Do not be termites

Akhlaaq of the Ummati: https://a.co/d/cHdRJkL http://amzn.to/1jwEfTS Video lectures on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH2S9p_j4R8&list=PLhQYGg7P8kb2updYU7o3GHK1EXQSKlByK Video version of this reminder: Auto-generated transcript: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions. Peace be upon him. From now on, my brothers and sisters, I want to talk to you about something extremely important today. Important in terms of character as well as important in terms of how it affects us Muslims, how it affects the Ummah. It's a very critical thing because today we are living in a world where we are oppressed. And which is, we are living in societies where we are full of strife and full of internal conflicts. And the reason for that is very simple, which Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, mentioned in the Quran. If you read Surah Al-Hujurat, which I strongly recommend, all of you must read Surah Al-Hujurat. And memorize Surah Al-Hujurat. Because Surah Al-Hujurat is the Surah of Akhlaq. It is the Surah of manners. It is the Surah of Tarbiyah and Taskiyah. And it is the Surah of manners. It is the Surah of manners. There is a book of mine on that, on the relevant ayat of Surah Al-Hujurat. So read that also. I will put the link to that book in this reminder at the bottom. Among the advice that Allah, peace be upon him, gave us and among what he commanded in Surah Al-Hujurat, Allah, peace be upon him, said, Allah said, Allah said, And then Allah said, If there is any conflict. Allah, peace be upon him, said, Allah said, Allah said, Allah said, I said, Allah said, Resolve conflicts between your brothers. Also in Surah Al-Hujurat, Allah, peace be upon him, strongly prohibited and made haram Ghiva and Namimah. Ghiva is backbiting. It is actually saying something. It is actually saying something about somebody which is negative. They asked Rasulullah, peace be upon him, they said, Ya Rasulullah, but what I am saying is the truth. Right? You might say, I say something negative about my brother, but that is a fact. He is like that. Rasulullah, peace be upon him, said, That is why it is called Ghiva. If you were saying something which was not the case, then that would be, That is slander. The difference between backbiting and slander is, backbiting is to speak something negative, which is actually a fact, in the absence of the brother or sister. And bahutan or slander is to make up something. It is not true, you make it up. Like they did with Maryam Alaihis Salah. That was a slander. They said she got pregnant with some man. Like they made up about our mother, Sayyida Aisha Sindhi, which was slander. It was false. The punishment for that in Islam is 80 lashes. With a whip. 80 lashes and branded as a kazab, as a liar for the rest of your life. And the testimony of that person is not, accepted in a court of law for his life. And it's a very unique punishment because in Islam, the usual rule is that once a punishment has been given, the person is free. For example, the punishment for theft is severance of one hand. But after that, the person is not branded a thief and he should be called a thief and he should not be given a job. And then that's it. That's it. You got caught for theft. You were convicted. Punishment has been applied and that's it. Then you are free to do what you want. Except in this case. In this case, after the punishment or part of the punishment is lifelong. For what? For speaking. Just speaking. Now, Namiwa is not backbiting, but it is what we call in English insinuation. For example, if somebody says, do you know Mr. Bakar? He says, ah, of course ma'am. Tell me about Bakar. I know all about Bakar. The whole world knows about Bakar. So what is the impression you are giving? That here is a man who is so notorious, so bad that everybody knows about him. Oh, him? Ah. Now, if you tell the man, he says, why are you saying negative something about Bakar? I never said anything. I didn't say anything. You did not say anything, but you said everything. Just by your tone. Just by how you imply it. This is called Namiwa. Rasulullah said, the people who do that will get adab in their qabar. For Namiwa. So Reba and Bukhtan and Namiwa, three things which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala warned us about in Surah Al-Hujarati, also warned us about cursing, about bad language. Allah said, how bad it is that you use filthy language after you have accepted Islam, after you have come to Iman. Your tongue recites the Quran and the same tongue is used for bad language. How evil is that? Right? The reason I'm saying that is because these things today are so much a part of our life, so much a part of our society. I remember saying this in one gathering and one of the young people, she said, oh my God, there goes our social life. And sadly, that's a fact. Just mock it. Monitor conversations. The best thing to do is monitor conversations. When you talk among yourself, just consciously think about what are we saying. 90% of the time you are talking about somebody. Somebody, whoever. Either it is somebody you know, someone in the masjid, this is the imam, this is the masjid board, this is the president of the masjid, this is so and so, and all of that commentary is negative. The imam is like this. The president. The president is like that. The masjid board is like this. They are, you know, rigging elections. I got no what I mean. All this stuff is talked. All of it is negative. Or you are talking about some public figures. Yasir Qadhi said this and Umar Suleiman said this and Fulan bin Fulan said this. And he is like this and he is like that. Some public figure, right? Or we are talking about something over which we have no control, which is completely useless, which is we say, oh, in Pakistan, this is what they are doing to Imran Khan. In Egypt, so and so is doing this. And in Saudi Arabia, they are doing this and they should be doing that and they should be. This is our social life. Now, this is the problem. This is the problem. This is like termites. You know what termites are, right? So imagine you have this beautiful, you know, many of these houses here, you see, in West Springfield. If you go further up, if you go to, for example, New Rochelle or if you go to Rhode Island and so on, you have these houses which are maybe 100 years, 200 years old, maybe even older than that. Beautiful wooden houses, beautifully carved wood, very, very beautiful looking houses. Now, imagine termites get into one of those houses. It's all wood. The entire, the frame is wood, the load bearing beams are wood, everything is wood, right? So when termites get into that, you will not see any sign of that, of the termites outside. Until one day, the whole house will collapse on your head. Bum. Collapse. And you say, my God, what happened? Suddenly what happened? Suddenly nothing happened. This was happening for the last God knows how many years. Because termites are not going to collapse. Termites won't eat the house in one day. They take a few years. Now, all those years, nobody noticed that there are termites and it is going on eating and eating and eating until it has completely hollowed everything from inside. All the strength is gone. The whole thing collapses. Now, unfortunately, this is our state as Muslims. We are our own termites. We are the termites which are eating up the structure of the umbrage. We are making things ourselves. You can't just eat a whole砱mah at home with just 2 pieces. This is the termites. It is a kind of a muton, right. Picking up corporation and so on. Also, al, alamuhashubhu pause tuna. your heart, your enthusiasm, everything gets dragged down. This is bad in Gaza, that is bad in Egypt, that is bad in Lebanon, this is bad in Syria, this is bad in Iraq, that is bad in Iran. إِنَّ لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّ لِلْهَجُرِ All these Arab leaders are utterly useless. They are worse than this, worse than that. لَحَوَلَ خُوَطَهِ لَوِلِهِ What is the benefit of this? Tell me. First of all, whether you are right or wrong, Allah only knows. Right? Secondly, even if you are right, let us assume all this is correct. What benefit has it caused? Has it helped you? Has it helped the people on the ground? What has happened? What positive change? Nothing, zero, right? So you might say, all this is fine, what shall we do? Number one, where there is a legal way of donating money, donate money. Number two, even more important than that, is to make dua to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in tahajjud, in sujood. With this total and complete yaqeen that only Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala can change destiny. Nobody else. Right? And number three, stop all this negative talk. When you are sitting in a gathering, the moment somebody opens his mouth about someone, tell him, excuse me, stop. Now, you want to talk about Sheikh Yawar, go to Sheikh Yawar and talk to him to his face. You know where the man is, you know where you can find him. Go, sit with him, talk to him, tell him whatever you want to tell him. Don't tell me. Do not tell me I am not Sheikh Yawar's anybody. Don't talk in this company. Go to Sheikh Yawar. And if Sheikh Yawar is somebody who is, you know, like the king of Saudi Arabia or something, you can't reach him. Don't talk about him at all. Because there is no point. What is the point? You are talking about somebody who you have no control over, who you cannot reach, who you can't talk to, who you can't meet. What's the point in talking? So if there is something with somebody who you can reach, go reach that person. Go talk to that person. Send that person an email. Don't send an anonymous email. If you don't even have the courage to write your own name, what's the point in writing? Send an email.