BismillahirRahmanirRahim
We are asking help and support from our Sheykh to send us something that is going to benefit us tonight, for this night, in our lives. And if we listen carefully, there is something there. If we listen to our ego, Prophets can come and can say for forty years, just like Abu Jahil and Abu Lahab, they see nothing. Insya’Allah, we listen properly, we put it in our lives, we can get benefit from it. That is fresh knowledge and the knowledge that is alive for us to use. Not stale knowledge. We are not interested in stale knowledge.
You are asking a question about jealousy (Sheykh ask a murid at the Dergah). What is jealousy? To you, what is jealousy? To your own understanding. Jelousy/envy, I don’t want to get to.., with the English to be too much because people use the language then it become so beautiful then it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just like flowers, artificial flowers. Doesn’t have any life in it. Speak simple. We can speak better than this too, get too caught up in that. But what is jealousy?
Jealousy, envy, arrogant, stubborn and anger, they are the four characteristics that we inherit from sheytan, that we are concentrating on to get rid of it. Especially in this month of Ramazan. Especially. If we cannot get rid of it in this month of Ramazan, to work on that, because you see, Ramazan is not just to work on your handling hunger and handling thirst, handling the day, handling your work in the month of Ramazan, ‘ohh, how are we going to fast so many hours? how are we going to do this?’ Now everyone is making fatwa to each other, giving advice to each other, saying to each other, ‘you know if you cannot fast twenty hours, I’m telling you don’t fast. Take care of your health..this…this..this…this.’ They are daring to give fatwa, daring to speak. Who are you? What are your credentials? Do you know, if somebody is following you and it is wrong, do you know how much fire that you are getting? But nobody has fear anymore. Everyone is talking about love. Who has fear of Allah?
So these are four characteristics that we are getting from sheytan. But what is jealousy? What is your understanding of jealousy? You ask a question, what is the root cause of jealousy? What is your understanding of jealousy? We felt that way before, right? Obviously. That’s why we are here to get rid of it. We are not here to say we are Saint.We have jealousy. Trying to get rid of it. If you cannot get rid of it, they will put you in a situation, especially in the Dergah, unusual way, you are going to feel so much jealousy for a person and you don’t know where it’s coming from. ‘I’m not a jealous person, why suddenly I get so jealous when Sheykh Effendi smile at this one and not smiling at me?’ Simple. We are asking now the root cause of jealousy. What is jealousy?
You see someone who has something better, and that better is argumentative, that better, the word better is debatable. It is better to you at that time. You think that it is better and you want it. You say, ‘it should be me.’ It’s not seeing something, someone is better and you want it and you are feeling positive. It’s not looking. We see so many of the Prophets, the Saints and our Sheykh, so many things better and we would like it, correct? But we are not jealous. That is guiding us for them to be our role models. So now we come to a part here where there are many sides of that and jealousy is one side of it, which is the dark side of it. So jealousy is what? When you see something someone has and we think it is better and we say not only we want it for ourselves but we feel very bad that that person has it. You understand?
We feel our Sheykh has so many good qualities and we like that quality for us, correct? Of course. But do we feel bad that he has them? No. So you feel bad because you feel that, ‘it’s me. I should have that. Not that one. That one has no right to have that. I should have it.’ We try to speak simply, try to understand simply, coming down to the root causes of how we feel, how we think. If we cannot come down to the root causes, you are always just going to play games with yourself, you are going to use a lot of words, you will impress some people but it’s not real.
Who has jealousy? First one to show jealousy: sheytan. Sheytan has that jealousy. And Sheykh Effendi is saying, but if sheytan had bowed down to Adam (as), if he had stepped over his jealousy, stepped on his jealousy and he had bowed down to Adam (as), Adam (as) was going to give him the secrets that he is going to go to his own maqam, to his own station and he is going to get very happy there and very lost there and he is not going to look at anything anymore from anyone. Wanting something that is not for us, and feeling very negative that that person has it and not us. Yes, then other things you may say, inequality, da…da..da…, because now with jealousy too, you are blaming, who are you blaming in reality? You are blaming Allah. Why that one has, I don’t have? Then in this world, the jealousy came, first one to show jealousy was who? Qabil.
Habil and Qabil, the son of Adam (as), he was showing jealousy. What was he jealous about? Leave all what the Bible is saying, 2000 years. They don’t even give any real reasons why there is a fight between Cane and Abel. They just say, ‘oh they are brother. They fight for nothing. There’s no reason.’ Meaning that everything is arbitrary, that he just wants Allah’s love but Allah is showing favor to him and not to this one so they are fighting. What a terrible idea of Allah you have. No wonder people are running away from your religion.
Allah is fair. What was Qabil jealous of Habil for? Yes. He was jealous because Habil was pulling the love of his father and the love of Allah. But he wasn’t looking at Habil to be a role model. This is the other point about jealousy. If people are using jealousy to say, ‘let me feel, let me just say, this one has something, and if I walk this way, if I follow him, if I take some lessons from him, I can get that also.’ Jealousy says, ‘no. I don’t like this person. Because he has this.’ And if power is given, he’s going to destroy that person too. It is not something that you can sit and you can understand. It’s something that is sheytanic that it takes over you. Correct? That suddenly you hate and it can be anything. It can be anything that is small. But why was Habil pulling the love of Allah and Adam (as), his own father? Because he was obedient. Because his heart was Halim and Salim, although he’s much bigger than Qabil. Because he was clean. You think, if it’s not because of the wife, he’s not going to find some other reasons to be upset with his brother for? Because when you obey, you are putting a barricade there between you and sheytan. When there is obedience, you put a barricade there between you and sheytan. When you become disobedient, when you allowing doubt to enter, then you are opening the door to sheytan and sheytan can come in, and with anything, you can just take that as an excuse and just bring you down.
So yes, the open reason is because of what? Because Allah swt has said, through His Khalifah that is here on this world at that time, Hazreti Adam (as), ‘you are going to marry his sister and you are going to marry his sister.’ Because Habil came out with another twin and Qabil came out with another twin and their twin are female, instead of marrying the same one that is in the same womb, they marry the other one. That is the shariat at that time. And Qabil wanted to challenge that authority because he is only judging it from the looks and he said, ‘the one that you are marrying, my own sister from the same womb, is more beautiful than the one I’m going to marry.’ So, jealousy at its base, is not for something that is deep, it’s something that is very fake, something that is just from the outside. It’s not something that is deep, something that has value. You cannot be jealous of a good person anyway. You admire that person. And you say, ‘I wish,’ and you feel bad that you don’t have it, that person has it and you want to try to become like that or that person or whatever qualities that he has.
It didn’t stop there. He tried to challenge, still Allah swt sending mercy to him and said ok. Adam (as) is saying, ‘you are not accepting my word, then take whatever that is best from you and take whatever that is best from Habil, present it and we will see the sign from Allah swt, to see whose intention, whose wish, whose dua, it is accepted.’ Qabil was doing the agriculture. And Habil was tending to the animals. It is to show again that the real reasons for jealousy, so many times like I said, it is fake. It is not real. Because if it is really sincere that he wants it, here is a chance for him to bring something that is the best and to put it in front of Allah swt. Habil chose the most beautiful animal to be sacrificed. The best, the most beautiful, the biggest, the most healthy, he chose that. but Qabil, he did not take the best of fruits or the wheat, he took whatever is on the floor and he says, ‘why Allah has need for this?’ He took it and he gave it as an offering. Not once, three times, he challenge and he says, ‘no.’ when the fire came down and took the animal, he says, ‘no. this is not fair.’ One more time. Three times. And everytime he failed. Why did he fail? His intention was wrong. Because his intention was disobedience. And his intention was to follow what his ego is saying. So with disobedience, jealousy can quickly enter.
We should try to get rid of this. It is something that is going to grow inside of you and it can be out of control. From something small, then you start disliking and hating everything about that person. Nothing about that person is going to please you. Every single thing. It can make you to become drunk. Just like the first sign of jealousy that came out, from who? From sheytan. Where all the angels, when they look, even when they look at his physical form, they knew that this is something that is special. Because Allah swt shaped Adam (as) with His own Divine hands, not physical, of course. That even the angel they knew that this was something that is very special. Because everything else in creation Allah swt is saying, ‘kun fayakun,’ and they just appear. But with Adam (as), with His Khalifah, with the one that he has been creating to represent him, He took time to create.. The Angels they know that this is something special. You think sheytan did not know that? He did. He did know that. But he look down on that one. He look down on that one because like so many people, they look down on that one because really, they understand that they are down themselves. That’s why they look down on people.
So sheytan look down on that one and he says, ‘this one is just made from clay, from mud.’ You think he doesn’t know that Allah swt is creating that one? Who know how much time Allah spent. But why he look down on that one? He had too. Because in reality, he knows that that one is much higher than him, and again, he wants that Maqam al-Mahmud. But that Maqam al-Mahmud has been created and it has been created for the one who is representing his Lord. That Maqam al-Mahmud was not created for anyone to race, to try to get. Can sheytan understand that? He doesn’t want to accept it. He say, ‘If I only try more, try hard enough, I’m going to get it. I don’t care what the Divine decree is. I don’t care what Allah is intending it to be.’ And there are so many people in the world that are like that. They put aside the intention and they say, ‘if I only try hard enough then I’m going to try to get it and I can get it and no one can blame me. I can wrestle with God,’ they are saying, ‘I can arm twist Him. I can force Him.’ There are so many people who are like that.
So sheytan he understood that that one is much higher than him and instead of bowing down to that one and to follow him, in order for him to reach to his maqam, his jealousy is making him to destroy himself. And from that jealousy, all light was taken away from his face. His disobedience, his arrogance, his anger, his stubbornness, everything coming around and all beauty is taken away from him and he becomes really ugly. So if you look at a person who has jealousy, he can be the most beautiful person, very ugly. Ugly smell coming from them too. And they can only talk about their own existence, putting down other people. Only way that they can talk about how good they are is to say how bad other people are. The only way they that they can talk about their worth is to put down other people’s worth. We know so many people who are like that.
We are concentrating on ourselves, to say, ‘what are we worth?’ What are we worth? Eh. We just broke our fast and all the food that we are eating, sometimes it’s taking hours, days, months, years, to grow, to eat. Something that is so much care and effort has been put in it to become so nice and so beautiful and so tasty, and we put it in our body and it becomes a waste. Are we understanding what we do to the most beautiful things? If we understand that, then we are going to come down a little bit from our arrogance and our stubbornness. But you have to be reminded. We have to be reminded. The Prophet (asws), one of his holy names was ‘A reminder.’ Because sheytan makes us forget. The dunya always pull to make us forget. Everything else in this world is making us forget our own reality. We are here to be under the guidance of our Sheykh, to understand the reality of our ego and to work on it. Yeah, the more you burn, the more light it gives. The more you are fighting against to your ego, the more light, more nur you are going to have.
May Allah accept our weak effort, our weak worship, for the sake of our Sheykh insya’Allah, and may we always be strong and clean, may we enter this month clean and go through it clean and end clean insya’Allah. May Allah forgive me and bless you. Al-Fatiha.
Sheykh Lokman Efendi Hz,
Khalifah of SahibulSaif Shaykh Abdulkerim el Kibrisi (qs),
OSMANLI DERGAHI- New York
4 Ramazan 1437
June 9, 2016
Sahibul-Saif Sheykh Abdul Kerim al-Kibrisi 