Surah Ar - Rahman - A Deeper #19 - When the Truth Shows on the Face

0:00this audio is brought to you by Moslim Central. Please consider donating to help cover our running costs and future projects by visiting www.muslimcentral.com for the slash donate. Last time in this Surah Ar-Rahman series, wait I thought the whole point of judgment day was what? Ask about the sins and now he's saying on that day none shall be asked about their sins. No human, no gin. What in the world? How does that make any sense? Let me explain. To help you follow along and reflect more deeply, we've created a companion workbook for this series. download it at bayina.com forward slash Rahman.

1:21So we're almost done discussing the scary stuff that's at the heart of the surah. What I want to do today is pick up from where we left off, give you an overview and then in inshallah we get to see the the the other side of the equation. So Allah says in ayah number 39 on that day nobody will be asked, la yus alu an them be he nobody will be asked about their sin neither the human being nor the gin. And this is again the opening scene of judgment day. The interesting word here is them one of the many words in the Quran for sin. So say you're janna there's different words in Arabic that are used for sins. And them actually comes it's related to like you know like the

2:25some pots are very deep and you have a ladle or like a really deep spoon that can get to the bottom of it without you getting scorched that's that spoon is called a mithnaba. The then is called the is the tale of an animal a bucket that goes all the way to the bottom of a well is also called a zennab. So and it's a fnab is also used for you know like politicians they give a lot of rhetorical speeches and people get fired up and a lot of people follow them without thinking about it right. Those kinds of people that just follow a politician around no matter what they say or do and they don't change their views you know they're called fnab the lowest of the people who don't have a brain for themselves. So the tale the long spoon the low bucket and low intelligence people so there's a common thread between all of these words which is what lones right lones or something embarrassing almost the word themb is used for something that an action that brings me low

3:26that lowers my my my my dignity my status my rank you can also think of them as something that's embarrassing like the tale is the embarrassment of the animal. In fact there was a poet who used to talk about the pride of his people his his people his tribe's name as a nickname was Anfunaka like the the nose of the camel. So they call their tribe the camel knows because the camel is very tall and the nose is the pride it's all the way up high you know like the image of somebody who's stuck up right so the another poet who was roasting them called them venabunaka like the tale of the camel right so he was trying to embarrass them by switching their name from the nose of the camel to the tail of the camel coming back to the point in the ayah Allah is using the word them to say that there are things we do that are embarrassing and on that day the embarrassing sins don't have to be asked about because as I was mentioning is going to get get unfolded the embarrassment

4:29will show where on the face right so the word is it's appropriate to that the other interesting thing is there's a the interesting difference between Sayyia and Thumb both words for sins and Surat Al-Fathe is a really nice place where both of these words occur together. Thumb is also used for the Prophet Sayyid al-Salam you know so Liyar fill Allah lakallahu ma taqaddamah min Thumbika so the Thumb is used for Rasulullah so Lallahu alayhi wa sallam so how do we understand that well easy example of that would be let's just say somebody comes to this masjid to pray Fajr right and they get here basically even before the Adhan is given every day they just get the first person here opens unlocks the doors and comes here in praise and there's somebody who never comes in praise and never even gets up for Fajr and one day something gets in their head and they decide they're going to come for Fajr right but they don't come for the first part of the prayer they barely make it to the second rakah and they join for Rukur so they made it but they kind of

5:29made it at the end and the person who normally prays every day and opens the door one day he got late and he joined at the same time so there's two people who joined at the same time second rakah they caught Rukur at the same time one of them this is like the height of his spiritual career like this I was in the masjid for Fajr and I got Rukur and the the person next to him this is like one of the worst most embarrassing days of his spiritual career because what's happened to me how did I get this late he's so disappointed in himself what I'm trying to get at is people maybe embarrassed by different things because their standards are higher or lower right now there's some things that everybody should be feeling bad about their stealing is wrong there's not like some people are not embarrassed by stealing and other people are poor embarrassed the wrong is wrong lying is lying but when it comes to good deeds or when it comes to you know things that that are expected of us people some people hold themselves up to a higher standard other people say

6:32I'll just follow the bare minimum I'll get I'll be okay like you you guys see this in in the classroom or in the workplace right there are some students that hold themselves to a higher standard and they just want to keep excelling so they're even in depression if they get a 95 right and then there's another student so long as they got a 66 you know 65 I don't know I'm disappointed 66 yeah I knew I know this stuff right so they they have a they have a lower standard so long as they can pass they're fine they're not embarrassed by it this is actually referring to every person has a gauge inside them whether whether they think society thinks of it as bad or not because you know we're living in a time it's interesting we're living in a time of morality and what is right and wrong is so subjective now remember the whole conversation about my truth versus your truth right so everybody's got their own truth so everybody's got their own standard of what thambi is you know so we all have relative fitra now right but judgmentate comes that everybody actually recognizes there's no more pride in your own version of morality we all come back to the actual

7:37morality and we all realize what embarrassing things we've done instead right all the all the layers that society put on and all the fake layers that we put on ourselves all of them get scraped off what Taraktum Mahawalaikum Allah says you left behind all the layers that we had wrapped you in right so the judgmentate all of those layers gets scraped off so nobody's going to be asked the other the other thing to subtly note about not being asked is that you know if somebody's being because the scene was there being shot at remember the sky is shooting at them and there's bombings going on and you could just ask hey why are you doing this to me hey what you know what have I even done why why is the police firing at me without even an investigation right they have the right to ask that no they don't because on that day you don't have to even be asked you will already know how incriminated you are like people aren't even going to pretend that they're not criminals they can't even pretend about that so there's no need to ask another interesting thing

8:40comment here is that there's two aspects of justice that justice has to be done and justice has to be demonstrated listen to this carefully justice has to be done and justice has to be demonstrated now what what does that mean let's say you have a secret trial right there's somebody got you know put it in court and there's a secret trial when there's a secret trial the judge comes out and says the evidence is a secret the testimony was secret the proceedings were secret and I have declared that this person's guilty right why are they guilty can't tell you all of that is what secret but if justice was done what is the public going to believe was that justice no because we don't just want to see justice done we want to see justice demonstrated we want to see the public trial right now Allah is the ultimate just ultimately just he actually does not need a judgment day to be just he could just take people straight the moment of their death he could

9:42just pick them up and put them in jahan and put them in jahan as he wants he could do that because the entire proceedings of a trial and every deed is being shown and the record is being shown and the deeds are being weighed and all that stuff that's actually not justice that is what it's the demonstration of justice there's a difference between justice and demonstration of justice Allah on that day isn't just doing justice he's demonstrating justice and it's he's demonstrating justice to the people before he puts them in wherever he puts them and it's not just showing them mercy it's the demonstration of mercy so there's absolutely no excuse left you know somebody gets thrown into jahan and I'm like yeah we say Allah is just what I didn't get a trial I mean it wasn't like where was my day in court I'll give you him court I'll give you in day in court but even the beginnings of that is the person who who may have even argued that they did nothing wrong they will know in and of themselves what they had done wrong for me

10:45ayah la yara biqmatu qatimah now with this threatening language Allah comes back to that same question you're araful mujdi muna bi si mal this is the ayah we're at now the criminals shall be recognized by the marks on their faces so seema can be marks on faces can also be facial expressions as we'll see in a second for you khadu bin Nawasi wal akdam then the person shall be taken so it's not you khadu na it's you khadu he shall be taken so it's an interesting switch so it would have been you're araful mujdi muna bi si mal him fa yuh khadu na bin Nawasi wal akdam but the ayah is fa yuh khadu bin Nawasi wal akdam so the singular version is being used so the switch in the link the transition would be criminals shall be recognized by the marks on their faces and he shall be taken you were expecting to hear they shall be taken because who was talked about criminals right but the rest of the ayahs and he shall be taken by the foreheads

11:49and the feet so each one's being taken by foreheads and then back to the plural again so there's a mix of the plural in the singular that's happening here we're going to discuss that in a second what first thing i want you to know here is the development of the scene and what does that mean while judgment they started people like Allah says i'll free myself up for you so na fruhulakum then he openly challenges runaway if you can go ahead knock yourself out then as we try to run away our people criminals try to run away may Allah not make us from them they're being shot down min nada nwanuhas then if that wasn't bad enough the entire sky starts bleeding molten brass and copper and dripping like oil turning blood red then now people don't even have to be asked but even as they don't have to be asked another thing their their look the look on their faces and the mark on their faces is showing this mark on the face is an important you know piece that may suggest that Allah is going to take the if the the spiritual effect of bad deeds

12:58and actually turn that into a visible effect let me say that in simple english we do good deeds right now right but when you do good deeds you it's not like your skin gets nicer it's not like you people say you have new one on your face that's just you baby you put baby cream on this is not new on your face okay you just you got oily skin there is such a thing there's some some what's such a thing well we take that stuff too far oh my god there's so much new run there instagram filter like there's that's that's that's that's that's you know but the but on judgment they Allah says that there's light coming from the believer's chest and light coming from their right hand so it used to be our good deeds you know has no effect on ourselves but on judgment those good deeds and our good intentions get converted into what they converted into light and actually conversely people who do bad deeds every bad deed like in this life the Hadith describes the prophet's life some describes a stain on the heart right

14:00but on judgment date actually becomes layers and layers of actual darkness actual darkness so here in in this life Allah says he takes believers out of darknesses into light we don't want to learn nor and the the the tahut mean a nori la dunmat from night light into darkness is right that's in this life it's a it's a it's a it's a spiritual image and spiritual light and spiritual darkness but actually that spiritual reality that unseen reality becomes a scene reality on judgment day it's a different kind of reality that day so now people it's not just the expression on the face of someone who's like oh my god I know what I did but actually physically a darkness takes over them this is something people commonly don't understand and they really misread what the ayah is saying for example in surat al-Alamran in al-Alamran Allah says on that day shall turn black and some some some faces will turn white and some places some faces will turn black right and the those who disbelieved or did evil their faces have turned black oh look

15:04there's a racist comment in the Quran what does it mean faces will turn black actually it has nothing to do with skin color at all the idea of this is turning black is if I turn all the lights off in this room what will our faces be so i'll be black why because it's actually referring to the lack of light on them there's no light on their faces they've become completely dark and like the black pitch of night that's actually it's not talking about skin tone at all you know and this is why that same analogy is explained elsewhere as good I'm in a lane the darkness on their faces will be like a piece of a dark night you know a pitch black night so there's lack of light is actually what's being described here when you say that criminals will be recognized by the marks on their faces perhaps the mark on their face is actually darkness other places in the Quran on judgment day you know there's smut on the faces there's tar on the faces there's dirt on the faces you know

16:06basira there's a darkness on the faces on the flip side and so do kiyama navira they're lit they're illuminated faces right because they're looking towards a la ilar abbiha navira navira ilar abbiha navira so this imagery of dark and light that becomes actual dark and actual light on judgment day is really really important the faces are actually going to be lit so their faces are actually in a sense you know overshadowed with darkness the darkness of their deeds and the lack of light in their good deeds is actually now manifesting itself then of course when it says criminals shall be recognized in this way they shall be recognized it doesn't say a law will recognize them or the angels will recognize them it's saying they shall be recognized this is the passive version of the verb now passive verbs in English let's take an English example if I say this child got beat up at school he got beat up who did I not incriminate who like was a one guy who beat him up was it a little

17:07girl who beat him up was was it a five boys that beat him up was it the eighth graders that beat him a third grader we don't know we just know he got beat up so there's the perpetrators are not mentioned so when you say criminals shall be recognized you're not mentioning who's doing the recognizing you get it so then what it is is believers will recognize them oh my god you're you were my best friend and there's no light on your face oh thank god you're not my real best friend there's a difference between them they will see the darkness of each other so this is where I belong angels will see the darkness so it's not just one view it's multiple views of these people everybody's seeing everybody and so and then the other interesting thing this Surah does not mention kaffiruun musherikuun valimun the typical terms for deniers of the prophet alisato salam uses the word mujrimun which is interesting because the Surah began the only call to good deeds in this Surah was akim ul wasna bilkisti wala toksiru al mizan you know

18:11established the weight with justice and don't shortchange when it comes to the scale which means and by the way when people shortchange and mess with the scale and cheat and scam their criminals aren't they so the word mizan now has a correspondence with the word al mujrimun it's a fitting word for what's being described inside of the surah this is another small indication of how vocabulary inside a surah is interconnected words inside of a surah or in tart there's an entire whole ecosystem inside of a surah so it's important to understand the ayat within a surah to to be really get a grasp of what's going on instead of just isolated ayat on there's an ayat about this and there's an ayat about that well which surah is it in and what was the ecosystem of that surah right that's that's a really important part of studies so you're your ureful mujrimun abisi maham the word jaram or mujrim it actually just has it's also really interesting uh i'll tell you what this means it means earning it also means a heavy basket or a heavy bag that you take all the

19:16dates that fall from the tree you pick it up and you hold a really heavy bag right the heavy weight of a bag general also means the the weight of a body actually the word mujrim means the someone who's done a heavy crime it actually has to do with heavy weight which is really cool because the word mizan is the skill that measures what weight so again a correspondence with that word right now here's some ayat about just i wanted to just give you a view of how faces are really important in dokoran faces and facial expressions so the the dokoran is actually putting quite a bit of emphasis the face and whether it's the believer's face you know si maham fi wujuhi him in atheris sujud in suratul fat you'll see the mark on their faces because of the effect of sujud some people feel that that's literally talking about a you know a blemish on the forehead so they'll get like the kind of sejada

20:17or masallallah or do speakers call it the jainamas right that has like a little scrappy thing at the top so they can just make sure they get the si maham fi wujuhi him in atheris sujud right that's not what that's referring to what that's referring to is let me tell you like if you're i like silly examples it gets the point across if you have a kid who loves bullying other kids like he's just waiting to hurl and insult at somebody sitting in a class waiting who am i going to troll there's a certain look on their face there's a certain dubious look on their face right and if they get in the habit of doing that that look becomes a part of them okay teenagers sorry teenagers but prety when you were pretyns you were so nice you were so nice like yours is a smile on your face hi mama hi papa how's your day and it was just like this is lit face and then you started

21:17hanging around cynical people that are always criticizing and always seeing negative things and always dismissing things and whatever whatever whatever uncare uncare like you just all the time and then your face changes so your your the negativity you have in all your conversations actually starts impacting your actual face right it has an impact on you people that are always negative right for a long time does it show on their face yeah totally and people that are just you know they try to stay optimistic and happy and even if they're not smiling you can tell this person's at peace there's a like long-term behaviors actually have an impact where on the face a life of such that right a life of humbling yourself truly humbling yourself humbling myself before Allah actually has an impact where on the face and by the way saying that it has

22:20an impact on the face means it has an impact on the personality because your face is an expression of your personality right so what so now when criminals are recognized by their the marks of their faces there was a certain personality that that they they demonstrated they exhibited and now it's taking this new form look at that I was telling you Ka'annama uxshiyat wujuhum kitam minalay as if there are their their faces on that they have been covered with a piece of the night absaruhum khashi anjajmante their eyes are going to be filled with fear like if you zoomed in on the eye the way the pupil is dilating is being talked about now in the ayah wujuhum yoma alayha qabara faces that have dirt covered on them smat thrown on them then the the the the rest of the ayah when they're going to be grabbed by the the forehead and the feet will get to that in a second but you know the the the expression of the face even the arrogance of the qafar was captured by describing their faces right the enemies of Islam among their crimes is thumma nathar thumma abbas

23:27abbasar thumma adbarawastakbar then he stared then he frowned you know then he looked like he's thinking deeply and then he turned away like Allah is describing every part of his facial expression you know laus liquna qabi absari him lam masami or dhikr these disbelievers the way they stare at you is like through their laser beam stare they want you to fall and slip when they hear the Qur'an the hatred the the visceral hatred in their eyes when they hear you recite the Qur'an right lam masami or dhikr so actually the face is a really important part of demonstrating arrogance and on the flip if you look for example at the wisdom lukman was giving his son he said radiallahu rana wala tussah al-khaddaq al-innasi don't swell your cheek at people again face right over and over again you find this expression what do you find in the son of the prophet salli sallam al-Basma to fiywajhi ahikas adaka smiling in the face of your brother is charity it's not just he he he he

24:33sallam al-khaddaq it's that's not what that means it actually means you let go of grudges you let go of like dual intentions you're actually soft and gentle towards the person you're meeting you know coming up next time in this surah al-Rahman series they're not going to believe there's a fire by hearing it on the news they're going to have to see the smoke or get close enough to feel the heat and then they'll react right so the distinction between our decision making and animal decision making is actually al-bayan that's the difference