Transcription
Wait, okay. [Music] Everyone, once again, we are coming upon a very brief but a very heavy parable in the Quran. I want to start by asking Allah's help in being able to communicate its beauty and its power, uh, effectively, and to capture some of its gems. But I'm sure I'm missing many things because it's just this profound.
Um, this is the parable of the spider's web. Al-ankabut, the Arabic word for the spider is al-ankabut. If you've been listening to my lectures for a while, you know that every time a unique word occurs in the Quran, I like to discuss the origin of that word and its etymology and where it comes from. The Arabic word doesn't really have an etymology. It's actually a unique word that doesn't have other other verbs associated with it. It's a standalone unique verb, and which is really unique and interesting because the spider itself is kind of a unique creature and it's a standalone creature. And as you will see as we contemplate the spider, uh, it doesn't even live with other spiders. It eliminates the entire family. So it can be by itself. It'll eat as many of its eggs as it can. It'll eat the spouse if it can. It eats siblings, the children. If they get a chance, they eat the mother. It's a crazy family. But in the end, and uh, is a singular word, is the plural. And Allah did not use the plural. Allah used the singular. But for other insects in the Quran, you find the plural is plural. But is not, which is also interesting because the bees work together, but the the the spider stays alone, right? So that's a really interesting, small, little, little, uh, nuance in the way that even Allah used this word.
But before we get into this word and this this parable, which is Ayah number 41 of Al-Ankabut, you need to know some things about itself. Where is this placed? Where is this parable placed? Al-Ankabut can be argued as one of the last Surahs to be revealed in Makkah. It may not be the last, but it's one of the last, certainly. So it's very late in the Makkan stage of the mission of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. And by this time, the Quraysh are not just insulting Islam, they're not just attacking Islam, or making fun of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, or harassing the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, or harassing the believers. Things have now become violent. Things are now becoming violent. And this is at the point where some people, some Sahabah have even been murdered and killed. There's also scheming beginning to assassinate the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. Things have intensified on the side of the Kuffar, okay? So this, this is one piece you need to understand about the opening or the entire.
And what Allah does here is there are two things. The Kuffar have intensified, which means it's also harder to be to stay Muslim. Now, we live in the modern, you know, nation-states where our part of our protection, especially in an era like the Trump era, part of our protection, or your protection, supposedly, at least for now, is your citizenship, right? You have a passport, you have a legal status, or whatever else. That's part of your state's protection. The ancient world, in the kingdoms, you had loyalty. You had your loyalty to the king or fealty to the king. But the Arabs didn't have a kingdom. So your loyalty came from your tribe. And if you're not from the tribe, you better be from one of the tribes that is affiliated with that tribe. That was your visa, that was your green card, that was your status. That's when you are protected, in a sense, whatever law they have, tribal law. You're protected because you are affiliated. Those affiliations were called *wila*. *Wila* was the term that that they used for tribes that are associated with each other. This is going to be an important word today to understand this parable. So I'm going to set that stage for you now. I don't know if we're going to be able to discuss the entire parable today or not, but I'm not going to rush through it because I think it's that important. In any case, so let's first understand some things about *wila*.
The word *wila* comes from the word *wali* or *awla*, which is if you see old times, people wrote horses and camels a lot. So they put a saddle on top of the horse, the seat on top of the horse. But they don't just put the seat on top of it, which is made of leather and hard material. If it sits on the horse, and then you sit on the horse, eventually the horse's skin is going to start getting scraped. It's going to get a rash, like you get a rash when you go to Umrah and you buy the 99-cent sandals and you get that little rash, annoying rash thing on your foot, right? The the camel's going to get that, the horse is going to get that. So what the Arabs used to do is they placed something called, they would put this cushion, like a mattress, a thin mattress, and then put the saddle on top of that, and then sit on the camel. That cushion was called a *wil'a* or *awla*, or even *wila*. Those were the pronunciations of that word. What happens if you're sitting on it day in and day out, and you got the seat on top, seat on top, seat on top, eventually when you try to take it off, it's like stuck on the the animal, like glue. It got, you know, because of sweat and all that time and all that stuff. So the the the thing has to almost be peeled off. It's like a sticker on the animal because it's been put so much pressure on and it's been there in high heat for so long, right?
From this came the idea of the the verb *wala* or *awla*, which actually means when one thing closely follows another. So for *wala*, whatever follows, whatever follows, okay? Or so, so from this idea when two things go together, came the idea of tribes. One of them is stronger, the other is medium strength or weaker. The weaker tribe is going to get attacked easily. So it makes a connection to the stronger tribe. So that *wila*, you can use our *wila*, you can marry among our women, you could do the, you could have these advantages, you can take some of our animals and use some of our milk, etc., etc. But we're affiliated with each other. We do business with each other. We, uh, do marriages with each other. We share each other's water resources. We'll help you make the tents, you can help us start the fires, etc., etc. But if we're attacked, if you're attacked, we'll come and help. And if we're, you're attacked, or if we're attacked, you'll come and help. So this, this was *wila*. This was *wila*, right?
And the problem is in Makkah. In Makkah, you're, there's *wila* between the tribes, and there's *wila* inside the tribe. Once you're a member of the tribe, you are stuck to that tribe. If they went and killed an innocent man, well, you know what part of your *wila* is? You're going to stick with the killer and not going to say that was wrong because that's what *wila* demands. You, family first, Mafia style, right? You're going to stick with the family. You don't go against the family. If you're thinking about, you know, quitting your job in the Mafia, then we're going to have to call Mikey and take you out back and, you know, take care of the problem, that kind of thing, right? So your affiliation with the tribe was your survival.
Things reached a point in Makkah that the Arabs, the Quraysh, decided that if you are with sallallahu alaihi wasallam, we consider his religion. If you accept that religion, and he himself, he no longer gets our *wila*. We have rescinded, we have canceled his citizenship. We have revoked his citizenship. He, which means he no longer has protection. Which means the moment you say, your blood is basically, you are now in this land. What that means is if they kill you, nobody's going to bat an eye because you're no longer a citizen. You with me? So now becoming Muslim in Makkah, in Makkah, remember, we're not fighting back. We're not, this is not, and all that's later. So the, up until now, actually, Allah told us later in Medina. He told us that the policy used to be, the policy was, hold your hands back, don't fight back. Allah actually let us know later that the Sahabah were working under a policy that Allah himself revealed, not to fight back. So now, number one, we're not going to fight back. Number two, we're basically all targets. You could just get killed. So now, you know, before it was, you get insulted, humiliated, maybe you get boycotted, don't give you food, they don't do business with you, they don't marry among you, they don't, you know, your family, you know, uh, kicks you out of the house. It was bad. It had economic consequences, emotional consequences, social consequences. But now there's life and death consequences. This is, this is next level.
And so this Surah begins with, uh, shows up, according to a narration, you know, associated with this Surah. He's a Sahabi of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. They caught him, they grabbed him, they took his shirt off. They took some, they have these coals on the ground that are burning hot, like a pit in the ground with coal, and they forced him, be back, to lie down on it, and then they stepped on him until his back burnt off, the skin burnt off of him. And he, and he's screaming, and they're not letting him go. And after all of that torture, when he finally gets up, and he's peeled, the back of him is peeled, he comes to the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, in that state, and he says, "This is what we get for being believers?" Right? Like he's in a state of desperation. And some narrators say that's the context in which Allah said the opening statement of the Surah, when He said, "Did people believe that they're going to just say that they believe, and they're going to be left alone, and they're not going to be put to the test?" They're not, literally, by the way, the word "put to the test" is when you put the gold in the fire, which is Allah's way of saying, Sahabah, like that are gold, right? That's a really profound thing to say.
And then, so that's how the Surah begins. But then, because things are intensifying, Allah also spoke in a kind of code. What did Allah do? I'll show you. Allah, in the beginning, after giving this opening statement about how believers have to hold on, and this will be the, this will be the only time in the Makkan Quran that I know of that Allah actually uses the word *munafiqeen*. I believe it's here, yes, in Ayah number 11. Hypocrites. Hypocrisy was not a subject in the Makkan Quran. Hypocrisy was a subject in the Medinan Quran. But an exclusive place where both *jihad* is mentioned here, and hypocrisy is mentioned in the Quran. Why? Because when it came to life and death, maybe you could have handled your family yelling at you, maybe you could have handled, like, you know, things getting tough, or the economic situation getting bad. But when it came to being tortured and beat and about, basically, you're going to lose your life, you decide, you know what? What I'm not going to, I think I take back my Islam. I want my citizenship back, right? And Allah says, Allah will expose those who really believed, and Allah will expose the hypocrites, right? Now, this is a different level. This is a higher level of test for the, actually, the benchmark for hypocrisy was much easier in Medina. This is a much harder benchmark.
What's what's in Medina? In Medina, you become a Muslim for some advantages because Muslims are in power. So you accepted Islam for the wrong reasons, right? Here, you better stay in Islam even if you're being tortured to death, even if you're being tortured to death. And if not, this is a much higher standard. In fact, even Allah reduced that standard later on when He talked about *ikraah* and other things, right? Allah mentions that someone who was forced to disbelieve, or forced, and they, their heart was content, they have relief. So Allah actually made things easier. But when, when this religion started, Allah wanted the toughest allies for the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. The religion did not begin with ease. The reason we have ease in this religion, the reason we have ease is because the earliest Sahabah went through the toughest difficulty. They paid the price for the rest of us to have an easy Islam. They had the hardest Islam. Their Islam was a life and death decision. Their Islam was a crisis decision. You understand? For us, after, after Medina, Islam came, and Allah says, Allah wants that He should make your burden lighter for you. Allah gives the fast and says, and then people still say, why is there 30 fasts? So many and so hard? Can we have a fatwa on that or something? We have weekends off, you know, some. But the early Sahabah, they had, they were operating under a different set of standards. But anyway, let me move along quickly.
Then Allah mentioned the stories of Ibrahim, then Musa, you know, and a bunch of prophets. But notice these early prophets, eventually what happens with Ibrahim? When the *da'wah* intensifies, he escapes. Yes, Allah gives him a way of escape. Ibrahim alaihi salam, they're about to throw him in the fire, and Allah creates a way of escape. One is escaping from deathly water, and the other is escaping from deathly fire. And then Musa is told, make, literally, I'm making *Hijrah*. What is Allah telling the Sahabah who are right now going through the pits? That actually, between these stories, the common thread is all of them are making *Hijrah*. What's coming? *Hijrah* is coming. We're at the end of the Makkan period. So the hints are already getting dropped that you're going to have to leave town soon, right? But then Allah then opens up the subject on the different kinds of schemes each of these nations did. And I'll come to that at the end.
Now, with that, with that, uh, uh, uh, background, with that, you know, scenario that you understand, Allah is now describing the different tactics that the Kuffar have used on the Muslims from the beginning until now. And the tactics get, tactics keep getting worse and worse and worse and worse, right? They get more and more and more intensified. And He exposes their tactics sometimes by talking about them directly, and sometimes by talking about previous nations, because those nations used the same tactics, right? So even when Allah is talking about Noah, or the nation of Noah, or the nation of, etc., etc., He's actually not just talking about those nations. He's telling the believers, by the way, you've seen this tactic also. They're doing this. This is not a new thing they're doing. It's been done before, right? So He's exposing them to see the parallels between what happened thousands of years ago, or centuries ago, and what's happening in front of their eyes now.
With all of that in the background, after mentioning these nations, and how all of those nations failed in their plans, actually, this is the, the next piece that I want you to really take in. I had a political science professor who told me this when I was very young in college, in 1876. Um, and he said something, it stuck in my head, and I've been a student of politics many years. But something just sticks in your head, and it was a *hikmah*, a really profound wisdom. And that was, the more police and military you see on the street, the less control that government has. The more authorities you see, the weaker that government. The public thinks the opposite. They have a lot of police, they must be very powerful. But you know what's happening inside the government offices? Oh my God, these people are out of control. We're going to lose the government. Call the National Guard, call the military, call the police, patrol all the streets. Actually, the government is losing control when you see lots of police on the street. And when you don't see much police on the street, you know what that means? That government is very, very secure. Right?
Have things intensified? Are the authorities pressing the button on the Makkan, on the Muslims? They are, right? Which looks like they're showing their force. They're actually showing their force. But actually, what are they demonstrating? Their weakness. They're actually demonstrating their weakness. Because the fact that they had to get to that point is a problem. And to get to that point, you actually have to break some of your own rules. When you have to unleash the authorities on your own people for no crime, because of what they believe. The crime is what they believe, what they're saying, what's coming out of their mouth. They're not doing anything with their hands. Are the Muslims breaking idols in Makkah? Tell me, no. There's alcohol, there's prostitution, there's gambling, there's all this stuff happening in Makkah. Are the Muslims stopping any of it? They're not. They're just talking. So they're not stopping anybody from worshiping the idols. They're not stopping anybody from committing these crimes. In fact, baby girls are being buried alive. The Quran is commenting on it. But are the Muslims going there and saying, "You can't bury that girl alive? Stop! We're going to get in your way?" They're not. They're technically not breaking any rules. And in a society where you can worship anything or nothing at all, you want to worship one God, two Gods, 20 Gods, or no God, you're free. Makkah is a free society. You want to get married, you don't want to get married, no problem. You want to have one wife or 20 wives, no problem. You want to have three husbands or 25 husbands, no problem. They were crazy. I've studied their history. They were crazy. No rules. All of a sudden, in a society that has so much freedom, one religion comes and they say, "No, not this one. I know we have freedom of religion, except this one. I know we have freedom of expression, except this one, right?" Are they breaking their own rule? Yeah. And they say, "Makkah is sacred land. We don't hurt anyone here. That's our whole branding. People can come here from any religion, any God they want to worship, and they come and do their *tawaf* and eat their food and they go. That's why people leave us alone. Everyone is safe here in Makkah, except who? The Muslims."
And on top of that, your, your, your tribe, your tribe is your citizenship. Remember? So if you're ever going to be protected, who is going to be the ultimate protection in the Arab world, in the ancient, ancient Hijaz? Your tribe. Your blood. If you're Banu Hashim, then the Hashim will protect you. If you're Banu, the will protect. And they're cousins anyway, so they're all protect each other if it comes down to it. Between Makkah and Taif, the people of Makkah will protect the people of Makkah. The people of Taif will protect the people of Taif. If it comes down to it, even though they're at odds with each other. But then, is the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, from Makkah? Is he a citizen of Makkah? Is he a citizen of Makkah? Is he a Makkan citizen? And their citizenship no longer gives them any patriotic, any, any rights, any legal constitutional rights? All of their civil, civil liberties destroyed? Why? Because they're Muslim. Thank God that only happened thousands of years ago. It's never going to happen again. Alhamdulillah. We've never had to worry about that.
Okay, so now, with all of that, Allah describes for the Muslims, look, it's going to be hard for you to keep holding on to your Islam. In fact, there might even be somebody, imagine I'm living in Makkah, I'm not Muslim yet. I heard the *da'wah*, I heard the call to Islam. I like it. I'm about to let the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, know that I want to become a Muslim. But then I look at at my *wali*, the head of my tribe, and I know the moment I become Muslim, who's going to be mad at me? That guy, and that guy. You don't even want to look at him in the eyes, because if he looks at you the wrong way, you disappear. Something bad is going to happen to you. If you see him walking down the street, you walk the other way. You don't, you don't mess with that guy. But if I accept Islam, I become his next target. So I have to choose between fearing Allah, making Allah my *wali*, or holding on to this *wila*. Isn't it?
Now, it's not just, so, so the, the, the, the idols they worshiped were also called *aliha*. This, this idol protects my health. This idol protects our wealth. This idol protects my family life. This one protects my children, etc., etc., etc. They are all *aliha* of different kinds. But in the end, behind those *aliha* were the people that were making the most money from those idols. So they're the idol *aliha* had the business *aliha* behind them. Because actually, the idols in Makkah, and I've said this many times, but I don't get tired of saying it because I want it drilled in your head, idol worship was not just a religion, it was a business. It's a very powerful business. It feeds off of people. Who do you want to make sure people don't think for themselves, and they keep following it, and they keep following it, and they keep paying homage, and they keep making donations, and they keep sacrificing animals, and they keep, and that that keeps the religious tourism alive. Because Makkah ain't exactly Hawaii. Ain't nobody coming to Makkah for the weather. Nobody's coming to Makkah to enjoy the views. Let's say I, you know, I need a vacation. I'm going to go to the burnt rock desert of Hijaz. People have no reason to come there. You have to give them a reason. And what's the reason? This tribe will come because their idol is here. That tribe come because their idol is here, etc., etc. And we, the Makkan, we clean the idols, gets us some money. We pay the people that come and visit the idols, gets us more money. We get to do the import-export business, and nobody robs us. Why don't they rob us? Because we're taking care of their idols. So they give us respect. We get immunity, right? We're part of the *mushrik* union. So we get, we get our pass, and we got border, no border patrol for us. Everybody else can get robbed. We don't get robbed. So we have all of this.
If you question the idols, by the way, the poor people in Makkah stay poor. The poor people in Makkah stay poor. Who actually benefits from the idols? It's not the poor people. It's the people that are making the money. It's the Abu Jahl, Abu Sufyan. There's a handful of people that keep coming up in the over and over again. Why? Because the billionaires are not in the hundreds. The billionaires are just a handful of people. Right? The billions, this is just a handful of people. And so this entire machinery is being run by what looks like idol *aliha*, but behind the idol *aliha* are the human *aliha*. The moment you accept Islam, you are making enemies not just with the mythical gods that you rejected, and you know, they had these beliefs that if you reject this God, that God's curse will be on you. If you reject this one, then they will avenge against you because you, you know, didn't pray your proper respects, etc., etc., right? But beyond the mythical, there's also political, social, economic, and actually life-threatening consequences from the actual mob boss *aliha* that are sitting there.
When Islam was coming up, you, everybody here knows this. When Islam was coming up, they thought, "Oh my God, because they only see religion as a business." So when Islam came up, they saw it as a new need. Some place that opened up is going to take our customers away. So if you see a good competitor, and you're a big business, if you're Walmart, and you see somebody else selling little items, what are you going to do? You're going to buy them out. What did they do with the Prophet? In the beginning, they tried to buy them out. Come on, I mean, we know what this is. We do it too. Good job, you took a little bit of our market share. But before your market share gets too big, let's just acquire you. What's your, what's, what's a good offer for you? Come on, give us your number. Give us your number. Isn't that what they did? Because, you know, the way they think is the way they think everybody else thinks. Everybody has an agenda. So even the Prophet must have an agenda. You could be bought and sold. But that didn't work. And now things have intensified. So you couldn't buy him out. Then you tried to make lies against him. That didn't work. Now, your propaganda machine didn't work. Your money didn't work. Your best media people didn't work, right? Your best poets couldn't come up with anything. I think we're going to have to take some serious steps. We're going to have to make things violent. The fact that they had to make things violent is an indication that they are running out of tactics, right? Because the normal thing is, you should beat words with words, and you should meet violence with violence. But here you are, the Prophet is not doing any violence, he's just giving you words, and you're meeting those words with violence. You know what that means? Those words are more powerful than any other words. And the only way to end them is to end these people, so there's no mouth left to say it. That's the state that we read with that background.
Now, let's read this Ayah. "The example of those who took other than Allah multiple *aliha*. *Aliha* is the plural of the patron, the protective patron that you stick with. When they turn right, you turn right. When they turn left, you turn left. You are stuck to them like glue. Those who stuck with their patrons besides Allah, their example is it is like the example of the spider. It took, she took a home. The feminine is used. The spider took up a home, and the weakest of homes, the most dilapidated of homes, is the home of the spider. Had they only known. If they only knew. Allah knows whatever they call besides Allah of anything at all, and He is the ultimate Authority, all-wise. And those, those examples are the ones we strike for the benefit of people." Listen to this last part carefully, and nobody understands them except people who actually know Allah. Put a challenge here. You would have to know deeply for you to, you have to get some knowledge before you can understand this parable. Allah put a challenge himself at the end. There's a style called *takrar*. You should be familiar with this. I, I dropped some heavier things sometimes in my lectures. Maybe you can collect them over time. One of those, one of the, one of the styles of of the Quran, rhetorical styles of the Quran, is called *takrar*, which means you say a word repeatedly, even though you didn't have to say the word repeatedly. You could have used a pronoun. You keep using the noun. For example, if I was telling a children's story, "Once upon a time, there was a cow. The cow lived. The cow lived in the farm. The cow gave lots of milk. The cow did this. The cow did that." I didn't have to keep saying "cow, cow, cow, cow, cow." I could have said, "Once upon a time, there was a cow. It lived on a farm." I could have used a pronoun. But I keep saying "cow, cow, cow." Why? Because I want the word stuck in the listener's head. I want it to ring in their head. Yeah.
Now listen to this. Listen to the word *bayt*, just the word *bayt*. You hear *bayt* three times, right? Three, over and over again. Allah wants this idea of *bayt* stuck in our head with this parable. He wants us to keep coming back to it over and over again. Even the word *ankabut* is repeated twice. Allah could have said, "we would have understood it." But He wants these two concepts, the spider and the home, ringing in our minds in order to now begin making sense of this parable. Let's start with the basics. Let's start first about the web, because the spider's home is a web, right? Everybody knows that. The, the material that the silk that the spider produces is actually some of the strongest material found in nature. I mean, it's very thin. The spider's thread, each thread is extremely thin, maybe even up to 10 to 100 times thinner than one human hair. That's how thin it is. But if you make steel that thin, then the spider's web is actually stronger than steel. The only reason we don't mass produce it is because it's so difficult to produce in such large quantity. It would be really expensive to produce. But actually, research is going on on how to synthetically reproduce that silk that the spider produces using some of its basic proteins to use as Kevlar and bulletproof vests and other kind of strong materials. It's one of the strongest materials found in nature, and it's more flexible than steel.
Now, it's interesting that the more you study that, you realize Allah is talking about one of the strongest things found in nature, yet how did Allah describe it? "The weakest of homes is the home of the spider." And our scientific discovery is taking us in the opposite direction. Why? Because Allah is actually making a profound, um, observation, making us make a profound observation. Those threads, if they were together, if I took a million of those threads and I wove them together, it would be the strongest kind of fiber or strongest kind of silk. But if you look at a spider's web, are those threads actually woven with each other, or are they apart? Are there gaps in between? There are gaps. And because they are, the way that it's designed, even though it's made up of the strongest material, by design, the spider can never come up with a scheme that will ever be strong. The scheme, the architecture, the material is the best material, but the architecture by definition is the weakest architecture. Yeah. So you bought the most expensive material, and you had the weakest architectural design. You understand? This is a commentary on the Kuffar, their schemes. Because they can have the best money, resources, the best weaponry, the best strategies, the best this, the best that, and when they put it all together, all that scheming goes into nothing but waste. Because it's, it's like the strongest material being used in the weakest possible way. It's being used. It's, it's as if Allah is saying that when they make their materials, they make it for the wrong reason.
Allah used the word *bayt*, right? Home. What's the purpose of a home? The purpose of a home is to give you protection. The purpose of a home is to protect the one living in it and all the people living in it. And the purpose of a home is to have integrity, structural integrity. Otherwise, it's not a home. You can't take a cardboard box and make it a home because it's not going to last in the rain. It has to have something that can survive the elements. And you have to protect yourself from the changing elements. It's going to rain one day, it's going to be snowy one day, it's going to be extremely hot one day. You want to be protected from the weather outside. Does the home that the spider have? Does it protect it from the outside elements? No. It's actually the most exposed kind of home. You know, um, even a bird has the cover of the tree, right? Even a, you know, a wolf or a predator, they'll find a cave to make a home. The ant will dig a farm into the ground, right? But the spider is creating a home that is actually extremely exposed. It doesn't have one. It doesn't have any structural integrity. Now, if it doesn't have structural integrity, at least it should be in a place where it can stay safe. But it ends up creating this web in a place that's completely open and exposed to the elements. Why did it create it? It didn't create it to live in it. It created it for a different purpose. People make a home to live in it. But the spider makes a home to catch prey. It's actually a trap. That's why it creates the home. Allah is describing the people, the patrons of Kuffar. They're actually not loyal to their home. They, the only reason it's their home is because that's a suitable place for them to catch people in their trap and to suck the blood out of them, to suck the life out of them. They have act, they actually don't have any loyalty to the tribe. They actually don't have any loyalty to the nation. They're actually not nationalists. Or in the end, they're just blood-sucking capitalists. It's all they are. Nothing. Everything else that they just sell to dumb flies that get caught in their trap. Thank God that never happened again.
Okay, so now, if these threads are so thin, each one of them, one at a time, can is bound to fail, right? And the only thing it can actually trap, can it trap a mouse? Can it trap a bird? No. What's it going to, what's it going to trap? A fly. So the only thing that this trap, this web, can capture is weak creatures, flies, flies, right? And so if we, if you're following along the scheme of the parables that we've been discussing, the believer was described as strong so long as they pursue Allah. And there was an example of the fly to describe something so weak, right? And the Kuffar thought, "We are weak like a fly, so they can just make a web and we can just get caught in their web." Yes, weak people, people weak as a fly will get caught in the web, not the believer. So when they intensify their attacks, Allah is saying, "Don't be intimidated. This is just a spider's web. It's good to intimidate flies with, not you. Not you. You're stronger than that." So this very powerful statement from Allah.
Now, let's take further, you know, implications of the spider's web. The spiders like to build their home in corners, in actually places. Uh, I was, I was looking this up. They, they like to build homes where the prey will come to them easily. So they have to exert the least amount of energy. They just set the trap and wait. They just set the trap and sit back. They stay behind the scenes and let the dumb fly just end up where it ends up. They don't have to. So they, they actually look for convenience more than anything else, right? This is in direct contrast with the believer. The believer is in Makkah. Life every day is getting more convenient or more inconvenient? It's getting more inconvenient. He stays until Allah's command comes to make *Hijrah*. He's going to stay. He's going to, he's going to stay loyal to sallallahu alaihi wasallam. She's going to stay and get tortured and still stay because that is the *amanah* of Allah and His Messenger, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. But the, the spider, by the way, the moment they notice competition or too many spiders nearby, they're not able to catch enough, they collect their web and they fly off or glide off and find another place at high risk and set up the shop again and use the same web they used before. Like the Kuffar, if they're done manipulating one society, they're like, "I think we had enough blood from this place," or "There's too many others that have popped up now. Let's just pack our bags and go somewhere else." The British Empire had enough of sucking Indian blood, right? Like, "Oh, let's just go to the Bank of England. Let's just move back. Let's just change our name from the British Empire to the Bank of England. We'll just operate as a bank now." The Roman Empire starts, has has sucked enough blood from humanity, like, "Let's now move our assets into the Catholic Church and just restructure a little bit, right?" Same operation, just different name. You know, same tactics, same strategy, just, you know, restructure a little bit.
What the spider does, Allah is describing, they have no real loyalties. They have no real roots. They claim that this is about our ancestors and about this or that. No, you don't. The spider's web doesn't have deep roots. It just has attachments. And it is attached to things that are found either by other, made by other people, like homes, or it's attached to things in nature. In other words, it depends on others to survive. It's not an independent entity. The spider, the web cannot just exist by itself. It depends on a corner where it's hanging on the walls, right? And that wall is either being held up by people, or it's maybe part of a tree, meaning held up by Allah. They act like they're so powerful and so predatorial and so in charge, and yet they're entirely dependent on somebody just cleaning up a wall, or a tree just falling, and they're gone. In the spider's mind, it's the apex predator, you know? And I, I'm getting ahead of myself, but you, you know, if the, if the home was designed for offense, right? It's designed to catch prey. Then the mindset of the spider is only to attack. But if you know anything about any combat sports, or any sports at all, or anything in which there's a conflict, war, politics, MMA, boxing, basketball, whatever, any sport in which there are opposing sides, you need to shore up two things: what two things? Offense and defense. You can't just have offense. Some guy goes into a boxing match thinking he's going to knock his opponent out, and he comes out swinging. The more he's coming out swinging, every time he's taking a big swing, isn't he opening himself up to a counter? Isn't he exposing himself, right? And so, and when does someone do that? Because they're so confident that their offense is so powerful, nobody messes with me. Everybody's scared of me. I'm the spider, everybody else is the fly. I don't need to build a fort. I just need to build a trap for the people I'm going to eat, for the people I'm going to kill. And Allah is describing that as the stupidest thing. You have no defense. You actually, you don't have any *wila*. You don't have anybody protecting you. And you think everybody gets protection from you. So you figure you don't need any protection. You're on top. Actually, the more on top you are, the more exposed you are. The more exposed you are, you're in the weakest position, actually.
And so they're so obsessed with attacking Islam, attacking, attacking. And Allah is saying, like the spider's web, you're so obsessed with catching your prey that you don't realize that your home is entirely flimsy. You've left it completely unguarded, right? Subhanallah. What an, what an incredible, like, thing to include in, just if we just contemplate just pieces of this, this parable. The entire mechanism of the arrogance of the Kafir, who's going to mess with us? We're Quraysh. If you think somebody's going to look at us in the eye, they're going to stop us, they're going to challenge us. We can do whatever we want. And they keep moving in that direction, right? You know, um, not that it's a direct parable, but, uh, Tesla took quite a hit, right? After he did the, *Assalamu alaikum* to the, uh, he waved the *salam* in this previous speech. Tesla took a 90% market share hit in Germany. I heard people just stop buying his car, buying his car. Like, and you know, there's this thing, "Who's going to take me down?" I've already, look, look at where I am. I get away with what. And then Allah all of a sudden just, let me just, uh, give you a little teaser. And that's not a *'adhab* yet, that's just, you know, some clouds. There's just some clouds. It's not the storm yet. It's just the clouds. But the arrogant are shown the clouds. They're coming. And they say, "These are clouds. They're going to come and give us beautiful rain." No, no, no. This is what you've been asking to get. This is the wind that's going to bring punishment for it. You painful punishment for you. Anyway, so the, there's this, this, this nature of being exposed inside the homes. These homes are very, very exposed. So it's, Allah is actually saying, you're not the ones that are being exposed. You're not the ones that are vulnerable. You don't have to worry that you don't have the right *aliha* anymore. They're not going to be there to protect you. Actually, the people you think used to be your *aliha*, they don't have any *aliha*. They're the ones that are actually vulnerable. They don't have anybody. And the only thing they can stick to is some walls and some, some things that aren't under their control. So they're actually not stuck to anything. That's why I mentioned the idea of *wila* being stuck to something, and the spider's web also sticks to something, right? So the word *wila* and the word *bayt* have a kind of a connection with each other.
Okay. The other purpose of a home is that it's supposed to serve all of its residents, right? But when the spider has a child, the, the female has a child, it eats its children as much as it can. And then the ones that survive are the ones that fall off the web and hatch somewhere else and start their own predatorial practices. But actually, spiders all live entirely on their own. They, they're just entirely predatory. What happens to these greedy people at the top? Do they love each other? Do all the billionaires, are they besties with each other? No. Actually, they're keeping an eye on their bank account, and they're also keeping an eye on the, the bank account of the guy that they took a selfie with. Because they're all, they're all egomaniacs. They actually internally, they all want to see each other go down. They could eat the other one if they could, right? And when they are at the top of society, society looks up to them and says, "Wow, these people are successful. These people made it. You know what? I want to be just like them." So what happens? Those people are sucking on your blood. And the moment you get a chance, you become a mini spider yourself. You become a little spider in your own family. You become a, a little, you know, like, just hyper. What, what is this? The spider is a representation of someone who's hyper-individualistic, someone who can only think for themselves, hyper-greedy. You're not concerned with anybody else. Look at the contrast. Prophets come to a society, they engage with the people for their own benefit, or the benefit of the people. The benefit of the people. These people that have other *aliha* besides Allah, those *aliha*, are they for your benefit or their own benefit? They're for your own. In fact, one of the ways that I like to read this parable is Allah is not talking to the Muslims that they are the spiders. Allah is saying that the people that the Muslims have loyalty to, they are the spiders. Which means the public is just the flies. The public is just caught in the web, and they're, they're not seeing it. But we'll get to the public in a minute. So you're not even serving all of your residents. And that shows you that actually, inside of these powerhouses, houses, there are deep internal struggles. There are deep internal power struggles. What happens when a billionaire dies? What happens with his family? Lawsuits and this and that. They're trying to eat each other alive, right? Or trying to make sure the insurance policy covers me and not them, or this or that. You know, that's the nature of the beast. So this is not that different from the spider.
Now, let's, uh, I, I've covered most of this, but it should be said that the spider lives a life that is entirely lonely. So it actually, it looks like it has a home, but what's a home if you don't have people in it? Right? You only have people that you prey upon, but not people that you actually rely upon, right? So even the only ones around you are the people that they're eventually, you're just going to eat them. That's the only body, the only ones around you. Which is a commentary on the hyper-greedy. They don't actually have any real connections. This takes us back to the parable we did yesterday and the one before that. The disbeliever was described alone in the desert, and then he was described alone in the middle of the ocean. And now he's alone like the spider. So the, the solitude and the isolation of the Kafir is being highlighted. And what do you see on the flip side? Allah says in this Surah, "Those who believe and do good deeds, We will ensure that they are injected in the company of good people." We have company. They don't have company. They're actually all, even though they look like there's 50 of them, they each one of them is a spider on their own and would eat the other if they had the chance. That, that's that's their reality. So now let's talk a little bit about the, the, the fly, right? Because the fly is.
The only reason the spider survives is because of the fly, right? If it was anything stronger than the fly, the spider has no business. He'll move somewhere where you can find more flies.
What do we know about flies? They have no shame. They eat whatever, wherever, however. Yeah, they're highly impulsive, quick animal, right? They can't be relied upon in any way. They're a nuisance. They're almost a waste on you. Almost feel like, why are they, why do they even exist? Why are they here? Some even argue that "Zab," the plural, the, the word for fly, is because it's, you know, means it chews away. "Aba" means it comes back. You're like, comes back. So, so that's where the word comes from.
But the thing about the fly is that it's, it's just going to go wherever it can find something to chew on, something to, to feed off of. It has no distinction between what's filthy, what's rotten, what's good, good, what's not. And its stupidity to go just anywhere. Notice it's very different from the honeybee. The honeybee has very specific pathways, right? Pursue the pathways that your master has laid out for you with humility.
But the fly has no. It's basically an impulsive shopper, okay? The fly is an impulsive shopper. It'll just go anywhere and just eat anything and buy anything and consume anything. And that's why it spends a lot of time on the web, right? It's a hyper consumer. And the more it spends time on the web and consumes, the more the spider is fed. So it's hyper consumerism. It thinks that by doing this, "word," I'm just, I'm just doing a little, you know, eating. I'm just buzzing from here to there. I'm just following the new buzz, right? That's all I'm doing.
But actually, what you're doing is feeding the spider. And the only reason those tyrannical spiders exist is because you're not evolving out of your state of being a fly. You're actually the reason they exist. They wouldn't have a place to be if you didn't give them that place. You fed them with your own blood. You fed them with your own stupidity. It's actually a commentary on the silliness of the "mus." In the end, this and says it took up a, it took up a home. It's interesting. Allah could have said it has a home. Means it took up a home, as if it's not its home. It just made it its home, as if to say it doesn't naturally belong. It's a leech. It's a parasite on the environment. It shouldn't exist.
You know, I haven't talked to you guys about this piece of the, the discussion, but the Quran really comes after the filthy rich. If you study the criticism of the "kuffar" in the Quran and you just do a tally of all the places where the "kuffar" are criticized, you'll find the most common denominator is arrogance and wealth. The, the two things, go figure. Now, we know behind every corrupt government in the world, there are two elements: the arrogant wealthy. Is it not true? Whether it's multi-billion dollar, trillion dollar corporations or individuals or, you know, tech bros or whoever, or, or oil oligarchs or gas oligarchs or whoever else, right? But there's always these, these, this element is always, always there.
What does Allah do to counter that? Well, if you have corrupt wealthy, the only solution to the corrupt wealthy is the righteous wealthy. The solution to that is righteous wealthy. So what does the Quran do? The Quran actually, the entire system of "Sharia," the entire, like, if you study the, the, you know, the way we study "Sharia" is we study it legally in "Fiqh" terms. If you study it in socioeconomic and political terms, you'll discover something amazing. The entire "Sharia" is designed to make sure spiders don't exist. The whole, when somebody dies, what happens? Inheritance is given. Yeah, inheritance is distributed. If inheritance was given to the son, you would one spider would die and the other one would take his place, and then he would kill off all the other siblings, like the spider does.
But what does the Quran do? But even if someone had a lot of wealth amassed, once they die, it gets broken up between sons, daughters, the, the deceased wife, mother, sister, children, etc., etc., etc. And each one of them has their own marriage, has their own children, has their own life. When they die, what happens? Again, it breaks. Again, it breaks. Again, it breaks. Again, it breaks. Every time you collect a certain amount of wealth, you owe what? Every year you owe "Zakat." Every time you commit a sin, every time you, you break an oath or this, there's a "kaffara." There's you got to give up wealth and give up wealth and don't hold too much, don't hold too much, don't hold too much and keep giving it up.
And you know, when there's a, when there's a, um, you know, even actually, this might sound, you know, strange to some of you, but even the laws regarding polygamy and things like that, right? What did Allah mention? If you can't do justice among orphans, marry up to four. Why did he say that? Because, or you're not marrying the orphans, you're marrying the mothers of the orphans. And once you marry those mothers of the orphans, those kids are off the street. And if you have a society where you have spiders, then guess what happens? A lot of people start going bankrupt. So you get a lot, you get millions of single moms, you get lots of dads that abandon, you get excess in prostitution, you get excess in gambling, you get excess in alcohol, you get excess in crime. All the things the Quran says are "haram" happen in every society where there are spiders. Every one of them. Alcohol, gambling, prostitution, you know, single mom families, you name it, all of them.
And every one of them, Allah addresses in his book. Do this, this, this, this. Here's the alcohol solution. Here's the gambling solution. Here's the, you know, the children abandoned by their father's solution. Here's, here's all these solutions. And what happens? In two generations, three generations, the society normalizes. The economic distribution happens. You don't get to have spiders. And Allah is describing that if you do have a spider, eventually it will suck enough blood out of the people that eventually the people, the flies will gather together and they will smash into the web. It's all going to come crumbling down. When you have enough drain on a society from the ultimately wealthy, then eventually, this is history, you can study history yourself. The history of popular revolutions. Every time there's an oligarchy and it sucks up the wealth of the common person until the point where they can't even pay the rent, they can't even live properly, they can't even feed their family, eventually there is a revolt against the wealthy. And what's the crazy thing is, there's a revolt against the wealthy, they come in power within a century, they become the next spiders, and the cycle starts all over again. And the only solution to not allow society to get into that predatory life is what the Quran is giving. If, if you took religion out of it and you just looked at what Allah is giving as a solution to society, it's mind-blowing.
The final thing I'll share with you today is what happened in this "Surah." There are different kinds of spiders that make different kinds of webs all over the world. And actually, that's a commentary on different kinds of strategies the "kuffar" use to make different kinds of diabolical schemes to capture people. Each kind of "kafir" scheme is its own kind of web. So if you look, for example, I'm going to read through, I've selected a few. "Those who commit crimes, do they think they got ahead of us? What a terrible decision they make." Allah is making comments about the schemes that the "kuffar" are making. They think they got away with those schemes, because, you know, who's going to come after the spider? I go after everyone. No one comes after me. Allah says, "What a terrible decision they make."
Now look, there's a different kind. That's that's the webs at the top. But there are webs and spider behaviors even at the bottom. Even parents sometimes. Allah counseled human beings, each human being, to be beautiful with both parents. Then he says, "And if they struggle against you to make you follow something that you have no knowledge of." Meaning they want you to follow the path of ignorance, your parents. But you know, the "kuffar" were using a military tactic to try to kill the Prophet, peace be upon him. So we saw a military web. But the parents are not using a military web. These parents that want their children to stay on "Shirk," they're not using politics, they're not using the military, they're not using, you know, philosophy. What are they using? What's the, what's the web that the parents are using against this "Sahabi" who's becoming Muslim? Ah, there's an emotional web, too. It's a different kind of web. You get caught, just the same, though. You get caught, just the same. He exposes us to the emotional web that can be cast.
Then there's a cultural web. Loyalty to your culture. This is the, well, this is the, the web of, um, you know, appeal to authority. Have you heard that logical fallacy before? Appeal to authority. Look, I'm older, I'm more wise, I, I run a successful business, I have experience. I'm telling you, leave this religion alone. This is not good for you. I want good for you. So basically, you're just the dumb youth, I'm the wise elder. Let me give you some of my wisdom. And my wisdom is, stay away from this man, Muhammad, peace be upon him. Stay away from this man. Stay away from this religion. This is appeal to authority, right? And so this in the modern world, this works like, you know, expert testimony on mass media. This guy has a PhD. This guy's a professor at this university. This guy. And then they're giving their testimony. And now you're like, oh, well, this person clearly, they know what they're talking about. We should follow them. And then they have so much confidence. They say, follow our way. And if you are wrong, and if you do get caught, we will carry your sins. You can just tell Allah, I told you. Tell him, Professor sent you, right? And if there's a problem, I'll deal with it myself. Allah says, they're not carrying anybody's sins at all. They will absolutely be carrying their own burdens and additional burdens in addition to their own burdens because of this nonsense that they spewed from their mouth. They speak with such confidence that just to get people off of Islam. That's another kind of web. The, the propaganda web that is spread. With this, with the case of, uh, the constant web being spread, the cultural web. The culture became new is crazy. New is crazy. Generation after generation, it became part of the heritage. The people will bring their children to see him building the ark. Oh, this is the crazy man. Remember I told you not to listen to him when you were a baby? When you were four years old? Yeah, I remember, Dad. Okay. Well, one day you get married, make sure you tell your children that man's crazy too. Generations of people humiliating Noah, making it part of their heritage, right? The cultural web that was cast against, with Abraham. The loyalty web that was cast. You know, how could you do this to our gods? How could you insult our fathers in this way? Throw him into a fire. Then Abraham, peace be upon him, was mentioned. Noah is mentioned. Why? Because when you, when you cast a web where people get drunk. Listen to this. When people get drunk on their desires, Quran describes, they were blinded by their, or they were in their drunkenness, they became blind. Their sexual urges made them blind. So you inject animal behaviors into society. Pump society with sexual images, sexual messages. Pump society with the most animal instincts. You know, the biggest, most powerful social media companies in the world, their marketing tactics boil down to, you know what they say? One of the most primitive animal desires of human beings: sexuality, power, right? There's a handful, right? Prestige. This, the most, most basic. Who, who's the, you know, top of the tribe? You know, top of the top of the herd? Head of the pack, right? And they pick those primitive animal instincts. An entire multi-million dollar campaigns are designed around that instinct, just to inject that into the people. You don't have to drink alcohol or shoot up drugs to be drunk anymore, to be high anymore. You can just be high off of what you're being fed on a device over and over again. And you're getting drunk on it, little by little, by little, by little. And once you get drunk enough, then that web has been cast. Now, no reason, no evidence, no argument will matter. Like Noah and his people, he couldn't talk to them because they were just blinded in their drunkenness. They're just, they're just addicted to the dopamine hits from their, you know, from, from whatever was offered to them. That's all that's all they become. Wild.
Every, there's so many different kinds of webs Allah introduced us to in this "Surah." And then he said, "By the way, people that take other "Ayah" besides Allah, they all just have this is just a web." As powerful as it may be, millions of dollars, all of these devices, so much money behind these campaigns, so much media, so much propaganda, so many experts. Yeah, but it's just a spider. One, you just break right through it. You could just turn it off. Oh, oh, it's gone. The worldwide web, just gone. Just broke through it, right? "Ayyub." But, you know, what's really interesting? The spider's web, if you study them, they actually, some of them release an electromagnetic signal that attracts, uh, uh, flies to them. They actually have Wi-Fi signal. And you bees go there to charge, and they just get plugged in, and then they never unplug, right? Wild.
So anyway, then Allah mentions "Medan." What kinds of webs? The political webs. The top-down, the, you know, the State Department webs, the strategists' webs. How are we going to do the hearts and minds campaign? What kind of dismantling of Islam will we do in Egypt to protect Egypt for its, for the sake of its homeland security, right? That's the, that's the other web that Allah mentions. And then after that came this parable. And right after this parable, you will find something strange until the end of the "Surah." Allah is talking about our engagement with the people of the book, and they're coming up with different doubts about Islam. They're saying, "Oh, he's an unlettered prophet," or they're saying, "He must have written it by his own hand," or they're coming up with a bunch of different arguments, right? "Ayah" is coming next. Why? Because their propaganda against the religion and their attempts to take the weakest of the Muslims and come at them and say, "You know, your Quran, you know, it doesn't really say that Jesus isn't divine. I think, you know, your Quran says that he's God too. Really? Yeah, look at this translation I wrote myself." And so Allah has given us all kinds of very direct webs. And the more subtle webs, introduced us to all of them.
And in the end of it, he says, "Well, and you know how then you get so intimidated? I'm going to get caught up in one of these webs." At the end of it all, the last statement Allah makes in this "Surah": "Those who struggle in Our path, We guide them to Our pathways." The same wording used for the inspired bee that makes its way through the skies. So he contrasted us from being the fly and makes us into the bee by the end. Allah is with those who excel. Subhan Allah. Allah says, "Listen to those words again, and we'll close." "Those examples, we strike them for the benefit of people, hopefully people will stop being flies." Right? Then he says, "And nobody will really understand them except people who know." Well, I'm hoping now. So much of the work on the Quran has been completed on Bayyinah TV. I want you to enjoy systematically studying the Quran from the beginning all the way to the end, in brief and in great detail. And to do that, I'd like for you to sign up on bayyinah.com. And once you appreciate what's going on in Bayyinah TV, I want you to become an ambassador for it and share that subscription.