005 - Genealogy & Year of the Elephant

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Insha'Allah ta'ala, today will be, as we said, a rehash of one of the first episodes of the seerah. And that is the genealogy of the Prophet PBUH.

And we begin by talking about, really, the entire Arab race. Because this is how the books of seerah begin. Who exactly are the Arabs.

And there are many theories. And the fact of the matter is that there is nothing that is, quote-unquote, scientific. These are all legends that the Arabs have basically transferred down, generation to generation. And this is the standard narrative.

Genealogy of the Arabs

The standard narrative goes that: the Arabs can be divided into two broad categories.

1. The first of them are the Extinct Arabs (al-Arab al-Ba'ida/العرب البائدة). They are gone. The Extinct Arabs. And these are also called the Ancient Arabs. And these are the earliest civilizations known in the land of Arabia. The earliest human civilizations known. And the Quran mentioned some of them, such as Thamud (ثمود) and Ad (عاد). And there were other tribes as well.

And so these civilizations, they no longer exist, obviously. And their progeny, according to the majority and dominant opinion (and we will come to another opinion), has been completely exterminated; that Allah SWT basically exterminated all of them. And these civilizations flourished five to six thousand years ago, i.e., from the earliest dawn of the recorded civilization. And some of them were destroyed by Allah SWT, such as Ad and Thamud. And others were forced to evacuate or wiped out by war. So the point is these are called the Ancient Arabs, and they are simply in the textbooks of history.

2. The second group of Arabs are called the Remaining Arabs (al-Arab al-Baqiya/العرب الباقية); Those who remained. So we have the Extinct Arabs (the Ancient), then we have the Remaining Arabs (al-Arab al-Baqiya). And these Arabs are divided into two categories, okay? So these Arabs are divided into two categories:

2a) The first of these are: al-Arab al-Ariba (العرب العاربة), or if you want to be in English: the Pure Arabs. The Arabs who were pure Arabs.

2b) And the second: al-Arab al-Musta'riba (العرب المستعربة). The Arabs Who Became Arab; the Arabs who learned the Arabic language.

So far so clear?

006 - The Birth of Prophet Muhammad SAW & Why Arabia

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Pre-Islamic Arabia: Jahili Arabs' Unique Idolatry/Polytheism

The interesting thing about the jahili Arabs was that they believed in the same God that we Muslims believe in, by the same name and attributes, and that is Allah. They never depicted Allah as an idol. They made idols of al-Lat (اللات), Hubal (هبل), al-Uzza (العزى), Manat (مناة), etc., but they never made an idol of Allah because they knew Allah could not be represented by an idol. They knew Allah was their Creator, Originator, and Sustainer. Allah says in the Quran:

وَلَئِن سَأَلْتَهُم مَّنْ خَلَقَهُمْ لَيَقُولُنَّ الله

"If you were to ask them who created them, they would say, 'Allah.'" [Quran, 43:87]

وَلَئِن سَأَلْتَهُم مَّنْ خَلَقَ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ لَيَقُولُنَّ الله

"If you were to ask them who created the heavens and the earth, they would say, 'Allah.'" [Quran, 39:38]

وَلَئِن سَأَلْتَهُم مَّن نَّزَّلَ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ مَاءً فَأَحْيَا بِهِ الْأَرْضَ مِن بَعْدِ مَوْتِهَا لَيَقُولُنَّ الله

"If you were to ask them who sends the water (rain) from the heaven and gives life therewith to the earth after its death, they would say, 'Allah.'" [Quran, 29:63]

 قُلْ مَن يَرْزُقُكُم مِّنَ السَّمَاءِ وَالْأَرْضِ أَمَّن يَمْلِكُ السَّمْعَ وَالْأَبْصَارَ وَمَن يُخْرِجُ الْحَيَّ مِنَ الْمَيِّتِ وَيُخْرِجُ الْمَيِّتَ مِنَ الْحَيِّ وَمَن يُدَبِّرُ الْأَمْرَ ۚ فَسَيَقُولُونَ الله

"Say, 'Who provides you with sustenance out of the heaven and the earth? Who holds mastery over your hearing and sight? Who brings forth the living from the dead and the dead from the living? Who governs all affairs of the universe?' They will surely say, 'Allah.'" [Quran, 10:31]

So when the Prophet PBUH comes to them, it is not with a new god. Their paganism is not the paganism of the modern day. They know Allah is their Lord. But they are not Muslims, and we don't consider them to be Muslims. Why? Because they worship idols. Why do they worship idols when they know Allah created them? The Quran tells us — they say:

مَا نَعْبُدُهُمْ إِلَّا لِيُقَرِّبُونَا إِلَى اللَّهِ زُلْفَىٰ

"'We are only worshiping these beings so that they can bring us closer to Allah.'" [Quran, 39:3]

So their ultimate goal is Allah — the idols were only intermediaries.

Allah says:

وَيَعْبُدُونَ مِن دُونِ اللَّهِ مَا لَا يَضُرُّهُمْ وَلَا يَنفَعُهُمْ وَيَقُولُونَ هَٰؤُلَاءِ شُفَعَاؤُنَا عِندَ اللَّهِ

"They worship besides Allah things that do not harm them nor benefit them, and they say: 'These are our intercessors between us and Allah.'" [Quran, 10:18]

"We are too sinful to worship Allah directly, and these idols are holy beings, so we 'go through' them to get to the Holiest of holy that is Allah"—this is their mentality. So notice their shirk (شرك - idolatry/polytheism) was not in rejecting Allah; they firmly believed Allah is their Creator and Sustainer, but they were worshiping other than Allah — so we don't consider them to be Muslims.

This is important to note because in our times, some Muslims fall prey to this *exact* same mentality. They claim Allah is their Lord, but they feel they are too sinful to worship Allah directly, so they invent intercessors/intermediaries. Change al-Lat to pir, Manat to sheikh, al-Uzza to wali, and you get the exact same concept, word for word. They think they have to 'go through' the saint or the Prophet PBUH. "We worship this being, sacrifice to this being, invoke the blessings of this being, because this being has a higher status with Allah, and they will plead our case to Allah"—this is exactly the mentality of the jahili Arabs. They might say, "How dare you compare a pir to al-Lat! How dare you compare my sheikh to al-Lat!" Our response is: "What is al-Lat except a saint?"

Do you know the origin of al-Lat? Al-Lat was a generous man who used to feed the pilgrims a type of soup. "Al-Lat" means "the one who grinds." (Note: Al-Lat is his title, not his name.) He would stand on the road towards Makkah and feed the people on the road. So they called him "al-Lat," the one who grinds the barley for the soup. When he died, they said, "Let us commemorate him. He was a good man"—so they built a monument. And then people came, rubbed their bodies on it, put their hands on it to get blessings, and slowly but surely, it became an idol that they worshiped besides Allah. So what is al-Lat except a saint? (Note: In our religion, we are not supposed to build a monument on a grave *exactly* because of this reason.)

And the most common being who is invoked and worshiped on earth besides Allah is Jesus Christ. Is Jesus a good or evil being? He is a good being. He is one of the greatest of all prophets. You see, the slippery slope doesn't occur with evil people — look at how few people worship shaytan (the Satanists), and yet billions of people worship Jesus Christ, because it is easy to slip with a good man — you put him above his place, you take him to a status above what he deserves. And this is what our religion came to prohibit. You don't worship anybody besides Allah, including the Prophet PBUH. You don't 'go through' anybody to get to Allah. Take the Prophet PBUH as a role model, not as another god or demigod.

So the shirk of the jahili Arabs was a very unique type of shirk, unlike the Hindus or the Zoroastrians — because these groups believe in another god besides Allah; but the god of the Arabs was the God of Ibrahim and Ismail and Ishaq, and that is Allah, the God that we Muslims believe in. Their shirk was not in rejecting Him, but ironically, in affirming Him as being too Holy.

007 - The Early Childhood of Prophet Muhammad SAW

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We now move on to the period of the Prophet's PBUH life that is his early childhood — him growing up as a young child.

From Aminah to Halimah

The first thing we know of his life after his birth is that his mother gave him to be raised away from the house in the desert. This seems strange to us, but it was a custom of the nobility of the Quraysh. It was a status symbol that was done for a number of reasons:

1. They wanted the child to be raised in a pure and healthy environment. Infant mortality during this phase of humanity (in fact even up until 100 years ago) was very high. So to protect the child from plagues and disease, they remove them from congregations and civilization such that there are only a few people (i.e., one family) interacting with them. This increases the chances of their survival.

2. They wanted to build stamina in the child and make them adjust to a rough life. Even though life in Makkah was very tough, they wanted to raise their child in a harder environment so that they could then adapt easily to the hardships of Makkah. Indeed, children adapt to their circumstances much easier than adults, and that's why a child who was born in a very impoverished household is just as content and as happy as a child born in a rich and luxurious family. Allah has made us in a beautiful way. Children know how to have fun regardless of the circumstances, unlike us adults — if we were to, la qaddar'Allah (لا قدر الله - God forbid), be diminished in the standard that we are used to, life would become almost impossible to bear, even though many other people in the world would love that standard we have been diminished to. It is human nature that children adapt to their circumstances. And this shows the Quraysh had clever long-term planning. They wanted their children to live under difficulty at a young age so that the hardships of Makkah then appear like a luxury.