Al-Qarib (The Boat): lessons on faith and piety

'Al-Qarib' ('The Boat') is the title under which the Assabile archive keeps twenty-one short video lessons by Ahmad Farid, each about five to six minutes long. ¹ The title is never spoken in the recordings and no boat appears in them: the lessons form one continuous course on faith (iman) and then on piety (taqwa), built on the Qur'anic likeness of the good word to a good tree. ^{2 3 4} Each lesson opens with the sermon of need or a praise of God and closes with the speaker asking forgiveness for himself and his listeners. ^{5 6 7}

Lessons 1 to 14 treat the honour of faith, the fruits of what he calls 'the tree of faith' and the causes that make it grow; lessons 15 to 21 rise, in his words, 'a degree higher than faith' to piety, its meanings, its honour and its fruits in this world and the next. ^{8 9 3 10} The two halves share their subjects with two titles in the list of his works on the Arabic Wikipedia, 'The Tree of Faith' (Shajarat al-Iman) and 'Piety, the goal sought and the pearl lost' (al-Taqwa al-ghaya al-manshuda wa-l-durra al-mafquda). ¹¹ The episode pages give no recording date; in lesson 9 he speaks of the month of the Qur'an, Ramadan, as a time for a portion of recitation. ¹² The archive's pages and media files for the last three lessons are numbered 20, 21 and 22, so no lesson numbered 19 is kept; the nineteenth lesson as kept begins the fruits of piety directly after the eighteenth, which closed the honour of piety. ^{1 13 4}

The verses and hadiths on this page are as he recites and explains them in the recordings; the explanations are his, and the hadith gradings he gives, where he gives any, are his statements.

Lesson 1: the honour of faith. He calls faith a great blessing by which God has favoured believers, recalling the verse that answers those who reminded the Prophet ﷺ of their Islam that it is God who favours them by guiding them to faith, and the verse that God has made faith beloved to the believers and adorned it in their hearts. ^{14 15} He likens the believer to the mother of Moses, who nursed her own child, quenched the longing of her heart and was rewarded for it: so the believer does what his heart loves and is rewarded with the greatest reward. ^{15 16} Faith, he says, is the condition for good works to count, so that whoever honours his parents and gives alms while lacking faith will not benefit from it on the Day of Resurrection, and whoever loses faith loses all his works. ^{17 18} On the verse warning the Prophet that associating partners with God would void his works, he gives two explanations: that it is the supposition of the impossible, which Arabic allows, since prophets are protected from sins let alone from associating partners with God; and that the address is to the Prophet but meant for the whole community. ^{19 20} (See faith.)

Lesson 2: further honours of faith. Satan, he says, has no authority over believers who rely on God, only over those who take him as a patron and associate others with God. ^{21 22} Faith is a high rank: a person enters Islam by the two testimonies and rises by good works to the rank of faith; when the Bedouins claimed faith, God told them to say rather that they had submitted, for faith had not yet entered their hearts, a phrasing that in his reading leaves hope that it will. ^{22 23 24} He announces three degrees of worship, islam, iman and ihsan, for later lessons. ²⁴ The good life, he holds, belongs only to the people of faith and good works; the people of associating and of sins cannot find the sweetness, calm and intimacy of faith whatever they own. ^{25 26} He reads the verse that the righteous are in bliss and the wicked in hellfire as unrestricted: bliss and torment in this world, in the grave and in the hereafter. ²⁷ (See ihsan.)

Lesson 3: the good tree. God, he says, struck a likeness for the word of faith, 'there is no god but God', as a good tree whose root is firm and whose branches are in the sky; the good soil in which it grows is the believer's heart. ^{2 28} He builds the image of the whole series: the roots of the tree are the six articles of faith, its trunk is sincerity and following the Prophet, its branches are good works rising to God, and its fruits are to come in the following lessons. ^{29 30 31} Not everyone who testifies tastes the sweetness of faith, he says, but only the one in whose heart the tree has borne ripe fruit; he recalls the hadith that whoever is content with God as Lord, with Islam as religion and with Muhammad as prophet has tasted faith, and explains each contentment as contentment with God's decree and law, with the law of Islam and with the Sunna. ^{30 32 33}

Lesson 4: the first fruits. Worldly trees are tended all year for a harvest of a month or two, he says, while the tree of faith gives its fruit at every moment. ³⁴ The first fruit is God's guardianship: God is the patron of believers and brings them out of darkness into light, and the present tense, in his reading, means that this happens at every moment, from associating to oneness, from ignorance to knowledge, from heedlessness to remembrance, from doubt to certainty and from showing off to sincerity. ^{35 36} The second is God's defence of believers, and he recalls the sacred hadith, which he gives from al-Bukhari through Abu Hurayra, that God declares war on whoever is hostile to one of His friends. ^{37 38} The third is that all of the believer's affair is good, as the hadith says: grateful in ease, patient in hardship, rewarded in both. ^{38 39 40} Faith, he adds, is the greatest consolation in calamity, and he points to Jacob, who loved Joseph, excused himself twice when the brothers asked to take him, and bore the long separation with beautiful patience. ^{41 42} (See friendship with God and patience.)

Lesson 5: faith as refuge. Faith is the refuge of believers, he says: when they are frightened by something other than God, when a blessing comes, when trial comes, when they obey and when they sin. ^{43 44} When the Companions were told that the people had gathered against them, their faith increased and they said that God sufficed them, and when the believers saw the Confederates their faith and submission only grew, unlike the hypocrites who think every cry is aimed at them. ^{44 45 46} In trial they turn to patience and contentment with God's decree; in blessing they know the One who gives it and do not say, as Qarun did, that they were given it for their own knowledge, and they thank God with tongue, heart and limbs. ^{46 47 48} After an obedience they know that God enabled it; after a sin they turn to repentance, to asking forgiveness and to good deeds that wipe it out. ^{48 49} (See gratitude.)

Lesson 6: glad tidings in this world. People of faith and piety, he says, are given glad tidings of every good in this world and the next. ^{50 51} The first is people's love and praise: asked about a man who does a deed only for God and people love or praise him for it, the Prophet called it the believer's glad tidings brought forward. ^{51 52} The second is the good dream, which the Prophet said is all that remains of prophethood, one part of forty-six; prophethood has ended, he explains, and the remaining part is not a remaining prophethood. ^{53 54} The third is the angels' descent on those who said 'our Lord is God' and then stood firm, for which he gives two readings: that the angels descend on them throughout their lives, removing fear of what is coming and grief over what is past, or that they descend at death, when a person is at his weakest and most afraid. ^{55 56 57 58} (See the dream.)

Lesson 7: glad tidings at death, in the grave and beyond. In his account the believer's soul, given the glad tidings of God's pleasure, flows out as a drop flows from the mouth of a waterskin, with a sweet scent and a light, watches the washing of the body and, above the bier, asks to be hurried on; the soul of the disbeliever and the wicked is told of God's anger and is driven out, and above the bier cries woe and asks where it is being taken. ^{59 60 61} From this, he says, comes the Sunna of hastening the funeral: good is brought forward to a righteous soul, and an evil is put down from people's necks. ^{61 62} In the grave the believer's place is widened as far as the eye can see, a door to paradise is opened for him, his seat in it is shown to him morning and evening, and a man with a fine face, fine clothes and a sweet scent comes to him and tells him he is his good deeds; the disbeliever's grave closes on him and an ugly man comes and tells him he is his foul deeds. ^{62 63 64 65} On the Day of Resurrection the believers' faces are white, they receive their book in their right hands and a light runs before them by the measure of their faith; in paradise angels enter on them from every gate, and they are told at once that they will stay forever, so that no fear of leaving it spoils their bliss. ^{65 66 67} (See the presence of death and what accompanies a person to the grave.)

Lesson 8: God's love and paradise. God, he says, places love for the believers: He calls Gabriel to love a servant, the people of heaven love him, and acceptance is laid down for him on earth, so that people love him without being able to say why. ^{68 69 70} He quotes Harim ibn Hayyan: when a servant turns his heart to God, God turns the hearts of the believers to him. ^{70 71} People, he says, love the imams of knowledge and religion, Ahmad, al-Shafi'i, Malik, Abu Hanifa, al-Bukhari, Muslim, al-Tirmidhi and Ibn Taymiyya, while many who own billions have no place in people's hearts. ^{71 72} The angels who bear the Throne ask forgiveness for the believers, and he explains that they chose forgiveness because warding off harm comes before gaining benefit. ^{72 73} The greatest fruit is paradise, whose soil, he says, is musk and saffron and whose roof is the Throne of the Merciful, and he recalls the sacred hadith of what no eye has seen, no ear has heard and no heart has imagined, with Abu Hurayra (may God be pleased with him)'s invitation to read the verse that no soul knows what joy is hidden for it. ^{74 75 76} (See love for God, asking forgiveness and paradise.)

Lesson 9: the growth of the tree, knowing God and the Qur'an. He asks how the tree of faith is tended until it grows and bears fruit, and names first knowing God: the more a servant knows God, the more he loves Him, fears Him and relies on Him. ^{9 77} The names are called 'husna', he explains, as the plural of 'ahsan', the best, not of 'hasan', good, because God chose for Himself the best names, containing the best attributes; and he gives Ibn Abbas's reading of the verse that jinn and humans were created to worship as 'to know'. ^{78 79} The second cause is reflecting on the Qur'an: hearing it with a present heart increases faith, and those who do not benefit are like someone in Cairo called from Alexandria, who cannot hear; the fault is in them, not in the Qur'an. ^{79 80 81 82} (See the Most Beautiful Names and reflection on the Qur'an.)

Lesson 10: supererogatory works and good company. Once the obligations are complete, he says, the servant opens for himself the doors of supererogatory works, following the sacred hadith that a servant keeps drawing near to God by them until God loves him. ^{83 84} He lists them: twelve rak'as a day besides the obligatory prayers, from the hadith of Umm Habiba promising a house in paradise; the night prayer, the best prayer after the obligatory; fasting on Mondays and Thursdays, on the day of Arafa, on Ashura and six days of Shawwal, and the fast of David, a day on and a day off; umra and hajj after the obligatory pilgrimage; and charity. ^{84 85 86} Supererogatory works lead to God's love more than the obligations, he explains, because the obligation is done in hope of reward and fear of punishment, while the supererogatory act is done purely to draw near to God. ^{86 87} The other cause he names is sitting with the righteous: nothing benefits the heart more than their company, the soul being ready for good and for evil, and companions draw a person towards faith or away from it. ^{87 88 89 90} (See supererogatory works and the regular sunnas.)

Lesson 11: knowing the Prophet, and his miracles. Knowing the Prophet is another cause of the growth of faith, he says; for those who lived in his time it was enough to look at his face, and he recalls the verse of Hassan ibn Thabit that even without clear signs his first glance would tell you the truth. ^{91 92} He tells the story of Abdallah ibn Salam, a rabbi who looked at the Prophet's face on his arrival in Medina and said it was not the face of a liar, then asked the Prophet to call the Jews and question them about him before declaring his Islam; they praised him as their best and most learned, and after his testimony called him their worst. ^{92 93 94} The Prophet's life, he says, is itself among his miracles: he never betrayed, broke faith or lied, and was more modest than a virgin in her chamber; the greatest of his miracles is the Qur'an. ^{94 95 96} He relates al-Shafi'i's saying that God gave no prophet what He gave Muhammad, and when told that Jesus was given the raising of the dead, answered that Muhammad was given the yearning of the palm trunk, which wept when he moved to the new pulpit; he adds al-Hasan al-Basri's remark that a piece of wood yearned for the Prophet, and asks whether believers' hearts should not. ^{97 98 99} Where Moses struck the sea and it parted, he says, the Prophet pointed at the moon and it split. ^{99 100} (See miracle and the splitting of the moon.)

Lesson 12: further miracles. Moses struck the rock and twelve springs gushed out, he says, while the Prophet put his hand in a water vessel and water gushed from between his fingers, a greater wonder in his view, since water from stone is known in many places but water from flesh and bone was given to no one before. ^{101 102} He recalls the hadith in Sahih Muslim of a stone in Mecca that greeted the Prophet before his mission, and the two trees that moved at his word to screen him. ^{103 104} He tells of the man who entered during the Friday sermon asking for rain when there was not a wisp of cloud, of rain that fell before the Prophet lowered his hands and lasted a week, which the people of Medina, he says, called a 'sabt' from living alongside the Jews, and of the prayer that the rain fall around them and not on them, after which they walked out in the sun. ^{105 106 107}

Lesson 13: the merits of Islam. Another cause of growth is knowing the merits of Islam, the religion God has accepted for humanity, he says, until He inherits the earth. ¹⁰⁸ He recalls that the verse of the completion of religion came down at Arafa during the Farewell Pilgrimage, on a Friday, and the story of a rabbi who told Umar that had it come down to the Jews they would have taken its day as a feast, and Umar's answer that it came on two feasts, the day of Arafa and the day of Friday. ^{109 110 111} Islam is the best religion, he says, in creed, worship, dealings and ethics: prayer brings the forehead to the dust for God; zakat relieves the poor and cleanses the rich man's heart of avarice and the poor man's of envy; fasting narrows Satan's paths, breaks desire and lets the rich feel the hunger the poor feel all year; and hajj gathers Muslims of every race. ^{112 113 114 115}

Lesson 14: the climate of faith, and reflection. A summer tree sheds its leaves in the cold of winter and flourishes in summer, he says, and so does the tree of faith: it flourishes in the climate of hajj, umra, retreat in the mosque, following funerals and lessons of knowledge, and withers in a climate of licence and display. ^{116 117 118} A further cause is reflecting on God's creatures, not on His essence, which is beyond being encompassed by knowledge; he recalls hadiths on the immense size of angels and says the greatness of the creature points to the greatness of the Creator. ^{118 119 120} He relates that Umm al-Darda, asked what Abu al-Darda's most frequent worship was, said it was reflection, and the scholars' saying that an hour's reflection is better than a night of prayer. ^{121 122} (See reflection on God's signs in creation.)

Lesson 15: what piety is. He now moves to piety, which he calls the highest degree of faith, and recalls the hadith in which the Prophet was asked about islam, iman and ihsan; ihsan, worshipping God as though you see Him, is in his words the degree of piety, and its reward is the vision of God, the 'more' promised to those who do good. ^{3 123 124 125} He gives several definitions: the heart's knowledge of the Lord's nearness, a nearness unlike that of one creature to another, like someone on the king's carpet who knows the king sees him; leaving what one desires for what one fears; leaving sins, as Abu Hurayra answered with the image of a man walking a path of thorns, put into verse by a poet; and leaving doubtful matters for fear of falling into sin. ^{125 126 127 128 129} These meanings, he says, do not contradict one another but support one another. ¹³⁰ (See piety.)

Lesson 16: piety as the counsel of God, of the prophets and of the early generations. Piety, he says, is God's counsel to the first and the last, the Prophet's counsel to his community, as in the exhortation his Companions said sounded like a farewell, and the counsel of every prophet to his people, and he names Noah, Hud, Salih, Shu'ayb and Moses. ^{131 132 133 134} It is the counsel of the early generations: Abu Bakr urged it in his sermons, Umar was urged to it on being appointed, and Sufyan al-Thawri told Ibn Abi Dhi'b that if he feared God, God would spare him people, and if he feared people they would not spare him God. ^{135 136} It is the finest garment: after the clothes that cover and the finery that adorns, God pointed to the garment of piety, and he sets this against nakedness and display, which he says are not civilisation but a fall. ^{136 137 138}

Lesson 17: the best provision and the noblest people. Piety is the best provision, he says, and he gives the occasion of the verse: people of Yemen would set out for hajj without provisions, calling themselves God's guests, and were told to take provisions and that the best provision is piety. ¹³⁹ The noblest people are the most pious, not the richest or best-born, and he sets Abu Lahab, the Prophet's uncle, who was not honoured by Islam, against Salman the Persian, who was not even an Arab and was raised by Islam. ^{140 141 142}

Lesson 18: piety as the goal of worship. God created people to worship Him, he says, and the goal of worship is piety: the first command in the Book, to worship the Lord who created you, ends 'that you may be pious'. ^{143 144} So too the fasting, which no one can see and which only one who knows God sees him keeps intact, and the sacrifice, whose flesh and blood do not reach God but the piety of those who offer it. ^{145 146} He explains that revelation is called 'spirit' because life comes through it, so that people without God's law are dead, and ends with the command to cooperate in righteousness and piety. ^{147 148 149 13}

Lesson 19: the fruits of piety in this world. Every fruit of the tree of faith is also a fruit of piety, he says, since piety is its highest degree; he divides piety's fruits into those of this world and those of the next. ^{4 150 10} In one sura, which he names as al-Talaq, he finds five: a way out (al-Talaq 2), provision from where one does not expect (al-Talaq 3), ease in one's affairs (al-Talaq 4), and the expiation of sins and a greater reward (al-Talaq 5). ^{10 151 152 153 154} Provision is decreed, he explains: a man decreed a hundred thousand in a year receives it lawfully if he is pious, and if he is not, gets no more but may take it, or much of it, unlawfully. ^{155 156 157}

Lesson 20: protection, and the inheritance of paradise. God protects the pious and patient from their enemies' plots, he says, and the pious are the rightful heirs of paradise, to whom the hereafter is given whole. ^{158 159 160} He contrasts a worldly win, a car or a flat, with the triumph promised to the pious, and a five-star hotel or a beach chalet with their 'good return', which the verses then describe in detail. ^{160 161 162 163} He distinguishes, in his reading, the women of the pious, who look only at their husbands, from the houris kept in pavilions in sura al-Rahman (al-Rahman 72), whom tents screen from others. ^{163 164}

Lesson 21: the last fruits. Paradise is brought near to the pious, he says, coming to welcome them; friendships turn to enmity on that day except among the pious; and they are driven to paradise in groups, prophets with prophets and martyrs with martyrs, or, in another reading, every group that loved one another for God. ^{165 166 167 168 169} The pious, he says, will be above others on the Day of Resurrection, and he closes the series with the hadith that whoever asks God for paradise should ask for al-Firdaws, its middle and highest part, whose roof is the Throne of the Merciful. ^{169 170 171}