Pre-Islamic Arabia and Muhammad's Birth

Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Alhamdulillah, wassalatu wassalamu ala rasulillah, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wala. Brothers and sisters in Islam, you are here at the Omar bin Khattab Masjid, Melbourne, Australia. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reward you. you for coming and being part of this gathering. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow the angels to encompass us with their glorious wings. And I ask Allah that this is beneficial to you all. Don't keep it to yourself, pass it on. Make du'a for us. And salamu alaykum to all our brothers and sisters around the world who are watching right now live on Facebook. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. So, we are still living now, I mean, when I'm telling you the story, imagine that we are now still as if we're living back in time in what we call the pre-Islamic Arabia. Just before the time of the Prophet ﷺ was born, within a about, I'm going to talk to you now, right now, within about 100 years. Within the 100 year frame, before the Prophet ﷺ was born, I think it's essential that you know a few things that are connected to the coming of the Prophet ﷺ. And I have to mention them because in the life of the Prophet ﷺ, we're going to... refer back to them. They've got a connection. And the Quran mentions them as well. So here we go. Last week, we left off where this kafir man, Amr ibn Luhayn, started idolatry in the Arab world. He existed about 500 years before the Prophet ﷺ came, and for the next 500 years, the Arabs in Makkah and around all the Arab peninsula, the Yemen, Yemen is a very important place. we need to talk about. In Yathrib, at that time it was called Yathrib, Medina, Mecca, we call it Jazira al-Arab, the island or the Arab peninsula. They all worshipped idols. Some of them stayed what we call Hunafa, Hanifs. Ever heard of Hanifs? Hanif, not Abu Hanifa. Hanif's Hunafa, literally in Arabic it means those who steered away. What did they steer away from? They steered away from Shirk. There are a few people that never did Shirk. There were also groups of Christians that were living and they're sort of mixing with the Arabs a little bit in Hashem, places like that. These Christians were mixed. Some of them were... people call them Unitarians, but I think they're called Jewish Christians. Jewish Christians are not like the Jews of today. In those days, they were the people who were still worshipping Allah correctly, and accepted Isa as the Prophet and Messenger of Allah. And they believed in Moses and wanted to follow him. Is that the way Muslims are today? Or the way the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam came? These were proper Christians. And then there were what you call, get ready for it, Pauline Christians. You all know Pauline Hanson from Queensland, the racist woman. And these were called Pauline Christians. I don't know how that... And these guys, they followed this guy named Paul, St. Paul. Everything he said they believed in changed the idea of Jesus Christ to be celebrated. I just wanted to mention that to tell you that there are Christians among them There are Jews among them who still worship God correctly. And then there were the Jews who went off the track later on. There were also the Persians. The Persians were mixing with the Arabs a little bit, up towards Iraq. Modern day Iraq and Iraq. Iraq. Same place. And the Persians used to have this bizarre belief system. They used to worship the fire. They were called Zoroastrians or Magans or Magians as you call them. Bizarre beliefs. Today some of their belief system are the people who follow star signs. It's amazing that in the Western world we still have what? If you're born in a particular month, it tells you about your personality or character. And people believe that. Now, the 21st century of what we call the, I don't know, Diamond Ages, which has been the Golden Ages, and I don't know what, now the Diamond Ages, and still people are going backwards. They think that there are stars mean something. And people who read tarot readings, they... They still exist today. They came a lot from the Persians. Would you believe that the car Mazda is named after a Persian Zoroastrian god? Don't go now saying, Brother Bilal said we can't drive a Mazda. can drive a Mazda car because nobody worships that anymore. It's gone. It's finished. May I say, I'm being courageous to say this now because I know some people, conspiracists and all those other people are going to jump on me. Nike. Nike was a Greek god. But man, that was thousands of years ago. Nobody worships Nike anymore. It's just a name at the moment. And it's gone. So wearing Nike is fine. I don't know what the big deal is, to be honest. Punch me later. but I'm still going to stick by my word. So if you feel smiling, you've got an icon. It's alright. It must be. You're not doing good for the church. But for example, like the cross. People don't wear the cross not because the cross itself is a bad thing. But the cross represents a belief system that is part of the worship of Jesus Christ which is still strong today. So if you wear a cross it's representing that. but before Jesus as Christ, the cross meant nothing. Anyone can wear a cross, right? Because it didn't represent Kufa. Once it's gone, not everything is haram and make our life so difficult on ourselves. Let's move on inshallah from that. Let's go down to Mecca and see the idols that they are worshipping. They have these 360 idols inside of the Kaaba. They say it's the number of the days in the year. Remember the Arabs had no calendar. They didn't follow months and things like that. I mean, they had these months, but they didn't really follow them. to call the first of Muharram or this or that. They used to say the year of this or the year of that. One classic example is the year of the elephant when the Prophet ﷺ was born and people will start marking births and dates from there. That's why you're going to find that it's very hard to give you accurate, precise ages of people and how long they lived, but approximately inshallah. I mentioned that Hubal was the greatest god that they worshipped to many other gods. One of the most bizarre two idols that you'll ever read about in the Arab world, their names were Esav and Nadina. Have you heard of them? Esav and Nadina. These two gods, there's even a hadith about them, these two were actual real people. They were a man and a woman that lived in Yemen. And they fell in love with each other. Story of remnants. They loved each other. And the families didn't want them to marry each other. So they ran away. That's the Arab version of Romeo and Juliet. Where did they go? They went to Mecca. Everybody honored and revered Mecca. Remember what we said? And they decided to meet there because... Nobody's going to suspect them to do anything haram there, right? Even in the ancient Arabs, before Islam, guys, women wore hijab. Christians wore hijab. Persians wore hijab. Hijab is not just for the Muslims. It actually was there way before. Way before. That's why I see in churches the depiction of Mary and saints, women, full hijab. Just like the Muslims. Jews wear hijab as well. But current times they've changed the idea. In those days there wasn't boyfriend and girlfriend relationships. People got... married right they married dozens of wives but they still got married so you know the idea of marrying four wives when the Prophet came out and he said you know the Quran said up to four wives in those days it was like only? why only that much? nowadays it's like what? more than one? so in those days it was like why only four? because everybody married a lot so they still did that right they didn't have any of this you know corruption that we're talking about. in the sense of boyfriend, girlfriend and zina. And it was really, really rude. It was a'ayib for the Arabs to do something like that. So where did they go? They went to the Kaaba. Nobody's going to suspect what shaytan says. And subhanAllah, even in front of the Ka'bah, brothers and sisters, they fell into zina in front of the Ka'bah. One of the most heinous acts. In those days, there wasn't people who protected the Ka'bah. Allah protected it. It's not like today where Allah has entrusted the Muslims to protect our symbols. In those days, it wasn't that. So it says in the hadith that Isaaf and Nadila committed zina in front of the Kaaba and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala turned them into statues. Solidified and crystallized and they became statues. Now if you think this is far-fetched, then read about other people who have been turned to stone. If you've ever heard of Pompeii, the history of Pompeii, we've had them in our museums before. Pompeii, people whose whole town... and people were turned into stone from a volcanic eruption. So Allah SWT can do anything. Isaaf and Nahlah were two statues of a man and a woman. They took them and placed Isaaf on Safa and Nahlah on Marra. And the people started to make sari. There was still the sari in those times, there was still the tawaf in those times, there was still giving the hujjaj, the pilgrims, food and water. In fact, it was a great honor and a privilege for anybody who came to the service of the hujjaj, of the pilgrims. And from the time of Ibrahim A.S. till today, Hajj has always been Hajj. But in their time, remember that man, Amr Ibn Tufay, he changed a few things. He changed a few things of the laws, as we said. Isaf and Nadira then became, they forgot, the Arabs forgot what they had done, and they ordered that these two statues be brought down, and worshipped. People started worshipping Isaf and Nadira. The two statues that came in at Zina, in front of the Ka'ba. They used to bring their sheep to the thing, and then sacrifice for Isaf, sacrifice for Nadira, all that stuff. The Arabs also believe that the angels, Allah's angels, they believe in angels, they said they are His daughters. Allah mentions about that in the Quran. When they make the malalika inatha, they make the angels female daughters of God and they worship them as the daughters of God. Maybe that's where Wonder Woman came from. And their idols were mixed of men and women, idols. By the way, something important. You know, the Arabs didn't actually worship the idols themselves. They were intermediaries. You know what that means? It means that they believed in Allah. That's the religion of Ibrahim, alayhi salam, Hanif, away from Shirk. But they had this idea that if they worship these idols, God will listen to them more. Like a channel. Lots of religions today they practice the stills, the channel. And due to the ignorance, the widespread mixing of other religions, this chieftain mentality, if a chief converts in the Arab world, in those times, if a chief converts, the entire tribe has to convert. Whatever the chief does, the whole tribe has to do. This was something the Arabs had. We still have it today in parts of Arabia. We still have this old J.E.E. The chief does something everybody has to follow. It's an honour. If you don't do it, it means you're not honouring your blood. My brothers and sisters in Islam, then what happened? Let's now take you to Yemen, because I've got a story to tell you as we're coming towards the birth of the Prophet ﷺ. In Yemen, there were Arabs and there was a new king. His name was Tabban Asad. I'm Bilal As'al, he was Tabban As'al. You're going to forget it. Ramadan. Tabban As'al. He was from Qalm Tubba. Remember we said in the Quran, the Prophet said the Arabs had Tubba. Tubba is the title of the king of Yemen. The king of Yemen? So it's someone who loved, someone who loved to live, and he became Tabban. Someone has blocked the way, brothers. It's a van, it's a paint van, please come. A what there? A painter. Painter. A van for some painter. Please go and remove it. You can still redeem yourself, I'll come to you for painting, inshallah. Brothers and sisters in Islam, so the king of Yemen is titled Tughba. Who knows what the king of Rome was entitled? Qaysar in English. Caesar, people like Constantine and Julius and all those, they were titled Caesar. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he was still titled Caesar. The king of kings of Rome. There was also Kisra. Kisra was the king of Persia. They also used to call him Shah of Shah, which means the king of kings. The Persian kings were just outrageous men. I'm going to tell you something. They're the best of the best, they were gods. I'm going to tell you a little bit about them as we come towards them. It's just mind-boggling. And probably gives you reasons where they get movie ideas from. And all that stuff. And the king of Ethiopia, what was he called? Negus, Najash. These were titles that they used to use. So Tubba is the king of Yemen and his name was Tabban Asad, among the earliest kings of Yemen. Why am I mentioning him? Well, here it goes. He had a son, and they were both tradesmen. So they went to a place called Yathrib. What's Yathrib at this point? Medina. It wasn't called Medina or Tiba until later on. At that point everybody called it Yathrib. He went to Yathrib, and he left his son there to do some trade business with them, while Tabban Asad, the king of Yemen, went to a sham to do some business over there. He received news that the Madani people had a bit of a conflict with his son. They had a fight, and they killed him. So the ban has happened. got angry. He comes back to Yathrib and he wants to take them on. He brings an army and starts to have battles with the people of Yathrib. They would fight and he would fight. I want to get the revenge of my son. I'm going to take over Yathrib. The most amazing thing he found about Yathrib, and this is important for me to tell you this, he found that they were courageous and strong in the day. And when they came to settle, to rest in the night, that was the rules of war, they used to rest in the night. The Yathrib people, they used to come and bring food and water to their enemies. What does that tell you? That tells you that the people of Yathrib, Aus and Khazr, those Arabs, have always had the trait of kindness, compassion, generosity. And later on, where does Muhammad ﷺ get his support and his what is in Medina. Those are the same people that always had that personality, subhanAllah. And the baddie looked at his thought, this is amazing, but still he thought, I'm going to get the revenge of my son. Two Jewish scholars. Jewish Christians, proper Jewish Christians, they came up to him. And they said to him, listen, what do you want from Yathrib? He said, I want to destroy it. He said, you're not going to be able to now. He goes, why? He said, we have in our Torah that this land, Yathrib, a prophet is going to emerge in it. Allah will not let you touch it. Do whatever you want. So then he started asking him questions and asking them questions. And they started telling him about the Torah and Judaism. than the bad ass-huckers. converted to Judaism, became a Jew. So then he said, come back with me to Yemen, I'm going to convert the whole of Yemen into Jews. And then, some people, they were tribes, they were trying to take over Mecca. It was always this thing, people want to take over Mecca. At this point, Quraysh is not in Mecca within that last 100 years. They will remember who they were. Anyone remember who they were? Khuzaa. Remember the old time, time of Ismaili, Khuzaa, people took over Mecca and Zamzam was buried by Judah? Remember that one? They were people of Khuzaa. They had no right to be there. A similar example is to talk about... the Israeli Jews, the Zionists, who went into Palestine, they were waiting there just to settle, and then suddenly they took over, and occupied illegal territories. Similar to what happened in Bakka. The Khuzar people came, took it over, and they started to take over. stated they're illegal territories for the next 500 years. And the people of Joram, the original people of Ismail alayhi salam, they're still upset till that day, that they can't do anything about it. This tribe comes up to him and says, they want to cause a fight, they want to annihilate these people. So they said to him, would you like some jewellery and gold? He said, yes. You see that Kaaba over there? It's got jewellery and gold in it. Truly, it had two big deers made out of gold. He said, yeah, I'd like to take that. Because God is starved. Now the Jewish people, those two scholars are with him. They said to him, what are you doing? These people, they just want you to be a lion leader. He said, what are you talking about? I'm a big king. I've got big soldiers. He said, no. One law. The Jews were saying this. One law. We do not know a more sacred and holy house of Allah than this one. The Jews always knew this. If you dare to touch her, Allah will destroy you. He said, what should I do then? He's a Jew now, right? He said, do tawaf around her out of respect. He said, alright, I will. But what about you? Why don't you do tawaf? They didn't want to do tawaf. And they said to him, Wallahi, if there were no idols in her, we wouldn't do tawaf. So they weren't idolaters, idolaters, idolaters of these Jews. So he did his tawaf. And subhanAllah, as we said in the Quran, when Ibrahim A.S. made the da'a, I said, oh, well. Allah make this Kaaba I love it to the hearts of all people who see it. The bad Asad fell in love with the Kaaba. He went to sleep that night, and he saw someone showing him, putting clothing or material over the Kaaba. The Kaaba was... still plain. It was bare. It was just rocks at the moment. So he thought of the idea. He went and put clothing over the cloth. And then he thought it doesn't look good. So then he got silk from Yemen, ordered it and started putting silk cloths over. the Kaaba. And the people who were around loved this idea, it was a great respect. They took it on and it became a Sunnah. Every single year that passed, it was a custom, they put another giswa, another material over it. But they didn't take the other material off. So they kept putting material over material over material over material every year. Until the time came, close to Quraysh time, and they thought the Kaaba was just too much on it that it was about to fall. because over the years. So they decided, we'll just put one Kiswah every year and change it. And subhanAllah, the honor and respect of this Ka'bah, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will tell you, it didn't have to be Muslims or prophets to do it, this was Allah's house. And till today subhanAllah you see the Kiswah, the black Kiswah over it, with woven golden silk, golden threads. Till today subhanAllah, the Kiswah of the Ka'bah, the house of Allah. Tabad Asad is king of Yemen He went back to Yemen and he said, Everybody become a Jew. And they refused. They said, We're not even going to become a Jew. Leave all our Arab ancestry and follow Jews? Are you serious? That's bad. You've lost your mind. Now in those days, what happened? Because they mixed with the Persians and they mixed with other religions, something happened. There were people called Kohan. Kohan are like soothsayers, fortune tellers, sorcerers. Everybody started believing in these people. People who read stars and astrology. Astrology. science of astrology, and I don't know what, it's not science, science, science, it's just, it's fake science, it's imaginary science, fantasies, and just rubbish. And, some of them used to worship trees as well, trees, they believed spirits resided in trees. That's where you get knock on wood from. Have you ever heard of knock on wood? When somebody sees something, they either say, knock on wood, so that they don't jigs it. Well, this came from worship of spirits inside of trees, they used to have. So, to burn aside, he came and told them, you know, Jews, and then they said, listen, there are soothsayers over here. And there was a room that had a fire in it. A fire that kept burning from the Persians. They said, we will open the door. They used to have this idea that if they can't decide, they'll open the door. And whoever the fire goes after, it comes out. It's a big fire in the house, it comes out. Whoever it catches on fire, then they're in the wrong. That's the idea there. So they brought the two Jewish scholars and they brought the soothsayers. And they said, both of you stand. they opened the door door and subhanAllah the fire happened to blow towards the soothsayers. And they ran away. And they said, hey come here come here, come here, come here, what's this? Our tradition says that whoever the fire goes after you're in a rock. You have to go in the fire and get burnt. That was their belief. The Susay's came back, threw themselves in, they got burnt, and the entire Yemen became Jewish. Now, there's a plan. Allah SWT is leading them to something. So now Yemen is Jewish, and Yemen is a very, is a favorite place. place for the Prophet ﷺ. He had a Sham and Yemen. The Prophet ﷺ said in a Sahih hadith in Bukhari and Muslim, may Allah ﷻ bless the people of Shamina and Yemenina. May Allah ﷻ bless the people of our Sham and our Yemen. today. He says if you can go to Hashan and go to the Yemen, there is a blessed land over there. If you can, over the years. And Yemen is a blessed place after Hashan. We'll know why in a while. Then, my dear brothers and sisters, in Yemen a civil war broke out. After Qadban Asad the king died, a civil war broke out. People started fighting each other and one of the children of Qadban, his name was Dun Nuwas. Nawas. I know Sri Lincoln's name, Nawas. Am I right? Russian? Nawas? Popular? Nawas. It's a popular name in the subcontinent. It's an Arabic name. I'm going to take the Z down and I put an S because it's an Arabic name. I'm still your friend, right? So, Dhun Nawas. And this man, he managed to take over authority. Now there's an amazing story about this man, Lunawes. As I tell you this story, you're going to figure out what it is. But just the name is not familiar to you. Let me take you through it. There was a Christian monk, a good Christian monk, who worshipped Allah. He went to Africa to give... ...a priest. And one of the Arabs of Najran, Najran is in Saudi Arabia, it's very close to Yemen, he took him, stole him, and turned him into his slave. And he went back, and he became his slave. Now, he used to see this Christian monk, every time he entered into the room, he had a noor, light around him. He said, what's this light? He said, I'm a man of God. I worship Allah alone, and my religion is the correct one of Jesus Christ and so on. And he gave him a bit of dawah. And this Arab man, he said, no, no, I don't believe in it. He used to worship a tree, as I said. And this monk, he said to him, if my God beats your God, will you enter Christianity? He said, of course. So he stood in front of the tree, this man kept making dua until subhanAllah, the miracle is that Allah sent fire one night and the tree got burnt. And this man, he thought his religion is correct, he converted to Christianity and set him free. And this man kept giving dawah until some people became Christians, proper Christians, Unitarians or what you call the Jewish Christians. And they went back to Yemen. These guys went to Yemen, Christians. In Yemen, they preached a little bit. And there was one man who worshipped inside of a cave. in the mountains. The Nawaz, who is now the king of Yemen, he believed in sorcery. So he had this right-hand man as his favorite sorcerer, and he ruled the people with sorcery. People all feared the Nawaz because of his sorcery. And there was this young boy who wanted to become an apprentice of this sorcerer. Remember the boy in the king's story? This is where it happened. About 50 years before the time of the Prophets of Allah. Actually, maybe even less. And this young boy, he went to become a sorcerer. He passed by this cave on his way and he heard this man, a Christian monk, saying words that he's never heard before. heard it before. Cutting the story short, he went inside, and he liked his words. The young boy left the sorcerer, and he converted to Christianity and began to preach about the oneness of Allah. The story is long. If you want to read about the boy in a king reading. But I'm just going to cut it. Short now and go to the main point. The king Nawazi found out about this monk. So he brought him and killed him. The boy became very upset. So he came and stood before the king and he said, You killed my teacher. He's on the right path. God will destroy you. So the king took him and he got his soldiers and said, Go and take him to the highest cliff and throw him. They went and the boy came back by himself to the king. He said, Where's my soldiers? He said, Allah is the best. made the mountain shake and they all died. He goes, why did you come back? He said, because I want to prove to you that God is, my Lord is stronger than me. He said, I'm the greatest God. He brought his soldiers, they're going to go take him into a ship and take him to the middle of the sea and throw him into the sea. They went to the middle of the sea and the boy came back for himself. He says, what happened to my soldiers? He says, Allah drowned them. So then he brought a sword, he wanted to kill himself and his arm became paralyzed. He says, why can't I kill you? And he said, there's only one way you can kill me. He said, how? He said, you've got to gather all the people of Yemen. Remember, they were Jews, and they started worshipping sorcery and stuff like that. And you have to say in front of everybody, Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, in the name of Allah, the Lord of this young man. You have to say it loud so everybody can hear you. He stood, tied him up, put an arrow, and he said as he said. And subhanAllah, the boy died. He gave his life so that, in order to save the people, and enter Islam. All of the people of Yemen converted to Christianity, the proper Christianity. And Lunduwas became so angry that he said, if you're not going to obey me, I'm going to kill you. They dug up a huge trench, lit it up with fire, and they began to throw the people in it, the people of Yemen, the ones who followed the young boy. He kept throwing them, throwing them in, throwing them out. These are the people who in the Quran are called Ashab ul-Ukhdud. Allah says, the people of the trench were killed. fire that he lit up the oppressor. He let them stand there, not able to escape, and threw them in there one by one. And Allah and everyone is witness to what that man did to them and his allies. These believers who they killed. And they did not kill them and take revenge for any other purpose except that they just believed in Allah, the one and only. The Lord of all the worlds and everything. I call them in here, these Christians who worship on the way of Jesus Christ. There was a story in the Sahih Muslim about a woman who was carrying her baby, one of those Najranti, Yemen Najranti. And she... She stopped. She got afraid. She didn't want to jump in. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala made her baby speak. There are four babies in the cradle. We are reported that spoke in the history of man. Isa alayhi salam. Another baby is another story. I'll tell you some other time. There was a third one, I'll tell you another time. And this one. This one, Ashar al-Khudud, and the baby said to its mother, Asbiri al-man, be patient, oh mother, fa innaki al-haqq, you are upon the truth, and you are of the people of Jannah. So she threw herself as well. One man escaped. I think his name was Umayyad. He managed to run away. The Nawas went after him, but he went to the sea and ran. Allah SWT saved him. And this man, Allah saved him to do something. the people of Yemen and Mejron. So because he was a Christian, he thought of who? He thought of Caesar. So he went all the way to Rome. All the way. Months and months journey, very far away. And he met Caesar. I'm not sure who Caesar was. He said to him, this is what happened to our people there, Christians. And Caesar became very, very angry. He was one of the just kids actually. And he said, I can't do anything because I'm so far away. However, I'm going to send a letter to the king of Ethiopia, Negus. Now the king of Ethiopia, what were they? They were Christians, like the Romans, they were allies. So he went and gave that letter to Negus and Najashi of Ethiopia, we'll talk about later, at the time of the Prophet ﷺ. And Najashi got very angry at this, and he sent an army to Yemen and Najash. And one of the commanders of that army, his Let's start from the beginning. 10-15 years before the Prophet ﷺ. They reached Yemen and they had a big war fight with Dhul Nuwas until they annihilated his army and Dhul Nuwas ran away. Dhul Nuwas is an Arab. The Arabs had this idea that... They have an honour to be killed by their own people, not by the foreigner. The Arabs had this, I'd rather be killed by my own blood than the foreigner. Stupid beliefs. He goes, he ran away into the sea and drowned himself. Blimmin' the wise. And... The Ethiopians, the Abyssinians, took over Yemen and Najran, and now they became the authority. Yemen and Najran now became a Christian civilization. Of course there were still Arabs among them and they were upset and sad. Ethiopians are conquering the authority over them, but they couldn't do anything anymore. SubhanAllah, the history of it. Abraham. He, there was a man, another commander, who he and him had a dispute. And this other man who was oppressing the people and he was trying to do wrong things, so he and Abraha had a fight. I told you Abraha became the... the king of Yemen. But before that, he had a fight with the other commander. There were two commanders. And they kept fighting and fighting until they said, let's stop. Our armies are being killed. Ethiopians are killing Ethiopians. Let's us man to man. Let's have a duel. Whoever beats the other person becomes the king. And as they were fighting the other commander, he cut the nose of Abraham. And Abraha was called Abraha al-Ashaj, which means Abraha, the one with half a nose. That's what he looked like. And then Abraha killed the commander and he became the king. Negus of Ethiopia found out and he got very angry. Why are the Ethiopians killing each other? Why is Najashi doing that to him? And he said, I'm going to send an army there. We're going to shave his hair off. I'm going to get him, you know, a human. humiliated. So Najashi, he got upset, he got really sad, he sent a letter to him and he put his hair, he shaved it off and put it in a little bag and said, this is my hair, and I've been humiliated, and Allah only did it because the commander was oppressing the people, and so on and so forth. Negus left him alone. Najashi, he wanted to please Negus. He wasn't happy. He wanted to please his king. So he said, I am, you know, there's this place where the Arabs go to. It's called the Ka'a. I'm going to build... a big church where all the Arabs whom we conquered will come and do their Hajj and Tawaf at this church instead of the Kaaba. Just for my King Negus so he can be pleased with me. So he built a huge church called Al-Qulais. And he made it so magnificent. Magnificent. Pearls, diamonds, everything. And he started calling the Arabs to do Hajj to it otherwise we will conquer them. Now, I'll try and make this fast. He sent a letter to these special people that were called Ahlul Nasee' Al-Nasee' They are mentioned in the Quran. Allah says, إِنَّمَا النَّسِيءُ زِيَالَةٌ بِالْكُفْرِ Those people who are called the Naseer, they are just exaggerated Kuffar. They were Kuffar. Now what did the Naseer do? They were the people who could play around with the months of the Arabs. There were four months of the Arabs. Dhul Qa'dah, Dhul Hijjah, Muharram and Rajab. These are called the forbidden months. Till today Allah has kept them. Al-Ash'ar al-Hurm. Where nobody is allowed to start war in the Haram. No one is allowed to start war, no one is allowed to kill an animal, no one is allowed to kill even an insect, nothing. These people and Naseeb, they could play around with those mouths. They can make, like for example, Muharram, they can say, we can put... will suffer instead of Muharram, and we'll make that a day to fight, and then we'll bring Muharram back in. So this is to play around. And Allah said, why are you playing around with my Horm days? I said to you these months, and you want to play around with days? Yeah. That's what people do today, they keep changing around. and God's laws and say, you're liberated free, just do what you want. You know, there's different versions of Islam. Now there's this new show called Muslims Are Like Us. They had it in the UK, now they've got it in the SBS here in Australia. I don't know, man. There's a bit of a agenda to it. It shows how Muslims are so diverse. Not diverse in our culture, diverse in the different versions of Islam. You worship Allah the way you want. I'm really afraid of that because I don't know what kind of heroes these young people are going to take. They might take the guy with the tattoos as their hero and say, oh, this guy's good, I'm going to copy him or the other. the woman, one of them says, you know, I worship God by writing on a piece of paper, that's how I worship God. Oh, how cute, nice, you worship God the way you want. Trying to tell us to fragment Islam and do Islam the way you want. Ideological liberalism it's called. Be very careful of that, my brothers and sisters. We do not change Islam to suit us. If anything, we change ourselves to suit Islam. If you're weak in practicing your deen, that's one thing. But to come inside and change your deen and say this is my version of deen, my perception. These people... They want to detach you from a divinity, from Allah's man and the heart. So that religion can be you and you can be your own god. Easy to manipulate people that way. They don't have a divine authority. So my brothers and sisters in Islam, this is what happened. Abraha wrote a letter to them because they were the powerful Arabs. They got very upset. So one of them comes into Al-Qulais, the church, and he defecates them. You know what defecating is? What's defecating? He poo-poos them. So they went into the church of this Abraham and they did their deed in there. They used it as a toilet. He came inside and saw this thing happening. He got very upset and said, I'm going to go and destroy the car. That's it. took a huge army and marched towards the Kaaba. With him was an elephant. Now they had lots of elephants. The Ethiopians liked riding elephants in their wars and stuff. And the Persians did as well. This elephant's name was really Mahmud. That was his name. It was Mahmud. And They drove this animal, elephant, he doesn't know, towards the Kaaba. Things happened along the way. The Arabs tried to stop him, but they couldn't. They failed. And there was an Arab who betrayed them and showed them where the Kaaba is. The Arabs till today, they say he's a bad... until he reached the Ka'ba. Now Abdul Muttalib, have you heard of Abdul Muttalib? He's the grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad . This was the year the Prophet was born. So the grandfather of the Prophet was there, Abdul Muttalib. Abdul Muttalib was an extremely handsome man. In every sense of the word, a wide face, wide cheekbones, full hair, volume, everyone who saw him and looked into his eyes felt an awe. ...water in his face and they respected him when he walked in. He was the type of man that when you look at him, mashallah, he fills your eye, and you just can't help but like him and respect him. That's Banu Hashim, the Prophet ﷺ, they're all like that, they're all really handsome, they've really got an aura on them. So this man, Abu Muqtadir, was the chief of Quraysh at that time. And Abraha, he wanted to destroy it. So some connections happened and Abu Muqtadir was allowed to go to Abraha to speak to him. Abraha had taken some camel. from the Arabs who kept them. He said, I can walk with them, he comes in, Abraha sees him, and he couldn't help but respect him. So Abraha gets up and says, he actually from the amount of respect and how much he respects him, here. He was charmed by him. In other words, Abraha got off his firm, walked towards Abdul Muttalib and sat with him. He really respected him. He said, now, this is a man to come and talk to me. And he said, what would you like? Abdul Muttalib said the following. He said, you've taken some camel's points. back. You've taken some camels, I want them back. As soon as he said that, Abraham goes, you, with all your aura and respect, you come to ask me for a bit of camels? I thought you were going to come and tell me, don't destroy the Kaaba, turn away. I thought the Kaaba meant a lot for you. You come and ask me for camels? Oh Allah, I respected you, now I don't anymore. Abdul Muttalib looks at him in all kindness and says, The camels belong to me. I protect them. As for the house, it has a Lord who protects it. He will do it. He said, take your camels, get out. Got angry, got the elephant, says, charge with the car. One of the Arabs managed to get away, and he went into the ear of the elephant and said, Uthbut, ya Mahmood, innahu baytullah. Be steadfast. Stop, this is the house of Allah And subhanallah, the miracle happened The elephant stopped and sat down They start to hit the elephant, move it The elephant wouldn't move They faced the elephant in a different direction The elephant went Towards the Kaaba, it stopped Subhanallah Allah says in the Quran, وَإِن مِّن شَيْءٍ إِلَّا يُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِهِ وَلَكِنَّا تَفْطَحُونَ تَسْبِحًا There isn't anything except that it glorifies and praises and worships Allah, but you, a man, cannot understand their praise and worship. everything, the trees, the sun. the moon, the birds, everything worships Allah. My brothers and sisters, Abraha got very upset, and as we're trying to get the elephant, subhanAllah, the Muttalib, he took the people and said, go to the mountains, something terrible is going to happen. They still had that belief. And subhanAllah, as we know in Surah Al-Fin. They saw above them clouds of swarms of these birds. They're called طَيْرَ الْحَبَابِرَ I don't know what they look like, maybe like sparrows. And they were carrying special types of rocks that were full of heat. Very hot rocks. And they dropped them. Every soldier that this rock fell on, it caused fire and burning all over their bodies. Until they all died, their skin melted off their bodies. and Abraha was the last, they all died from the heat of these rocks, from these simple birds, in this fall. You might think, what is this fantasy, and what is this, subhanAllah, we say what Allah SWT told us in the Qur'an. If Allah SWT can create volcanoes and rocks of fire, He can easily create birds who carry these rocks and burn people. We see it all around us. And so Allah SWT protected His house. You might be wondering now, if someone attacked the Kaaba now, wouldn't Allah protect it? What do you think? Now, would Allah protect it? No. No, He won't. SubhanAllah Ta'ala. Tell me the difference. In those days, there was no new deen. The people had gone into shirk and there wasn't an ummah and Allah SubhanAllah had not sent down a new law. So the Kaaba was left to Allah. In our time, we had an ummah. And Allah SWT has written in the Quran that you must take up arms to protect yourselves and to protect your holy places if someone attacks you. Allah has put the responsibility upon us. This is the difference between the ummah of Muhammad SAW and the ummah of every other prophet. So, the Kaaba was protected by Allah SWT and bin Nawaz died. My brothers and sisters in Islam, that was the year in which Muhammad ﷺ was born. It is approximately, in the Gregorian calendar, 570 CE, or as they say, 570 AD. 570 after Jesus Christ ﷺ. Muhammad ﷺ was born. My brothers and sisters, I don't have too much time left, so I'm going to have to leave the rest, inshallah, the birth of the Prophet ﷺ and his family and how Quraysh came about. Very, very interesting. It's actually going to get more and more interesting as we get closer to the birth of the Prophet ﷺ. This was the year and they called it the year of the elephant. Approximately in Muharram. Muharram, we said, is the year, the forbidden year. Remember we said? And Abraham wanted to attack the Kaaba in the year of the elephant. year in the month of Haram. Muharram is Muharram. Even till today it's one of the months forbidden. You're not allowed to start wars. But if someone starts you, you can defend. It happened once at the time of the Prophet ﷺ. Arabs attacked them in the month of Haram and the Muslims defended. Allah says, وَإِن قَاتَلُوكُمْ فِيهِ فَضْلُوا If they fight you in the Ka'ba, around the Haram, in these holy months, then fight them back. We don't just sit down, as they say, and turn the other cheek, and a Muslim stands up and fights back. Otherwise, we want peace. So, the next story that I wanted to share with you, if we can't finish it now, inshallah, next week, if we can't finish it, we can come back. Sort of what? We've got one minute. I'll just introduce this man. Next week, inshallah, we'll start from him. If I forget, you remind me. His name is Qusay ibn Kilab. Qusay. Ibn Kilal. He is the one who starts Quraysh. You know Quraysh? At this point there's no Quraysh, remember? And from here, Allah will send set up the coming of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and his upbringing. Getting everything ready. This is now the boiling. Now the boiling starts. Inshallah next week we'll talk about that. But before I finish I'll just tell you that not all the Arabs were mushrikeen. Idolaters at this point, as I said. There were four particular scholars among them who stayed Hunakha worshipping Muhammad. There are several names, but the most important and you're not going to remember, one of the important names that you need to remember is Waraqa ibn Nawfa. The cousin of who? Cousin of who? Khadija radiallahu anhu. He was a Christian, converted to Christianity, and he knew a couple of languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, and he was able to read and write. To be able to read and write in those days, it meant that you were a genius, you were a great scholar. Okay? Waraqa ibn Naufal. And I'll tell you now, who was the first Muslim in Islam? Who? Who was the first Muslim man in Islam? Abu Bakr? Well done. It's actually Waraqa ibn Nawfa. and we'll tell the history inshallah next week when the time comes next week inshallah we'll talk about how the Quraysh came into power how they set up themselves in that area, we'll talk about Zanzen and how it was revealed we'll talk about the birth of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam's father and his grandfathers and we'll talk about inshallah the birth of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Very interesting next week. You're going to learn about the first woman to touch, to touch the Prophet ﷺ. A name that a lot of us don't really know. So inshallah next week. Jazakum Allah khair for listening. And also the brothers and sisters around the world. Finish? Yes.

May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow the angels to encompass us with their glorious wings. And I ask Allah that this is beneficial to you all. Don't keep it to yourself, pass it on. Make du'a for us.

And salamu alaykum to all our brothers and sisters around the world who are watching right now live on Facebook. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. So, we are still living now, I mean, when I'm telling you the story, imagine that we are now still as if we're living back in time in what we call the pre-Islamic Arabia. Just before the time of the Prophet ﷺ was born, within a about, I'm going to talk to you now, right now, within about 100 years. Within the 100 year frame, before the Prophet ﷺ was born, I think it's essential that you know a few things that are connected to the coming of the Prophet ﷺ.

And I have to mention them because in the life of the Prophet ﷺ, we're going to... refer back to them. They've got a connection.

And the Quran mentions them as well. So here we go. Last week, we left off where this kafir man, Amr ibn Luhayn, started idolatry in the Arab world.

He existed about 500 years before the Prophet ﷺ came, and for the next 500 years, the Arabs in Makkah and around all the Arab peninsula, the Yemen, Yemen is a very important place. we need to talk about. In Yathrib, at that time it was called Yathrib, Medina, Mecca, we call it Jazira al-Arab, the island or the Arab peninsula.

They all worshipped idols. Some of them stayed what we call Hunafa, Hanifs. Ever heard of Hanifs?

Hanif, not Abu Hanifa. Hanif's Hunafa, literally in Arabic it means those who steered away. What did they steer away from? They steered away from Shirk.

There are a few people that never did Shirk. There were also groups of Christians that were living and they're sort of mixing with the Arabs a little bit in Hashem, places like that. These Christians were mixed.

Some of them were... people call them Unitarians, but I think they're called Jewish Christians. Jewish Christians are not like the Jews of today.

In those days, they were the people who were still worshipping Allah correctly, and accepted Isa as the Prophet and Messenger of Allah. And they believed in Moses and wanted to follow him. Is that the way Muslims are today? Or the way the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam came? These were proper Christians.

And then there were what you call, get ready for it, Pauline Christians. You all know Pauline Hanson from Queensland, the racist woman. And these were called Pauline Christians. I don't know how that...

And these guys, they followed this guy named Paul, St. Paul. Everything he said they believed in changed the idea of Jesus Christ to be celebrated. I just wanted to mention that to tell you that there are Christians among them There are Jews among them who still worship God correctly. And then there were the Jews who went off the track later on. There were also the Persians.

The Persians were mixing with the Arabs a little bit, up towards Iraq. Modern day Iraq and Iraq. Iraq.

Same place. And the Persians used to have this bizarre belief system. They used to worship the fire.

They were called Zoroastrians or Magans or Magians as you call them. Bizarre beliefs. Today some of their belief system are the people who follow star signs. It's amazing that in the Western world we still have what?

If you're born in a particular month, it tells you about your personality or character. And people believe that. Now, the 21st century of what we call the, I don't know, Diamond Ages, which has been the Golden Ages, and I don't know what, now the Diamond Ages, and still people are going backwards. They think that there are stars mean something.

And people who read tarot readings, they... They still exist today. They came a lot from the Persians. Would you believe that the car Mazda is named after a Persian Zoroastrian god? Don't go now saying, Brother Bilal said we can't drive a Mazda.

can drive a Mazda car because nobody worships that anymore. It's gone. It's finished. May I say, I'm being courageous to say this now because I know some people, conspiracists and all those other people are going to jump on me. Nike.

Nike was a Greek god. But man, that was thousands of years ago. Nobody worships Nike anymore.

It's just a name at the moment. And it's gone. So wearing Nike is fine. I don't know what the big deal is, to be honest. Punch me later.

but I'm still going to stick by my word. So if you feel smiling, you've got an icon. It's alright.

It must be. You're not doing good for the church. But for example, like the cross. People don't wear the cross not because the cross itself is a bad thing. But the cross represents a belief system that is part of the worship of Jesus Christ which is still strong today.

So if you wear a cross it's representing that. but before Jesus as Christ, the cross meant nothing. Anyone can wear a cross, right? Because it didn't represent Kufa.

Once it's gone, not everything is haram and make our life so difficult on ourselves. Let's move on inshallah from that. Let's go down to Mecca and see the idols that they are worshipping. They have these 360 idols inside of the Kaaba.

They say it's the number of the days in the year. Remember the Arabs had no calendar. They didn't follow months and things like that. I mean, they had these months, but they didn't really follow them.

to call the first of Muharram or this or that. They used to say the year of this or the year of that. One classic example is the year of the elephant when the Prophet ﷺ was born and people will start marking births and dates from there.

That's why you're going to find that it's very hard to give you accurate, precise ages of people and how long they lived, but approximately inshallah. I mentioned that Hubal was the greatest god that they worshipped to many other gods. One of the most bizarre two idols that you'll ever read about in the Arab world, their names were Esav and Nadina. Have you heard of them? Esav and Nadina.

These two gods, there's even a hadith about them, these two were actual real people. They were a man and a woman that lived in Yemen. And they fell in love with each other.

Story of remnants. They loved each other. And the families didn't want them to marry each other. So they ran away. That's the Arab version of Romeo and Juliet.

Where did they go? They went to Mecca. Everybody honored and revered Mecca.

Remember what we said? And they decided to meet there because... Nobody's going to suspect them to do anything haram there, right?

Even in the ancient Arabs, before Islam, guys, women wore hijab. Christians wore hijab. Persians wore hijab. Hijab is not just for the Muslims. It actually was there way before.

Way before. That's why I see in churches the depiction of Mary and saints, women, full hijab. Just like the Muslims. Jews wear hijab as well. But current times they've changed the idea.

In those days there wasn't boyfriend and girlfriend relationships. People got... married right they married dozens of wives but they still got married so you know the idea of marrying four wives when the Prophet came out and he said you know the Quran said up to four wives in those days it was like only?

why only that much? nowadays it's like what? more than one?

so in those days it was like why only four? because everybody married a lot so they still did that right they didn't have any of this you know corruption that we're talking about. in the sense of boyfriend, girlfriend and zina.

And it was really, really rude. It was a'ayib for the Arabs to do something like that. So where did they go? They went to the Kaaba. Nobody's going to suspect what shaytan says.

And subhanAllah, even in front of the Ka'bah, brothers and sisters, they fell into zina in front of the Ka'bah. One of the most heinous acts. In those days, there wasn't people who protected the Ka'bah.

Allah protected it. It's not like today where Allah has entrusted the Muslims to protect our symbols. In those days, it wasn't that. So it says in the hadith that Isaaf and Nadila committed zina in front of the Kaaba and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala turned them into statues.

Solidified and crystallized and they became statues. Now if you think this is far-fetched, then read about other people who have been turned to stone. If you've ever heard of Pompeii, the history of Pompeii, we've had them in our museums before.

Pompeii, people whose whole town... and people were turned into stone from a volcanic eruption. So Allah SWT can do anything. Isaaf and Nahlah were two statues of a man and a woman.

They took them and placed Isaaf on Safa and Nahlah on Marra. And the people started to make sari. There was still the sari in those times, there was still the tawaf in those times, there was still giving the hujjaj, the pilgrims, food and water.

In fact, it was a great honor and a privilege for anybody who came to the service of the hujjaj, of the pilgrims. And from the time of Ibrahim A.S. till today, Hajj has always been Hajj. But in their time, remember that man, Amr Ibn Tufay, he changed a few things. He changed a few things of the laws, as we said.

Isaf and Nadira then became, they forgot, the Arabs forgot what they had done, and they ordered that these two statues be brought down, and worshipped. People started worshipping Isaf and Nadira. The two statues that came in at Zina, in front of the Ka'ba.

They used to bring their sheep to the thing, and then sacrifice for Isaf, sacrifice for Nadira, all that stuff. The Arabs also believe that the angels, Allah's angels, they believe in angels, they said they are His daughters. Allah mentions about that in the Quran.

When they make the malalika inatha, they make the angels female daughters of God and they worship them as the daughters of God. Maybe that's where Wonder Woman came from. And their idols were mixed of men and women, idols.

By the way, something important. You know, the Arabs didn't actually worship the idols themselves. They were intermediaries.

You know what that means? It means that they believed in Allah. That's the religion of Ibrahim, alayhi salam, Hanif, away from Shirk. But they had this idea that if they worship these idols, God will listen to them more.

Like a channel. Lots of religions today they practice the stills, the channel. And due to the ignorance, the widespread mixing of other religions, this chieftain mentality, if a chief converts in the Arab world, in those times, if a chief converts, the entire tribe has to convert. Whatever the chief does, the whole tribe has to do.

This was something the Arabs had. We still have it today in parts of Arabia. We still have this old J.E.E. The chief does something everybody has to follow.

It's an honour. If you don't do it, it means you're not honouring your blood. My brothers and sisters in Islam, then what happened? Let's now take you to Yemen, because I've got a story to tell you as we're coming towards the birth of the Prophet ﷺ. In Yemen, there were Arabs and there was a new king.

His name was Tabban Asad. I'm Bilal As'al, he was Tabban As'al. You're going to forget it.

Ramadan. Tabban As'al. He was from Qalm Tubba. Remember we said in the Quran, the Prophet said the Arabs had Tubba.

Tubba is the title of the king of Yemen. The king of Yemen? So it's someone who loved, someone who loved to live, and he became Tabban. Someone has blocked the way, brothers.

It's a van, it's a paint van, please come. A what there? A painter. Painter. A van for some painter.

Please go and remove it. You can still redeem yourself, I'll come to you for painting, inshallah. Brothers and sisters in Islam, so the king of Yemen is titled Tughba.

Who knows what the king of Rome was entitled? Qaysar in English. Caesar, people like Constantine and Julius and all those, they were titled Caesar. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he was still titled Caesar.

The king of kings of Rome. There was also Kisra. Kisra was the king of Persia.

They also used to call him Shah of Shah, which means the king of kings. The Persian kings were just outrageous men. I'm going to tell you something.

They're the best of the best, they were gods. I'm going to tell you a little bit about them as we come towards them. It's just mind-boggling. And probably gives you reasons where they get movie ideas from.

And all that stuff. And the king of Ethiopia, what was he called? Negus, Najash. These were titles that they used to use.

So Tubba is the king of Yemen and his name was Tabban Asad, among the earliest kings of Yemen. Why am I mentioning him? Well, here it goes.

He had a son, and they were both tradesmen. So they went to a place called Yathrib. What's Yathrib at this point?

Medina. It wasn't called Medina or Tiba until later on. At that point everybody called it Yathrib. He went to Yathrib, and he left his son there to do some trade business with them, while Tabban Asad, the king of Yemen, went to a sham to do some business over there. He received news that the Madani people had a bit of a conflict with his son.

They had a fight, and they killed him. So the ban has happened. got angry.

He comes back to Yathrib and he wants to take them on. He brings an army and starts to have battles with the people of Yathrib. They would fight and he would fight.

I want to get the revenge of my son. I'm going to take over Yathrib. The most amazing thing he found about Yathrib, and this is important for me to tell you this, he found that they were courageous and strong in the day.

And when they came to settle, to rest in the night, that was the rules of war, they used to rest in the night. The Yathrib people, they used to come and bring food and water to their enemies. What does that tell you?

That tells you that the people of Yathrib, Aus and Khazr, those Arabs, have always had the trait of kindness, compassion, generosity. And later on, where does Muhammad ﷺ get his support and his what is in Medina. Those are the same people that always had that personality, subhanAllah. And the baddie looked at his thought, this is amazing, but still he thought, I'm going to get the revenge of my son.

Two Jewish scholars. Jewish Christians, proper Jewish Christians, they came up to him. And they said to him, listen, what do you want from Yathrib?

He said, I want to destroy it. He said, you're not going to be able to now. He goes, why?

He said, we have in our Torah that this land, Yathrib, a prophet is going to emerge in it. Allah will not let you touch it. Do whatever you want.

So then he started asking him questions and asking them questions. And they started telling him about the Torah and Judaism. than the bad ass-huckers. converted to Judaism, became a Jew.

So then he said, come back with me to Yemen, I'm going to convert the whole of Yemen into Jews. And then, some people, they were tribes, they were trying to take over Mecca. It was always this thing, people want to take over Mecca.

At this point, Quraysh is not in Mecca within that last 100 years. They will remember who they were. Anyone remember who they were?

Khuzaa. Remember the old time, time of Ismaili, Khuzaa, people took over Mecca and Zamzam was buried by Judah? Remember that one?

They were people of Khuzaa. They had no right to be there. A similar example is to talk about...

the Israeli Jews, the Zionists, who went into Palestine, they were waiting there just to settle, and then suddenly they took over, and occupied illegal territories. Similar to what happened in Bakka. The Khuzar people came, took it over, and they started to take over. stated they're illegal territories for the next 500 years. And the people of Joram, the original people of Ismail alayhi salam, they're still upset till that day, that they can't do anything about it.

This tribe comes up to him and says, they want to cause a fight, they want to annihilate these people. So they said to him, would you like some jewellery and gold? He said, yes. You see that Kaaba over there? It's got jewellery and gold in it.

Truly, it had two big deers made out of gold. He said, yeah, I'd like to take that. Because God is starved.

Now the Jewish people, those two scholars are with him. They said to him, what are you doing? These people, they just want you to be a lion leader. He said, what are you talking about?

I'm a big king. I've got big soldiers. He said, no.

One law. The Jews were saying this. One law.

We do not know a more sacred and holy house of Allah than this one. The Jews always knew this. If you dare to touch her, Allah will destroy you. He said, what should I do then?

He's a Jew now, right? He said, do tawaf around her out of respect. He said, alright, I will.

But what about you? Why don't you do tawaf? They didn't want to do tawaf.

And they said to him, Wallahi, if there were no idols in her, we wouldn't do tawaf. So they weren't idolaters, idolaters, idolaters of these Jews. So he did his tawaf.

And subhanAllah, as we said in the Quran, when Ibrahim A.S. made the da'a, I said, oh, well. Allah make this Kaaba I love it to the hearts of all people who see it.

The bad Asad fell in love with the Kaaba. He went to sleep that night, and he saw someone showing him, putting clothing or material over the Kaaba. The Kaaba was... still plain. It was bare.

It was just rocks at the moment. So he thought of the idea. He went and put clothing over the cloth. And then he thought it doesn't look good. So then he got silk from Yemen, ordered it and started putting silk cloths over.

the Kaaba. And the people who were around loved this idea, it was a great respect. They took it on and it became a Sunnah. Every single year that passed, it was a custom, they put another giswa, another material over it. But they didn't take the other material off.

So they kept putting material over material over material over material every year. Until the time came, close to Quraysh time, and they thought the Kaaba was just too much on it that it was about to fall. because over the years. So they decided, we'll just put one Kiswah every year and change it. And subhanAllah, the honor and respect of this Ka'bah, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will tell you, it didn't have to be Muslims or prophets to do it, this was Allah's house.

And till today subhanAllah you see the Kiswah, the black Kiswah over it, with woven golden silk, golden threads. Till today subhanAllah, the Kiswah of the Ka'bah, the house of Allah. Tabad Asad is king of Yemen He went back to Yemen and he said, Everybody become a Jew.

And they refused. They said, We're not even going to become a Jew. Leave all our Arab ancestry and follow Jews?

Are you serious? That's bad. You've lost your mind.

Now in those days, what happened? Because they mixed with the Persians and they mixed with other religions, something happened. There were people called Kohan.

Kohan are like soothsayers, fortune tellers, sorcerers. Everybody started believing in these people. People who read stars and astrology.

Astrology. science of astrology, and I don't know what, it's not science, science, science, it's just, it's fake science, it's imaginary science, fantasies, and just rubbish. And, some of them used to worship trees as well, trees, they believed spirits resided in trees.

That's where you get knock on wood from. Have you ever heard of knock on wood? When somebody sees something, they either say, knock on wood, so that they don't jigs it. Well, this came from worship of spirits inside of trees, they used to have.

So, to burn aside, he came and told them, you know, Jews, and then they said, listen, there are soothsayers over here. And there was a room that had a fire in it. A fire that kept burning from the Persians.

They said, we will open the door. They used to have this idea that if they can't decide, they'll open the door. And whoever the fire goes after, it comes out.

It's a big fire in the house, it comes out. Whoever it catches on fire, then they're in the wrong. That's the idea there.

So they brought the two Jewish scholars and they brought the soothsayers. And they said, both of you stand. they opened the door door and subhanAllah the fire happened to blow towards the soothsayers.

And they ran away. And they said, hey come here come here, come here, come here, what's this? Our tradition says that whoever the fire goes after you're in a rock.

You have to go in the fire and get burnt. That was their belief. The Susay's came back, threw themselves in, they got burnt, and the entire Yemen became Jewish. Now, there's a plan.

Allah SWT is leading them to something. So now Yemen is Jewish, and Yemen is a very, is a favorite place. place for the Prophet ﷺ. He had a Sham and Yemen. The Prophet ﷺ said in a Sahih hadith in Bukhari and Muslim, may Allah ﷻ bless the people of Shamina and Yemenina.

May Allah ﷻ bless the people of our Sham and our Yemen. today. He says if you can go to Hashan and go to the Yemen, there is a blessed land over there.

If you can, over the years. And Yemen is a blessed place after Hashan. We'll know why in a while.

Then, my dear brothers and sisters, in Yemen a civil war broke out. After Qadban Asad the king died, a civil war broke out. People started fighting each other and one of the children of Qadban, his name was Dun Nuwas. Nawas. I know Sri Lincoln's name, Nawas.

Am I right? Russian? Nawas?

Popular? Nawas. It's a popular name in the subcontinent. It's an Arabic name.

I'm going to take the Z down and I put an S because it's an Arabic name. I'm still your friend, right? So, Dhun Nawas. And this man, he managed to take over authority. Now there's an amazing story about this man, Lunawes.

As I tell you this story, you're going to figure out what it is. But just the name is not familiar to you. Let me take you through it. There was a Christian monk, a good Christian monk, who worshipped Allah.

He went to Africa to give... ...a priest. And one of the Arabs of Najran, Najran is in Saudi Arabia, it's very close to Yemen, he took him, stole him, and turned him into his slave.

And he went back, and he became his slave. Now, he used to see this Christian monk, every time he entered into the room, he had a noor, light around him. He said, what's this light?

He said, I'm a man of God. I worship Allah alone, and my religion is the correct one of Jesus Christ and so on. And he gave him a bit of dawah.

And this Arab man, he said, no, no, I don't believe in it. He used to worship a tree, as I said. And this monk, he said to him, if my God beats your God, will you enter Christianity? He said, of course. So he stood in front of the tree, this man kept making dua until subhanAllah, the miracle is that Allah sent fire one night and the tree got burnt.

And this man, he thought his religion is correct, he converted to Christianity and set him free. And this man kept giving dawah until some people became Christians, proper Christians, Unitarians or what you call the Jewish Christians. And they went back to Yemen. These guys went to Yemen, Christians.

In Yemen, they preached a little bit. And there was one man who worshipped inside of a cave. in the mountains.

The Nawaz, who is now the king of Yemen, he believed in sorcery. So he had this right-hand man as his favorite sorcerer, and he ruled the people with sorcery. People all feared the Nawaz because of his sorcery. And there was this young boy who wanted to become an apprentice of this sorcerer. Remember the boy in the king's story?

This is where it happened. About 50 years before the time of the Prophets of Allah. Actually, maybe even less. And this young boy, he went to become a sorcerer.

He passed by this cave on his way and he heard this man, a Christian monk, saying words that he's never heard before. heard it before. Cutting the story short, he went inside, and he liked his words. The young boy left the sorcerer, and he converted to Christianity and began to preach about the oneness of Allah.

The story is long. If you want to read about the boy in a king reading. But I'm just going to cut it.

Short now and go to the main point. The king Nawazi found out about this monk. So he brought him and killed him. The boy became very upset. So he came and stood before the king and he said, You killed my teacher.

He's on the right path. God will destroy you. So the king took him and he got his soldiers and said, Go and take him to the highest cliff and throw him.

They went and the boy came back by himself to the king. He said, Where's my soldiers? He said, Allah is the best. made the mountain shake and they all died. He goes, why did you come back?

He said, because I want to prove to you that God is, my Lord is stronger than me. He said, I'm the greatest God. He brought his soldiers, they're going to go take him into a ship and take him to the middle of the sea and throw him into the sea. They went to the middle of the sea and the boy came back for himself. He says, what happened to my soldiers?

He says, Allah drowned them. So then he brought a sword, he wanted to kill himself and his arm became paralyzed. He says, why can't I kill you?

And he said, there's only one way you can kill me. He said, how? He said, you've got to gather all the people of Yemen.

Remember, they were Jews, and they started worshipping sorcery and stuff like that. And you have to say in front of everybody, Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, in the name of Allah, the Lord of this young man. You have to say it loud so everybody can hear you.

He stood, tied him up, put an arrow, and he said as he said. And subhanAllah, the boy died. He gave his life so that, in order to save the people, and enter Islam. All of the people of Yemen converted to Christianity, the proper Christianity. And Lunduwas became so angry that he said, if you're not going to obey me, I'm going to kill you.

They dug up a huge trench, lit it up with fire, and they began to throw the people in it, the people of Yemen, the ones who followed the young boy. He kept throwing them, throwing them in, throwing them out. These are the people who in the Quran are called Ashab ul-Ukhdud. Allah says, the people of the trench were killed.

fire that he lit up the oppressor. He let them stand there, not able to escape, and threw them in there one by one. And Allah and everyone is witness to what that man did to them and his allies.

These believers who they killed. And they did not kill them and take revenge for any other purpose except that they just believed in Allah, the one and only. The Lord of all the worlds and everything. I call them in here, these Christians who worship on the way of Jesus Christ.

There was a story in the Sahih Muslim about a woman who was carrying her baby, one of those Najranti, Yemen Najranti. And she... She stopped. She got afraid. She didn't want to jump in.

Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala made her baby speak. There are four babies in the cradle. We are reported that spoke in the history of man.

Isa alayhi salam. Another baby is another story. I'll tell you some other time.

There was a third one, I'll tell you another time. And this one. This one, Ashar al-Khudud, and the baby said to its mother, Asbiri al-man, be patient, oh mother, fa innaki al-haqq, you are upon the truth, and you are of the people of Jannah.

So she threw herself as well. One man escaped. I think his name was Umayyad.

He managed to run away. The Nawas went after him, but he went to the sea and ran. Allah SWT saved him. And this man, Allah saved him to do something. the people of Yemen and Mejron.

So because he was a Christian, he thought of who? He thought of Caesar. So he went all the way to Rome.

All the way. Months and months journey, very far away. And he met Caesar.

I'm not sure who Caesar was. He said to him, this is what happened to our people there, Christians. And Caesar became very, very angry.

He was one of the just kids actually. And he said, I can't do anything because I'm so far away. However, I'm going to send a letter to the king of Ethiopia, Negus.

Now the king of Ethiopia, what were they? They were Christians, like the Romans, they were allies. So he went and gave that letter to Negus and Najashi of Ethiopia, we'll talk about later, at the time of the Prophet ﷺ.

And Najashi got very angry at this, and he sent an army to Yemen and Najash. And one of the commanders of that army, his Let's start from the beginning. 10-15 years before the Prophet ﷺ.

They reached Yemen and they had a big war fight with Dhul Nuwas until they annihilated his army and Dhul Nuwas ran away. Dhul Nuwas is an Arab. The Arabs had this idea that...

They have an honour to be killed by their own people, not by the foreigner. The Arabs had this, I'd rather be killed by my own blood than the foreigner. Stupid beliefs.

He goes, he ran away into the sea and drowned himself. Blimmin' the wise. And... The Ethiopians, the Abyssinians, took over Yemen and Najran, and now they became the authority. Yemen and Najran now became a Christian civilization.

Of course there were still Arabs among them and they were upset and sad. Ethiopians are conquering the authority over them, but they couldn't do anything anymore. SubhanAllah, the history of it. Abraham.

He, there was a man, another commander, who he and him had a dispute. And this other man who was oppressing the people and he was trying to do wrong things, so he and Abraha had a fight. I told you Abraha became the... the king of Yemen.

But before that, he had a fight with the other commander. There were two commanders. And they kept fighting and fighting until they said, let's stop. Our armies are being killed.

Ethiopians are killing Ethiopians. Let's us man to man. Let's have a duel. Whoever beats the other person becomes the king.

And as they were fighting the other commander, he cut the nose of Abraham. And Abraha was called Abraha al-Ashaj, which means Abraha, the one with half a nose. That's what he looked like.

And then Abraha killed the commander and he became the king. Negus of Ethiopia found out and he got very angry. Why are the Ethiopians killing each other?

Why is Najashi doing that to him? And he said, I'm going to send an army there. We're going to shave his hair off. I'm going to get him, you know, a human.

humiliated. So Najashi, he got upset, he got really sad, he sent a letter to him and he put his hair, he shaved it off and put it in a little bag and said, this is my hair, and I've been humiliated, and Allah only did it because the commander was oppressing the people, and so on and so forth. Negus left him alone. Najashi, he wanted to please Negus. He wasn't happy.

He wanted to please his king. So he said, I am, you know, there's this place where the Arabs go to. It's called the Ka'a.

I'm going to build... a big church where all the Arabs whom we conquered will come and do their Hajj and Tawaf at this church instead of the Kaaba. Just for my King Negus so he can be pleased with me. So he built a huge church called Al-Qulais.

And he made it so magnificent. Magnificent. Pearls, diamonds, everything.

And he started calling the Arabs to do Hajj to it otherwise we will conquer them. Now, I'll try and make this fast. He sent a letter to these special people that were called Ahlul Nasee' Al-Nasee' They are mentioned in the Quran.

Allah says, إِنَّمَا النَّسِيءُ زِيَالَةٌ بِالْكُفْرِ Those people who are called the Naseer, they are just exaggerated Kuffar. They were Kuffar. Now what did the Naseer do?

They were the people who could play around with the months of the Arabs. There were four months of the Arabs. Dhul Qa'dah, Dhul Hijjah, Muharram and Rajab.

These are called the forbidden months. Till today Allah has kept them. Al-Ash'ar al-Hurm.

Where nobody is allowed to start war in the Haram. No one is allowed to start war, no one is allowed to kill an animal, no one is allowed to kill even an insect, nothing. These people and Naseeb, they could play around with those mouths. They can make, like for example, Muharram, they can say, we can put... will suffer instead of Muharram, and we'll make that a day to fight, and then we'll bring Muharram back in.

So this is to play around. And Allah said, why are you playing around with my Horm days? I said to you these months, and you want to play around with days?

Yeah. That's what people do today, they keep changing around. and God's laws and say, you're liberated free, just do what you want. You know, there's different versions of Islam. Now there's this new show called Muslims Are Like Us.

They had it in the UK, now they've got it in the SBS here in Australia. I don't know, man. There's a bit of a agenda to it. It shows how Muslims are so diverse. Not diverse in our culture, diverse in the different versions of Islam.

You worship Allah the way you want. I'm really afraid of that because I don't know what kind of heroes these young people are going to take. They might take the guy with the tattoos as their hero and say, oh, this guy's good, I'm going to copy him or the other. the woman, one of them says, you know, I worship God by writing on a piece of paper, that's how I worship God. Oh, how cute, nice, you worship God the way you want.

Trying to tell us to fragment Islam and do Islam the way you want. Ideological liberalism it's called. Be very careful of that, my brothers and sisters. We do not change Islam to suit us. If anything, we change ourselves to suit Islam.

If you're weak in practicing your deen, that's one thing. But to come inside and change your deen and say this is my version of deen, my perception. These people... They want to detach you from a divinity, from Allah's man and the heart. So that religion can be you and you can be your own god.

Easy to manipulate people that way. They don't have a divine authority. So my brothers and sisters in Islam, this is what happened.

Abraha wrote a letter to them because they were the powerful Arabs. They got very upset. So one of them comes into Al-Qulais, the church, and he defecates them.

You know what defecating is? What's defecating? He poo-poos them.

So they went into the church of this Abraham and they did their deed in there. They used it as a toilet. He came inside and saw this thing happening. He got very upset and said, I'm going to go and destroy the car. That's it.

took a huge army and marched towards the Kaaba. With him was an elephant. Now they had lots of elephants. The Ethiopians liked riding elephants in their wars and stuff. And the Persians did as well.

This elephant's name was really Mahmud. That was his name. It was Mahmud. And They drove this animal, elephant, he doesn't know, towards the Kaaba. Things happened along the way.

The Arabs tried to stop him, but they couldn't. They failed. And there was an Arab who betrayed them and showed them where the Kaaba is. The Arabs till today, they say he's a bad...

until he reached the Ka'ba. Now Abdul Muttalib, have you heard of Abdul Muttalib? He's the grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad . This was the year the Prophet was born.

So the grandfather of the Prophet was there, Abdul Muttalib. Abdul Muttalib was an extremely handsome man. In every sense of the word, a wide face, wide cheekbones, full hair, volume, everyone who saw him and looked into his eyes felt an awe. ...water in his face and they respected him when he walked in. He was the type of man that when you look at him, mashallah, he fills your eye, and you just can't help but like him and respect him.

That's Banu Hashim, the Prophet ﷺ, they're all like that, they're all really handsome, they've really got an aura on them. So this man, Abu Muqtadir, was the chief of Quraysh at that time. And Abraha, he wanted to destroy it. So some connections happened and Abu Muqtadir was allowed to go to Abraha to speak to him.

Abraha had taken some camel. from the Arabs who kept them. He said, I can walk with them, he comes in, Abraha sees him, and he couldn't help but respect him. So Abraha gets up and says, he actually from the amount of respect and how much he respects him, here. He was charmed by him.

In other words, Abraha got off his firm, walked towards Abdul Muttalib and sat with him. He really respected him. He said, now, this is a man to come and talk to me.

And he said, what would you like? Abdul Muttalib said the following. He said, you've taken some camel's points. back.

You've taken some camels, I want them back. As soon as he said that, Abraham goes, you, with all your aura and respect, you come to ask me for a bit of camels? I thought you were going to come and tell me, don't destroy the Kaaba, turn away.

I thought the Kaaba meant a lot for you. You come and ask me for camels? Oh Allah, I respected you, now I don't anymore. Abdul Muttalib looks at him in all kindness and says, The camels belong to me.

I protect them. As for the house, it has a Lord who protects it. He will do it.

He said, take your camels, get out. Got angry, got the elephant, says, charge with the car. One of the Arabs managed to get away, and he went into the ear of the elephant and said, Uthbut, ya Mahmood, innahu baytullah. Be steadfast. Stop, this is the house of Allah And subhanallah, the miracle happened The elephant stopped and sat down They start to hit the elephant, move it The elephant wouldn't move They faced the elephant in a different direction The elephant went Towards the Kaaba, it stopped Subhanallah Allah says in the Quran, وَإِن مِّن شَيْءٍ إِلَّا يُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِهِ وَلَكِنَّا تَفْطَحُونَ تَسْبِحًا There isn't anything except that it glorifies and praises and worships Allah, but you, a man, cannot understand their praise and worship.

everything, the trees, the sun. the moon, the birds, everything worships Allah. My brothers and sisters, Abraha got very upset, and as we're trying to get the elephant, subhanAllah, the Muttalib, he took the people and said, go to the mountains, something terrible is going to happen.

They still had that belief. And subhanAllah, as we know in Surah Al-Fin. They saw above them clouds of swarms of these birds. They're called طَيْرَ الْحَبَابِرَ I don't know what they look like, maybe like sparrows.

And they were carrying special types of rocks that were full of heat. Very hot rocks. And they dropped them.

Every soldier that this rock fell on, it caused fire and burning all over their bodies. Until they all died, their skin melted off their bodies. and Abraha was the last, they all died from the heat of these rocks, from these simple birds, in this fall. You might think, what is this fantasy, and what is this, subhanAllah, we say what Allah SWT told us in the Qur'an.

If Allah SWT can create volcanoes and rocks of fire, He can easily create birds who carry these rocks and burn people. We see it all around us. And so Allah SWT protected His house.

You might be wondering now, if someone attacked the Kaaba now, wouldn't Allah protect it? What do you think? Now, would Allah protect it? No. No, He won't.

SubhanAllah Ta'ala. Tell me the difference. In those days, there was no new deen.

The people had gone into shirk and there wasn't an ummah and Allah SubhanAllah had not sent down a new law. So the Kaaba was left to Allah. In our time, we had an ummah. And Allah SWT has written in the Quran that you must take up arms to protect yourselves and to protect your holy places if someone attacks you.

Allah has put the responsibility upon us. This is the difference between the ummah of Muhammad SAW and the ummah of every other prophet. So, the Kaaba was protected by Allah SWT and bin Nawaz died.

My brothers and sisters in Islam, that was the year in which Muhammad ﷺ was born. It is approximately, in the Gregorian calendar, 570 CE, or as they say, 570 AD. 570 after Jesus Christ ﷺ.

Muhammad ﷺ was born. My brothers and sisters, I don't have too much time left, so I'm going to have to leave the rest, inshallah, the birth of the Prophet ﷺ and his family and how Quraysh came about. Very, very interesting. It's actually going to get more and more interesting as we get closer to the birth of the Prophet ﷺ. This was the year and they called it the year of the elephant.

Approximately in Muharram. Muharram, we said, is the year, the forbidden year. Remember we said? And Abraham wanted to attack the Kaaba in the year of the elephant. year in the month of Haram.

Muharram is Muharram. Even till today it's one of the months forbidden. You're not allowed to start wars.

But if someone starts you, you can defend. It happened once at the time of the Prophet ﷺ. Arabs attacked them in the month of Haram and the Muslims defended. Allah says, وَإِن قَاتَلُوكُمْ فِيهِ فَضْلُوا If they fight you in the Ka'ba, around the Haram, in these holy months, then fight them back. We don't just sit down, as they say, and turn the other cheek, and a Muslim stands up and fights back.

Otherwise, we want peace. So, the next story that I wanted to share with you, if we can't finish it now, inshallah, next week, if we can't finish it, we can come back. Sort of what? We've got one minute.

I'll just introduce this man. Next week, inshallah, we'll start from him. If I forget, you remind me. His name is Qusay ibn Kilab.

Qusay. Ibn Kilal. He is the one who starts Quraysh. You know Quraysh?

At this point there's no Quraysh, remember? And from here, Allah will send set up the coming of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and his upbringing. Getting everything ready.

This is now the boiling. Now the boiling starts. Inshallah next week we'll talk about that.

But before I finish I'll just tell you that not all the Arabs were mushrikeen. Idolaters at this point, as I said. There were four particular scholars among them who stayed Hunakha worshipping Muhammad. There are several names, but the most important and you're not going to remember, one of the important names that you need to remember is Waraqa ibn Nawfa. The cousin of who?

Cousin of who? Khadija radiallahu anhu. He was a Christian, converted to Christianity, and he knew a couple of languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, and he was able to read and write. To be able to read and write in those days, it meant that you were a genius, you were a great scholar. Okay?

Waraqa ibn Naufal. And I'll tell you now, who was the first Muslim in Islam? Who? Who was the first Muslim man in Islam?

Abu Bakr? Well done. It's actually Waraqa ibn Nawfa.

and we'll tell the history inshallah next week when the time comes next week inshallah we'll talk about how the Quraysh came into power how they set up themselves in that area, we'll talk about Zanzen and how it was revealed we'll talk about the birth of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam's father and his grandfathers and we'll talk about inshallah the birth of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Very interesting next week. You're going to learn about the first woman to touch, to touch the Prophet ﷺ. A name that a lot of us don't really know. So inshallah next week. Jazakum Allah khair for listening.

And also the brothers and sisters around the world. Finish? Yes.

Transcript for:Pre-Islamic Arabia and Muhammad's Birth

Transcript for:
Pre-Islamic Arabia and Muhammad's Birth