A quick note on the dhikr of Ramadan before we begin. Scholars from Tarim combined two narrations — one about the four things to repeat in Ramadan, and Sayyidatuna Aisha’s question about what to say on Laylatul Qadr — into a single formula:

Ashhadu an la ilaha illallah. Astaghfirullah. Nas’alukal jannata wa na’udhu bika minan nar.

Repeat this as often as you can throughout the month — after prayers, while waiting for iftar, in quiet moments. It covers everything: testimony, repentance, hope, and protection.

Shaitan Can See You. You Can’t See Him.

“He and his gang can see you from where you cannot see them.”

This is sobering. The enemy has full visibility. We have none. Which means our protection cannot come from observation — it has to come from consistent spiritual practice. Morning and evening adhkar. Daily Quran. This is not optional maintenance. It is armour against an enemy we cannot see.

Many of my teachers like, Sheikh Ahmad Mamduh, Habib Kadhim, and others have said the same thing independently: if you cannot do anything else, do your morning and evening adhkar. That is the minimum. That is the protection.

And if you find even the full adhkar too much to manage right now, Sheikh Ahmad Mamduh gave three short supplications — morning and evening — to start with. Build from there.

The Army of Shaitan Has Two Divisions

Shaitan, the army of Iblis, comes in two forms. The unseen — the jinn we cannot perceive. And the visible — human beings who beautify evil and invite others toward it.

The second category is worth an honest look. Because sometimes, without realising it, we moonlight in that role. The friend who convinces you to skip Taraweeh. The voice that says the night is long, iftar was light, surely one more gathering won’t hurt. Good intentions, perhaps. But the effect is the same — drawing someone a step further from where they should be.

Be careful not to accidentally serve on the wrong team.

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Before we move into tonight’s ayat, a reflection from Part 2 that deserves its own moment — because it will run as the undercurrent through everything that follows in this surah.

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Last night we saw those two paths clearly: the path of Iblis, who blamed Allah and recruited others into his rebellion; and the prophetic path, demonstrated by Adam — take ownership, turn back, ask forgiveness.

The Prophet ﷺ at Ta’if

No one embodied the prophetic path more completely than the Prophet ﷺ himself. After his wife Khadijah and his uncle Abu Talib both died, he travelled to Ta’if seeking support for his mission. The people there not only rejected him — they paid children and slaves to throw rocks at him, chasing him out of the city. He fled until he found refuge in a garden, bleeding, exhausted.

The angels of Ta’if came to him with an offer: say the word, and we will bring the surrounding mountains down upon them.

He said no. Perhaps from their descendants, someone will accept Islam.

And then he made dua — one of the most moving supplications in the seerah. O Allah, I submit to You my weakness, my lack of planning, my low standing among the people. Not a single word blaming the people of Ta’if. He turned the lens entirely on himself. He asked: perhaps it was my weakness. Perhaps my planning was insufficient.

This from the man who could not have done it better. Yet he took responsibility — because blame leads nowhere. The only path forward is to work on what is within our control.

This is the lesson from Adam’s dua and the Prophet’s dua after Ta’if: focus on your circle of control. Protect yourself and your family. Spend your Ramadan nights on what you can actually change. The tariff rate is not within your control. How you spend this blessed month is.

One Tree Among Millions

Before we move forward in the surah, there is a gem worth sitting with from the story of Adam in Jannah.

Jannah — by definition a lush garden of millions of trees — had exactly one prohibition. One tree. Everything else was open.

This is a mirror of how Allah has designed this world. The halal is vast. The haram is specific and limited. When Allah speaks about what is halal in the Quran, He speaks in sweeping terms: “O mankind, eat from what is halal and good on earth.” No list — because the list would be endless. When He speaks about what is haram, He lists it out, one by one, because it is few enough to enumerate.

There is a principle in Islamic jurisprudence: al-aslu fil ashya’ al-ibaha — the original ruling on all things is that they are permissible. You need evidence to declare something haram, not the other way around. We sometimes become more restrictive than the Quran itself, treating everything as forbidden until proven otherwise. That is not Islam. Allah is merciful, and everything He has made haram is genuinely harmful to us — and there is not much of it.

Shaitan’s trick is to make us fixate on the haram, to make us feel hemmed in, to make the life of a Muslim feel like a series of closed doors. But the reality is the opposite. The doors are almost all open. He just wants us staring at the one that isn’t.

Animosity — and the Iblis Agenda

Allah commanded Adam, Hawa, and Iblis to descend from Jannah, and said there would be animosity between them. This animosity runs in multiple directions — not just between humans and Shaitan, but between humans themselves. Between races. Between classes. Between genders.

When we look at gender wars today, Islam has no difficulty affirming the rights and dignity of women. In fact, much of what has historically restricted women came through culture, not religion. The Prophet’s masjid had no barrier between men and women. The Prophet ﷺ gave lessons to mixed gatherings. Women asked questions — including sensitive ones — directly. The Ansar women were specifically praised for their courage in seeking knowledge. When a separate door was created for women in the Prophet’s time, it was at the suggestion of Sayyidina Umar, so that women wouldn’t be pushed and jostled as the community grew — it was for their comfort, not their exclusion. Sayyidina Umar, despite being famously protective of his own wife, allowed her to attend the masjid because the Prophet ﷺ had explicitly said: do not stop the believing women from coming to the masjid.

The problem with certain strands of modern feminism is not the defence of women’s rights — it’s the framing of everything as a gender war. Men and women, from an Islamic perspective, are equal in spiritual standing and in the eyes of Allah, but created with different natures, different inclinations, different responsibilities. Not one above the other. Different — the way a table and a chair are different. Both necessary. Together, complete. If every chair insists on being a table, everyone ends up sitting on the floor.

The same principle applies to class. Islam does not vilify wealth — it channels it. Zakat. Waqf. The oldest universities in the world — Qarawiyyin, Zaytuna, Al-Azhar — were sustained for centuries through endowments from wealthy Muslims who had the akhirah in mind. Al-Azhar offered free education, boarding, and meals for over a thousand years, funded entirely by waqf. Harvard today operates on $53 billion in endowments — the same principle, different name. The Islamic economic vision is not to make everyone equal — it is to ensure that the rich carry the poor, and that no one goes without. When zakat is properly collected and distributed, the mathematics work out. The system is not a class war. It is a covenant of care.

All of this division — gender wars, class wars, race wars — is part of the Iblis agenda. He said there would be animosity. He is working to deepen it. Our job is to see through it.

Tomorrow insha’Allah — Part 3 of Surah Al-A’raf begins. Allah speaks directly to the children of Adam. Ya Bani Adam.

Tonight’s video is recorded by Perth Islamic Channel.

Following along with the series? Consider a paid subscription to receive a free digital copy of the Surah Al-A’raf Study Guide and Workbook.

The Prophet ﷺ once climbed his mimbar and said “Ameen” three times — once on each step. When the companions asked what the dua was, he told them Jibreel had made three supplications and…

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We Were Made for Good Living

“We have settled you on earth and made for you therein ma’ayish.”

Ma’ayish doesn’t just mean livelihood. It means good living. Allah didn’t have to create us this way. He could have made us like the dung beetle — one food source, no variation, no pleasure. Instead He gave us the ability to mix, to cook, to combine flavours that taste terrible alone but become extraordinary together. The star anise in your soup. The spices in your curry.

This is a gift that we almost never acknowledge. And Allah notes it: “Very little of you are grateful.”

The Gratitude Loop

Gratitude, according to both Islamic tradition and modern psychology, requires three elements: the benefit, the beneficiary, and the benefactor. The first two are easy to identify — good food, and me enjoying it. But the loop only closes when you know who to thank.

Researchers at UC Davis and UC Berkeley have found that people who cannot complete this loop — who have no one ultimate to direct their gratitude toward — experience limited happiness from gratitude practice. Without God, who do you thank for good health? For a good family? For being alive?

When we say Alhamdulillah, we close the loop. And then we find ourselves grateful for the ability to be grateful — which calls for another Alhamdulillah — and so it continues, deeper and deeper. That is the loop Allah built into the fitrah.

Allah Takes Ownership of How He Made You

“We have created you and then fashioned you.”

Allah doesn’t just create — He takes personal ownership of how each of us was shaped. Tall or short, dark or light, slim or otherwise. This is His doing.

Which makes it worth asking: when we mock someone’s appearance, who are we really criticising? If you insult a painting, the painter is the one offended. Allah shaped us. He takes ownership of that. So the next time someone comments on how you look, you are well within your rights to say — I didn’t have much say in this. Take it up with my Creator.

The Story of Adam — Told in Angles

The story of Adam appears in the Quran roughly every seven juz. If we complete a khatam every month, we encounter it at the start of every week. It is our origin story, and Allah wants it close to us.

But each surah tells it differently — Al-Baqarah focuses on the purpose of our creation and the dialogue with the angels. Al-A’raf zooms in on two things: the sin of Iblis, and the slip of Adam and how he returned. Different angles on the same story, the way a good film cuts between perspectives to hold your attention and reveal something new each time.

The First Sin: Arrogance

Allah commanded all the angels to bow before Adam. Everyone did — except Iblis.

When Allah asked why, Iblis said: “I am better than him. You created me from fire and him from clay.”

This is the first act of disobedience in creation. And look at what drove it — not doubt, not confusion, but kibir. Arrogance.

The Prophet ﷺ defined arrogance as two things: looking down upon others, and rejecting the truth. Iblis did both in a single sentence. He rejected Allah’s command. And he declared himself superior to Adam.

Here is the profound irony: Iblis had no hand in his own creation. Did he choose to be made from fire? Did Adam choose clay? This was all Allah’s doing. Yet Iblis took credit for what Allah created and used it to look down on what Allah created. That is kibir in its purest form.

And Allah’s response? “Exit. You are from among the small ones.”

Kibir shares its root with kabir — greatness, bigness. Iblis wanted to be seen as great. And because of that, Allah made him small. This is the divine law that the Prophet ﷺ articulated: whoever humbles himself, Allah raises. Whoever seeks greatness through arrogance, Allah diminishes.

We stopped here tonight. Tomorrow insha’Allah — why kibir happens, how Shaitan uses it, and how we defend ourselves against his tricks.

Following along with the series? Consider a paid subscription to receive a free digital copy of the Surah Al-A’raf Study Guide and Workbook — your companion through this Ramadan journey.

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A reminder before we begin: Ramadan is a marathon, not a sprint. The temptation on night one is to go all out — packed masjid, high energy, maximum worship. But the goal is to still be standing strong in the last ten nights. Start with intention, build with cons…

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Ramadan Mubarak.

Every Ramadan, our community at Qaswa gathers to study one surah in depth — weaving tafseer into our nightly prayers. We’ve journeyed through Al-Baqarah, Ali Imran, An-Nisa, Al-Ma’idah, and Al-An’am. This year, we enter Surah Al-A’raf: 206 ayat, one of the longer Makki surahs, and a surah that carries a message every generation needs to hear.

If you're following along, the Surah Al-A'raf Study Guide and Workbook is your companion through this series — structured notes, key points, and reflection questions for each thematic section, designed to help you move from listening to living the lessons. Physical copies are available at the tarawih hall and Qaswa House. And if you're reading this on Substack, consider a paid subscription to receive a free digital copy of the workbook — your support also helps keep this tafseer series going.

The Surahs Come in Pairs

One of the beautiful structural features of the Quran is that the early surahs mirror and complement each other.

Al-Baqarah purifies the heart — iman and taqwa. Ali Imran extends that inward transformation outward — Islam and submission. An-Nisa moves from the individual to the community, beginning with the most vulnerable: orphans and women. Al-Ma’idah scales further outward still — to national and international relations.

Then Al-An’am, a Makki surah, brings us back to basics. Back to aqidah. It makes the case for Islam through reason — the logical argument of Prophet Ibrahim, who observed that a god who appears and disappears cannot be God.

Surah Al-A’raf continues that argument — but shifts the angle. Where Al-An’am appealed to logic, Al-A’raf appeals to history. What happened to the nations before us? What became of the peoples who refused to listen?

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Makki vs Madani: What We’ve Been Getting Wrong

Here is something worth sitting with: roughly 70% of the Quran is Makki. Only 30% is Madani.

The Madani surahs contain our laws — fasting, zakat, hajj, rulings on marriage and wealth and dress. Important, yes. But the bulk of Allah’s revelation is Makki, and the Makki surahs are concerned above all with akhlaq — character, ethics, the way we treat one another.

The Prophet ﷺ was asked repeatedly: who is the best person? His answers: the one with the most beautiful character. The one who is most useful to others.

Yet over 1400 years, we have narrowed our definition of a good Muslim to ritual: how many rakaat, how many khatms, how long the fast, how correct the recitation. We’ve let the 30% overshadow the 70%. We’ve mistaken the branches for the roots.

Surah Al-A’raf will have something to say about this — particularly in the story of Prophet Adam and his expulsion from Jannah, where we will see what Allah identifies as the most important quality of a believer.

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