others? Where are we going? Those of you

who were born here, or lived here most of your lives, you can understand where you

are coming from. You are coming from Tariqah, from Islam, and from the truth.

Whether it’s an individual who is asleep, or in a coma, Allah sends a wakeup call.

The wakeup call is named Adam, Nūh, Ibrahim, Musa, Jesus/ Isa, Muhammed (peace

and blessings on all of them). That’s the Mercy of Allah Swt. He sends to us a rebirth

when there was only dying, and awakening when there was only sleep, waking us up

from our lack of attention, and sending us a sign. We were asleep and He woke us

up. We were worshiping the deities of this life, of this world, and we preferred our

material possessions and our name and fame to a free soul. We were afraid of


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nothing, until we became afraid of Allah in the sense of piety, and then He frees us.

Very few people experience this in a lifetime. Very few people ever experience what

you have experienced already in your life. And you take it for granted; we all do.

How many people are going to experience the opening of the sea, or the defeat of a

tyrant who could overpower you? And shouldn’t we ask who the chosen people

are? They are not the tribes of the Bani Israel.

The chosen people are the ones chosen by Allah to be able to resist the tyrants and

develop the strength, to have trust in Allah, and know Allah is going to handle the

cause. To sit back, and when things are difficult—yes, of course, they will affect you;

and yes, you will worry about them—if you resolve yourself with Allah, then you are

of the chosen people. You are chosen to see and to hear. Then we should ask, “What

is it I am supposed to learn, and how can I change myself?” If you think for one

moment that this is all about the people of Egypt, or that the story of Musa (as) or

the story of Khidr (as) is all about the people of Egypt, then you totally miss the

point.

We were dead and Allah gave us life. We were conditioned to believe that the

enemy was outside of us when the enemy is inside of us, really. It’s our own fears

and our own desires. We felt the enemy had power over us, but that was just an

illusion. The enemy is inside of us, and all the external enemies are only a

manifestation of our own internal enemies. We project them, in other words. They

are projections. If we want to conquer the enemies of disease, poverty, fear, and

doubt, then we have to conquer what’s inside of us, the breeding ground for those

feelings. That’s why Allah says:

Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change

themselves.


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First change what is in your self. First, we have to conquer envy, greed, selfishness

and doubt, and shirk and fear, hope and dependence on anything other than Allah

Swt. Allah shows us that the root of all our diseases and our oppression is within

us. Before we can defeat the Pharaoh of our life in the external, we have to defeat

the Pharaoh inside of us. That’s what’s happening today in Masrah and other places,

in Libya and Tunisia, and more subtley in other countries. People are tired of being

oppressed. You and I have to learn, or had to learn, how to overcome oppressing

ourselves. You oppress yourself every day, but you don’t believe it. Allah Swt is not

oppressing us; we are oppressing ourselves.

Ibn Tirmiyya (not someone I quote that much for historical reasons) answers the

question, “What is oppression?” He says, “The one who is truly imprisoned is the one

whose heart is imprisoned from Allah, and a captivated one is the one whose desires

have enslaved him.” Despite the fact that is Ibn Tirmiyya, it’s true. When you are free

inside, you are free outside. If you are free inside, you never allow anyone to take

your freedom away from you. When you have inner freedom, you can look into the

eyes of the Pharaoh, whatever he looks like: Mubarak, Mursi, or Bin Ali or whoever.

He may look like Cheney, or Ran Paul. He may look like all kinds of people. You can

look them in the eye.

When you are free within yourself, no one can make a slave of you, because you can

only enslave a person who is attached to things. And you can only threaten a person

who is afraid of losing something. You have only power over someone when they

need or want something from you, and you have the ability to either take it away or

not give it. But there is one thing that no person has the power to take away from

you, and that’s Allah. If you let go of Allah and think, “I’ll pray later. I’ll think later.

I’ll do the practices later. I’ll find something different. I’ll find something better. I’ll


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find something I’ll like.” Guess what? You probably won’t. The fight to free the

black people from their de jure enslavement in the 1960’s, a hundred years after

they were freed by Lincoln, was the key for me finding how to free myself. That’s

what was happening. I went out to march for their rights as a do-gooder, and I came

back as someone who had to reflect on the truth, and I found the spiritual path.

That’s what’s happening, inshā’a-Llāh, in Egypt today, and Tunisia and Libya.

Allah gives us the formula for success in Qur’an—sabr (patience and perseverance),

and taqwa (fear of God, but really piety before God), and tawadu (humility). “O you

who have believed, preserved and endured and remained stationed in fear of

Allah alone that you may be successful.” There’s the formula. Those of you who

have believed, persevere and endure, and remained stationed, and fear Allah alone

that you may be successful. If we are watching Egypt, what eyes are you watching

through? Are you watching through pure eyes? Are you watching through the

utmost sincerity? Maybe talking like this allows us to eventually see the sea open,

right before our eyes—just a gift, just the blessing of Allah Swt, just the way He can

prove to us the Divine Presence and purpose in life.

Fareeda: quote from Rabe’ea al Adawiyya: “When I wake up in the morning, and I

have some suffering, I know that Allah loves me. And if I wake up in the morning and

there’s no suffering, I feel he has forgotten me.”

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Dinner blessing muraqabah, and for the love and affection ...sitting in muraqabah, and for the love and affection of Dr. Aliyah, and we pray for her health. We ask You, Allah, for