How Yusuf (AS) Led With Integrity | From Trial to Triumph | Ep. 16

How Yusuf (AS) Led With Integrity | From Trial to Triumph | Ep. 16

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله رب العالمين والعاقبة للمتقين والصلاة والسلام على أشرف الأنبياء والمرسلين سيدنا محمد النبي الأمين الذي يُسمى مكتوباً في الإنجيل والتوراة، أما بعد

We continue from ayah number 59. We'll just step back one more verse to ayah 58, where the passage begins.

The Brothers of Yusuf Enter Egypt

Allah says the brothers of Yusuf entered upon him and he recognized them, whilst they did not recognize who Yusuf alayhi salam was. We highlighted — for obvious reasons — that they weren't able to recognize Yusuf alayhi salam because of the fact that he's much different, and not just in his age but also his position. He's also covered with the clothing and the helmet of a king and a treasurer, so it's difficult to recognize who it is behind the garb. But primarily, simply because how could a person who was thrown into a well become the king and the treasurer of Egypt? That is something which is far-fetched.

And then when he جَهَّزَهُمْ — he fulfilled their need. So they came with 11 camels. 11 camels was for 11 siblings, because Yusuf alayhi salam is obviously the 12th. So they had 11 camels and each one was fulfilled — in the 11th one, Yusuf alayhi salam didn't fill it. The word جَهَّزَ means to give whatever the needs of that person are. Sometimes this word جَهَّزَ is used to give someone a gift at their wedding, a need that they have. جَهَّزَهُم بِجَهَازِهِمْ — he fulfilled the need of food that they had, obviously due to this famine that had touched all throughout Egypt and beyond that as well, in the greater region of Sham.

So when he fulfilled their part — which was 10 camel loads — the 11th camel sat empty. And they said, "Well, the 11th one as well is for our younger brother." And they mentioned that we're actually 12 brothers, and 11 of us remain. "Our younger brother — one day he was strolling around and he got lost. He never came back." — as if he never came back for that reason. And obviously they're referring to Yusuf alayhi salam.

So he says to them: "Well, why is your younger brother not with us? I can't give you his share unless he's with you. You have to be able to prove that you have dependents in order to be able to secure a stipend. You can't just say that you have dependents and based on that receive something from the government. If he's not here, I can't give it to you on his behalf."

So he says: "In order for you to receive the share for Binyamin — your brother from your father" — and I mentioned this last time around as well, that Binyamin and Yusuf — their mothers were different from the other 10 brothers. Yaqub alayhi salam was their father but their mothers were different. So he says: "Bring me your brother from your father's side, because he's not your brother from your mother's side." It's mentioned in Tafsir al-Razi that even by that subtle statement — "bring me your brother from your father's side" — the brothers could have figured out that this was Yusuf, because they never mentioned that they were brothers from the father's side and the mothers were separate. But he kind of signaled towards: "Bring me the brother from the father's side who is different, because he's actually my full brother and he never tried to harm me. So bring me that one. And if you bring him, I'll fulfill his share as well."

The word وَفَاء in Arabic means not just to complete, but to do more than what the other person expects from you — وَفَاء. So he says: "I'm filling your baskets, your camels, your packets. If you bring me your brother, I'll also give it for him."

"And I am the best of those who can give you whatever you came for."

The brothers, in response to this, said: "You know, a long time ago we had this issue with our father and our younger brother Yusuf. He was with us and a wolf ate him. And when the wolf ate him, our father lost trust in us. So this time around, when we tried to bring Binyamin, our father didn't let us bring Binyamin." So they're narrating the story to Yusuf — of which he is obviously the main character — and they're saying, "It wasn't our fault, this happened, but our father won't trust us with Binyamin because we already had this situation with Yusuf."

And then he says to them — Yusuf alayhi salam says to them: "Well, look, I'm not going to give you the 11th share. Actually, I don't even know if I can trust you guys." He says:

"Your language is different than our language. Your way of dressing is different than our way of dressing. Your way of going about things is different than the way that we go about things in Egypt. You're from Kena'an, you're from Lebanon or Palestine. You're very different than us — maybe you guys are actually just spies."

"So look, if you're going to keep trying to go back and forth with me, I'll take this back as well. So go back and tell your father that the only way you're getting the 11th share is if I'm able to see Binyamin."

Now Yusuf alayhi salam obviously could have trusted the 10 brothers and gave them the share of Binyamin, but there is also a personal kind of interest — of being able to see his brother after all these years. So he goes ahead and says:

"If you don't come back with him, then I won't give you his share. Rather, forget about it — just don't come back. If you don't come back with him, don't come back at all, because if you don't come back with him there's nothing that I have for you."

The Brothers' Promise and Return to Their Father

So the brothers respond, and this is Yusuf alayhi salam attempting to finally be reunited with someone from his family:

They say: "We will do our best to convince our father to allow our brother to come with us. We will do our best." The word that is used here is similar to the word that was used earlier in the surah, when Yusuf alayhi salam was seduced and enticed — the same word, different context. Same word, رَاوَدَ — سَنُرَاوِدُ — but different context. Over there it had a negative connotation; over here it actually holds a positive connotation. سَنُرَاوِدُ عَنْهُ أَبَاهُ — "We will do our best to convince our father to let Binyamin come with us."

The word رَاوَدَ is from the root of إِرَادَة, which means to make intention, but it holds a meaning of hyperbole — that we will do everything within our power, like how she did to Yusuf: she did everything in her power to attempt to entice him to come to her. So they are saying here: "We will do everything in our power to convince our father to allow Binyamin to come with us."

Yusuf Returns Their Money

So whilst they are preparing to leave, he tells the workers that work for him — the word فِتْيَان or فَتَى that are used in the Quran are primarily used for workers — so he says to the workers of the royal palace: اجْعَلُوا بِضَاعَتَهُمْ فِي رِحَالِهِمْ — "Place their wealth and their money back in their bags." Put their money that they brought back.

Again as a reminder — in these seven years, it wasn't as if the community lost their money, but they lost the power to buy anything because there was nothing in the market to buy. When a famine hits, it's not that people lose their wealth, it's that their wealth is of no benefit because there is nothing to buy. Sometimes you hear about stories of even people in Gaza, or other countries, or Sudan, that they have money but there is no food coming in that they can buy — this is a blockade, as we've seen multiple times in our lifetimes already. So the famine hit the entire region from Egypt all the way to Palestine. People had money but they had nothing to buy — there was nothing in the marketplace.

So they brought their money. And in Islam as well, it becomes haram in that moment to raise the price of your product. We can't be advantageous of people's difficulties. Just because there is a famine, it doesn't mean that now we can raise the price of crops or raise the price of rice. In our beautiful tradition, when we learn about the principles of fiqh, they talk about — for example, during the time of warfare, you can't increase the price of weaponry; during the time of a pandemic, you can't increase the price of medicine — because now people have a need toward it. It becomes haram to increase the price beyond what it was before this situation took place. So Yusuf alayhi salam, in the government, is selling this but at a price that is reasonable.

So he returns their money back in their bags. Now — the first question here: did he return the money that belonged to them, or did he return money that belonged to himself? Because technically, the money that he received from the brothers, he doesn't own it — this money belongs to the government, it belongs to the institution. So the mufassirun highlight that the money that he returned was actually his own money.

It's very easy to be generous with someone else's money. It becomes more challenging to be generous with your own money. Sometimes you have the card from the company or the institution or your workplace, and your workplace has given you an amount that you can spend on lunch and dinner, and then you become very generous with it. But now imagine if that money was your money — how would you spend it in that case? So it's not like he returned the money of the institution to the brothers — even though perhaps he could have done so, because he is the person responsible for it — no, he returned money that was from his own wealth, not from the wealth of the institution and the government, because that's not his money.

As youngsters sometimes — people are very comfortable being generous with the credit card that their parents gave them. Now when they have their own money, it becomes very difficult to buy even a coffee for someone else. So this is not someone else's money that he is being generous with.

لَعَلَّهُمْ يَعْرِفُونَهَا — He returned the money back to them so that they could recognize. Recognize what? This is left open. So Imam al-Qurtubi rahimahullah highlights that it could be one of two things that they could recognize:

The first is that this person — Yusuf alayhi salam — is a very genuine, generous person. So he is not forcing them to go back and bring Binyamin because he is being difficult, but he is doing it because that is the general principle, and he is a good person. So if they recognize that he is a good person, then they will come back to him and bring Binyamin.

The second — which is the most common and most often-mentioned opinion — is that he put the money back so they could recognize that Yusuf alayhi salam understood that his brothers don't have that much money. So he put their money back so that they could recognize that they still have money to buy more with, because they were coming from a family that was somewhat impoverished. That money that they got back was the only way they could actually return to Egypt to purchase more. So therefore, he put the money back in their bags.

The Brothers Return to Their Father

"O father, a share of ours was held from us. We were given a certain amount, but there was still a share that we were not given because Binyamin wasn't with us. So father, send Binyamin with us so that we can receive the measurement for him — we can receive the camel load that is written for him on his name. And O father, وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ — we will surely protect him."

Now this sounds — for those who remember the earlier story — very similar to the type of words that were used when they asked for Yusuf to come with them as well. Same words: أَرْسِلْهُ مَعَنَا, وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ, وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَنَاصِحُونَ — "O father, we will protect him, we will be his caretakers, we will be his guardians. Send Yusuf with us." So the father, after all these years, is hearing the brothers make a very similar request.

Yaqub's Response: Grief, Hope, and Trust in Allah

So Yaqub alayhi salam — he says — humans are humans, and pain is pain. Religiosity does not remove the pain of people's hearts. Grief is a price that we pay for love. If you love someone, then you're preparing yourself to grieve — and that's the norm of life, that's the price we pay to love. And if we don't love, we don't grieve. And that's not a life that human beings are supposed to be living.

We come from the root letters of أُنْس, which means within our nature we require to be loved and to love. And when a person is stripped of that emotion — and they're not shown love and they don't have the ability to express their love correctly — then the nature of being a human is slowly withered away from them, and now they become وَحْش — وَحْشَة. Often times you find youngsters or children that grow older and they have their moments in their journey where they're acting out or acting differently, and often times it's because they weren't shown the love that they needed or they weren't given the space to express their own love.

The harshest punishment that we have is solitary confinement, which takes a person away from their most dominant feature — of being around people, being with people, being within people. This is أُنْسِيَّة. So we're expected to love. This is why the Prophet ﷺ highlights the qualities of people who love for the sake of Allah, because we're going to love anyway. And if we lose our أُنْس — the opposite of أُنْس, which means compassion and love and some level of intimacy, the opposite of it is وَحْشَة, which is the common trait of وُحُوش. Animals have intelligence. Allah did not define human beings to be different than animals because of our intelligence. Allah defined us to be different because of how we process it. But animals have intelligence too — how else would they know how to eat, drink, and survive in the wild? They have intelligence. But there is وَحْش — their animalistic nature is dominant over their intelligence. But human beings have أُنْس — they don't have وَحْشَة.

This is why when a person is taken away from having compassion, they start getting angry very quickly, start getting very agitated, and that's a level of وَحْشَة — they're always angry, they always respond too quickly.

(Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2012)

Haste is from Shaytan. And if a person seeks أُنْس from people, you will always feel that they will let you down. We truly find this within people, but within our relationship with Allah, we find perfect fulfillment.

So grief is a price that we pay for love. And he says:

He hasn't forgotten what happened 40 years ago. He hasn't forgotten. Ask someone who lost a loved one years ago — till today it's as if it was yesterday. They can play the day out to you, moment by moment, what they were doing, what was happening around them. This is the nature of loss, even when a person attempts to conceal it and to confine it. It still lives within a space in their heart.

So the father says: "Do you want me to trust you with Binyamin the same way I trusted you with his brother earlier on in our lives?" So he kind of throws that in there. "Last time, what happened?" And then he says: فَاللَّهُ خَيْرٌ حَافِظًا — Allah is the greatest protector. حَسْبُنَا اللَّهُ وَنِعْمَ الْوَكِيلُ، فَنِعْمَ الْمَوْلَىٰ وَنِعْمَ النَّصِيرُ — Allah is the greatest protector. وَهُوَ أَرْحَمُ الرَّاحِمِينَ — and He is the Most Merciful of those who show mercy.

And in this, Yaqub alayhi salam says two things. The first thing he said was: Allah is the greatest protector. The second thing he says is that Allah is the most merciful of those who show mercy.

The first statement is attributed to his hope and his fatherly intuition — that Yusuf was still being protected by Allah. "Should I trust you the way that I trusted you with Yusuf? You didn't take care of him, but my hope is that Allah is protecting him." فَاللَّهُ خَيْرٌ حَافِظًا. So he still had this hope and this intuition, this hunch, that Yusuf was alive.

And number two — the second part of this ayah — وَهُوَ أَرْحَمُ الرَّاحِمِينَ — which is a direct signal to the brothers that: "You still have time for tawbah. Even though you messed up then, you still have time for tawbah."

The Discovery of the Returned Money

When they opened their bags, their sacks, their baskets, they find that their money was returned to them. They say: "O father, this is what we were seeking! This is our money that was returned to us."

Now if this money wasn't returned to them, they wouldn't be able to return to Egypt right away because they would have to work to earn the money and then go back. So there was no reason for them to negotiate with their father when the father said, "I'm not sending Binyamin with you." But when the money was returned to them, they said:

"O father, we will go back to Yusuf — or this king, they don't know his name — and we will go ahead and secure the sustenance for our family. نَمِيرُ means to secure the money and the food for our family. وَنَحْفَظُ أَخَانَا — we will constantly be on the lookout to protect Binyamin. وَنَزْدَادُ كَيْلَ بَعِيرٍ — and we will be able to increase one more camel load, because Binyamin will also be with us. ذَٰلِكَ كَيْلٌ يَسِيرٌ — O father, that is a very easy way to make profit. All he needs to do is show up, and if he shows up the treasurer will give us his share. We don't have to do anything special, just allow Binyamin to come."

Yaqub's Covenant: A Lesson in Wisdom and Trust

He says: "I swear by Allah, I will not send him with you unless you make a covenant to Allah."

Look — human beings are responsible to forgive, but human beings are also responsible not to get caught in the same situation multiple times. Being naive is not a sign of good character. Naivety is not a sign of good character. Forgiveness is — but Yaqub alayhi salam understood: "Look what happened the first time. As much as I understand there is qadr and there is a precise decree that takes place, and none of us have the power or the will or the capacity to change it even to the slightest minute moment — I am still responsible to do my due diligence."

لَنْ أُرْسِلَهُ — "I will not send him with you all, because the first time this happened, you lost my son and you gave me your story. But regardless, my son never returned." So this time around, hence the Prophet ﷺ said:

A believer does not get stung from the same hole twice. If it happens to them once, they will be more careful, they will be more cautious the second time. Now it doesn't mean that they don't engage, that they don't forgive, that we shouldn't project our vulnerabilities toward people. Maybe in dealing with so-and-so person we had a bad experience — that doesn't mean that every person like that will be bad. We dealt with so-and-so person and they lied to us or they cheated us in a business transaction — well, that doesn't mean everyone will be the same way. It does require a level of genuineness and sincerity, but at the same time you do become more careful and more cautious.

"The last time I gave you this — I let you drive my car, you hit my car, you scratched it. Now this time I'm not giving you my car. You want to drive — you can drive with me. I'm not giving my car to you." And there's no harm in this. It's not saying that I don't forgive you. It's saying that I forgive you, but I'm not falling in that same ditch twice. And there's a fine balance between the idea of forgiving someone and also being able to trust them again, versus forgiving them and not having that same level of trust.

The condition of forgiving someone is not that you have to trust them again. That's not the condition. If that was the condition, it would be a very lofty goal for people. And even forgetting about what they did is not a condition. If they harmed us, we can still forgive them — and the scars we live with. You don't have to forget about it. The ultimate goal is to forget about it, because that's the highest level of forgiveness. How Allah says: when my slave seeks forgiveness from me:

(Referenced in various narrations of hadith qudsi — see Sunan Ibn Majah, Hadith 3820, and related)

"I forgive this person and I forget about what they did." That is the highest form of forgiveness. But to some degree, that might be difficult for people. So we don't hold back.

Sometimes you can find people who say: "I'm not prepared to forgive you, because I'm not sure if I trust you again. I'm not sure if I'm ready to forget about what you did to me." So for that person, it's important to be able to create these silos or these levels of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not trusting the person again. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you have the exact same relationship. It means that you will give this person their rights, and you will not harbor hate for them, and you will not take revenge for what they did to you on the Day of Judgment — ultimately that's what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is saying: "On the Day of Judgment, I will not be able to come and take your good deeds away from you, because I've already forgiven you."

So he says to them: "Binyamin is not coming with you all حَتَّىٰ تُؤْتُونِ مَوْثِقًا — until you take a covenant, a promise to Allah." They were believers. The children of Yaqub were believers. They made a major mistake. And believers will make mistakes.

Sometimes — and often times, as the month of Ramadan comes by — youngsters, all of us, may struggle with this dual-personality syndrome: "I'm a good person, but I'm also a bad person. I'm a good person — I pray, I fast, I volunteer — but I struggle with my ears, I struggle with my eyes, I struggle with my tongue." That doesn't mean that your goodness doesn't count. It means that it doesn't mean that the good deeds that you're doing — fasting in the month of Ramadan, all of this — are going to waste or are perhaps a sign of hypocrisy. No. It means that we're humans. Everyone has struggles. Everyone has sins. But ultimately a person recognizing that sin and being able to work through it — that is their jihad of their life. That's their struggle.

Some people have different types of addictions and they're challenged by it. That doesn't mean that they're not good people. It means that Allah is testing them. They can't concede to it, because that's letting Shaytan win. The victory of life — they can't just bow down to it. Allah has given us قُوَّة, Allah has given us strength to fight it. But the challenge that we experience doesn't remove the sweetness of our faith. We're still good people.

These were good people — they made a mistake. If cancel culture was real, then they would never be forgiven. How do you forgive someone who took away your most beloved son from you? How do you forgive someone who maintained a lie for 60 years? This is not something which is normal to forgive someone of this nature. But the Qur'an is a way of life for every situation. The Qur'an doesn't simply speak to us based upon what we see to be fair — the Qur'an decides what is fair. This is fair. If Allah chose to forgive them, that means Allah is being fair, Allah is being forgiving.

So people will make mistakes. We should never be happy at people's downfall. We see people's hardships, their difficulties, their mistakes being exposed in the community, and sometimes we're actually happy for their downfall. How can one be happy for someone's downfall as a believer? How can we be happy about them having an addiction?

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 13; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 45)

You love your brothers, you love your sisters, like you love yourself. And one can't reach that if — would we ever imagine: if this person was your blood brother, your blood sister, your son, your daughter, your siblings, your spouse? You never want to be happy for someone's downfall.

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 2443)

The Prophet ﷺ says: "Help your brother if he is the oppressor or if he is the oppressed." And the Sahaba say: "Ya Rasulullah, the oppressed makes sense — we know how to help the oppressed. How do we help the oppressor?" And the Prophet ﷺ says: "You help him stop doing what he is doing. You do whatever you can to prevent him from increasing in that oppression." But there is still the idea of nasiha for this person. We don't count people out. People have goodness. Allah forgave someone for feeding a dog.

Not that we want to be in a situation where we are struggling with sins — not that we think it's okay for this to happen — but if we have people in our spaces that are struggling, our job is not to count them out. If that was the case, we won't have redemption for the brothers of Yusuf.

Nonetheless — "You make this covenant. You are believers. I am trusting you if you make a promise upon Allah, because I know you believe in Allah." Even the people who don't pray, don't fast, don't do anything — they still somehow say Wallahi. Even non-Muslims say Wallahi. Because there is this concept — we still have an understanding of who Allah is.

So after this covenant is taken, he says: "The promise you are going to make to Allah is you will bring Binyamin back to me, unless you are raided and overwhelmed by bandits and highway robbers, or something that overwhelms you that you have no choice in." In other words, in simple words: "If you return and he doesn't return, I don't want you back. He has to come back to me, unless all of you are killed — then you have no choice."

Once they gave their promise to their father through Allah, Yaqub said: "Allah was present for us as the wakil when you made this promise. We don't have any papers to sign on this, we don't have anyone else watching us, but Allah is watching us — this is enough for us to know that you made this promise to Allah."

A Father's Wisdom: Enter From Separate Doors

This is really interesting. The father then says: "O my beloved children." يَا بَنِيَّ — يَا بَنِيَّ is how he spoke to Yusuf as well. يَا بَنِيَّ is the plural of it. What's interesting here is that Yaqub — as difficult as this may sound — he didn't change the way he spoke to his other sons that destroyed his life based upon what they did. He still fulfilled his fatherly role of showing them love, respect, and dignity. He still spoke to them with love, even though one could say: "يَا بَنِيَّ — why would you tell these kids who literally caused Yusuf to be taken away from you, why would you say يَا بَنِيَّ to them? Why would you speak to them with so much care?"

And then he does something really interesting — he goes ahead and advises his sons. He says: "When you get to Egypt, do not enter from one door. Your eleven brothers — enter from separate doors." And the obvious reason for this is 'ayn, which is a common theme in the story of Yusuf — it is something of truth.

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 5740; Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2187)

The Prophet ﷺ said: 'Ayn is real. It has power. It can impact people. So he's telling them: "You're eleven beautiful brothers, you're coming in as a pack. If you enter from one door all at one time, you will garner the natural attention of people and people's eyes will start being fixated on you while you're in Egypt, and they might harm you or they might give you 'ayn. So don't present yourself in a situation where you're asking for harm to come your way."

Now in our time, the easiest way to reflect this concept is: how much we present our lives on social media. A person receives the gifts that they receive — whether it's marriage, children, jobs, finance, vacation — how much should I share? And we should share based upon how much وِرْد we have and how much we recite to protect ourselves. If my recitation is weak and my recitation of Surah Yasin is incomplete, and my recitation of the مُعَوِّذَتَيْن — سُورَةُ الْفَلَقِ and سُورَةُ النَّاسِ — is kind of absent, then at that point you shouldn't be sharing anything because you have no protective layer. Because the protective layer is Qur'an. Allah uses it as protection. The Prophet ﷺ was given these surahs to seek protection from these types of evil.

And sometimes the people who are giving 'ayn are not evil, and they may not even be ill-intended — but it just happens. And it may even be that it happens with people who love you. This is why we're always taught that when we see something that we like, not just to say mashallah but also to add:

All of this comes from Allah. The idea of that is to not be impressed by the creation — we're impressed by Allah. But at the receiving end: why accelerate, or rather why allow people who we don't know to see snippets of our life, that we know are only snippets, that may then cause within them a reaction that will harm us or our families? Don't do it.

لَا تَدْخُلُوا مِن بَابٍ وَاحِدٍ — Don't enter from one room, don't enter from one door, don't drive in this space with all your cars at one time. Be careful with it. وَادْخُلُوا مِنْ أَبْوَابٍ مُّتَفَرِّقَةٍ — Enter from separate doors.

The Father Never Abandoned His Role

That was the first point. The second point — this is Yaqub speaking to his sons who attempted to harm Yusuf, meaning these sons of his were the cause of his greatest pain in life. But despite that, his responsibility as a father isn't removed from him. Check this out: if someone who you have a relationship with deals with you in a certain way, that doesn't dismiss the liability Allah has placed upon you and how you're supposed to deal with him.

If you're the father, you're the mother, you're the older sibling — whatever that relationship looks like — it's not reciprocal. I still have to fulfill my side of the bargain. They caused me great pain, but I'm still the father and my job is still to be the father to them that I'm supposed to be, to the best of my ability. And hence he's giving them advice because he's still playing the fatherly role.

How often someone does something to us, and they still have a حَقّ upon us, they still have rights upon us, but we dismiss their rights based upon how they treated us. That right that they have upon us wasn't built upon them being good to us. That right that they have upon us was built upon Allah putting it there — within relationships of family, relatives, صِلَةُ الرَّحِم, and so on and so forth. So he still advises them.

He said: "Obviously, no one can protect you and no one can save you. Only Allah has power to protect. الْحُكْمُ إِلَّا لِلَّهِ — every decision is only for Allah. عَلَيْهِ تَوَكَّلْتُ — upon Him we trust. وَعَلَيْهِ فَلْيَتَوَكَّلِ الْمُتَوَكِّلُونَ — and the people who have tawakkul also rely upon Allah."

The Brothers Return to Egypt

Now, based upon this, they go back to Egypt and they enter the way that their father told them to enter — good sons. They were not disobedient in every moment of their life. They were disobedient in one moment — that was a major moment — but it wasn't as if their entire lives they were disobeying their father. So they did what their father said, and they returned to Egypt. And this is their second time returning to Egypt, and this time they come back with Binyamin.

And inshallah, we'll continue from what happens when Yusuf alayhi salam sees Binyamin. One of my favorite parts of the story is when Yusuf alayhi salam, after all these years, finally is reunited with Binyamin, and the relationship that they cultivated afterwards as well.

Summary of Lessons

But in these few verses, we recognize a few things. Number one — just to summarize — Yusuf alayhi salam had deep love for Binyamin. He could have given them the camel load if he wanted, but he made sure that they brought Binyamin back, and he also facilitated that return based upon what was in his capacity — i.e., he gave the money back to them.

Lastly, Yaqub alayhi salam never lost trust in Allah. Even when they were asking about Binyamin going, he responded by saying: "Allah is the protector, you are not the protector of Yusuf." And he hints to them: "Even though a long time has passed, Allah is أَرْحَمُ الرَّاحِمِينَ — you can still seek forgiveness."

Lastly — the father never took away and removed the role that Allah had placed upon his shoulders. Our relationships with people and the way that we respond to them is not reliant upon how they deal with us — it is reliant upon the rights that Allah has placed upon them in our lives. So whether or not they fulfilled their side of the bargain, we still have a responsibility to uphold the rights that Allah has given. Even within relationships like spouses and siblings — the right that Allah has given them is still something that is فَرْض upon me to fulfill. And I still have to fulfill that in order for me not to be sinful. Because if I dismiss it, then just like how this person is sinful for taking away from my rights, now I also become sinful.

This is what the Prophet ﷺ says:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 5991)

There is no such thing as goodness through being reciprocal. That's not goodness — that's called being average. Goodness is when someone harms you but you do good back to them. And this is in the context of fulfilling the ties of kinship with families and relatives. So this idea that I have to still play my role despite the way this person treated me is also a test from Allah, which can be very difficult.

And last but not least — he heads toward the idea of protecting yourself. Not displaying your blessings to the point that the blessing itself becomes a cause of harm in your life. Displaying it within the means that you can control — and who can see it. And the more you display it, the more eyes that see it, the more potential of someone giving 'ayn. And if we're comfortable with it, that means that we have a very strong layer of protection. We're reciting our daily tilawat, we're doing our daily adhkar, we're reciting our Surah Yasin, we're doing all of the precautionary means to protect ourselves — which we should be doing anyway. But if I'm going to share more, I best believe that my level of protecting myself should increase.

And hence they say that if you're in the eyes of people more often — public figures, whose exposure toward people is more than others — then your ability to protect yourself through the Qur'an has to be more. You can't miss your Surah Yasin. I remember when we finished our studies, our teacher said to us: "Till today — whoever recites their du'as of ta'awwudh, or their three Quls, or Ayatul Kursi correctly after every salah, as the Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sunan al-Nasa'i, Hadith 9928; also referenced in related narrations in al-Tabarani)

Whoever recites Ayatul Kursi in the morning and the evening — there's nothing in this world that can harm them. If you missed it before, it's one thing. But now if you miss it, you're in danger, because now there are more eyes and more people who might not want to harm you but just might not want to see you excelling in goodness."

So at every level of our life, we must increase the ta'awwudh, the du'as of protection — such as Ayatul Kursi, such as the Quls, such as Surah Yasin — as much as we can. Ultimately, all of these are ways to create protective layers between 'ayn, hasad, magic, and evil things that people are actively doing. So if we don't protect ourselves, we may be a recipient. May Allah protect us all.

So Yaqub alayhi salam highlighted toward that as well. May Allah bless you all. Inshallah we'll go ahead and break for class, and inshallah next week — if there's not another snowstorm that hits Michigan — we'll be back at 4 o'clock inshallah. JazakAllah Khayr.

Assalamu Alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.