# Raised by Jibreel (AS)... Then He Led an Entire Nation Into Idol Worship | As-Samiri's Story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrFSzmUYlqY

[00:00] Let me ask you something that might shake you a little.
[00:03] What if I told you there was a man, a real man mentioned by name in the Quran, who was literally raised by the greatest angel in all of creation.
[00:10] Not just blessed by him, not just visited by him once or twice, raised, fed, nurtured by Gibl. Salam himself.
[00:20] And what if I told you that this same man, the one who grew up eating food that came from the hands of an angel, became one of the most dangerous, most destructive figures in the entire history of Bunny Israel.
[00:30] He didn't just sin.
[00:37] He took an entire nation of prophets and their followers and pushed them into church into idol worship into the kind of darkness that took rivers of blood to wash away.
[00:44] His name was Asamiri and his story is one of the most haunting most psychologically intense stories in the entire Quran.
[00:52] Most people know about Musa Alisam.
[00:55] Most people know about Feron but this man as Samiri sits right in the middle of that entire story and most
[01:00] people have never really dug into who he was, where he came from and why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose to include him by name in the Quran.
[01:09] Today we're going to fix that.
[01:11] We're going to go deep all the way back to ancient Egypt.
[01:15] All the way back to a dark cave on the outskirts of a city ruled by the most arrogant tyrant in human history.
[01:20] And we're going to follow this story through the parting of the sea, through a golden cart that could actually make sounds through one of the most terrifying punishments ever given to a single human being all the way to its conclusion.
[01:35] And when we're done, I think you're going to walk away with a completely different understanding of what faith actually means, what arrogance actually costs, and why Allah tells us these stories over and over again in the Quran.
[01:48] So settle in.
[01:49] This one is going to take a while, but I promise you, every single minute of it is worth it.
[01:54] We need to start at the beginning.
[01:55] And the beginning of this story isn't with Samir.
[01:58] It's with a nightmare.
[01:58] Ancient Egypt, the kingdom of
[02:00] Feron.
[02:03] Now, when we think of Fyron, we usually think of him as this distant, almost mythological villain.
[02:07] But try to really picture what it was like to live under his rule.
[02:11] This was a man who genuinely told his people and believed it himself that he was God, not a representative of God, not a son of God, God himself, an Rabukul Allah, I am your highest Lord.
[02:23] He said that out loud in front of crowds of people.
[02:25] And Bani Israel, the children of Israel, the descendants of Yakub Alisam, the people of the prophet Ysef Alisam.
[02:36] These people were living under this man's boot.
[02:38] Generations of slavery, generations of humiliation.
[02:40] They were building his monuments, cleaning his palaces, doing the hardest and most degrading labor imaginable.
[02:49] And they had been doing it for so long that many of them had forgotten what freedom even felt like.
[02:52] And then one night Fyon had a dream.
[02:55] The scholars of Tapsi particularly Ibn Kirimah mention a narration from Abdullahbn
[03:02] Abbasu describing this dream in detail.
[03:04] Firon saw a fire a massive consuming fire and it was coming from the direction of Bul Maktus from Jerusalem sweeping across Egypt.
[03:15] And this fire burned everything that belonged to Feron and his people.
[03:17] The Coptic palaces, the temples, the homes of the Egyptian elite, all of it reduced to ash.
[03:24] But the homes of Bani Israel, untouched, not a single flame touched them.
[03:29] Feron woke up drenched in sweat.
[03:31] He called for his priests, his astrologers, his dream interpreters.
[03:34] He gathered the smartest, most supernaturally gifted people in his kingdom and he told them what he saw.
[03:40] And they gave him an answer that changed everything.
[03:43] They told him, "A boy is coming.
[03:45] A boy from Bunny, Israel, not yet born, who will grow up to destroy you.
[03:49] He will end your kingdom, end your religion, end your dynasty.
[03:53] He is coming and there is nothing you can do to stop the prophecy.
[03:58] Now, most human beings when they hear something like that [music] might think, "Okay, maybe I
[04:04] should change.
[04:06] Maybe I should reflect on why the enslaved people under my boot are the ones being protected in this vision [music] and I'm the one being burned.
[04:11] But Fon wasn't most human beings.
[04:14] Fyon was a man whose heart had been locked shut for so long that mercy and self-reflection were completely foreign to him.
[04:21] So he did what tyrants do.
[04:23] He decided to kill every single baby boy born to Bunny Israel.
[04:26] Every single one.
[04:29] The Quran mentions this in surah albakara ayah 49 reminding Bani Israel of what Allah saved them from.
[04:35] A people who slaughtered their sons [music] and left their daughters alive.
[04:39] A whole generation systematically wiped out at birth.
[04:43] Can you even imagine what that was like?
[04:45] Mothers who had carried their children for 9 months who had given birth in secret trying to hide the sound of a crying newborn who had their sons torn from their arms by soldiers the moment they were discovered.
[04:57] This wasn't occasional brutality.
[04:59] This was a policy, an official state sponsored massacre of infants.
[05:02] And it was in the middle of
[05:06] this horror, this specific year, the year the killing was at its worst, that two women in Bani, Israel, were pregnant at the same time.
[05:10] One of them was carrying Musa Alisam.
[05:14] The other one was carrying a samuri.
[05:17] We know a great deal about what happened with Musa Alisam's mother.
[05:21] Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us her story directly in the Quran.
[05:26] He inspired her to place her baby in a basket and put him in the Nile.
[05:30] And the river carried that basket past the soldiers, past the danger all the way to the palace of Fyon himself.
[05:37] His wife Assa Radiu Anha found the child and fell instantly in love with him.
[05:41] And just like that, the very man trying to kill the prophesied boy was now paying for his milk and raising him in his own home.
[05:48] The irony is almost too perfect to be coincidental.
[05:52] And of course, it isn't coincidental.
[05:54] It's divine orchestration at its most breathtaking.
[05:59] But what about the other woman?
[06:01] The one carrying Samiri?
[06:03] Her story is less famous.
[06:05] But in some ways, it's even more dramatic.
[06:05] She knew she was pregnant.
[06:05] She
[06:07] knew what Feron's soldiers were doing to every newborn boy they found.
[06:12] And when she felt her time coming near, she made a decision born out of pure desperation and pure love.
[06:19] She left the city.
[06:21] In the middle of the night, quietly, without telling anyone, she made her way out beyond the edges of civilization, past the last houses, past the last roads, into the wild, rocky terrain outside of town, until she found a cave in the mountains, remote, hidden, silent, and there, alone, with no midwife, no family, no support of any kind, she gave birth to her son.
[06:43] And then she faced the most heartbreaking decision a mother could ever face.
[06:47] She couldn't bring him back with her.
[06:49] If she walked back into the city with a newborn boy, it was a death sentence for both of them.
[06:55] Fyon's spies were everywhere.
[06:57] Neighbors reported each other.
[06:59] There was nowhere to hide a crying baby.
[07:02] So, she did the only thing she could think of.
[07:03] She placed her newborn son on the stone floor of that cave.
[07:07] She blocked the entrance with whatever she could
[07:09] find to protect him from wild animals.
[07:11] And she walked away.
[07:11] She left her child in that cave alone with no food, no water, no warmth, and no certainty that she would ever see him again.
[07:19] She left him, as she must have believed, in the hands of Allah.
[07:23] And she was right about that part, more right than she could have possibly known.
[07:27] The cave was dark.
[07:30] The baby was alone, and he was hungry.
[07:32] Now, here is where the story takes a turn that I think is genuinely one of the most astonishing things I have ever encountered in the books of Islamic history and taps.
[07:40] Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sent someone to that cave.
[07:45] Not a stranger passing by.
[07:47] Not a kind woman from the village.
[07:50] Not even a miraculous provision of food appearing out of nowhere.
[07:51] He sent Jirel.Isam, the greatest of all the angels.
[07:54] The one who carried the revelation to every prophet.
[07:58] The one described in the Quran as possessing 600 wings.
[08:03] The one whose true form when Rasool S.AI was saw it filled the entire horizon from east to
[08:10] west. that Gabriel Allah sent him to a dark cave in the mountains of Egypt to take care of one small hungry crying baby.
[08:20] The narrations preserved in the books of Tapsier describe something almost impossibly beautiful.
[08:22] Girrel alisam would come to the cave and feed this child.
[08:29] According to these narrations, from one of his fingers flowed milk, from another flowed honey, and from another something like butter or cream.
[08:38] Pure sustenance straight from the mercy of Allah, delivered by the most honored being in all of creation into the mouth of this tiny abandoned child.
[08:48] [music] Day after day, week after week, month after month, the baby survived.
[08:52] More than survived, he thrived.
[08:54] And as [music] he grew from a newborn into a toddler, and from a toddler into a small child, something was happening to him that had never happened to any other human being in history.
[09:02] He was becoming familiar with an angel.
[09:07] Not in a vague theological sense, not in the way that all of us are surrounded by angels we can't see.
[09:09] He
[09:12] was actually physically repeatedly encountering Gabriel Alisam.
[09:17] He knew the way Girel moved.
[09:19] He knew the light that came with him, the energy that preceded him.
[09:23] He knew what it looked like, what it felt like when this particular angel was near.
[09:27] He was learning to recognize a being that no ordinary human being should be able to recognize.
[09:34] And this this childhood education in the presence of the divine is the key that unlocks one of the biggest mysteries in the entire Quran.
[09:40] How years later at the shore of the Red Sea in the middle of hundreds of thousands of fleeing people did Samir recognized Gibriel Alleis Salam.
[09:51] This is how.
[09:53] But before we get to that moment at the sea, we need to understand what happened to Samiri after he left the cave.
[09:58] At some point, the narrations don't give us an exact age.
[10:02] Samir made his way back to human civilization.
[10:07] He integrated into the community of Bani Israel.
[10:09] He looked like everyone else, acted like everyone else, went through the same daily rhythms of
[10:13] slavery and survival that everyone else went through.
[10:16] But he wasn't like everyone else.
[10:18] Not even close.
[10:20] He carried something inside him that nobody around him could see or understand.
[10:25] He had a kind of perception, a kind of sensitivity to the unseen that was unlike anything a normal human being possesses.
[10:31] He could see things others couldn't.
[10:33] He could sense things others couldn't.
[10:35] And instead of this gift leading him toward gratitude toward Allah, toward humility, toward wanting to use this extraordinary awareness in service of truth, it went in the other direction entirely.
[10:47] It fed his ego.
[10:50] There is something deeply dangerous about a person who has access to knowledge or abilities beyond what others have, but whose heart is not grounded in genuine taqua.
[11:00] Because instead of making them humble, instead of making them aware of just how small they are compared to the source of that knowledge, it can make them feel superior, chosen above the normal rules that apply to everyone else.
[11:12] This is
[11:14] exactly what happened to Samiri.
[11:16] Egypt at that time was absolutely saturated in magic and mysticism.
[11:21] Fyon's court was full of magicians, powerful, skilled practitioners who used their craft to maintain his power and awe.
[11:29] Magic wasn't hidden or underground.
[11:31] It was mainstream.
[11:33] It was prestigious.
[11:35] It was one of the most respected professions in the land.
[11:38] And a young man with Samur's unusual gifts found himself drawn into that world.
[11:43] He learned fast, faster than anyone around him, because he had a foundation that no human teacher had given him.
[11:49] He understood things about the relationship between the visible and invisible worlds that most magicians spent their entire careers trying to grasp.
[11:57] Within a short time, he had become extraordinarily skilled.
[12:00] But he kept it hidden.
[12:02] He kept himself hidden.
[12:04] He was quiet, unremarkable on the surface, just another face among the oppressed masses of Barney, Israel.
[12:09] He was watching, waiting for what even he might not have fully known yet.
[12:12] And then
[12:14] Musa Alisam arrived.
[12:17] The story of Musa Alisam confronting Fyon is one of the most famous stories in all of human history.
[12:25] Told in some form across three of the world's major religions.
[12:26] We don't need to rehash every detail here, but I want you to understand how Samir must have experienced these events because it's crucial for what comes next.
[12:34] He watched Musa Ali Salam walk into the most powerful court on earth and stand there calmly while Fon raged.
[12:44] He watched the 10 plagues, the frogs, the locusts, the darkness, the death.
[12:47] He watched Fyon's most celebrated magicians, men who had spent their entire lives mastering their craft, throw down their ropes and staffs, expecting to win.
[12:57] And he watched those ropes and staffs get swallowed up.
[13:00] He watched those same magicians, the most skilled practitioners of deception in the known world, fall to the ground in prostration.
[13:08] Not because they were forced to, because they recognized immediately with the trained eye of
[13:15] experts that what Musa Alisam was doing was not magic.
[13:18] It was something else entirely, something real.
[13:21] He watched all of this [music] and eventually when Allah commanded Musa Alisam to take Bunni Israel and leave Egypt, Samir left with them.
[13:28] He was among the multitude that followed Musa Alisam out into the desert, heading [music] toward freedom, carrying with them whatever they could take, looking over their shoulders at the only home most of them had ever known.
[13:44] He walked with them.
[13:47] He was one of them.
[13:49] He publicly followed Musa Alisam's leadership without apparent complaint.
[13:51] But his heart was not where his feet were.
[13:53] Now we come to the Red Sea.
[13:55] And this is the moment, the single specific moment that changes everything.
[14:01] Bani Israel has fled Egypt.
[14:03] Behind them, Fyon has regrouped his army and is in full pursuit.
[14:06] Ahead of them is the Red Sea, vast, deep, with no boats and no way across.
[14:11] They are trapped.
[14:13] The sound of Fyon's chariots is getting louder.
[14:16] The people are panicking.
[14:18] Some of them are already crying out to Musa Alisam, saying that they're going to die here.
[14:22] And then Musa Alisam raises his staff and strikes the water and the sea opens.
[14:28] Not a little, not like wing through shallow water.
[14:30] The sea splits completely with walls of water standing vertically on either side and in the middle a dry path wide enough for hundreds of thousands of people to cross.
[14:38] [music] path wide enough for hundreds of thousands of people to cross.
[14:40] According to some narrations, perhaps 12 separate paths for the 12 tribes [music] of Israel.
[14:45] The people start crossing.
[14:47] All of them rushing, terrified, but moving, following the path that should not exist through a sea that should not be passable.
[14:56] And Samir is among them, moving with the crowd, looking as always more carefully than anyone around him.
[15:03] And then he sees something among the chaos of hundreds of thousands of people crossing a split sea.
[15:08] With Fyon's army at their backs, Samir spots a rider.
[15:10] A rider on a horse moving alongside the crossing people, guiding them forward.
[15:18] Everyone else is focused on the miracle beneath their feet, on the walls of water on either side of them, on the army behind them, on getting across before something goes wrong.
[15:28] Nobody else is paying attention to this rider in the way Samir is paying attention to him because Samir recognizes him.
[15:33] He has seen that light before.
[15:35] He has felt that presence before in a dark cave a long time ago when he was too young to form words, but not too young to have certain things burned into his awareness.
[15:47] This is Jirelisam and his horse.
[15:50] The narrations describe it as a heavenly horse.
[15:52] Sometimes called the horse of life.
[15:54] Wherever its hooves touch the ground, something extraordinary happens.
[15:59] The earth comes alive.
[16:02] Dry dead sand and rock bursts into green life at the point of contact and then dies again.
[16:06] Once the hoof moves on, Samir watches this.
[16:09] His mind is working furiously.
[16:11] His knowledge of magic and his understanding of the relationship between the physical and the spiritual is telling him something about what he
[16:19] is witnessing.
[16:22] This horse, this specific horse, the soil that it touches is somehow charged with something, something that animates, something that brings life to the lifeless.
[16:31] And Samiri makes a decision.
[16:33] Quietly, carefully, without anyone noticing, in the middle of one of the greatest miracles in human history, while literally walking through a parted sea, [music] Samir bends down and scoops up a handful of that soil, the very earth where Gibbrel's horse has just stepped.
[16:49] He closes his fist around it.
[16:52] [music] He keeps it.
[16:53] He carries it forward across the sea to the other side.
[16:57] And later in surah taha when he is confronted by Musa Alisam and asked to explain himself this is exactly what he says.
[17:02] Ayah 96.
[17:06] I saw what they did not see.
[17:08] So I took a handful from the footprint of the messenger and I threw it in.
[17:11] He admits it [music] openly almost proudly.
[17:14] I saw something nobody else could see and I took it.
[17:16] Now Bunny Israel is free.
[17:16] Feyon is dead.
[17:19] They watched his army drown.
[17:22] watched the waters crash back over the most powerful military in the world.
[17:24] Watch the man who had enslaved their people for generations disappear beneath the waves.
[17:31] But here is something that the Quran is very honest about and that I think we sometimes gloss over when we tell this story.
[17:39] Bani Israel was deeply psychologically scarred.
[17:42] Generations of slavery does not just affect the body.
[17:44] It doesn't just mean hard work and physical suffering.
[17:45] It means your entire world view, your entire understanding of power and worship and what is real and what matters gets shaped by the culture of your oppressors.
[17:56] And the Egyptians were a people who worshiped bulls.
[17:58] The cult of Apis, the sacred bull, was one of the most prominent religious practices in ancient Egypt.
[18:04] Bani Israel had grown up watching this.
[18:07] They had internalized it, even if they didn't consciously subscribe to it.
[18:09] We get a glimpse of this almost immediately after the crossing.
[18:11] As Bani Israel is traveling through the Sinai, they pass by a group of people who are
[18:20] worshiping idols.
[18:23] And some of them, not all of them, but some turn to Musa Alisam and actually say, "Can you make us a god like theirs?"
[18:33] Musa Alisam was horrified.
[18:34] He told them they were a foolish people who didn't understand what they were asking.
[18:38] And the moment passed.
[18:40] But the desire didn't disappear.
[18:43] It just went underground.
[18:45] It sat there dormant waiting for the right conditions to come back to the surface and Samir knew it was there.
[18:49] Then came the command that changed everything.
[18:52] Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told Musa Alisam to come to Mount Tur to come alone to receive the Torah, the divine guidance that would govern the lives of Bani Israel going forward.
[19:02] The original plan was 30 nights.
[19:05] Then Allah extended it by 10 more making it 40 nights total.
[19:10] Before he left, Musa Alisam placed his brother Harun Alisam in charge.
[19:15] His instructions were clear.
[19:17] Take care of my people.
[19:19] Maintain order and do not follow the path of those who cause corruption.
[19:20] He then headed up the mountain and Bani Israel was left without their prophet for 40 days.
[19:24] Now 40 days doesn't sound like very long but when you have just come through the most traumatic experience of your collective life slavery running for your lives watching the sea part and then close and the one person who has been the anchor the constant the voice of certainty in all of that chaos suddenly disappears for 40 days with no news no updates no communication anxiety sets in quickly.
[19:51] The first 30 days passed Musa Alisam was supposed to be back.
[19:55] He wasn't.
[19:57] Whispers started.
[19:59] What if something happened to him?
[20:00] What if he's not coming back?
[20:02] What are we supposed to do?
[20:04] Samir had been waiting for exactly this.
[20:06] He moved carefully, strategically.
[20:09] He didn't rush.
[20:11] He started by identifying something that had been bothering people.
[20:14] The gold jewelry that many of them were still carrying, borrowed from Egyptian women before their departure.
[20:18] Some people felt uneasy about keeping it.
[20:20] It felt like it didn't
[20:22] belong to them. It felt impure. Samiri
[20:25] saw his opening. He went to the
[20:27] community leaders and with complete
[20:29] authority and apparently great religious
[20:31] conviction, he announced that keeping
[20:33] this jewelry was impermissible. It was
[20:36] tainted. It needed to be purified by
[20:38] fire. The people agreed. They dug a pit,
[20:42] lit a fire, and threw in everything.
[20:44] Necklaces, [music] bracelets, earrings,
[20:46] rings, all of it. A fortune in gold
[20:48] melted together into a single molten
[20:50] mass. And then Samiri took over. He was
[20:53] a craftsman, a sculptor, a man with
[20:55] unusual knowledge of metallurgy and the
[20:58] properties of materials. He shaped that
[21:01] molten gold into the form of a calf,
[21:03] deliberately chosen to echo the sacred
[21:06] bull of Egyptian religion. The image
[21:08] burned into the subconscious of people
[21:10] who had spent their entire lives in
[21:12] Egypt. It was a beautiful piece of work,
[21:15] hollow, precisely constructed. And then
[21:17] Samiri reached into whatever he was
[21:19] carrying and pulled out that handful of
[21:21] soil. the soil from beneath the hooves
[21:24] of Gibriel's horse. He [music] placed it
[21:26] inside the golden calf. And the golden
[21:28] calf made a sound, a real sound, a
[21:31] loing, moaning, deep sound like an
[21:33] actual [music] animal. The Quran
[21:35] describes this in Surah Taha ayah 88.
[21:38] Then he produced for them a calf, a body
[21:41] with a loing sound. Picture what that
[21:43] moment was like for the people standing
[21:45] there. They had just contributed their
[21:47] gold. [music] They were anxious,
[21:49] leaderless, psychologically primed
[21:51] towards something visible and tangible
[21:53] to worship. And now here was this
[21:55] gleaming golden, perfectly crafted image
[21:58] of a creature they associated with
[22:00] divine power. And [music] it was making
[22:02] noise. It sounded alive. Samir or those
[22:05] around him immediately declared, "This
[22:07] is your god and the god of Musa." Musa
[22:10] forgot and went to look for him on the
[22:12] mountain and they believed it. Not all
[22:14] of them. There were those who held firm.
[22:17] Harun Alisam himself immediately ran to
[22:19] the crowd and pleaded with them. Surah
[22:21] Taha ayah 90 records his words. Oh my
[22:25] people, you have only been tested
[22:26] [music] by this. Indeed, your Lord is
[22:28] the most merciful. So follow me and obey
[22:31] my order. But the crowd had already
[22:33] crossed a line and crossing lines is
[22:35] easy. Coming back from them is much
[22:37] harder. They told Harun Alisam they were
[22:40] not going to stop until Musa returned.
[22:43] Some narrations indicate they even
[22:45] threatened to kill him. Harun Alisam was
[22:48] alone, surrounded by people who had
[22:50] completely lost themselves. And he made
[22:52] the judgment call that maintaining his
[22:55] own life and waiting for Musa Alisam was
[22:58] better than getting himself killed
[23:00] [music]
[23:00] and leaving the community with no
[23:02] religious leadership at all. So the idol
[23:05] worship continued for days. People
[23:08] dancing around a golden calf in the
[23:10] desert. People who had seen the sea
[23:12] split open with their own eyes. People
[23:14] who had been fed by miraculous food from
[23:16] the sky. People who had watched Feyron
[23:19] drown in real time as a direct
[23:21] consequence of his refusal to
[23:23] acknowledge the [music] one true God.
[23:25] Those same people worshiping a gold
[23:27] statue. Up on the mountain, Musa Alisam
[23:30] was in the most profound spiritual
[23:32] experience of his life. He was speaking
[23:34] directly to Allah. Not through a dream,
[23:37] not through an angel, not through
[23:39] inspiration to his heart. directly
[23:42] spoken word to spoken word. And then
[23:45] Allah told him what was happening.
[23:46] [music] Surah Taha ayah 85. Indeed, we
[23:51] have tried your people after you
[23:52] departed and Asamiri has led them
[23:55] astray. Musa Alisam took the tablets of
[23:58] [music] the Torah, the divine law that
[24:00] had just been inscribed for his people,
[24:02] and he came down the mountain fast,
[24:04] running, his mind already processing the
[24:07] magnitude of what he was about to face.
[24:10] When he arrived, the site was exactly as
[24:12] bad as Allah had told him. Thousands of
[24:14] his people [music] dancing and singing
[24:16] around a golden calf, their faces lit up
[24:18] with a kind of frenzied joy that had
[24:20] nothing to do with anything real. He was
[24:23] so overwhelmed, [music] so burning with
[24:25] grief and righteous anger that in that
[24:27] moment he set down the tablets, not
[24:29] carelessly, not permanently, but he
[24:32] could not hold them and process what he
[24:34] was seeing at the same time. The weight
[24:36] of the betrayal was too great. He went
[24:38] first to Harun alisam and the Quran
[24:41] tells us that he grabbed his brother by
[24:42] the hair and pulled him toward him
[24:45] demanding to know why he hadn't stopped
[24:47] this. Harunisam responded with one of
[24:50] the most heartbreaking lines in the
[24:52] entire Quran. Surah Taha ayah 94. Oh son
[24:55] of my mother do not seize me by my beard
[24:58] or by my head. Indeed I feared that you
[25:00] would say [music] you caused division
[25:02] among the children of Israel and you did
[25:04] not observe my word. And in surah al
[25:07] araf he adds [music] they almost killed
[25:09] me. So do not make the enemies rejoice
[25:11] over me and do not place me among the
[25:13] wrongdoing people. He was one man
[25:16] against a mob. He had [music] tried. He
[25:18] had failed to stop them but he had not
[25:20] joined them. Musa Alisam understood. He
[25:23] released his brother. He turned to face
[25:25] the crowd. Addressed them. [music]
[25:27] Confronted what had happened. And then
[25:29] he found the man at the center of it
[25:31] all. a samuri. What happened next is
[25:34] preserved in three consecutive ayat of
[25:36] surah taha ayat 95, 96 and 97. And I
[25:41] want to walk through each of them
[25:42] carefully because there is so much
[25:44] packed into this short exchange. Musa
[25:46] alaiisam faced Samir and asked him
[25:49] [music] directly what is your case oh
[25:51] Samiri that's ayah 95 a simple question
[25:54] but behind it is everything. Who are
[25:56] you? Why did you do this? How? Samir
[25:59] answered, "Ayah 96." He said, "I saw
[26:03] what they did not see, so I took a
[26:05] handful from the footprint of the
[26:06] messenger and threw it in. Thus, my soul
[26:09] prompted me." Read that answer
[26:10] carefully. He doesn't make excuses. He
[26:13] doesn't claim ignorance. He doesn't try
[26:15] to deflect or blame anyone else. He is
[26:18] almost boasting. I saw what they
[26:19] couldn't see. I knew what they didn't
[26:21] know. I had access to something they
[26:23] didn't have. And that last phrase, thus
[26:26] my soul prompted me, is in some ways the
[26:29] most chilling part of the whole thing.
[26:31] He's saying, nobody made me do this. My
[26:33] own naps, my own inner self, my own
[26:35] desires and ego told [music] me to. I
[26:38] chose this freely, knowingly. He had
[26:41] been given an extraordinary [music]
[26:42] gift, a childhood in the care of the
[26:44] most noble angel. eyes that could see
[26:47] through the barrier between the visible
[26:48] and invisible worlds, an awareness of
[26:51] divine realities that almost no human
[26:53] being has ever possessed. And he used it
[26:56] to make a golden idol that moved because
[26:58] it made him feel powerful because it
[27:00] made him feel special because it allowed
[27:03] him to stand in front of a crowd and be
[27:05] the most important person in the room.
[27:07] Musa Alisam looked at him and delivered
[27:09] the judgment. Ayia 97 go for indeed it
[27:12] is yours in this life to say no contact
[27:15] and indeed [music]
[27:16] you have an appointment you will not
[27:17] fail to keep two punishments one for
[27:20] this world one for the next the
[27:22] punishment of the next world is
[27:24] self-explanatory a person who
[27:26] deliberately led an entire community of
[27:28] believers into sherk the one sin Allah
[27:31] has told us [music] he does not forgive
[27:33] without sincere repentance is facing a
[27:35] reality on the day of judgment that does
[27:38] not bear comfortable contemplation.
[27:40] But the punishment of this world,
[27:42] Lameisa, no [music] contact. This is
[27:44] where I want to slow down because I
[27:46] think this punishment is often described
[27:48] in a way that underscells just how
[27:50] devastating it actually was. The
[27:53] scholars of Tapsier explain that Allah
[27:55] caused something to happen to Samir's
[27:57] body as a direct consequence of Musa
[27:59] Alisam's declaration. If anyone touched
[28:02] him or if he touched anyone, both people
[28:05] would immediately experience a burning,
[28:07] agonizing sensation like being set on
[28:10] fire from the inside. No embrace, no
[28:13] handshake, no brushing past someone in a
[28:15] crowd, no sitting close enough to
[28:17] another human being that your clothing
[28:19] might touch [music] theirs. And beyond
[28:21] the physical pain, the social reality of
[28:23] this punishment was that he was expelled
[28:26] from the community entirely. He could
[28:28] not live with people. He could not work
[28:30] with people. He could not eat with
[28:32] people. He could not be comforted by
[28:34] people. The man who wanted to be adored
[28:36] by crowds would spend the rest of his
[28:38] life [music] running away from the sound
[28:40] of approaching footsteps, crying out in
[28:42] panic whenever someone got too close,
[28:44] isolated in the desert, alone perhaps
[28:47] for decades, wandering like a wild
[28:49] animal with no human connection of any
[28:51] kind. And this was not simply exile.
[28:54] This was the complete inversion of
[28:55] everything he had wanted. [music] He had
[28:57] wanted to be at the center. He was
[28:59] placed permanently on the outside. He
[29:01] had wanted to be needed. He was made
[29:03] untouchable. He had wanted power over
[29:06] people. He was made completely powerless
[29:08] before the simplest human need, the need
[29:11] for connection. Allah subhanahu wa
[29:13] ta'ala did not kill him. Death would
[29:14] have ended his suffering quickly.
[29:16] Instead, he let him live year after year
[29:19] [music] in a state that was
[29:20] simultaneously a punishment and a
[29:22] warning to everyone who encountered him.
[29:25] Here is what happens to a person who
[29:27] takes the gifts of Allah and uses them
[29:29] to lead people away from Allah. After
[29:32] Samir was dealt with, Musa Alisam turned
[29:34] to the golden calf itself. He had it
[29:37] burned. He had the ashes ground down
[29:39] into powder so fine it was almost like
[29:41] dust. And then he had that dust
[29:43] scattered into the sea. The golden calf
[29:46] that people had been worshiping, dancing
[29:48] around, giving their gold to create,
[29:50] treating as a deity, [music] dissolved
[29:53] into nothing, less than nothing. Dust in
[29:55] the water gone. This is always what
[29:57] happens to false gods [music]
[29:59] if you're patient enough to watch. But
[30:01] the story wasn't over. Not yet. Because
[30:03] Bani Israel had committed sherk. Real
[30:06] sherk, public sherk. And while Allah
[30:09] subhanahu wa ta'ala is algaful and
[30:11] algafu the most forgiving, the most
[30:14] merciful, [music]
[30:14] his forgiveness requires sincere
[30:17] repentance. And for what bani Israel had
[30:19] done, the repentance required was
[30:22] extreme. Surah al bakar ayah 54 records
[30:26] what Musa Alisam told his people. Oh my
[30:29] people, indeed you have wronged
[30:31] yourselves by your taking of the calf
[30:33] for worship. So repent to your creator
[30:36] and kill yourselves. [music] That is
[30:38] best for you in the sight of your
[30:39] creator. Kill yourselves. Not
[30:41] metaphorically, not symbolically. Those
[30:44] who had committed the sherk were to be
[30:45] killed by those who had not. The
[30:47] purification of this sin required blood.
[30:50] And the narrations [music]
[30:50] described this event in terms that are
[30:52] almost too heavy to hold. They were
[30:55] divided into two groups. Allah sent a
[30:57] thick darkness, a cloud, so that no one
[31:00] could see the face of the person in
[31:02] front of them. so that a man would not
[31:05] hesitate because he recognized his
[31:06] brother or his father or his son.
[31:09] [music] In the darkness, the killing
[31:10] began. 70,000 by some narrations. Sons
[31:14] and fathers and brothers and friends and
[31:16] neighbors all cut down in the dark as
[31:19] the price of returning to Tohed. When
[31:22] the blood had run long enough, Musa
[31:24] Alisam and Harun Alisam [music] were
[31:27] weeping, calling out to Allah to accept
[31:29] this repentance, to have mercy, to stop
[31:32] the killing. And Allah accepted. The
[31:35] cloud lifted. The swords were still. The
[31:37] dead lay where they fell. And Allah
[31:40] declared them shahed, martyrs. And the
[31:43] living had their repentance accepted.
[31:45] The price of sherk is always higher than
[31:47] anyone expects. Even after all of this,
[31:49] the golden calf, the slaughter, the
[31:51] repentance, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
[31:54] was not done testing Bani Israel. Musaam
[31:57] selected 70 of the best men from the
[32:00] community, scholars, elders, leaders. He
[32:02] took them to Mount T to make a formal
[32:04] communal repentance before Allah to hear
[32:07] the divine speech to be witnesses for
[32:10] their people [music] that all of this
[32:11] had truly happened and that the covenant
[32:14] between Allah and Bani Israel was still
[32:16] in effect. These 70 men had the
[32:19] extraordinary experience of actually
[32:20] hearing Allah speak to Musa Alisam. They
[32:24] were there. They heard it. And after
[32:26] hearing it, they made a demand that is
[32:28] almost incomprehensible. Surah Albakar
[32:31] ayah 55. Oh Musa, we will never believe
[32:34] you until we see Allah outright. These
[32:37] are the best men in the community. The
[32:39] elders, the scholars, men who had
[32:42] survived the golden calf fiasco
[32:44] precisely because they hadn't
[32:45] participated. [music] Men who had just
[32:47] heard with their own ears the speech of
[32:50] Allah, and they were still demanding
[32:52] physical visible proof. We need to see
[32:54] him. We cannot believe in what we cannot
[32:56] see. The poison that Samiri had planted,
[33:00] the insistence on a tangible, visible,
[33:02] physically present deity had sunk so
[33:05] deep into the psyche of this people that
[33:07] even their best representatives couldn't
[33:09] fully escape it. Allah's response was
[33:11] immediate and total, a bolt of
[33:13] lightning, instant death. All 70 of them
[33:16] struck down in a single moment. Musa
[33:18] Alisam stood there in shock and grief.
[33:21] He turned to Allah in desperate prayer.
[33:24] What am I supposed to tell my people?
[33:25] They'll say, "I brought their elders up
[33:27] here and killed them. They already
[33:29] barely trust me. This will destroy
[33:31] everything." And Allah in his infinite
[33:33] mercy did something [music]
[33:34] extraordinary. He brought them back, all
[33:37] 70, alive again. Surah Albakar ayah 56.
[33:41] Then we revived you after your death so
[33:43] that perhaps you would be grateful. They
[33:45] came back having tasted death, having
[33:47] briefly experienced whatever comes
[33:49] after. And whatever they saw changed
[33:51] something in them because the demands
[33:54] stopped and the humility returned. But
[33:57] this would not be the last time Bunni
[33:59] Israel would fail their own faith. The
[34:01] final major test came when they reached
[34:03] the edge of the promised land. They had
[34:05] traveled through the Sinai. They had
[34:07] received the Torah. They had been fed by
[34:09] mana and quail sent from heaven. They
[34:11] had drunk from a spring that burst from
[34:13] a rock when Musa Alisam struck it. They
[34:16] had been shaded by a miraculous cloud in
[34:18] the brutal desert heat. And now, after
[34:21] all of this, they stood at the doorstep
[34:23] of the land they had been promised, the
[34:26] Holy Land, Beth Maktis. There was only
[34:29] one obstacle. The Amalachites, a
[34:31] powerful, organized, militarily
[34:33] formidable people who currently occupied
[34:35] the land. Allah's command was [music]
[34:37] direct. Musa Alisam conveyed it clearly.
[34:40] Go in, fight. Allah is with you. You
[34:43] will win. And Bunny Israel, after
[34:46] everything they had witnessed, after
[34:48] every impossible thing they had seen
[34:49] Allah do on their behalf, refused. Surah
[34:53] al-Ma ayah 24. The words are preserved
[34:56] in the Quran for all of time. Indeed, we
[34:58] will not enter it ever as long as they
[35:00] are within it. So go, you and your Lord,
[35:02] and fight. Indeed, we are remaining
[35:05] right here. You and your Lord, go fight.
[35:07] We'll wait here. Read that back slowly.
[35:10] Let the magnitude of it sink in. These
[35:12] were people who had literally seen
[35:14] Fyon's entire army swallowed by the sea.
[35:17] They had watched it happen and they
[35:19] still could not bring themselves to
[35:20] trust that [music] the same God who
[35:22] parted the waters could give them
[35:24] victory in battle. Mus Alisam brookke.
[35:26] [music] He had been patient through
[35:28] everything. Through the golden calf,
[35:30] through the 70 elders, through the
[35:32] endless [music] complaints and
[35:33] ingratitude. But this was the final
[35:35] straw. He turned to Allah and made a
[35:38] simple dua. a doer of exhaustion and
[35:40] surrender. My lord, indeed I do not
[35:42] possess except myself and my brother. So
[35:44] part us from the defiantly disobedient
[35:46] people, and Allah's response was a
[35:48] punishment the likes [music] of which no
[35:50] community had faced before. The promised
[35:53] land was forbidden to them. Not forever,
[35:55] but for 40 years. They would wander the
[35:58] desert, unable to find their way out,
[36:00] going in circles. [music] the same
[36:02] generation that refused to fight, dying
[36:04] off one by one, year by year, until none
[36:07] of them remained. [music] The narrations
[36:09] describe something almost supernatural
[36:11] about their wandering. They would walk
[36:13] all day toward what they thought was the
[36:15] exit. And at sunset, [music] they would
[36:17] find themselves exactly where they had
[36:19] started, a divine maze, a cosmic timeout
[36:23] for a people who were not yet ready to
[36:25] receive what they had been promised. And
[36:27] in those 40 years, Harun Alisam died.
[36:30] And Musa Alisam himself died within
[36:33] sight of the promised land close enough
[36:35] that he could see it but unable to
[36:37] enter. The generation that had been
[36:39] shaped by Fyon's slavery that had been
[36:42] broken by Samir's fitnner was not going
[36:44] to be the generation that inherited the
[36:46] Holy Land. That was going to be their
[36:48] children. children who had grown up in
[36:50] freedom, who had no memory of bowing to
[36:53] a pharaoh, [music] who had been formed
[36:54] entirely by the desert and the Torah and
[36:57] the daily miracles of divine provision.
[36:59] That generation was going to be
[37:01] different. And 40 years later, that
[37:03] generation led by Yushaunis
[37:06] entered the Holy Land and took it. Okay,
[37:09] we've been through a lot together
[37:10] [music] in this story. So let me bring
[37:12] it all home because I think there are
[37:14] things here that are deeply urgently
[37:17] relevant to the moment we are living in
[37:18] right now. The first thing Musa Alisam
[37:22] grew up in Fan's palace, the worst
[37:24] environment imaginable. A man who
[37:26] literally claimed to be God surrounding
[37:28] this child with luxury and polytheism
[37:30] and absolute arrogance. And Musa Alisam
[37:34] came out of that environment as one of
[37:36] the five greatest prophets who ever
[37:37] lived. Ulzam possessing the highest
[37:41] resolve. Samir grew up in a cave fed by
[37:43] Gibriel Alleis Salam himself. The best
[37:46] environment imaginable, pure,
[37:48] miraculous, surrounded by the presence
[37:50] of the divine. And Samir came out of
[37:53] that environment as one of the most
[37:54] destructive forces in his community's
[37:57] history. If you think that environment
[37:59] alone determines a person's spiritual
[38:01] outcome, [music] the Quran has given you
[38:03] two case studies that directly
[38:04] contradict that assumption. What is the
[38:07] difference? The difference is what is in
[38:09] the heart. The submission, the
[38:11] surrender, the genuine turning of the
[38:13] self toward Allah rather than toward the
[38:15] self's own desires. You can be in the
[38:18] worst circumstances and find Allah. You
[38:20] can be surrounded by the most
[38:22] extraordinary spiritual gifts and turn
[38:24] your back on Allah. The determining
[38:26] factor is not what is outside you. It is
[38:29] what you do with what is inside you. The
[38:31] second thing, Samir's downfall started
[38:34] with one specific thing. I saw what they
[38:36] did not see. [music] He had an ability
[38:38] others lacked. And instead of making him
[38:41] humble, instead of making him realize
[38:44] that this ability came from Allah and
[38:46] therefore should be directed toward
[38:48] Allah, it made him feel superior to
[38:50] everyone around him. It made him feel
[38:52] like normal rules didn't apply to him.
[38:55] It made him think that because he could
[38:57] see more, he could also decide more,
[39:00] override more, know better than the
[39:02] profit that was sent to his community.
[39:04] Spiritual arrogance is one of the most
[39:06] subtle and dangerous forms of pride
[39:08] there is because it wears the face of
[39:11] insight and knowledge. The person
[39:13] doesn't think they're being arrogant.
[39:15] They think they're being perceptive.
[39:17] They think they can see what others
[39:18] can't understand what others can't
[39:20] grasp. And Shayan exploits this with
[39:23] absolutely surgical precision. If you
[39:25] ever find yourself thinking that you
[39:27] understand Islam better than the
[39:28] scholars, better than the tradition,
[39:31] better than the established principles
[39:32] of the dean, that your personal
[39:34] spiritual experience or your personal
[39:36] reasoning gives you permission to go
[39:38] outside those boundaries, please hear
[39:40] the echo of Samir's voice in that
[39:42] thinking. I saw what they did not see.
[39:45] The third thing, the punishment of
[39:47] Lameisa, no contact, is worth [music]
[39:50] sitting with. Samir wanted the crowd. He
[39:53] wanted to be at the center of things,
[39:54] [music] to be the indispensable one, to
[39:56] be surrounded by people who needed him
[39:59] and admired him and credited him with
[40:01] their [music] spiritual experience. And
[40:03] Allah removed exactly that, every single
[40:06] part of it. He ended his days alone in
[40:08] the desert, running from the sound of
[40:10] approaching footsteps, crying out in
[40:12] terror when anyone got close. Allah
[40:15] Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has an extraordinary
[40:17] way of making the punishment fit the
[40:19] crime. What you sought in the wrong way
[40:21] becomes the exact thing you are denied.
[40:24] Samiri sought connection through
[40:25] deception and he was cut off from all
[40:28] connection. Bani Israel sought a visible
[40:30] God they could see and touch and they
[40:33] lost access to the unseen mercy that had
[40:35] been protecting them all along. There is
[40:37] a pattern here that shows up again and
[40:39] again in the Quran. What we pursue
[40:41] outside of Allah we lose. What we seek
[40:43] from Allah directly even in the most
[40:45] impossible circumstances we find. The
[40:48] fourth thing, Bani Israel didn't worship
[40:51] the golden calf because they were
[40:52] stupid. They weren't stupid. They had
[40:55] seen miracles that most human beings
[40:56] never see. They knew the truth. But
[40:59] there was something in them deep in the
[41:01] subconscious built up over generations
[41:04] that craved something visible, something
[41:06] tangible, something that felt present in
[41:09] a physical concrete way. And we are not
[41:11] different from them in this regard. We
[41:13] live in a time saturated with golden
[41:15] calves. They don't look like gold
[41:17] [music] statues. They look like follower
[41:19] counts and bank balances and the
[41:21] validation of strangers online. They
[41:23] look like ideologies that promise if you
[41:25] just organize society in the right way,
[41:28] everything will be fine. They look like
[41:30] celebrities and influencers and public
[41:32] figures [music] who are treated with a
[41:34] kind of reverence that belongs only to
[41:36] Allah. They look like our own desires
[41:39] and ambitions [music] dressed up in the
[41:41] language of authenticity and
[41:42] self-actualization.
[41:44] The psychology that fell for the golden
[41:46] calf is alive and well in every one of
[41:47] us. The form has changed. The
[41:50] vulnerability hasn't. The test of every
[41:52] generation is the same test. Will you be
[41:54] satisfied with the invisible God, the
[41:57] one you cannot put in a frame and point
[41:59] to and show off to your neighbors? Or do
[42:02] you need something you can hold in your
[42:04] hand? The fifth thing, the 40 years in
[42:06] the desert were not a punishment in the
[42:08] sense of meaningless suffering. They
[42:11] were a formation. The generation that
[42:13] came out of Egypt could not enter the
[42:14] promised land. Not because they were bad
[42:17] people across the board, but because
[42:19] what Egypt had done to their minds and
[42:21] hearts made them structurally incapable
[42:24] of building and sustaining the kind of
[42:26] community Allah wanted Bani Israel to
[42:29] become that had to die with them. Their
[42:32] children born free, formed in the open
[42:34] air of the desert, shaped by the Torah
[42:37] and the hardship of the wandering.
[42:39] [music] They could do what their parents
[42:40] couldn't. There are things in us that
[42:42] were built by the cultures and
[42:44] experiences we grew up in that are not
[42:46] compatible with the life Allah is
[42:49] calling us toward. And some of those
[42:51] things don't get fixed in a week or a
[42:53] month or a year. Some of them take a
[42:55] generation. Some of them require the
[42:57] patient, disciplined work of building
[42:59] something entirely different in
[43:01] ourselves. [music] Not improving what's
[43:03] there, but replacing it with something
[43:05] new. The Quran tells us about Bunni
[43:07] Israel not to make us feel superior to
[43:10] them. It tells us about them because we
[43:12] are them. Every pattern described in
[43:14] their story is a live wire running
[43:16] through the ummah today and through each
[43:18] of our individual lives. The question is
[43:21] whether we are paying attention. I
[43:23] started this video by asking you a
[43:25] question. What if the person raised by
[43:27] the greatest angel in creation turned
[43:30] out to be one of the greatest sources of
[43:31] destruction his community ever faced?
[43:34] Now you know the story. Now you know the
[43:36] answer isn't a coincidence or a paradox.
[43:38] It's a [music] principle. The gifts you
[43:40] are given, intelligence, perception,
[43:43] skill, opportunity, spiritual
[43:45] experiences, knowledge, [music] none of
[43:47] them save you on their own. They can
[43:49] become the very things that destroy you
[43:51] if your heart is not genuinely,
[43:53] consistently, humbly oriented toward the
[43:56] one who gave them to you. And the
[43:58] circumstances you are placed in, whether
[44:00] they look like Musa Alleis Salam's
[44:03] palace or Samir's cave or Barney
[44:05] Israel's desert wandering, none of them
[44:07] doom you on their own either. The worst
[44:10] circumstances in the world cannot
[44:11] prevent a heart that is truly turned
[44:13] toward Allah from finding its way home.
[44:16] This is the huda, the guidance that the
[44:18] Quran offers, not just information about
[44:21] the past, a mirror in which we can see
[44:23] ourselves. [music] And what we do with
[44:25] what we see in that mirror is, as it
[44:27] always has been, entirely [music] up to
[44:29] us.