The Treasure and the Key – #2

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the worlds.
And peace and blessings be upon the honour of the Prophets and Messengers.
Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon all his companions.
Peace be upon him, and upon all his companions.
Now we have looked at two reasons why du'as are not accepted.
Meaning, if we want du'as to be accepted, we must fulfill these things.
The third one which Ibrahim A.S. said was, he said to them,
you claim to love Rasulullah, you claim to love the Prophet Muhammad ,
but you abandon his sunnah, but you abandon his way, you abandon his teachings.
Allah told us why he sent
Rasulullah , the purpose of the Nuzul of the Prophet ,
and he called him his blessing.
Allah said,
لَقَدْ مَنَّ اللَّهُ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذْ بَعْسَ فِيهِمْ رَسُولًا مِّنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ يَتْلُوَ عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِهِ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةَ وَإِنْ كَانُوا مِنْ قَبْلُوا لَفِي ضَلَالٍ مُّبِينٍ
In Surah Al-Imran, Allah said, which means indeed Allah has done the believers a great favor
by raising a messenger from among them, reciting to them his revelations,
purifying them, teaching them the book and wisdom,
for indeed they had previously been clearly misguided.
It is worthy to note that Allah, even though the Quran,
is a blessing of Allah, even though everything we have is a blessing of Allah,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose to call the teacher of the Quran,
the Rasul alayhi salam, as his special blessing on the believers.
It must be understood that Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
is the key to the treasure called Al-Quran al-Kareem.
He is the password to the database, the roadmap to Jannah.
Without the password, without the key,
the treasure chest, the roadmap will not open.
You may hold it in your hand, but it cannot benefit you
because you can't use it to find the road or to walk on it.
Islam is all about practice.
Who is a Muslim? The one who practices Islam,
not the one who knows about Islam.
There are many people who know a great deal about Islam.
There are many heads of the departments,
heads of Islamic studies in many American universities,
full tenured professors,
who know more about Islam, certainly than I do.
But they are not Muslim because they don't practice Islam.
For them, Islam is another ideology which they know about.
Islam is all about practice, not only about belief,
not only about knowledge.
Without the example of Islam,
without the example of Rasool Allah ,
we cannot practice Islam.
There are two questions in the mind of anybody.
One is why, the other one is how.
The question why comes when you say,
why should I obey? Why should I follow the Prophet?
Why should I obey Allah?
I obey Allah because I believe in Allah.
And then I say, how should I do that?
That's equally important.
Without the how, the why cannot be implemented.
And that is why the Sunnah is the key to the Quran,
to the Ridha of Allah and to Jannah.
Allah emphasized this particular point in two ways.
One, by the use of the word, Laqad.
Surely, indeed, verily, in the beginning.
Laqad mann Allah. Surely, indeed.
Allah could have simply said, I have given you a blessing. No.
Just surely.
He is drawing our attention to that.
He said, notice this.
And then, by how He, Jalla Jalaluhu, ended the ayah,
where He said,
وَإِن كَانُوا مِنْ قَبْلُوا لَفِي ذَلَالٍ مُّبِينٌ
And Allah said, for indeed, before this,
before the coming of the Prophet ,
they were clearly misguided.
Please reflect on the fact,
that the people had been following some ideology,
before the advent of Islam.
Because they obviously, like,
anybody follows something because you consider that to be the best,
and so they followed whatever they followed.
But when Allah sent Islam and sent the Prophet ,
Allah said, all that was before is misguidance.
Follow this.
Because this is the clear path.
And as they say, when the destination is chosen,