Zuhd in Islam

That's why the Prophet corrected them and said, I get married, I fast and I sleep, I break my fast and I sleep and I rise and I wake up, I perform klaim al-layl and I sleep.

So this is very important to recognize that we as human beings, sometimes there are those that are kind of celebrated as Zuhad, people of Zuhd, people of asceticism, and they're celebrated because they sacrificed dunya.

But that's becoming a mug.

And monasticism is not part of our faith.

No, I, I think that, that, that's a very key question, uh, for, uh, the third part of the book where I talk about how he intends to bring about this homiletic piety-oriented ruler, right? Um, and, um, so I, I think, you know, we, we, we kind of have to start with, I think, homiletic piety first.

You know, with homiletic piety, there's so much emphasis on, on, on asceticism, on Zuhd, right? Uh, and so a lot of the qualities in homiletic piety, uh, I think sit very uneasily with power.

Uh, there's a sense of a kind of discomfort with power even.

Um, you know, you have a lot of anecdotes about, you know, about rulers giving up power, in fact, uh, in, you know, in these, um, uh, anecdotes about Zuhd.

Uh, so I, I think there is an uphill climb for Ibn Aujausi if he wants to make homiletic piety, uh, the main focus of his political program.

And I think during his time, uh, there is a lot of discourse, uh, at, at, especially among the ulema, and especially among the kind of pi- more pious circles of the ulema, uh, about the need to distance oneself, uh, from government.

I need to have time to dismiss my mind and my brain from all these distractions and to, to free myself, to be able to do ibadah, to be able to worship Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

We need to learn to say no to distractions, and maybe it's helpful also to reach to this position of zuhd, whether male or female, whether husbands or wives.

Zuhd means that you lose interest in the extras that might affect your relationship with Allah.

When you lose interest in that, then you're happy.

But once you start, "No, I want to have this, and I want to get this, and I want to have that," and you get tired, and you get sick, and you get depression, and you get to have a fight, and you fight with people around you, uh, this is because running after dunya.

What is higher than that? Allah Azzawajal.

He says, that's why he had Zuhd.

He forsook, I mean, in a sense of what he was the khalifa, but he was not consumed by it.

He was not after money.

abstaining from everything that Allah Azzawajal made Haram.

And this is Adna Maratib Az-Zuhd.

It's the lowest level of Zuhd.

It's a very good type of Zuhd, like in it's in terms of the Zuhad, the lowest level that concerns us is leaving the Haram.

The middle level is what we call Al-Wara.

The idea of leaving that which you doubt, دَعْ مَا يَرِيبُكُ إِلَى مَا لَا يَرِيبُكُ Leave that which you doubt for that which you do not doubt.

So some of them, you know, I know that I'm taking joy.

My joy is in the joy of ridha Allah, God's favor, when I really reject this world, right? This is farah az-zuhd, uh, farah az-zuhd.

So it's the joy of being ascetical or renouncing the world, feeling free of the world, and that's like a, you could say, a realized eschatological joy, that I'm getting a taste of the joy to come, that joy that I feel at rejecting the dunya because it's a joy that's showing I'm really oriented to the akhirah, right? Now, for a lot of people, they weren't satisfied with that.

That just seems a little, "Look, I wanna, I wanna enjoy life, you know?" Um, so another thing was farah al-wisal, the idea that in my nightly prayers, right, um, I mean the Quran refers to the people of the evening, ahl al-layla, and you find that in certain literature, the people who are up at night in this kind of intimacy with God, the, the n- the najwa or munajat, and then the uns, the, the intimacy with God, that they have this farah al-wisal, this, this joy of feeling, um, connected to God, right? And so they're also doing that realized eschatologic.

Lakin if we talk about az-zuhd, with the most general meaning, then it is, leaving that which doesn't benefit you in the Akhirah.

And that is, it's more comprehensive and deeper than the two meanings that come before it.

So to remind ourselves at the most basic level, when we talk about Az-Zuhd, we talk about abstaining from the Dunya, we talk about abstaining from the Haram.

abstaining from everything that Allah Azzawajal made haram.

And this is adna maratib az-zuhd.

So whoever keeps away from these unclear matters has saved his honor and his religion.

And he saved his religion between him and Allah and he saved his honor in terms of how he is presented and how he appears before the people in this world.

And this is the middle level of when we talk about the Zuhd, leaving the world.