What Can You Learn From Kids? - 30 Verses For 30 Days 1/30

Salamun alaykum, dear brothers and sisters, and welcome to today's Tafsir clip. InshaAllah today we'll be going through a verse of the Qur'an from the first Juz of the Qur'an, and that Surah, that verse today will be verse number 26 from the first Juz from Surat ul-Baqara. So verse 26 starts out like this: "Inna Allaha la yastahyi an yadriba mathalam maa ba'oodatan famaa fawqaha" (2:26). Allah is not shy, He is not embarrassed to use anything for an analogy, including a fly. "Fa amma alladheena amanu fa ya'lamoona annahu al-Haqqu min Rabbihim" (2:26). Those who are on the Right Path, they will hear this analogy or this lesson that Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is explaining through maybe a fly, for example. They will hear this and they will know there is merit to what Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is trying to explain, what He is trying to get across.

But on the other side, those were disbelievers: "wa amma alladheena kafaru fa yaquluna ma adhaaa araada Allaahu bi hadha mathala" (2:26). Those who are disbelievers, they will hear the same analogy, they will hear the same parable, so to speak. And then they will sit there and say, what does Allah Suhana wa Ta'ala mean by this?

So the context of this verse, of course, is that Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala uses many parables, many metaphors, many different sayings in the verses of the Qur'an. And sometimes the parable might be using a creature of Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala to display a certain lesson, to teach us a certain lesson, right? And the Kuffar and the Mushrikin, they used to use this as an excuse. They used to come to the Prophet and say, what book is this that uses, for example, these types of creatures as part of its parables? What type of book is this that uses these types of creatures and animals, for example, to get the point across?

Now, how does this relate to us? This action or this objection that the Kuffar and the Mushrikin were raising really was an example of how an individual, instead of looking at what is being said, and really trying to understand the merits, the truth behind the parable, or what is trying to be said, he tries to look for other excuses to essentially give himself room to not take that truth and apply it to his own life. This is what the Kuffar and the Mushrikin were doing.

And many times, if you think about it, this is also what we do. And Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is making it clear. I can use any way that I want to explain the truths and the teachings of Islam to you. You can't sit there and come up with your own excuses. A lot of times we might do this. A lot of times someone might come to us with a particular truth, something that they want to tell us. And we might come up with a number of different excuses. Instead of looking to see whether what they are saying is actually true, whether it has merit in and of itself, we might try to come up with a number of excuses just to excuse ourselves from having to deal with that truth.

Sometimes you see this with parents and children, like a father might come to a son, or a mother might come to a son or a daughter and say, well, this is what you have to do. Sometimes children will say, well, you are not perfect so you don't have the right to. Now tell me what I'm supposed to do, what I'm not supposed to do. You made mistakes as well. And while that might be true, instead of trying to come up with excuses, we have to see what is the truth and what the person is saying. If what they are saying is true, let me take that and apply that, instead of looking for excuses to dismiss the whole situation. This is what the Kuffar and the Mushrikin used to do. So that's one lesson we learned from this verse.

The second lesson that we learned from the verse as well is that Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala is very beautifully explaining to us that you can learn lessons from anything in life. You are never above anything, to say, you know what I can't learn from this person or I can't learn from that person. He says, even when it comes to a fly, I might use a fly to explain a point to you. You might have to learn from a fly, even.

And if you apply this to our lives, a lot of times you will find a situation where I might feel so arrogant, I might feel like I cannot learn from so and so individual, maybe because they come from a smaller or a lesser social class compared to me or maybe even times they are younger than me. I might look at my children and say, sometimes people have this ideology or this idea that, yeah, if someone is young, you don't really have to listen to them. There's not much to learn from them.

But the Qur'an is making it clear you can learn even from a fly. And this is why our Prophet, salawat Allahi wa as-salamu alayh, beautifully stated in a narration that he says: I love children and I learn from the children. Inni uhibbu as-sibiyan, and he mentions five reasons. And every one of these five reasons is something that the Prophet is saying, you and I can learn from children, even a child, there's a lot to learn from him.

He says: number one, the first lesson that we can all learn from the children is: "annahuhum al-bakkahum", they cry easily, they express their emotions very easily. They are not too arrogant, right? If they did something wrong, they might cry. If they feel like they are in the wrong, they might cry. They express their emotions very easily.

Number two: "yatamarraghuna bi 't-turab", they play with dirt. They are not arrogant, right. They don't take themselves too seriously. You might see them, they might be playing in the dirt somewhere.

Number three: "yakhtasimuna min ghayr heqdin", they might argue with one another, but they never hold grudges against one another.

Number four: "la yaddakhiruna li ghadin shay'a", they don't have this mentality that if they have, for example, ten pieces of candy and they can only have one or two today, let me hold on to these pieces of candy for the next 20 years of my life. No, they take what they need for today. The rest of it, they kind of leave it. They don't worry about it. In other words, the human being also has to learn to rely on Allah Subhana wa Ta'ala in this way.

And number five: "yu'ammirun, thumma yukharribun". Another thing that they do is that they build and then they they destroy. They're very used to the idea that whatever they are going to build is going to be temporary, and at a deep level. These are all things that we can learn from.