Why You Keep Giving Up on Seeking Knowledge | #11 Ta'iyyah Abu Ishaq al-Ilbiri | Sheikh Tim Humble

The sweetness talib ilm finds in a book. Somebody would say I didn't find that sweetness in a hundred movies, TV shows, in music, in anything. I mean, this person is sitting reading this book like the time passes by as though there's, you know, just only a minute has passed and hours have gone by and the person just because they take they realize the sweetness of knowledge. This sweetness, honestly, truly, truly, I promise you, it eclipses the sweetness of the dunya. >> For every person, there are moments when they move towards greatness. But what is rare among men is being steadfast. Every one of you does something that if you carried it on, you would become a great scholar of Islam. The problem is most of you will stop. >> In our next line of poetry, the نظم رحمه الله تعالى he said, He said, "If you had tasted the sweetness of this knowledge, the sweetness of its taste, you would have given up everything, or you would have given learning precedence over everything and you would have worked hard. So, the first thing we want to talk about is the sweetness of knowledge. That's the first thing. Because in reality, knowledge has knowledge has a sweetness. And there are statements, very beautiful statements from some of the early generation with regard to the sweetness of knowledge and how people don't know how sweet knowledge actually is. Again, if we start with what the Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wasallam said with regard to ta'am al-iman and with regard to halawat al-iman. The Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wasallam spoke about it. Dhaqa ta'am al-iman. The person has tasted He has tasted ta'am al-iman. He has tasted the sweetness of iman. Man radhiya billahi rabban wa bil-islami dinan wa bi-Muhammadin Sallallahu alaihi wasallam nabiyyan. The Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wasallam said, "The one who has tasted the sweetness of iman is the one who is pleased with Allah as their Lord and with Islam as their religion and with Muhammad Sallallahu alaihi wasallam as their messenger." The hadith in Sahih Muslim from the hadith of al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib radhiyallahu ta'ala anhu. So, the first thing we need to understand is that iman and iman for us includes knowledge without a shadow of a doubt because of two reasons. First of all, actions are included in iman. And second of all, that you can't do any actions without knowledge, right? Knowledge has to come first. Fa'alam annahu la ilaha illallah wastaghfir li dhanbik. Know that there is no God worthy of worship except Allah and then seek forgiveness for your sins. So knowledge comes first and action comes second. So we can say that the mention of Iman here contains knowledge for two reasons. The first is you can't carry out the actions of Iman whether internal or external without knowledge. The second is that seeking knowledge is a part of Iman. It's a part of the actions that a person does. So it has a sweetness. And the one who has tasted the sweetness of Iman is the one who is pleased with Allah as their Lord with Islam as their religion and with Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wasallam as their messenger. And how can you be pleased with Allah as your Lord if you don't know who Allah is? And how can you be pleased with Islam as your religion if you didn't study the religion of Islam? And how can you be pleased with Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wasallam as your messenger if you don't know who the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wasallam is? And let me add if you are Rasulullah for whom you don't care who and rather if you don't know who the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam is, the default is that you will be inclined to reject him. As Allah Azza wa Jalla said and let me add if you are Rasulullah for whom is it that they don't know their messenger for whom you don't care who so then they reject him. Therefore, the idea here is it's knowledge that plays a part in you being pleased with Allah as your Lord. You know about his names, his attributes, his actions. You know about what Allah wants from you and what Allah promises you. And so you become pleased with Allah as your Lord and you taste the sweetness. You know what the religion of Islam is. You know the fairness of it, the wonder of it, the beauty of it. You know what the message is, the most important part of it, the subsidiary parts of it, the secondary parts of it. You know what is high priority and what is less and and so you become pleased with Islam as your religion. And you know who the Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wasallam is, you know his Nabua. The proofs that make him a prophet. All of the things that many we did actually a lecture on uh recently in the Akida pathway. It's there. There's a discussion on the proofs of prophethood. In other words, what is it that proves to anyone who is fair that Muhammad Sallallahu alaihi wasallam was the messenger of Allah? You know what proofs are there? So many proofs there are. Huge categories of proofs, not just miracles, not just the Quran, his character, what he called to, so many different things we spoke about. So when you know those and you know his how he was, how he behaved, how he looked and you know his Hadith and what he said, and you know his Sira, so you'll be pleased with the Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wasallam as your messenger. And the more and here this is the point, even if someone said, "Look, you don't need that much knowledge to be pleased with Allah." No problem. But what I'm proving here is the more knowledge you get, the more sweetness you get. The more knowledge you get, that's for sure, because the more you know about Allah, the more you will love him. There's a statement of Qayyim alaihi wasallam. He said, "Kana billahi kana minhu akwaf." Wali alaihi akwalab wa an masiyatihi abad. He said, "Whoever knows Allah more, fears Allah more, and worships Allah more, and disobeys Allah less. So, no doubt the more knowledge you have, the more sweetness you're going to taste. That's why you see now, for example, the the sweetness that the finds in a book. Somebody would say I didn't find that sweetness in a hundred movies, TV shows, in music, in anything. And this person is sitting reading this book like It's like for them it's like it's like honey being poured onto your tongue. And just reading it reading a book. Sometimes a person reads so much just this one book and it the time passes by as though there's you know just only a minute has passed and hours have gone by and the person just because they realize the sweetness of knowledge. Listening to the Quran before all of that, reading the Quran. Then what about reading the Quran with it? What about understanding the Quran? And actually knowing what you're reading. You could it's going to be sweeter. It's going to be even sweeter. This sweetness, honestly, truly, truly, I promise you, it eclipses the sweetness of the world. It truly does. There's no there's no word for it except that. It increases and it's greater than the sweetness of the world. The sweetness of the world is very typically is very much a small peak and then a big drop. So, for example, people talk about retail therapy. I don't know if you heard that expression. But it means that yeah, when you feel down, you go and buy something. Like you feel a bit depressed, so you go to the shop and you buy something. Presumably, you're not depressed cuz you've got no money, otherwise that wouldn't work. But, let's just say that you decided, you know, I'm feeling really down. I just want to go and buy the latest phone or the latest whatever. How long does that sweetness last? Maybe a day, maybe a couple days, maybe even a week before you're back in your depression again and you need to go and buy something again. Like in Islam, it's not like that. The sweetness of Iman is not like that. The sweetness of Iman just keeps going up and up and up, and it only goes down when you disobey Allah and you go far from Allah, and then you make tawbah and it's back up again. And it doesn't cost you anything. So, we come to the second and last part. What would happen if you knew the sweetness of it? What would you do? You would have given precedence to your studies over everything else. Meaning, you would have made everything else suffer for the sake of your studies. And you would have worked hard. The quote that I was thinking of earlier is the quote of Ibrahim ibn Adham. That's what I was thinking of. That he said He said Ibrahim ibn Adham, he said, "If the kings and the sons of the kings knew what we were in from the sweetness and the pleasure that we are in, they would have sent the people with swords to take it from us." And Sheikh al-Islam ibn Taymiyyah, he has a statement about the jannah that exists in this dunya. And there's a jannah in this dunya. Sheikh al-Islam, uh he said, "Inna fi dunya jannah Man lam yadkhulha la yadkhul Jannatul Akhira. He said in this Dunya there's a Jannah. The person who doesn't enter it hasn't entered will not enter Jannah in the Akhira. The person will not enter it in the Akhira. And then he said ma yasna'u a'da'i bi. He said what will my enemies do to me? My Jannah and my garden in the Jannati wa bustani fi sadri is in my heart. In ruhtu fa hiya ma'iya la tufariquni. Wherever I go my Jannah is with me it doesn't go away. Inna habsi he said khalwa. Wa qatli shahada wa ikhraji min baladi siyaha. He said if they put me in prison it gives me a chance to be alone with Allah and remember Allah. And if they kill me I'm a shaheed. And if they take me out of my city it gives me a chance to travel for knowledge. And this is a Jannah you can't take away. And my Jannah is my Jannah is in this Dunya Jannatul Dunya. Some of the salaf said masakinu ahl al-Dunya kharaju minha wa ma dhaqu atyaba ma fiha. He said you shall I tell you who is miskeen? The miskeen person is the one who lived in this world and they didn't taste the best thing in this world. Qila lahu ma atyabu ma fiha. He said what's the best thing in this world? He said mahabbatullahi ta'ala. Wa ma'rifatuhu wa dhikruhu wa al-unsu bihi. He said loving Allah and knowing him and remembering him and being near to him. If you didn't taste that you didn't taste the best in this dunya. Whatever hotel you stayed in, whatever car you drove, you haven't tasted the best thing in this dunya. So, you're miskeen until you have As for the issue of which we were talking about alum. The is this is something amazing. This this idea of is alum is amazing. Allah said Those people from the Ansar who They had homes in Medina. And they accepted Islam. They have nothing in their hearts but love for the people who made Hijrah. The Ansar, the people in Medina. They have nothing but love in their hearts for the people who made Hijrah. And they don't find anything in their heart against what they've been given or any problem giving away what they've been what they've been given. And they prefer those over themselves. Meaning they give up their right for the sake of others. This is called alum. And this is what the poet said alum. Meaning you would take away your right to food and drink and enjoyment and dunya. All of it you would give up everything you could give up for the sake of prioritizing knowledge and learning. And you would have worked hard. And that's a that's a goal to get to, right? We're not going to say that it's we're perfect in it. We're not going to say that we don't have bad times or times when we waste time, but a person realizes the more sweetness you take in from this knowledge, the more you're going to be willing to give up to have it. It's like a good addiction. Most addictions are not good, but it's a good addiction. The more you have it, you become addicted, and you have to have more, and you're willing to give up everything that you have for that more and more and more because you're addicted to it. But this addiction is a good one. It's a rare good addiction, and that is addiction to Islamic knowledge. As long as it comes with what? Zakat. As long as it comes with paying your zakat by acting upon it and teaching it and commanding what is good and forbidding what is evil and all of the things that come alongside it, as long as it comes with zakat al-ilm, it's a good addiction to have. Because it's a beloved addiction for you to have in the sight of Allah Azza wa Jal. And we're not saying for you that you're going to do zulm to someone else, because that's not ithar, right? The key thing about ithar is ithar is not zulm to others. You're giving up your haqq for something else. As for saying like I'm not going to feed my kids because I'm going to buy books, that's not ithar, right? La yadkhulu fil ithar. Because ithar is about giving up what is yours for someone else. As for giving up what belongs to someone else, you can't do that, right? You can't I can't give up my kids' right to food for books. But I can give up my own. I can give up my own luxury or my own and what is in my hands, I can give it up for more knowledge. And there's so many statements about it. Really, we could do a whole three, four, five lectures on all the different statements that exist regarding it. Uh but inshallah Ta'ala, I I think that's a good place for us to stop. And that's what Allah made easy for me to mention and Allah knows best. So after praising Allah and sending peace and blessings upon the messenger alayhi wasallam and upon his family and his companions, we continue with the explanation of the Manzumah at-Ta'iyyah of Abi Ishaq al-Ilbiri rahimahullah And I still haven't finished what we were started speaking about in the last bait that we took. We said if you had tasted its sweetness you would have given precedence or you would have given precedence to to learning ahead of everything or you would have given up everything for learning and you would have worked hard. We spoke about the idea of al-ithar in the last lesson, what it means. They give precedence to others over themselves even though they are in great need of it. And here the poet talks about giving precedence to knowledge even when it means that you personally have to give up things that you like. For example, you have to give up the mubahat, some of the mubahat, the things which are halal. Some of the things you enjoy. Perhaps some hobbies, some things that you like to do in your spare time, which may not be things that are muharramat. And those things in the end of the day, the haram is the first thing that we have zuhd in it, right? When we spoke about zuhd, we said the most important thing regarding zuhd is az-zuhdu fil-haram. That you don't involve yourself in anything that's haram. And from this is the hadith of the messenger sallallahu alayhi wasallam min husni islamil mar' tarkuhu ma la ya'nihi. From the perfection of a person's faith is leaving that which doesn't concern them. And that's why the ulama mentioned the first thing. And Nawawi wa ghayruhu rahimahullahu ta'ala the first thing that doesn't concern a Muslim is involving himself in that which Allah azza wa jalla made haram. Lakin if we talk about az-zuhd with the most general meaning, then it is tarku ma la yanfa' fil-akhirah. Leaving that which doesn't benefit you in the akhirah. And that is awsa'. It's more comprehensive and deeper than the two meanings that come before it. So to remind ourselves, at the most basic level when we talk about az-zuhd, we talk about abstaining from the dunya, we talk about abstaining from the haram. Abstaining from everything that Allah azza wa jalla made haram. And this is adna maratib az-zuhd. It's the lowest level of zuhd. It's a very good type of zuhd, like in its in terms of the zuhhad, the lowest level that concerns us is leaving the haram. The middle level is what we call al-wara. The idea of leaving that which you doubt. Leave that which you doubt for that which you do not doubt. So, now the person is not just leaving the haram. They're leaving things they don't know whether they are haram or not because they're scared of falling into the haram. Innal halala bayyinun wa innal harama bayyin. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam said the halal is clear and the haram is clear and between them there are unclear matters which many people, he didn't say nobody knows, many people don't know the whether they are allowed or not. So, whoever keeps away from these unclear matters has saved his honor and his religion and he's saved his religion between him and Allah and he's saved his honor in terms of how he is presented and how he appears before the people in this world. And this is the middle level of what we talk about the the the zuhd, leaving the world. Lakin the greatest of the levels, wallahu a'lam, is tarku ma la yanfa'u fil akhirah. Tarku ma la yanfa'u fil akhirah. >> Leaving everything that doesn't benefit you in the akhirah. Even the halal. Even the things that Allah made halal for you, if you don't see it's not getting me closer to Allah, I don't need it. And this is a level that it is not many people who find the Allah to be able to do that. So this is something that we train ourselves to try to do. Why I'm mentioning is that one of the things that helps you to reach that level is to have such a love for the which bring you close to Allah that you're willing to have this ether. You're willing to actually say, "You know, this halal, I like it. And it's halal. Like and I like to love Allah more. I like reading books more. I like seeking knowledge more. I like coming to the class more. And so if you knew the reality of what knowledge was and you tasted its sweetness, you would want to give up many permissible things from your life in order to sacrifice it for the sake of beneficial knowledge. Like and what I wanted to talk to you, that's just where we got up to now. I want to talk to you about the issue of the fear of Allah or the fear of Allah more. Working hard in seeking knowledge. Because this we didn't go into it last week in detail. What does it mean? If we have a think about the statement of Allah Azzawajal, the Quran has been made easy. Allah Azzawajal has made the Quran easy to remember. Allah Subhana Wa Ta'ala made this Quran easy to remember. However, if you think about the Quran, memorizing the Quran and understanding the Quran is easy from one side and difficult from another. So, in terms of the knowledge of the Sharia, the Quran is the khulasah, right? The Quran is the summary of the knowledge that Allah Azzawajal sent down for this ummah. And Allah made it easy to access and memorize and learn and understand. What is it that is actually difficult? Think of the Hadith of Abdullah ibn Umar, the Hadith is that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, "Innama mathalu sahibil Qur'ani kamathali sahibil ibilil mu'allaqah. In 'ahada 'alaiha amsakaha, wa in atlaqaha dhahabat." Aw kama qala. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said the example of the companion of the Quran is like the companion of the hobbled camels. I'll take a minute to explain cuz we're not ashabul ibil. At least me personally. I Maybe some of you guys have camels. I I'm not a camel person, so I'll explain to you what it means. The Prophet spoke to the people the way they understand it. And he had different methods. Speak to people the way they understand you. When you have a camel in the desert and you want to take a break to rest under a tree or to spend the night, where do you tie your camel? It's a problem because there's no fence post, there's no, you know, no nice place to tie your camel around. Maybe you could find a cactus and tie it, but camels are very strong animals. So, what people used to do is fold the leg of one of their camels over and tie it. So, the camel is hobbling. It can't walk properly. So, the camel can stay there for a long time. But, the camel can't walk. So, I've seen two ways. I've seen the two legs tied together, but more commonly I've seen, and I'm not a camel person, that they raise the leg at the knee joint and they tie it. So, the camel can't go anywhere. But, the camel is a very, very strong animal. And the camel is an amazing animal. Very, very strong. So, what happens over time? It fights against the knot and every, you know, hour or few minutes that goes by, the knot gets more and more loose. So, what the Prophet said, the example of the person of the Quran is like the one who has this camel that is tied up. It's hobbled, tied up like that. If he keeps on visiting it, he'll keep hold of it. But, if he lets it go and he doesn't visit it, it's is to disappear from him. He's going to find his camel left him in the middle of the desert with no no food and no water. The example of the Quran is the difficulty is in the effort needed to keep on revisiting it. It's not in the actual knowledge itself or in the memorization itself, but the difficulty is in the revision and the habit and the patience and the effort of keeping on coming back. Well, I in this there's an ayah meaning ayat of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. There's a sign from the signs of Allah. Think about this. The knowledge itself is easy. So, Allah has made it accessible. People can understand it. It's not ancient Greek. It's not ancient Hebrew that there's a a few people that can understand. It's not Aramaic that nobody can understand. It's in a language that everybody can understand. But in order to benefit from it, you have to work hard by keeping the relationship going. So, this idea really in Islam Islamic knowledge in itself is not in itself hard. in itself As long as you take it from its people and you take it with tadarruj, step by step, you know, page by page, hadith by hadith, ayah by ayah. And as long as you don't take it from ahl al-bid'ah, the people of innovation who make it complicated with philosophy and things like that. The reality is this knowledge is not hard. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam spoke in a way that was easy to understand. The Quran today we can take anybody who speaks Arabic. We can open the Quran and say, "Read me this ayah. What does it mean?" True, they might not have the tafsir in its comp in its completeness, but they have they they understand what is being said in a general sense. But where is the difficulty? The difficulty is in the habit of continuously and consistently working on that knowledge in two ways. Number one, the consistency of learning every single day. We've spoken about this already. The person who memorizes one ayah a day, memorizes one line of the Quran every single day, or who memorizes a quarter of a page a day, that person will be far better than the one who memorizes two or three pages and then stops. Like some of them say, "Ah, fatwatalib ilm al-inqita'." The calamity for the student of knowledge is stopping. It is It's stopping, not keeping going. So, to get the knowledge in the first place, you have to have sabr to keep going. And to keep the knowledge, you have to have sabr. You have to keep revising it. So, the need in knowledge is it's not for you to be wealthy cuz we're talking about al-muqaranah baynal ilmi wal mal. That's the the topic we've been in so far, the comparison between knowledge and money. As the Nazim Rahimahullah Ta'ala is advising Abu Bakr regarding the issue of too much attachment to this world and and instead dedicating yourself to knowledge. But what we see here is it's not about you don't need to have money to get it. You need to have sabr to get it. You need to be someone who keeps on going no matter what. And it amazes me something that there's a poet called Ibn al-Harith al-Asfahani. And he said a very nice line of poetry. He said, He said, "For every person, there are moments when they move towards greatness. But what is rare among men is being steadfast." He says, "Every one of you does something that if you carried it on, you would become a great scholar of Islam. The problem is most of you will stop. That's the problem. Every one of you does something that if you carried it on, you would be someone great in this ummah. In ilm, in whatever area is, in sadaqa, in in whatever it might be. If you carried it on, you would be from the great people of your time. But the problem is the majority of us stop. That's the problem. And here comes the statement of Yahya ibn Abi Kathir, and Imam Muslim narrates it. Knowledge is not attained through comfort. Knowledge doesn't come through being comfortable. Knowledge comes through working hard. And that means that you have some you know there's some pain involved. There's some struggle involved. There's some difficulty. But isn't that the case for almost everything that is good in the sight of Allah in this world and even in the sight of people in this world. It comes through hard work. Whoever strives for the Akhirah, races for the Akhirah, sa'i is something which involves hard work, exertion. Exerts themselves for the Akhirah while being a believer, it is those that their exertion will be rewarded. Their hard work, their running around will be rewarded. And if you look at some of the statements and we don't bring all of them like and you look at some of the statements in the ayah in Surat al-Kahf Again, Yahya ibn Abi Kathir he said here majalis al-fiqh He said the meaning of the ayah that you need to have sabr sallallahu alaihi wasallam with the people who are calling upon their Lord in the morning and the evening, they're the people who are seeking knowledge. In the gatherings of knowledge. You don't get that knowledge by resting your body. And you don't get it by being comfortable. Ibrahim al-Tali, he said man lam yahtamil dhull at-ta'lim sa'ah, baqiya fi dhull jahli abada." He said, "The person who cannot bear the lowliness of learning, and that the hardship of sitting on the floor and writing and coming to classes and revising and being hot and cold and all the things that come and not having the money that you wanted to have and all the things, if you can't bear that, you will have to bear being ignorant for the rest of your life." So, this idea of and then you to get what you want, you have to work hard. And you know the famous statement, "Man jadda wajad." Whoever works hard is going to reach their goal. Is going to find what they're looking for. And some of them also said, "Man lam yarkab al-masa'ib, lam yanal ar-ragha'ib." They said, "Man lam yarkab al-masa'ib, lam yanal ar-ragha'ib." And something like that. That the person who doesn't face any calamities and hardships and difficulties, that person is not going to be able to achieve their desires. Any al-masa'ib any as-sa'b. The person who doesn't face difficulties is not going to face is not going to get their desires. So, the patience in gathering knowledge can be divided into two types. Patience in gaining knowledge and patience in giving knowledge. So, as for patience in gaining knowledge, memorization, understanding, attending classes, all of it requires patience. As for patience in giving knowledge, spreading it, conveying it to the people, helping people to understand, having patience with some of the difficulties in that. And what is really needed, what we need is more than anything else is consistency. Consistency. And the people who are successful are those people who are consistent every single day. Not those people who necessarily work hard in a burst and then don't work hard for a long time. And to get that, you need to find that that consistency. So, this is what we some of the points we wanted to mention regarding uh al-ijtihad fi talab al-ilm working hard. Because Allah Azza wa Jal made this knowledge easy to acquire, but the payment you have to make is hard work. That's the payment you have to make. You have to be willing to work hard. You have to be willing to give up your sleep, your comfort. And here, I just want to talk about a a very famous statement and I think you've all you've all heard it before. And it's something that we we hear people say all the time. That if you give knowledge your all, and if you give knowledge your all, knowledge will only give you some of it back. If you give everything you have, knowledge will give you something in return. And if you give something to your to knowledge, any a part of what you have, then ultimately it will not give you anything. It will not give you anything at all. It's a statement any which is it's something very very well known. If you give knowledge your all, it will give you something. And if you give knowledge some of what you have, it will give you nothing at all. I wanted to talk about it because a lot of times people find that complicated when we're all involved in other things. We all have families, for example. Some of us have work. Some of us have studies. How do we reconcile that particular that particular issue? How do we How do we reconcile it? So, the way that we we try to reconcile this really is by saying it doesn't mean 24 hours out of the day. That's not the meaning of the statement at all. And I think when people think of it like that, it is not quite the intended meaning. The intended meaning of giving it your all is giving 100% of what you have available to give. Not giving 100% of all the time that you have in your life, but giving 100% of what you have available to give. So, if for example, a person says, "I only have a certain I I I don't have for example, I'm not I'm not mutaferriq. I don't have for example, the whole week to seek knowledge. I'm not someone who gets up in the morning and I've got nothing else to do until the evening." But the question is when you have that free time, when you've fulfilled your obligations to all the people that have hope and rights over you. What do you do with the time that you do have? Here is now where the issue of giving knowledge everything you have comes in. This is where it comes in.