Revive Your Heart: Putting Life in Perspective

ʿazza wa-jall
). May Allah
(
ʿazza wa-jall
) make us a people of gratitude, make us a people of 
tawakkul
and
make us a people of sincere, accepted 
duʿā’
.

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CHAPTER 3
Criticism
I
n this reminder, 
in shā
’
 Allāh
I just want to share with you one small section,
from a very small surah. 
Sūrat al-ʿAṣr
is probably a surah you have heard many,
many talks on, many reminders on; and it is important we remind ourselves of
the wisdom that’s encapsulated inside this very beautiful surah. In one sense, it’s
a summary of the entire Qur’an; you can say it is a summary of the entire
religion of Islam. All we have to do to succeed in this life, or more accurately all
we have to do to avoid failure in this life, is described in 
Sūrat al-ʿAṣr
.
Many times when I give 
durūs
on 
Sūrat al-ʿAṣr
, I let people know in the
beginning, and I’ll let you know too, that 
Sūrat al-ʿAṣr
is not about attaining
success. It’s not a surah that teaches Muslims how to become successful; it
actually teaches Muslims how not to become failures. There are teachers, when
they start a course they give advice: here’s what you do to get an A, here’s how
you get a hundred on the test, here’s how you become the top student; that’s one
kind of advice. And that is there in the Qur’an too. But then there are other
teachers or there are other times and the teacher says, ‘Okay, you have to meet
these minimum requirements; and if you don’t meet these minimum
requirements, you fail. Forget about the A, I won’t even give you a D, you’re
going to get an F. You’re not passing this class’.
Sūrat al-ʿAṣr
is about that minimum. It’s an urgency for us to remind
ourselves of that minimum because it’s important to remind ourselves not just of
the higher grades and the extra credit assignments that will give us more and
more promotions in this religion; none of that is relevant if you’re not even
passing. None of that makes sense if you’re not even meeting the minimum
requirements, right?

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So this reminder is not about 
Sūrat al-ʿAṣr
itself, as I stated in the beginning,
it’s about one piece of it that easily gets neglected. There is one piece of it that
we have to pay extra attention to because Allah (
ʿazza wa-jall
) put four
connected conditions on meeting the minimum requirements:
1. 
Illā alladhīna āmanū
2. 
Wa-ʿamilū aI-ṣāliḥāt
3. 
Wa-tawāṣaw bi-l-ḥaqq
4. 
Wa-tawāṣaw bi-l-ṣabr.
There are four conditions and in this reminder, more than anything else, I
wanted to focus on just one condition. And it’s not 
illā alladhīna āmanū
, and it’s
not 
wa-ʿamilū aI-ṣāliḥāt
. In this reminder, I wanted to reflect a little bit with you
about the idea that Allah captures inside the phrase: 
wa-tawāṣaw bi-l-ḥaqq
.
I think it’s important to take advantage of short surahs and give reminders on
them and discuss them more because pretty much every Muslim either knows
them already, even our children know them already, and if you don’t, it wouldn’t
take you much to memorize them. So it wouldn’t take much to remind ourselves
of the lessons that are captured and the wisdom that is buried inside these words,
subḥān Allāh
.
So first a rough translation of the surah is in order:
By the time! Lo! Man is in a state of loss; save those who have faith
and do righteous deeds, and counsel each other to hold on to truth and
counsel each other to be steadfast.
(Al-ʿAṣr 103: 1-3)
In the surah, Allah swears by the time that’s running out, that no doubt every
single human being is drowning in loss, in some loss. And then Allah says the
only exception are those who’ve believed—