Am I a Mumim

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honour of the Prophets and Messengers. Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions. Many peace and blessings be upon them. And after that, my dear respected brothers and elders, it is a great pleasure and honour to be here in your mosque. I have been to Albany several times, but first time here. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la cause this evening to be an evening of khair and barakah for all of us. And to make it a means of guidance for me and for all of us. The topic of my lecture is, Am I a Momin? Am I a Momin? Now, the purpose of Islam, the purpose of all the ulum of Islam, whether you are studying the Quran al-Karim, whether you are studying the Hadith and Nabawiya Sharif, whether you are studying Fiqh, anything, the purpose of all of that is only one. And that is to connect with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Because Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la said, وَمَا خَلَطْتُ الْجِنَّ وَالْإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُوهُ Allah said, we have not created the jinn and the inns, the humans, for anything except our Ibadah. The only purpose, the only reason that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la created us and created the jinn is to worship Him. And as Imam Ghazali Rahmatullah Ali said, you cannot worship the one you don't know. Therefore, knowing Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is not only critical, but it is essential for us to be able to worship Him. When we worship Allah, we are not worshipping some mythology, we are not worshipping somebody we don't know, we are not worshipping some mystery. The question is, do we know Allah? Do we know Allah? Who is Allah? And that is the reason why Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la gave us a framework. He gave us a metric. He gave us a way of measuring the strength and the presence and the strength of our Iman. So when I say, am I a moment? The question you should ask is, how do I know that? How can I know if I am a moment or not? And my answer is, to know if you are a moment, for me to know if I am a moment, I don't need to ask anybody. I do not need to ask anybody. Because the Qur'an-ul-Karim gives me and gives you a metric. A way of checking. Now that way of checking, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la mentioned in Surah Al-Anfal, I seek refuge with Allah from the accursed Satan. In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. Indeed, the believers are those who, when Allah is mentioned, their hearts are filled with joy. And when the verses are recited to them, their faith increases. And they rely on their Lord. Those who perform the prayer and spend from what We have provided for them. These are the true believers. They have degrees with their Lord, forgiveness and noble provision. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la gave us a metric. And that metric consists of five things. Three of them are internal and two of them are visible, external. The first thing that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la said is, They are the Momineen. Verily these people are the Momineen, the believers. Innamal Muminun. Manhu. Who are they? Alladheena Yazkuroona Allah. No. Innamal Muminun. Idhaa Dhukira Allahu Wajilat Qulubhu. When the Dhikr of Allah comes before them, when the mention of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la comes before them, their hearts shiver with the glory and majesty of Allah. So first, self-test. What happens to me, when the name of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is mentioned before me? What happens? Does something happen? What happens to me when the name of Allah is mentioned before me? So let us do that. Let us test that. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la introduced Himself. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la said, Allah is the One who is the All-Living, the All-Sustaining. No sleep or sleep can take Him. He has all that is in the heavens and all that is on the earth. Who is He who can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is before them and what is after them. And they do not have any knowledge except what He wills. And the throne of the heavens and the earth is wide. And their preservation is not in vain. And He is the Most High, the Most Great. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la mentioned His sifat and His awsakr in ayat al-kursi which we know. I know we recite ayat al-kursi in the morning, we recite ayat al-kursi in the night, because this is part of our azkar of the morning and the night. And we recite ayat al-kursi for sawab, we recite ayat al-kursi for protection. Do we understand ayat al-kursi? All of this is true. It is a good thing. We should do all this. I am not against all that. We should do it. It is sunnah. But Allah is introducing Himself. After reading ayat al-kursi, after listening to ayat al-kursi, after reciting ayat al-kursi, can you say, can I say, Alhamdulillah, I know Allah? Can we say that? If you can say that, Alhamdulillah. If you cannot say it, then ask the question, why not? And if you say, yes, I know Allah, then what is the visible result of that in your and my life? That is the point. The whole point is, if you know something, then, for example, if you say, I know that drinking Coca-Cola is bad for my health, I know this, then what will you do? Drink Coca-Cola. Huh? No. No? No, seriously. I mean, if you know something, if it is good, you will do it. If it is bad, you won't do it. If you say, no, I know this, but I'm still doing it, then it doesn't make sense. So do I know Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala? If I know Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, how has it changed my life? If I know that this is my Rabb, Jalla Jalaluhu, this is the one who I just worshipped in Salatul Baghrib, what is the result on my heart? Allah is talking about the Qalb. Fee Qulubihim Wajilat Qulubuhu Allah is saying, check your heart. Is your heart moving? Is something happening in the heart? It's not up here. It's not a question of saying, Ayatul Kursi has got so many, you know, ayin in it and so many this in it, so many, the whole analysis. No, no, no, no, no. He is saying, does it do something here? I give you an example, Taal Allahul Amsal. Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, is above any example. We don't give the example of Allah. But let me give you an example to illustrate. You love your children, right? And say this little child of yours, you love him very much, you love her very much. And somebody mentions the name of the child. Just the name. The child is not there. The child is with the mother somewhere or maybe at home. Just mentions the name of the child. Does it have some effect on your heart? It brings a smile to your face straight away. The minute you mention the name of the child, it brings a smile to your face. Because now you have gone off from here, you are connecting with the child. Oh, my little baby, I need to go home. So when you mention Allah, what happens? What must happen? Say, Ali bin Abi Talib, Abu al-Ana in one of the battles, he got an arrow hit his thigh, and the arrow head went in his face. And the arrow head went inside, and it broke off. So the arrow head is inside his thigh. Naturally, if you got a piece of iron in your body, it's no good for you. So his whole legs got swollen up. It got blue. It would have got gangrenous. So they said to him, you have to cut it, cut it and take it out. Otherwise you will die. The poison will go into your blood. But it was so immensely painful that he would not let anyone touch it. So they said, okay, we will give you something to drink. You will lose consciousness, and then we will operate on you. He said, no, I will not drink anything which is intoxicating. Now what do you do? You can't touch him. He doesn't want to be anesthetized. So they said, you tell us. You tell us. We don't know what to do. This is the problem. If we don't operate on you, we don't want you to die. So tell us what to do. He said, when I stand in Salah, then cut it. He stood in Salah, they did the whole operation. He had no consciousness of that. They cut it, they took it out, they stitched him up. No consciousness. Because he is connected with his . But the rest of the world doesn't matter. The moment he is connected with Allah, that's it. Allah said, when my ayat are recited before them, when they see my signs around them, their iman increases. You live here in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. When you go out in the morning, take a deep breath, of fresh, pure air. Many of us come from countries where people get lung cancer never smoked in their lives. They never looked at a cigarette in their life. They only bit breathing. Only breathing is enough. Not this case here. Pure air. Do we thank Allah? Just air. Just air. In this part of the world, there are beautiful streams. Clean water. You can take the water out of the stream. I have drunk it many times. Drink the water straight out of the stream. No problem. We come from countries where you take water out of a stream and drink, you won't walk 10 feet from there. Within 10 steps, you're gone. I go for a walk every morning in a place called Ashley, Urzaway. Every day, I see deer. Some days I see bear. Today I saw a bald eagle take a fish out of the lake. Yesterday I saw an osprey diving for fish. SubhanAllah. The khudrat of Allah subhanAllah. Every day. Do we thank Allah? Seriously, we need to thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala one by one by one. I tell people make a list. Seriously, do this as an exercise. It's a part of Tasiya wa Tarwiyah. Sit down and make a list of the things that you have to thank Allah for. Your faculties, the environment you live in, the country you live in, your children, your spouses, and so on and so on and so on. Make a long list. And then every day pray tahajjud and in sujood, thank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala one by one by one. Allah said, وَإِن تَعُدُّ نِعْمَةَ اللَّهِ لَا تُحَجُدُ رُحْصُوحَ Allah said, if you try to count my blessings, not even thank,