Fajr Reminders - Mahmood Habib Masjid and Islamic Center

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 honor of the Prophets and Messengers, Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and upon his family, and peace and blessings be upon him and upon his family. My brothers and sisters, one of the things that I have noticed sometimes is that especially for people who are reverts or who come into Islam or realize that they are Muslims and then they start practicing, is a level of arrogance. Where they start believing that they are better than their erstwhile friends, they are better than other people around them, and so on. Now this is something which is highly regrettable. And so I thought let me speak a bit about this. The key thing to understand is that hidayah or guidance is from Allah. It is from Allah. And if somebody starts practicing Islam, it is not because of something good about them or something special that they have done or some way in which they are special. It is just that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, decided to bless them and so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala blessed them. Now, therefore the thing to do, the correct attitude is an attitude of great humility and humbleness to say that, oh Allah, I really don't know. I mean, I know I don't deserve this, but you chose to give it to me. And therefore I am most grateful to you. And then what I need to do is to try my best. I need to try my best to live up to that. So if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has blessed me, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has caused me to be guided to Him. Then what we need to do and think is to say, well, let me not lose this position of favor with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now, therefore the focus must be on yourself to say, okay, Alhamdulillah, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala was merciful on me, merciful to me, and Allah Ta'ala guided me to Himself. And therefore I am going to make sure that I do not lose this position of favor with Allah. Now, the way to, to keep the position of favor is to focus on two very important things. To obey Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in every single thing that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala commanded us. And to do that in the way of Rasulullah , which is the Sunnah. So I obey Allah the way the Rasulullah obeyed Allah. Not according to however I felt and I believed, not however I think and not according to some YouTube videos, videos that I'm watching, none of that. I will focus and I will, I will, you know, be with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and I will obey Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the way of Muhammad Rasulullah , because that is the only way which is certified, which is absolutely sure to be acceptable to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The thing to understand with regard to dawah is that dawah is, is the sign of true compassion. And the biggest sign of true compassion. Think about this. If a person feeds one homeless person one time, right? Just one meal, a homeless person who's need, who need a food, somebody gives them one meal. Now, obviously that one meal will not last him forever. It lasts him for that one time. You know, the next meal time he or she is ready to eat again. The next day they are ready to eat again. So all you have done is to alleviate their difficulty or their suffering for a short period of time. But anyone looking at that will say, Swa Allah, what a wonderful kind person this is. They have helped this person and they are kind to that person. That's just for a one time thing which happened one time. How about somebody who is working, who is concerned about, who is shedding tears in the night for that, who is doing their best to save someone from the hellfire, which is permanent problems, permanent suffering. Somebody who is working to free someone from permanent suffering, not something which is temporary, right? Now, how about that? Now, this is why dawah, inviting people to Islam, is the greatest, greatest service that you can do to anyone, right? So, this is something that we should always keep in mind. So, when somebody is giving dawah, this is what they are doing. Now, that service cannot be given, compassion cannot come in the guise of arrogance. That service cannot be given if you look down on people. So, many times I have heard this conversation where people, especially living in this country, especially living in the West, they say things like, oh, these kuffar, all of these are kafirs, and their lifestyle is so bad, so shameless, so this, so that. Now, I say, hold on a second, just stop a minute. First and foremost, in Islam, to call a non-Muslim kafir is haram. It is not done. It is something which Rasulullah never did. It is something which is, Allah mentioned in the Quran, as a description of those who hide the truth. There is nothing to say that you can go to somebody and say you are a kafir. This is not Islam

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 upon his family and companions. Peace be upon you all. We are on the advice and the beautiful story that Syedina Hatim al-Atham, may Allah be pleased with him, gave to the people. And on the fourth of them, he said, But I have read in the Qur'an that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, In Surah Al-Hujurat, Allah said, Verily and truly the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the one who is the most righteous and pious of you. Allah is truly all-knowing, all-aware. Therefore, he said, I have learnt piety. I have learnt piety and righteousness so that I may become the best of men in the sight of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. My brothers and sisters, we have learnt in this deen of ours, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, Allah has blessed us with this beautiful deen. And the first and foremost thing to understand here is that all benefit comes, only from practice. And practice is done only by those who consider that practice to be beneficial and worthwhile. So therefore, we have to ask ourselves, Do we really believe that Islam is the best way of life? And if the answer is yes, and of course the answer is yes, then we must practice Islam. Not talk about Islam. Not think about Islam. Not write. Not write about Islam. Practice Islam. Because Islam is like a martial art. It's like a physical exercise. It will not benefit you. Knowing about Judo will not benefit you. Doing Judo will benefit you. Knowing about lifting weights won't benefit you. Actually, lifting weights will benefit you. Right? Muhammad Ali, the greatest athlete of all time, the boxer, Rahmatullah Ali, he used to say, I don't count, I don't count, I don't count, I don't count, I don't count my push-ups from the time I start. I start counting from the time I start feeling pain. He said, because that is the time the benefit starts. Yeah, I start counting only from the time that I start feeling the pain because the benefit starts from that. This is very important for us to understand. That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave us this beautiful deen. And in this deen, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told us that the best person in the sight of Allah is the one who is most, who has the most taqwa, the one who is most conscious of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the one who wants to please Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala more than anything else in life. Right? So, the desire to please Allah and then the effort to please Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, this is what gives us benefit, not anything else. The rest of the stuff is what Allah has given us. It belongs to Allah anyways. What are we going to, you know, feel good about? My money doesn't belong to me. My life doesn't belong to me. So, I'm proud of what? So, we must think about this and remember this. See, the thing about this, look at, look at, look at, think about it like this. Many times I see, especially in people who have recently within quotes come to Islam. So, could be reverts, would also be Muslims who have suddenly, alhamdulillah, Allah has given them hidayat, so they start coming to the masjid, they start learning something and so on. Almost the first thing they do is they start looking down on others. First thing, immediately. Oh, look at this fellow, look at that fellow, this fellow, you were sitting in the pub with that fellow, you were sitting in the bar with that fellow yesterday. Suddenly now he's become an evil person. Why? Right? He was your greatest buddy and friend. Please understand this. The one who looks down on others, who was the first one? Iblis. What did he say? That's all he said. He did not say Adam alayhi salam is evil. He just said I am better than him. That's it. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala put him in hellfire. So, understand this. We are not better or worse. If I feel I have hidayah, it is minallah hitahal. It is not because I deserve it, it is not because I am such a great person. Allah knows why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose me or Allah chose you to give you hidayah. Allah knows why He chose you to bring you to Salatul Isha today in this masjid to pray with the jama'ah. So that you get the reward for half the night of Salah. Allah knows why He will wake you up in the morning tomorrow to bring you back to the masjid for Salatul Fajr so you get the reward for the whole night of prayer. Allah knows. The other person who is sleeping is just another person, just like you and me. There is nothing special about me, there is nothing special about you, there is nothing special about anybody. It is the only and only the mercy of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that He chooses you. So have humility, be humble

Auto-generated transcript:Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. My brothers, sisters, elders, 1500 years ago, a window opened in the heavens and God spoke to man. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala spoke to us. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sent Jibreel alayhi salam with his message, which was spoken to Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi salam. And he recited that to his sahaba. In a way, he recited that to us and we believed it because we believed him. The message of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala was later on written down. As we know the Kitabullah, the book of Allah, but what was sent was the actual kalam of Allah, the speech of Allah. It was the spoken word that came. It was heard, remembered, conveyed by the one who was known as As-Sadiq al-Ameen, the truthful and the trustworthy. We believed it to be the word, the speech of Allah, not because Allah spoke to us, but because Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam said so. We believed in Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam first, then we believed what Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam told us. The foundation of Islam is the truthfulness of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi salam. Every single thing in Islam is constructed on this foundation. And that is why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala deliberately gave the orders for his worship. The five things we know as the Arkan of Islam, the pillars of Islam. He gave the commands, but he left it to his messenger sallallahu alayhi salam to explain and teach us how. To do this. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala could have obviously very easily explained all of this in detail in the Quran. He did not do that. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said very clearly, for example, the first of the Arkan of Shahada of how do you enter Islam. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, وَمَنْ يَبْتَغِي غَيْرَ إِسْلَامِ دِينًا فَلَنْ يُقْبَلَ مِنْهُ وَهُوَ فِي الْآخِرَةِ مِنَ الْخَاسِرِينَ Allah said, whoever seeks a religion. Okay. Or comes with a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted from him. And in the hereafter, he will be one of the losers. And then he left it to Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to tell us how to enter Islam. And it was Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam who said to the people, قُلُوا لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ تُفْلِهُ Say, لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ بَحَمَّدُ رَسُولَ اللَّهُ And become successful. Because if you don't do that, you will be unsuccessful. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala made Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam not only the teacher of the way to enter Islam, but made him the door through which one enters this religion. Belief in Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam as the Rasul of Allah, as the Messenger of Allah, and as the final Messenger of Allah, as the last Nabi and Rasul is intrinsic to Islam. It is intrinsic to the faith. Without believing in Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, you cannot be a Muslim. Without believing that Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was the last and final Messenger, the final Nabi, the final Rasul, without believing that, and instead believing that there was somebody else or there is somebody else who can, who has come or will come after him, renders us out of, renders that person who believes that out of Islam. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the next pillar, commanded us to pray. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Nobody has the right to be worshipped except me. So worship me and establish as-salah, iqawati salah, for my remembrance. And then he left it to Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to teach us. He taught us how to do it. The method of the salah was left to Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam who taught the Sahaba, رضوان الله عليهم أجمعين and he said to them, صلوا كما رأيتموني أسلّي He said, pray as you have seen me pray. He did not say pray as Allah told you to pray. He said, no, pray as you have seen me pray. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala ordered us to fast in Ramadan. And he said, يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُوتِبَ عَلَيْكُمُ الصِّيَامُ كَمَا كُوتِبَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ مِنْ قَبْلِكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَّقُونَ Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Oh, you believe fasting? Assume fasting has been prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you so that you may become al-muttaqun. And then Allah jalla jalaluhu left it to Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to explain what is the meaning of fasting. And all its mathail. When to start, when to finish, what breaks it, what to do if you break it, and so on, and so on, and so on. Without learning and understanding these rules, it is impossible to fast. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala ordered us to establish salah and pay zakat and give something called qard hasana. And he said, وَأَقِمُوا صَلَاةً وَآتُوا الزَّكَاتَ وَأَقْرِضُوا اللَّهَ خَرَضًا حَسَنًا Allah said establish salah and give zakat and lend to Allah a good loan, qard hasana. And then he left it to Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to explain to us what zakat is liable on. What is zakat? How muc

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family, and peace and blessings be upon him. Peace be upon him, and much, much peace. And then, we are looking at the advice of Fatima al-Assam, may Allah be pleased with him, which he gave. And this is the third one. He said, I know that in this world, things which are dearest and most precious are looked after properly. Something which is most precious, most valuable and dearest to you, you will look after it properly. He said, I know this is the case with all our things. And then I read in the Qur'an, and Allah said, مَا عِنْدَكُمْ يَنْفَذُوا وَمَا عِنْدَ اللَّهِ بَاقٌ Allah said, whatever you have will end. But whatever Allah has is everlasting. And Allah said, وَلَذِيَنَّ الَّذِينَ صَبَرُوا أَجْرَهُمْ بِأَحْسَنِ مَا كَانُوا يَعْوَلُوا Allah said, and we will certainly reward the steadfast according to the best of their deeds. So Fatima al-Assam says that, whenever I saw something which was of great value, which was of great value, to me, I spent it for the sake of Allah. So that it will remain for me forever. Anything which was most valuable, I gave it away, so that it will remain for me with Allah forever. Allah also said in the Qur'an, لَنْ تَنَالُوا الْبِرَّ حَتَّىٰ تُنفِقُوا مِمَّا تُحِبُّونَ وَمَا تُنفِقُوا مِنْ شَيْءٍ فَإِنَّ اللَّهُ عَلَيْهُمْ مِنْهُمْ وَاللَّهَ بِهِ عَلِيمٌ Allah said, you cannot reach the level of birr, you cannot reach the level of piety, until you spend in the path of Allah, that which you love the most. حَتَّىٰ تُنفِقُوا مِمَّا تُحِبُّونَ There is virtue and there is sawab in spending anything, whatever you have, alhamdulillah, spending that in the path of Allah , including for example, things which you may not use, I'm not talking about trash, but I'm saying things which you may not use, maybe say older clothes and this and that, you give in the path of Allah, alhamdulillah, no problem. But that is not what Allah is saying in this ayah. In this ayah, Allah is saying, that which you love the most, give it in the path of Allah if you want to reach the level of albirr, the level of closest closest for Allah . So it's not a question of what you give, because everything you have in any case belongs to Allah . It's a question of your niyyah. It's a question of what is closest to Allah . It's a question of what is closest to your heart. So we have, alhamdulillah, beautiful stories from the seerah and from the ayat of sahaba, Abu Talha al-Ansari , when this ayat was revealed, Abu Talha had a garden, he had a date orchard, which was so thick that when you go inside, it would be cool even in the summer. So Rasool Allah sometimes used to go in that date orchard, he would go and sit there. There was a well, this well had a wall around it. So Nabi would sit on the side of the well on the wall, and sometimes he would take water and drink from there. There are several beautiful stories. This date garden also had a wall all around it. So one of the stories of this thing, Nabi one day, he went by himself, nobody knew where he went, he was missing for a long time, people got worried what happened to the Rasool . So they went searching for him. Abu Hurair then remembered, that usually he would go to this date garden of Abu Talha al-Ansari. So he went there, he tried to find a way inside, he couldn't find a way, he only found one way where there was a freshwater stream that would come out from this date garden. So for the stream to pass, there was a little like a drain, you know, hole. So Abu Hurair crawled in through that, and he saw Rasool Allah there, he was sitting there, he was sitting there. He was sitting on this side of the well. Abu Hurair said, Ya Rasool Allah, we are missing you. Nabi said, go and tell the people that whoever said, La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammad Rasool Allah, Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala will forgive all his sins. Go and tell them, announce it. Whoever said, La ilaha illa Allah, Allah will forgive his sins. Abu Hurair said, Ya Rasool Allah, you want me to announce this in the market everywhere? Yes, go announce. So Abu Hurair said, Ya Rasool Allah, nobody will believe me, I'm going to tell him this. So give me a sign. Nabi said, take my shoes. He was wearing, you know, wooden sandals. So he said, you take those. So he took those shoes, he put them on his head, and he went out, and he was going towards the market to announce this good news for all the people. On the way, he met Umar ibn al-Khattab al-Zaydan. Sayyidina Umar said, where are you going? He said, I'm going to, Nabi said this, they say, tell the people, they say, tell the people, they say, tell the people, say, tell the people, say, la ilaha illallah Muhammad Ra

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, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions. Peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions. And after that, we continue with the Hikaiyat, the teachings and the advice of Hatim al-Assam, may Allah have mercy on him. And inshaAllah, may Allah Ta'ala guide us and give us hidayah and give us the wisdom to follow these beautiful Hikaiyat for our own benefit, inshaAllah. So the second piece of advice that he gave the people and gave us, he said, I have read in the Quran that Allah said, وَأَمَّا مَنْ خَافَ مَقَامَ رَبِّهِ وَنَهَى النَّفْسَ عَنِ الْهَوَةِ فَإِنَّ الْجَنَّةَ هِيَ الْمَأْوَةِ He said that, Allah said in Surah Al-Naziat, But as for the one who feared the standing before his Rabb, and stopped himself from evil desires, certainly Jannah will be his abode. Now see the beauty of this ayah, وَنَهَى النَّفْسَ عَنِ الْهَوَةِ He stopped his nafs from the desire. We are not talking about evil actions. We are talking about the desire itself. So obviously there is first a desire, then there is a thought process of how to fulfill this desire, and then only will you come to the action. So we are not talking about the action. I'm saying right in the beginning, desire itself, cut it. وَنَهَى النَّفْسَ عَنِ الْهَوَةِ فَإِنَّ الْكَوَاسِ فَإِنَّ الْهَوَةِ Meaning stop nafs, his own nafs, عَنِ الْهَوَةِ About the desire, from the desire. desire, from the desire. And so, Hathim al-Hassan says, I know that whatever Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says is true, therefore I have restrained myself from worldly desires and I have become steadfast in my devotion to Allah. See, the thing which occurs to me always whenever I read these things, I read about the Sahaja and I read about these people, is the focus on the action. It's not what they know. We also know this, don't we know that evil desire is bad, we should not have any evil desire? No, this is not, you know, some special knowledge that is given only to some people. We also know this. But does it make us stop ourselves from those desires? That is the question. The question is, does it make us stop from those desires? Right? We know that sitting in a halaqa, sitting in the masjid when the khatira is going on, and sitting in the back with your face in the phone is a bad thing. Right? But we do that, we don't do that. Coming up, coming in front and sitting in front here is a good thing. Do we do that? We don't do that. Right? So, alhamdulillah, some people when they are reminded, they do it. May Allah bless them. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala raise their darajat. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala take the adhesive on the bottoms of the others, which is making them stick to the chairs. Alhamdulillah, the adhesive of two came out. Third one is still there. I know your names. You want me to call you by name? Good. Come without being called. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Come and sit and listen because this is beneficial for you. Wallahi, I'm not saying because I'm saying it. Forget me. Remove me from the picture. If I'm telling you my story, don't listen to it. Go home. But when I'm telling you about the kalam of Allah, when I'm telling you about the teachings of Rasulullah , this is beneficial for you. It's good for me also. I don't, as far as I'm concerned, if nobody listens also, it's fine. I will still say it. But what's the point? I'm here. I'm sitting. I don't know. I'm listening. I don't know. I don't know. So, come and listen. Alhamdulillah. JazakAllah khair, you came. May Allah bless you. May Allah subhanAllah raise your darjahat. May Allah subhanAllah protect you from all the evil that you know and you don't know, inshaAllah. Right? Shall I make dua also that May Allah subhanAllah kill all your phones and erase all your data? InshaAllah. No, I won't make that, don't worry. InshaAllah. So, very important. Very important. See, the whole, the whole issue of Amal. Think about it like this. Here is Hasib al-As'hab al-Ahudalal, he's saying, I start myself even from the desire, right? See, Islam, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Allah said, O you who believe, enter into Islam completely. So first and foremost, the ayat is coming to the believers. Who are the believers? Who are the first people who received this ayah? The Sahab of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the best of the best. So Allah is saying to Abu Bakr and Umar and Osman and Ali and Talha and Zubair and all these people, enter into Islam fully. It doesn't mean they were not in Islam fully. Point being, even for them, there

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, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions, peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions, and many, many more. And then, my brothers and sisters, one of the great scholars of this religion was a man by the name of Hatim al-Assam, may Allah have mercy on him. Hatim al-Assam, may Allah have mercy on him, was a student of Shaghiq al-Balqhi, may Allah have mercy on him. He was a contemporary of Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal and Bishr al-Hafi and others. And he was a great scholar. The reason he was called Assam, which means deaf, his name was Hatim, he was called Hatim al-Assam, Hatim the deaf. The reason he was called Assam was, see the akhlaq of people. See the akhlaq of people. He was a great scholar. So one day, this elderly lady comes to him with some soil. And as she sat down in front of him, she passed wind. So she got very embarrassed, obviously. But what happened, happened. So she started to speak to him and she was saying, yes, share something. And he looked straight at her as if he can't hear anything. She said, sheikh, salam alaikum. Sheikh, salam alaikum. Ah, what did you say? So he pretended to be deaf. So she felt, alhamdulillah, this man is deaf. He did not hear what, the sound I made. Imagine, see the beautiful akhlaq, right? He doesn't want this lady to feel embarrassed. This is taba'i. I mean, sometimes if you sit down, if, you know, wind comes out, what are you going to do? You don't do it deliberately. But it's embarrassing. So to prevent her from feeling embarrassed, he pretended to be deaf. And not only at that time, he pretended and continued to pretend to be deaf until that lady passed away. Ajeeb. So Hathim al-Aswami, he is a wonderful story, inshallah. We'll talk in detail. One of the stories of him, which I, inshallah, will do a whole series of lectures on it, is this question that he came to his, he spent almost 25 or 30 years with his sheikh, Sheikhi al-Balki Rahatul Ali. 25 or 30 years. And then he went away, wherever he went away, to Iraq and something. And then when he came back after a long time, he came to meet his sheikh. And his sheikh asked him, What did you learn from me? What did you learn from me? And he told him, I learned seven things from you. So the sheikh said, you wasted your life because 30 years you spent from me, you learned only seven things. And then he told him those seven things. It's a fantastic story. I won't go into it now. Inshallah, I will do it in due course. But amazing story. So Hathim al-Aswami, there are some beautiful hikayats. There are eight of these. What we call timeless lessons. Lessons which have, there's no time boundary on this. Inshallah, we'll talk about the first one today. He says, I have found that everybody loves somebody. Everyone loves someone. Your wife, children, property, friends, this, this. We love you, name, fame, money, whatever. Everyone loves something. But I know that as soon as this person is laid in the grave, the loved ones leave him. The loved ones part company with him. Consequently, he says, I have cultivated love for good deeds. Consequently, I have cultivated love for good deeds, so that when I die and pass into the grave, my loved ones will also accompany me into the grave, and I will not be alone. And this is the meaning of the Hadith of Rasulullah , where he said that when a man dies, what happens? All his aaman come to a close. Everything leaves him. Except three. And what are those three? One is, what are the Saleh? A child who is pious, who makes dua for him. And number two is Sadaqah Jariyah. Something which he has done, ongoing charity, which continues to benefit him. And third is Ilm-e-Nafiah. Any Ilm, any knowledge that he had, which was beneficial, which he passed on to other people. In another Hadith, the Prophet said, when a man dies, there are things which leave him in the house itself. And there are some who go up to the grave. And then there are some who go into the grave. So he says his wealth and his name and his fame and everything else leaves him as soon as his eyes shut. In the house itself or wherever he dies. And then his relatives and friends will go with him to the graveyard, to the cemetery. And then they put him inside and leave. What goes with him? Is his aaman. Now think about this. There is a wonderful story concerning Isa . And this is from the stories of the Bani Israel. The Isra'iliyat. And our Aqidah about the Isra'iliyat is that we neither deny them nor do we confirm them. And we accept them as a story, as a teaching story, as long as the story is within the boundaries of the Sharia. So if there is something in the story which is against the Sharia, then

Auto-generated transcript:As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. And we care for others in fundamental ways by enjoining good and forbidding evil. We don't care for them by pretending to be popular or doing whatever is trendy. We do solid work. In that context, what I want to say to you that one of the things that is happening in America is for various reasons. I don't want to go into all the reasons. But for various reasons, what is happening in America is the alienation of immigrants or the children of immigrants. They are being... They are being alienated. They are being seen as different. They are being seen as people who don't contribute, who don't count. And therefore, people who are at best a nuisance and at worst, they should find a way of getting rid of them. Now, that is not a good situation to be in. So we are talking right now about how we can smiling the House, but at worst, we should be able to say, Oh brother, I don't have money. A lot of them are well not that many. tests are going to be sleeping out there. This whole time schedule is coming to a difficult situation because of that. And also, there are limitations. In something happens protesting and that protesting also is usually for something which has happened or happening in some foreign country like currently what's going on with regard to paris then how's that by all means do that nothing wrong with that should do it but how many muslims took part in the black lives matter protests why not how many muslims are protesting because the majority of population in the prisons are the african-american people of this country majority by a big margin he's asked uh brother salahuddin he's he's part of the of the of the system of uh where he gives a whole lot of khutbas and so on in the prisons vast majority there are many such indicators which i can tell you but i don't think it's necessary let me ask you to think about it yourself i mentioned this in my khutba several times for example i mentioned to you and i said to you and i think i said to you at least two years ago all of the people who are protesting in the prisons are the people who are protesting all of the people who are protesting in the prisons are the people who are protesting in the prisons all of you here have children who go to the public schools how many of you are on those public school boards this masjid has been here for 40 years in 40 years how many people from this masjid were on the public school boards of west springfield 40 years is two generations at least maybe three generations of children who have passed to those schools how many muslims from this budget have been on the school boards how many of you have volunteered for and stood for and applied for positions in the town council in the city council there are many positions available in the city council how many of you have volunteered for that how many of you have volunteered for that and been rejected i sometimes tell people show me a rejection letter you cannot show me a rejection letter because you never applied but you are living in this town think about that you are living in this town your children are going to these schools and large numbers we are not talking here about small large numbers we are not talking here about small large numbers we are not talking here about small numbers large numbers but all the decisions that are taken concerning your children numbers large numbers but all the decisions that are taken concerning your children somebody else is taking them not you and not because there is discrimination not because nobody let us come there not because they don't like muslims none of that it's just because you don't care it's your children who are going to live in this town not mine My Raj still with Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala So when do you want to change this? Biggie comes here There is a council which Determines what happens there How many of you guys are on that council? It's also a great business opportunity You know, millions of dollars worth of business So what are you waiting for? Tell me What are you waiting for? The rule that Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala made in this world is If you want something, you got to go and work for it Nothing comes for free Please understand this Nothing Zero You want something, you have to go and get it And I have lived in different countries I have traveled in many different countries For this country, I can tell you The level of freedom The level of equality The level of equal opportunity The level of non-discrimination Is unprecedented I'm not saying there's no discrimination Of course there is There will always be I can give you a list of countries Where it is a million times more than this Here it's not there But effort has to be made Effort must be made I'm on the advisory council of Westfield State University I'm on the advisory c

Auto-generated transcript:Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wasalatu wasalamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen. Muhammadur Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Tasliman kathiran kathira. Fama badu. My brothers and sisters. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said. Ya ayyuhal ladhina amanu. Udkhulu fis silmi kafatan. Wala tattabihu qutuwati shaytan. Innahu lakum aduhum mubeen. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said. Which means the ayat which we have ourselves heard many many times. Which means O you who believe. Enter into Islam fully. Completely. Udkhulu fis silmi kafatan. Wala tattabihu qutuwati shaytan. And do not follow the footsteps of shaytan. Innahu lakum aduhum mubeen. He is an open enemy to you. I remind myself and you. To reflect on this ayah. Because first and foremost. This ayah is addressing the believers. It is addressing the believers. And in this case. Those believers were the sahaba of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The best of the best. In every sense of the term. So Allah ta'ala is addressing them. And he is saying O you who believe. And do what? Enter into Islam completely. Not partially. I remind myself and you. That. To benefit from. Any situation. To benefit from anything. It is critical and essential. To do it fully. Not partially. And this applies across the board. For example. If you want to benefit from walking. As an exercise aerobic exercise. Then they say you must walk. Ten thousand steps. That is five miles. If I walk. I will walk. If I walk one thousand steps. Which is half a mile. I am still walking. But I will not be able to benefit from it. In the way. That somebody who walks ten thousand miles. Will benefit. If I want to become a doctor. Then I will have to. Join the. Join a medical college. I will have to study. For the entire duration of the course. I cannot say. Well, you know. I want to become a doctor. But. The thing takes too long. It is like. Six years. And then I have to. You know. Do specialization. Which is another couple of years. And so on and so on. And I am a busy man. I. Do not have all this time. So I am going to. Do a few things. I am going to. Do a few things. I am going to. Do a few things. I am going to. Do a few things. So I am going to. Attend medical college. For one year. Because. I do not think really. I am very smart. And I do not really think. I need more than that. And the rest of the time. I will just. You know. I mean. Books are there. I know in the English language. The books are in English. So I am going to read. And. And that is it. I will not be a doctor. And if I do that. And if I try to practice medicine. Then. I will find myself in some. Some. Some. Some. Some. Some. I will find myself in some serious problems. The same thing I can go on with this. You know indefinitely, but I do not think I need to. And. Let me just give you one more example. Which. Is supposing I. Want to learn. To get a driver's license, then I would have to take the course. Pass the written exam, then pass the actual test. And having done all of that, then. I will be qualified to call myself a doctor, not before. Same thing applies across the board to everything. Now, the question is, to ask ourselves this, that this is something that we have no problem with believing, with mentally adjusting to. We have no problem with understanding this, understanding the importance of this, right? But for some funny reason, when it comes to Islam, we change these rules, we put them, we put them in the way of Islam. We turn them upside down. We do not apply the same rules when it comes to Islam. Somewhere we have convinced ourselves that Islam is something which can be learnt in our free time. And by free time, we mean time which is basically useless time, because free time when it comes to learning Islam is for us something which is free, free from everything else. If I have a game to play, it is not free time. If I have to, you know, some entertainment that I need to look at, then it's not free time. Anything, I mean, free time for me has to be something where there is zero, absolutely nothing happening in my life. And then maybe I will get up, and do something about Islam, not otherwise. Now, this is the standard we apply. So we say, well, you know, this is free time. Free time is when I have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do. And so then I'm free, and then maybe I will go and sit where I'm supposed to sit and study. Similarly, we apply this rule and we say, well, if somebody is teaching a class for us, then we will do something about it. We will decide the duration of that class, how long it should be. And we apply standards to it once again, which we don't apply anywhere else. For example, we say, was this class interesting? Was it boring? And so on and so on and so on. Now, I don't think I want to elaborate beyond this because it's more than clear what I want to say. My question is

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

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, Allah sent us into this world to be people who care. Allah sent us into this world to be people who care, who care about others, who do things to help others. Allah defined this and Allah said, Allah said, you are the best of people and you have been sent for the benefit of the people. You have been sent to care for the people. And what is this caring? This caring is to enjoy everything which is good and to forbid everything which is evil and to have faith in Allah . So Allah is also defining the caring. What is the meaning of that caring? What is the meaning of that caring? And then Allah again the same unwaan of Amar bil Maruf and Nayan al Munkar is coming in the Quran in several places. Then we have the hadith of Rasulullah , the hadith of Abu Dardar where he said, the Nabi said, if you see something evil happening, stop it with your hand. And . If you do not have the for that, then stop it, speak against it, stop it with your tongue. And if you do not even have the for that, then hate it in your heart. And this is a sign of the weakness of your Iman. So the question of joining with the people of taking part in that evil which is happening, being silent, being silent. This is the question. We are still the audience. We are still the audience. We are all the audience. We are all the audience. We are all the audience. Our audience is silent spectators. All of this is not there because if you hate something then what we do the first thing you will do is you leave the place. You can't say I hate the thing and I'm sitting there. Why are you sitting there? And the fact is that to understand this, we have to understand also that to change anything first, you need to care. You need to be prepared for three things. 1. To be resisted. 2. To be abused and to be reviled. These are the tests. The test, the grade of your sincerity. And then the doors will open. They will not open before this. They will open only after this. That's why Allah SWT said, وَتَوَاسُوا بِذَكْتِ وَتَوَاسُوا بِصَغْرِ Why the sabr? Because tawaso bil haq always results in opposition. People do not like somebody who tells them the truth. People do not like somebody who tries to save them from their own mistakes. Ameer Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, I am like a man who has lit a fire and all the moths are floating. Flying into the fire and this man is trying to chase them away. The moths want to go into the fire. The fire looks very attractive. They want to fall into the fire. They don't understand. It looks attractive but it is a fire. It will burn you. It will kill you. That's why the other day I said to you and I reminded myself, don't worry about the world because it does not belong to you. It belongs to Allah SWT. Don't worry about risk because it is from Allah. Allah SWT has mentioned many of these things. And then don't worry about the future because it is in the hands of Allah SWT. It's not in your hands. Worry only about one thing which is how to please Allah. Worry only about that. I remind myself and you that the past is over. History, is not something to like or dislike. To approve of or disapprove. History is something you learn from. If your history was painful, then that is even better because then you will not repeat it, hopefully. Because people who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. The future is not here. You and I may not even see the future. But one thing for sure, if you want that future to be good, then you need to work on that now. The future in this world we may never see, but the future in the Akhira is there. You will all see that. You will all see that. And if we want that future to be good, we have to start working now. We all talk about, I wish this, I wish that. Wishing, there is a saying in the proverb in English, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Wishing doesn't get you anything, you have to work. Planned action. That also is the best way to keep away anxiety. Because the best antidote to anxiety is exercise and working on your future. Make good choices today because every choice has a price. Which you will pay in your future. So read the price tag. As I said on the Lake George trip, those of you who remember, some things are easy today, but their price is heavy and painful tomorrow. Other things are difficult today, but their price is ease and success tomorrow. So choose wisely because we are talking about your life. You have to make choices wisely. You can't change how you think. In Surah Al-Ma'idah, Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Al-Yawma Atmaltu Lakum Deenakun Wa Atmantu Alaykum Nihmati Wa Raditulakum Ul-Islamu Deena Allah said, today I have completed my favor on you. And I have completed the deen for you. And I have chosen Islam as your deen. So Allah has completed it. Nobody can come and change anything and nobody can add something and subtract something and nobod

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the messengers and messengers. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions. Peace be upon him, and upon his family and companions. I have this news this morning of the passing away of my very dear friend, Zoya Siddin Babu Khan Sahib. Gaiyaz Bhai and I go back 25 years. I first met him when I returned from America in 2000, and now 25 years later he passed away. And as I was, I got the news just as I was about to leave, very early in the morning for my walk, and as I walked, I was thinking to myself, what are the memories that she left behind? Because we are remembered by the memories we leave behind, and that's why when we live in this world, and when we act, and we speak, and we do things, and we invest, and we build, or we destroy, and we do the opposite of all that, we must ask ourselves one question, which is, what do I need? What do I want to be remembered for? What do I want to be remembered for? And when I think of Gaiyaz Bhai, the first thought that came to mind was a conversation that I had with him, maybe 20 plus years ago, when we were traveling somewhere on one of the Zakat trusts, this was before the formation of FEED, trips to Zakat trust trips, to distribute scholarships. And I asked him, I said, why did you start doing this work? What led to it? He said to me something which is very simple, but from that day to this, I asked myself, we go through the same thing, how come we don't seem to, see things the way he saw them? He said to me, I realized that one day I will die. Now, the question I asked myself, and the question I have asked those who listen to me many, many times before, I said, go stand in front of a mirror, look at your face in the mirror, and say to yourself, one day I will die. And I said, I will die. And if you can't say that to yourself, and you look at yourself in the mirror, and you say that I will never die, then you are a case for a psychiatric hospital. But anyone who has any level of sense, any level of intelligence, you will look at yourself in the mirror and say, one day I will die. Now, the question is, what will be your legacy? What will you leave behind? What will you leave behind when you die? And that's what it boils down to, because what you leave behind when you die will either be something that you will be questioned for, and if Allah does not forgive you, you will be punished for, or it will be something which Allah has kept with him, and it has grown with him, and he will then present it to you. With the growth, and with the rewards. And this is the choice that is there with every single person of ours, every single one, every single one of us, every single person. So, what did Ghazaluddin Babu Khan leave behind? I think there is one memory again in this context, which stands out in my mind, as a memory that describes his legacy. And that memory is that he had set up this, you know, he and Bashir bhai, his elder brother Bashir bhai, again, a remarkable human being. He was again a very dear friend of mine, and I was honored to be part of a group that he would invite every month to have lunch in Nizam Club. And it was a diverse group of people. People with different schools of thought, different beliefs, different political positions, and so on. And he deliberately invited all of us so that we could have conversations. And we would talk about subjects which were, on which we obviously didn't always agree upon, but it was a very civil, very, lovely and very rewarding conversation. And also some excellent food. And he did this, you know, almost every month. And I was one of the people in that group, and I'm honored that he invited me. He was again a remarkable human being, because he was a politician with principles. It seems like something out of space at this time in this world, where we are looking at people where politicians and principles are two opposite extremes. But he was a man, a politician with principles, who quite literally put his political career on the line for what he believed in. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la grant him janatul firdaus without hesab. And his brother, Ghazal Babu Khan, he was the same. He's not a politician, but a man of enormous principles. So to come back to the story that for me is a marker in my memory, of Ghazbhai, which illustrates his legacy. We were in, I think if I'm not mistaken, we were in December, and we were distributing the scholarships. Now Ghazbhai had set up a whole system whereby they were, when somebody made an application for a scholarship, then one of the people of Zakat Trust would go and investigate the case of that person, to make sure that this person was not a person who was not a Muslim. To make sure that this app

https://youtu.be/Oj37__JfVwc Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honour of the Prophets and Messengers, Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions, and peace and blessings be upon him, and upon many, many. Brothers and Sisters, I want to talk to you about a very important thing, which is one of the major sicknesses of our modern society, and that is the illusion of choice. The illusion of choice. I say that because somewhere we have been given this false impression that we get to choose. And people try to use this where they can. I don't want to sit next to that person. I don't want to learn from this teacher or that teacher. I don't like my neighbour, and so on and so on. Right? The reality of life is that in life, if you are alive, you have no choices. You have no choices. You do not get to choose your circumstances. Your choices are with how you choose to deal with those circumstances. Please understand this. You do not get to choose your circumstances. What you do get to choose is how to deal with the circumstances. With the circumstances that are given to you. You don't get to choose whether you are rich or poor. You get to choose the kind of life you need to lead if you want to be rich or if you want to be poor. Now you might say, who would want to be poor? Every sensible person I know in this world wants to be poor. Poor not as in a homeless person with a begging bowl standing on the street corner, but poor as in a person with minimum assets, minimum impediments, minimum encumbrances, living a very comfortable but minimalist life. That is not a sign of stupidity. It's a sign of amazing intelligence. So you don't get to choose. For example, you don't get to choose whether you will be healthy or sick. But you get to choose the kind of life that you will need to lead if you want to be healthy. You don't get to choose whether you will be successful or not. You don't get to choose who your neighbors will be. You don't get to choose who your neighbors will be. You don't get to choose who sits next to you or on the same bus as you or on the same train as you. You don't get to choose who are your classmates in school when you go to school. You don't get to choose who are your teachers. But in all of these situations, you get to choose how you will behave as a neighbor, which will make no matter which neighbor it is, a good neighbor. The same neighbor has two houses, one on either side of his house. And you will get to choose whether your neighbor, even though intrinsically he might be a nasty person, that he will be the best, sweetest person to you while he continues to be the nasty person to the neighbor on the other side of the fence. This is the choice you have. You don't get to choose who are your classmates in school, but you get to choose what you want to do with those classmates in school, which makes you a better person. You don't get to choose who are your classmates in school, which makes them the best friends that you will ever have probably in your life, as well as very beneficial for each other's learning. Because that's why you go to school for. You don't go to school to hang out. You don't go to school to learn. And you don't go to school to learn book learning. You go to school to learn how to deal with people. Please get this into your head. Don't think that you have been to university for four years. Therefore, you have now a degree. And therefore, you must now be made the managing director of the corporation. No, sorry. When I hire a graduate from university, I don't care anything about what kind of degree he has, right? Or how well he did in that degree. What I'm looking at is that here is a person. The fact that you have a degree is evidence for me to show that you showed up everywhere. You showed up everywhere. You showed up every day for those four years. That you are somebody who can get away with the warning and go to school because there is school, because you have a sense of commitment to going to the school. Yes, you didn't study too well. And therefore, you could have got better grades, which you did not. And be sure I will ask you some questions about that. But that's not the reason I will fail you in the interview. I'm looking to see whether I'm going to hire somebody who will show up and not give me excuses. I'm going to I'm looking for somebody who demonstrates to me that he or she can complete assignments. I'm looking for somebody who can demonstrate to me that they can work with a bunch of diverse people who they did not choose to be with them. Because this is what they were presented with in life. In this case in the university, in

Auto-generated transcript:Alhamdulillah Rabbil Alameen wa salatu wa salamu ala ash-sharafi al-ambiyyi wal-mursaleen Muhammadur Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Tasliman kathiran kathiran. My dear respected brothers, sisters, elders. Before I begin my khutbah, I ask you to make dua for the forgiveness of the father-in-law of our dear brother Muhammad Kibodia. Who died today, he was sitting in Juma'ah in the Saf listening to the khutbah. When the khutbah finished and the Imam said, People stood up and he was still sitting there. So somebody said, please stand up. And he was gone. La ilaha illallah. Inna lillahi wa inna alayhi rati. I ask Allah to give me a khatim. I like this inshallah. Inshallah. Allahumma khufir lahu wa rahmah. Wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. The body of one of our brothers, a revert, who was the only Muslim in that family. And as I was bathing the body, and I went deliberately. Alhamdulillah, we have enough people to do this work. I said, I need the reminder for myself. So I went. Because the previous body I bathed was about 25 years ago from the same masjid. So I thought, too long, the time has passed. So I need the reminder. I went there. And subhanAllah, as I am bathing the body, I am thinking to myself, this man could have been a billionaire, a trillionaire, and he could own planes, and he could own, you know, massive palaces and whatnot. Or he could be somebody off the street from under us, living out of a shopping cart, which he stole from someplace. He could be anybody. All I have there is a body. And I remind myself and I remind you that one day this will happen to you and me. This will happen to us. And I had a, alhamdulillah, an amazing realization at that time. And I was thinking all this, you know, all this. Maybe he had wealth, maybe he didn't have wealth, and so on, so on. And I was thinking, how can I get this? And I was thinking, how can I get this? And I was thinking, how can I get this? And the question that popped in my mind was, how do I know what will stay here when I'm dying? When I die, how do I know what will stay here? And how do I know what goes with me? And my realization was very simple. And that was that whatever I can see will remain here. Whatever it is. I can see my wife. She will remain here. I can see. I can see my friends. They will remain here. I can see my property. It will remain here. Whatever I can see will stay here. What will go with me is how I acquired the property. What decisions did I make? How did I behave? What did I choose? Where did I choose to earn my living? Where did I choose to commit to pornography? And what did I deeply feel that this community needs toď? I was not safe in the behind of the altar. I was not safe in the rise of God by health and sickness. I was not safe in the rise of God by health and sickness. I had an addiction to Str pattern You'll see the money accumulating during this process. going to my qabar. But the fact that I used my money for a good cause will go with me. And I think that was a huge reminder for me. He says, Suhaillah, focus on why you are doing something. What is the niyyah? What is the khilas? What is my ta'allukh with Allah? Who do I look to for help? Who do I worship? Salim bin Abdullah bin Umar, radhiallahu anhum, was making tawaf. When Hisham bin Abdul Malik, the khalifa, also came to make umrah. So he saw Salim bin Abdullah bin Umar, the grandson of Umar bin Al-Khattab, radhiallahu anhum, making tawaf. And he looked at him and he saw that his clothes didn't look particularly good. They looked old and they looked, you know, maybe they had some holes in them, Allah knows. And he was carrying his shoes in his hand. And he saw that the shoes also looked like they were broken. So he came next to him while they are making tawaf. And he said, Salam, and he said to him, tell me, is there anything you need? What can I give you? I mean, he has a good heart. He's asking out of good intention. But he says, tell me, what do you need? What can I give you? Salim bin Umar, Salim bin Umar, radhiallahu anhum, looked at him with anger. And he said, are you not ashamed that you are in the house of Allah and you are making tawaf of the Kaaba and you are asking me what I need and what I can tell you? Are you not ashamed of this? So Hisham, this is the Khalifa of the time. They finished their tawaf and so on and they went to the mosque. Then Salim bin Abdullah went outside the mosque. So Hisham bin Abdul Malik, he waited for him to go a distance. Then he came back to him. He said, now we are not in the mosque. So now tell me, tell me what do you need? How can I help you? So Salim bin Abdullah says to him, shall I tell you about my duniyavi needs, my needs of this world? Or shall I tell you about my needs in the Akhira? He's saying to the Khalifa, to the King, shall I tell you about what I need in this life, in this world? Or

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the 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 upon his family and companions, peace and blessings be upon him and upon his family and companions. From my Wadu, my brothers and sisters, I want you to listen carefully. Today, myself, Brother Zahor, I don't know if he's here, Brother Asad, Brother Ali Khan from Baitus Salaam. We went to watch the body of a Muslim, the only Muslim in his family, a revert who had passed away. And I remember the body of a Muslim who was a Muslim, and he was the only Muslim in the family who had passed away. And I remember the body of a Muslim who was a Muslim. Time before this, when I watched the body that was about almost 25 plus years ago, maybe 97 or 98. We were in the masjid, and sheh Hussam got a call saying, this lady called and she said that, my husband has died. He was a nuclear failure. He was a nuclear failure. physician, and I can't recall whether it was Bay State or one of the other hospitals, but it's from this area. And he was playing, he was in his maybe 60, 50 and 60, and he was playing tennis, and he dropped dead on the court. So the wife said, I think he was Muslim, and I think he wanted to be buried as a Muslim. And he said, what do you mean? She asked, what do you mean? You thought he was a Muslim? Well, he's Syrian, and this is his name. Did you ever see him pray? No. Did he ever tell you about Islam? No. Do you have children? Yes, three children. The eldest one is 40 plus. Did he ever teach them anything about Islam? No. Did he teach you about Islam? No. No. He never taught them anything about Islam. So Sheikh said, well, as far as I'm concerned, he's not a Muslim, because he never prayed, and his family itself is saying he never taught them, told them anything about Islam. He never practiced Islam. So we cannot do the janazah for him. And that is the correct Islamic position. So I'm not criticizing Sheikh. This is the right way. But I asked him, I said, Sheikh, since this war, I'm not going to pray. Since this woman has called and asked and so on, do you have an objection if I go and do the salatul janazah? Sheikh said, no. You want to go, you go. You are on your own. So I said, okay. I collected the kafan and stuff from the masjid. Myself, if I'm not mistaken, if I remember correctly, Brother Rafiqawan, from who's now in Basra, and Brother Akbar Sheikh. You know, Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Azhar. Akbar Ah treat withث fors VR I belong to CSU 5 X K 1 Then when we came up To do the Salatul Janaza His wife, his son, his daughter They were all there So I said to the son Do you want to stand with us? He said no So then we prayed Salatul Janaza And then the lady said His wife said We will see you at the cemetery And they left So now this body is in the hearse And the hearse is driving in front And I am following in my car Behind this hearse We reached the cemetery Nobody there Only their family That's it Now all the way I am thinking Well we did the Ghosal I don't know how the khabar is Which way it is aligned Whether we can put him Facing the Qibla Or what is to come But all that Allah SWT is doing When we went there Everything was perfect The khabar was dug in the right direction And so on So I went down inside the khabar Nobody else was there I went inside We took the body Put it down Put his face towards the Qibla And so on and so forth And we buried him When we buried him I finished inside the khabar And I came up The wife and the children Got in the car and left The grave is still open The man is still there in the grave This is duniya 25 years or something later Today I washed another body And as I was doing the washing I was thinking to myself The same thing which I thought at that time That this man could be alive That body we washed literally the next day So it was literally The body was still soft This body at least Rigor mortis had set in Rigor mortis had set in And he had been in the cooler for a while So it was harder But that one was literally like a man sleeping That's it He's like Shake him Okay Get up And I'm thinking to myself That if I look at his body And somebody says But this man had a personal Customized Boeing 747 Which was his own And he had this onboard jacuzzi And he had this fantastic double bed And he had this massage chairs And he had this and he had that On this plane And he used to go from here to there Right He owned an island in the Bahamas This man he wouldn't even talk about which car he has Because if you own a 747 jet You

Auto-generated transcript: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. The house of marriage is not a den where the wrestling is taking place. Today you win, tomorrow I win. These are places of peace and security. Just like a ship that travels in the sea, there is a storm that also suffers. And when it comes to the ship, even if there is a storm, where will it go? So the ship is a place where you get peace. The storm has left behind. So create the home as a place of tranquility. In this marriage you are making an oath and you are making a promise to yourself, both the husband and the wife. Yes. That your attention will not go to anyone other than the two of you. His attention to you and your attention to him. You are making an oath to yourself that our attention will not go anywhere else than you. The second thing Allah mentioned was Mawaddah. Love. Love for each other. In Islam and in psychology, love is the foundation of respect. Please understand this. Love is the foundation of respect. Love is not a sign of lust. There is a difference between the two. Lust is a beastly trait. It is in us too. It is in everyone. But Allah did not say that lust is my sign. Allah said love is my sign. So love is the foundation of respect. So we must respect each other. Every person is respected. He is respected. He is loved. He is respected. Whoever is respected is loved. The one whom they respect, The one who loves their mother and father, Their respect is within us. If there is no respect, There can be no love. The second word Allah mentioned was Love. The foundation of love is respect. Allah did not say lust. Lust is a human emotion, But Allah didn't mention that as a sign. He said love. the foundation of love is respect. You respect your mother, you respect your father, and then you love them. Because of the respect, you love them. But if respect goes away, then love goes away. So it is very important for the husband and the wife to respect each other, to show that respect to each other, not to laugh at each other, not to make jokes at each other, not to treat each other with disrespect, not to use bad language against each other, not to curse your wife, not for the wife to curse the husband. These are very common things today. Very common things today. The tongue is the worst enemy of ourselves. There is the hadith of Prophet Muhammad, where he said, and when the Prophet Muhammad, they mentioned the hadith, they actually acted out. They said, he held his tongue like this. And he said, this will take more people into Jahannam than anything else. Huzoor Qasim said, and you held your tongue like this in the middle of the fingers, and you said, will this take so many people into Jahannam or will it take something else? Will it take something else? Will it take something else? Will it take something else? Will it take something else? Because the tongue, we use it to hurt each other, to curse at each other, to backbite people, to slander people, to tell lies and false witness. All of the tongue, All of them lead to Jahannam. So watch your tongue. Watch your tongue. I say to the husbands especially, because in the home the man has a position, the man is stronger, and I get many complaints from women who have been married and recently married. My husband is cursing me, my husband is using foul language against me. And I have nobody here. Remember that the woman comes to you, she comes alone. You are in your environment. You are in your family. She is leaving everything to come to you. She is leaving her family. She is leaving her environment. She is coming to you. Treat her with respect. Treat her with love. Treat her with affection. And you will have a beautiful home. And if you oppress her, if you curse her, if you... May Allah have mercy on you. May Allah have mercy do worse. Then remember she is not alone. She is not alone because the one who's alone, who is the that is the caretaker of that one? Allah . So fear the hands of the woman which are raised in taajjud against you. Because if she raises her hand against you and asks help from Allah, Allah will not refuse her. And for the wife too. And for the husband too. And for the wife too. The wife too. And for the husband too. And for the husband too. same thing. Fear the dua of your husband because I've seen husbands who are like chickens. Fear that. Do not oppress one another. Support one another. There will be conflicts. I guarantee that to you. There will be conflict. But we are adults, we are educated adults, we are Muslim. If there is a conflict, sit down face to face, resolve it. Don't involve everyone in it. Don't involve your parents. Don't involve anyone else. You are adults. If you have to run to your mother or your father, you are not fit to get married. Go home. If you are an adult, then deal with your husband and you deal with your wife as adults, not as little children. Sit together, resolve your difficulties. If

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, I want you to listen very carefully. Because every civilizational time in history, there has been a center of the civilization. There has been some city, some place which has been the center of civilization. 2000 years ago, it was Rome. That's why in the English language they say all roads lead to Rome. Because Rome was the center of civilization. Most powerful, the most wealthy. Effectively one city, I mean it was a nation, but effectively one city. And then that changed as the centuries passed. And it became statistical. And then it went to the Sassanian Empire. And then it went to, not saying this in chronological order, but different ways. And then it went to Constantinople. Then later it became Istanbul. Then it was Agra and Delhi. And then it was London. And today it is America. Post Second World War, it is America. The easiest way to check that is go to any country in the world and see the number of people standing in Rota America embassies wanting visas. Compare that with the embassy of any other country. It's not even a comparison. Not even a comparison. And then come to America. And go to the embassies of your countries here. And see how many Americans are standing there in line wanting to get Pakistani citizenship or Indian citizenship or Somali citizenship or Iraqi citizenship and so on. Right? Find me one American citizen who wants to become a Pakistani. There's a message, right? There's a message. You came here voluntarily. Nobody brought you here in chains. You came here voluntarily. Many of you came here after great struggle. Why? Because of the opportunity that this country presents. And no exaggeration. There is no country in the world which comes even close. No country. No white man's country. No black man's country. No brown man's country. No country. No African country. No Asian country. No European country which comes even close to the level of opportunity that this country has. Not even close. I have traveled the world. I have lived in the world. So I'm talking from experience. I'm not telling you, talking through my hat. No country even comes close. The second issue, second thing about this country is in terms of personal freedoms. Again, I can probably say this safely, that no country gives you as much personal freedom as America gives you. In every way. Freedom of worship. Freedom to dress the way you want to dress. Freedom to eat the food you want to eat. Freedom to go to the schools you want to go to. Freedom to do whatever you want. No other country. We have this masjid here. I can stand on the mimbar. Sheikh can stand on the mimbar and give any khuda we want. The U.S. government does not regulate it. The U.S. government does not stop it. The U.S. government does not give us a standard khutba to be read. Nothing. And as long as I don't stand there and he doesn't stand here, and as long as we are not promoting violence and rebellion and revolution, no problem. You can say whatever you want. No country in the world gives you, believe me, no country in the world gives you that level of freedom. This is what has happened in compromising theождения. That beneficial city is being reshuffled, is being settled and has such an inequitable nature, that we never try and Fling it again, even if it is an amphitheater, we have never, and this is an example because It exists in them. They have faced such a need. nobody will stop them, nothing. In Rabak, these universities, they have a director of spiritual affairs, under whom they employ chaplains, and the chaplains are paid salaries. Right? They give you a room for the chaplaincy, they give you a room at the chaplain's office. For prayers for Muslim students, they give you a place for Jummah if you want the place for Jummah. And if you say, I want the place for Jummah, they give you the place, they go and buy the sunjadas. They go and buy the prayer bags. Matching prayer bags. In Springfield College, the director of spiritual affairs, David Monkman, he comes, he buys the whole stuff and he shows me his prayer bags. He says, Mr. Shaikh, is this okay? I say, Wallahi, is it okay? They buy it. In Ramadan, they provide suhoor and iftar for the students. The college does it. And then in Ramadan, the college hosts a Ramadan evening at the expense of the college, public function. You can take 200 people and go there, the college pays for it. No country in the world, no country in the world, no country in the world, no country in the world, no country in the world, believe me, take my word for it.No country in the world. You can worship who you want. You can dress the way you want. I go to public function. You know how I dress, right? I go to public functions. They invite me. The colleges invite me to speak at their commencement and deliver the benediction and deliver the reflection every year. Now, they know who I am. They know how I dress w

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Creator, the Sustainer, the Maintainer, the Protector of the Universe and everything it contains. The God of Abraham, the God of Moses, the God of Jesus, the God of Muhammad. Peace and blessings be upon all of them. The one and only God, the one and only Creator who has no partners, who has no assistants. There is no one like Him. There is no one unto Him. There is none in creation that resemble Him. He is alone in His glory and His majesty. And we send salutations on His Messenger, on His Prophet Muhammad. Peace and blessings be upon him. And we send salutations on all the Messengers, on Abraham, on Moses, on Jesus and all the others. Peace and blessings be upon all of them. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la, God Almighty said and described the institution of marriage. And He called it one of His signs. And He said in the Surah which is called Ar-Rum in the Qur'an Al-Karib وَمِنْ آيَتِهِ أَنْ خَلَقَ لَكُمْ مِنْ أَنفُسِكُمْ أَزْوَاجًا لِتَسْكُنُوا إِلَيْهَا وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَكُمْ مَوَدَّةً وَرَحْمَةً إِنَّ فِي ذَٰلِكَ لَآيَةٍ لِقَوْمِهِمْ يَتَفَكَّرُونَ He said which means that from among our signs is that we have created for you mates from amongst yourselves so that you may find tranquility with them and we have placed between the two of them مَوَدَّةً وَرَحْمَةً love and mercy. In this there are signs for people who reflect. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, God Almighty, called the marriage one of His signs and He described three qualities of a marriage. The first quality is that marriage is a sign of love. The second quality is that marriage is a sign of love. The third quality is that marriage is a sign of love. The fourth quality is that marriage is a sign of love. The sixth quality that He described was السقون السقون is tranquility. سقون is the absence of movement away from the spouse. سقون is where when the marriage has taken place the spouses, each of them is saying to the other, سقون is where when the marriage has taken place, the spouses, each of them is saying to the other, So, this is an example of peace. the other that in this world for me you are the only one. The eyes, the ears, the attention, the heart, everything of the spouse will not move away from the other. That is Sukhom. Sukhom is tranquility in the marriage home. To create a home together which is a place of tranquility, a place of harmony, a place of peace, a safe harbor into which the ship that goes out into the oceans and which contends with hostile waves and winds can come back in safety into the harbor. That is the marriage home. The marriage home is the home of the spouse. The marriage home is not a boxing ring. The marriage home is not a place for each one to show their superiority over the other. The marriage home is not something where every morning a fight starts and you have to show physically or mentally or emotionally who is boss. That's not a marriage home. A marriage home is a place which does not have conflict in it and where conflicts are resolved. The second quality that Allah SWT, God Almighty mentioned is the quality of love. Love comes out of respect. Love comes when you appreciate the other person. Love is different from physical, sexual desire. That does not require love. Love is more than that. Love comes out of a sense of togetherness that this person is my responsibility. I take responsibility for her and she is taking responsibility for you. And so I care for you. And this love is shown in many, many different ways. It is shown by the giving of gifts. Not necessarily on this particular day, although you better remember that if you know what's good for you. But throughout the year. On the day of the marriage, you must know what's good for you. You just need to know that you are the reason. It's not about the reason. You are the reason. You are the reason. You are the reason. You are the reason. Why did you bring this for me? Because you are you. I don't need an external reason to do something for you. I do it because you are you. Love is to laugh with the person, not laugh at the person. Love is to support the person. Right? Both both when they are right and when they are wrong. Now you might say, well, how do I support the person? When they're wrong? You support the person when they're wrong by telling them that they are wrong. In private, not in public. You don't humiliate them. But in private, you are the person who's going to draw attention to them and say, All right. Now we are alone and what you did out there. No. It doesn't work. What you did out there doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't work. This doesn't work either. It's natural. What we are doing, and what we are doing, now all we don't care. What we are doing, and what we are doing out there doesn't work. work and this is the reason why it doesn't work we don't behave like this right who's going to tel

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, the Messenger of Allah, may peace and blessings be upon him and his family and his family, has been a great Muslim. After that, my brothers and sisters, Allah mentioned men in the Qur'an. And he mentioned the relationship of the man and the woman in marriage. And he mentioned the role of men, the fathers, in the homes. And Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, said, الرجال قوامون على النساء Allah said, the men, Allah did not say, Allah did not say, He said, الرجال, with the plural of رجل, الرجال قوامون على النساء The men have been given authority over the women. Allah did not say, الرجال قوامون على النساء Or تحت النساء Allah said, على النساء Men have been given authority over the women. The reason I am saying this is because The result of the feminist movement And then later on, the woke movement Has produced, has literally emasculated the men. At least those men who have allowed themselves to be emasculated. And it seems to have produced two extremes. On the one hand, you have the brutal, foul-mouthed men Who curse their wives, who beat the wives, who beat their children. And on the other extreme, you have men who are women with beards. No backbone. Now, both are men who are women with beards. No backbone. Both are horrible. Both are terrible. A man who beats his wife, a man whose foul mouth curses his wife Is like spitting in the air. The spit falls in your face. Because your wife is your honor. If you curse your wife, you are cursing yourself. If you beat your children or your wife, You are only proving to them that you are a stronger animal than them. Right? Nothing else. And on the other hand, If you are a woman with a beard, which is so-called man, Then there is no leadership in the house. Allah gave in Islam, Everyone has a role. This whole false ideology of the West, Of equality between men and women, Everyone has a role. This whole false ideology of the West, Of equality between men and women, Is nonsense. We have equity. We do not have equality. We have a division of roles. There is a role for the mother. There is a role for the wife. And there is a role for the father. There is a role for the man. Both are equally important. It's not a question of one being more important than the other. It's not a question of equality. It's a question of two very important roles, Working hand in hand, Working together, To produce a generation which is a credit to the parents, And a credit to society, A credit to Islam. Now this has failed. This is not happening. So we got these two extremes. Brutalized or brutal men, Or effeminate men. Now this must change. The role of the father is to produce, Is to be a role model for the children, Especially the sons. And that does not come out of weakness. It comes out of strength. And strength is not displayed by brutalizing, By foul mouthing. Strength is displayed by character. It must begin with your appearance. You must have the appearance of a man. You must have the appearance of Rasulallah . You don't shave your face and look like a woman. You don't begin your day by shaving your face, And removing the sign of Rasulallah from your face. When Rasulallah commanded you and said, Grow your beards. Why do you shave your face? For what? To look like a woman? Then it extends to, Think about this. What is the first memory? The other day, Sheikh Hafizahullah, may Allah bless him, He told us about his father. And he said that, For all my life, I would hear my father praying Salatul Lail. Kamul Lail. So also with me, I have mentioned this story many times. My earliest memory, Is my father praying Salatul Lail. Is my father waking up to make Udo for Kamul Lail. In the days I'm talking about, Sixties, There was no heating in the bathroom. There was no electric heaters and stuff. Water had to be heated outside on a wooden stove, And it was brought inside for you to have a bath. There were no plastics. Hold your breath. There were no plastics. No plastic buckets, no plastic chairs, No plastic bags. When the first plastic bags came, And the first plastic bottles came, We thought this is a miracle, This is a blessing from Allah . Shows us how little we know of the world. Today the whole environment is being poisoned with plastics. So what we had was buckets of metal. Galvanized Zayin, Ziyai. So my first memory, Is my father in the bathroom, When he picked up the bucket and put it on, The big clang. I said, okay, he's woken up for Salatul Lail. Then he would make Udo, He would pray Tahajjud, Then he would read Quran, Until the time for Fajr, Then he would come into our room, And he would say, He would turn the light on, He would say, Salatu Khairu Minanawm, Loudly, Salatu Khairu Minanawm. And he would pull off our, Our, you know, the cov

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the 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 companions. Peace be upon him, and upon his companions. From now on, my brothers and sisters, may Allah bless you. And make this whole trip a means of great khair and barakah and blessing for all of us, inshallah. I am saying this to you also in the way of a wasiyah, because I do not know if I will see you on such a trip again. So, remember this. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala made this world with some things easy and some things difficult. For example, to eat whatever you see, is easy. To control yourself, is difficult. To sleep till any time, is easy. To wake up for fajr, is difficult. To wake up for tahajjud, is even more difficult. To speak any way you like, you get angry, use all the foul language you heard anywhere, is easy. To control your anger, is difficult. To not read, to scroll your screen, you know, eight hours a day, nine hours a day, six hours a day, easy. Not to do that, instead, use the phone only and only to call people if you have to call them. Otherwise, do not use the phone, read actual books, which expand your mind, which increase your knowledge, which increase your knowledge. And, do not do that. So, to sit in one place, and do not exercise, and end up looking like a pregnant cow, is easy. To exercise, to break into a sweat, is difficult. And so on. I want you to, individually, I want you to make a list, as an exercise, I'm telling you, make a list of the easy and the difficult. Now, so Allah made this world like this. Things are easy, things are difficult. But Allah did one more thing. Behind every difficult thing, Allah put great benefit. And behind every easy thing, Allah put traps. If you don't move, and if you sit in one place and eat, you will not be able to do anything. You are looking at a wheelchair very early in your life. Now, sitting and eating in one place is easy. But spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair, is that easy? So ask yourself, is that what you want to do? You want to spend your life in a wheelchair? Then go, eat. Eat till like there is no tomorrow, because there will be no tomorrow. And then, you will be able to do anything. You will be able to do anything. You will be able to do anything. To grow up ignorant, easy. But once you grow up ignorant, what's going to happen to you once you become an adult? Who will give you a job? How will you start a business? What kind of family will you raise? You will have children who will look down on you. And they will say, this is my father? He doesn't even have a clean mouth. I mean, the man curses all the time. My father knows nothing. He doesn't even have a clean mouth. I mean, the man curses all the time. My father knows nothing. My father is an ignorant bum, which is what you will be if you don't read. Is that what you want for your... Is that your role model? You want to be a role model like that for your children? My father is my role model of how not to be. Is that what you want your children to say? Your choice. So when you scroll on the screen the whole time, that's what you're heading for. You're heading to become a father that your child will look down on. Okay? It's not enough to say, respect the father because he's your father. No, no, no, no, no. You have to become worthy of respect. That starts now. It doesn't start when you're 50 years old. Starts now. Right? So choose. Choose your hard. Choose your easy. And do that every single day. Allah created this world with what we call laws of physics, fundamental laws. The law of gravity, for example. Any object free falling in space is attracted towards the earth at an acceleration of 32 feet per second per second. This law of gravity applies on anything which is in free fall in space. Whether that thing is a meteor or whether that thing is solar dust or whether that thing is you jumping from a plane makes no difference. Allah's law of gravity applies. So now if I want to jump, high diving, skydiving, whatever, from a plane and I don't want to die a miserable death, slam into the earth, what must I do? I must understand how to deal with the law of gravity, right? How do you deal with the law of gravity in that situation? What do you do? What do you need? You need a parachute. You need a parachute. What did you say you? Land in the tree. Land in the tree. Yeah, good, good choice. I mean, think about that, right? Land in a tree. You will get a tree up some tender parts of yours. Seriously, I'm telling you, you know, this is, you want to make fun, brother. Go ahead, man. I didn't get my white beard by standing in the sun. Believe me. So the point I'm making is this is the time to m

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the 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. Tassleem and kaseer and kaseer. My brothers and sisters, I want to share with you some thoughts and remind you and myself about perhaps the single most important quality of a successful human being. And that is the quality of being able to forgive. The quality of being able to forgive. If you take the life of Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, this is one thing which stands out. Where Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, forgave everyone. To the extent that somebody like Abdullah bin Ubay bin Salul, the head of the Munafiqun, who was an enemy of the level where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala actually revealed Quran after he died and said that even if you ask forgiveness for these people 70 times, 70 times, Allah will not forgive them. And when the ayat was revealed, Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, if I knew that Allah would forgive them, if I asked 71 times, I would have asked 71 times. Abdullah bin Salul was an enemy of such virulence and such intensity that he did not leave any way or any means of trying to harm Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, both personally as well as his message of Dawah of Islam, both. Whether it was to take his people, 300 plus of the people of Medina, of the people of Khazraj, away from the, the army of the believers at the time of Ahud, which was one of the reasons for the failure of that defeat in that battle, or whether it was constantly harassing and baiting and, you know, making fun of Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, all kinds of ways. But when he died, his son, whose name was also Abdullah bin, came to Rasulullah and he said, I know Rasulullah, my father has died. And I have two requests. One is, can you please give your Thawb, the Khamis you are wearing, to use as a coffin for my father? So the Barakah of the cloths, which touched the Mubarak body of Rasulullah, peace and blessings be upon him, and he said the second request is if you can please pray Salatul Janada for him, , I imagine, , I imagine, , I imagine, , I imagine, , I imagine, , I imagine, , I imagine, I imagine, I imagine, , I imagine, I imagine, , I imagine, I imagine, I imagine, I imagine, , I imagine, I imagine, what is the barakah of something like this where you have won the aasar of the Nabi A.S. directly and where you have the Nabi A.S. making dua maqfara for you means janaza is dua maqfara so you have the Nabi A.S. himself making this dua of forgiveness for you and Nabi A.S. agreed to both he took off his commission and gave it and he went and he prayed when he went there to pray tried to stop him he literally came between him and the janaza and he said ya Rasulullah don't do this why are you praying janaza over this bar this bar is the worst enemy that we have Rasulullah A.S. said to move aside and this is also the mercy of Allah after he finished the Salatul Janaza Allah revealed the ayat and said even if you ask I will not do it don't stand on their graves meaning make dua forever this is the mercy of Allah Allah did not send him to do this He sent the ayat before right if Allah had sent the ayat five minutes before then Nabi A.S. could not have done this is the mercy of Allah okay my Nabi wants to do let him do but Allah's judgment does not change because of that so the lesson we learn from this before I go to the forgiveness piece is that at the end of the day it is your Amal which stand with you it is your Amal your Aqidah and your Amal which stand with you not anything else so many times people have this feeling oh you know I am descended from so and so I am the Ahlulad of this Sheikh and that Sheikh and this Peer and that Peer and this Sufi and that Sufi and this and this is I have this Barakah that no Barakah no nothing in the Quran Al Kareem Allah SWT gave us the relationship of every kind of relation the son of a Nabi the father of a Nabi the wife of a Nabi directly Noah's son Ibrahim's father Ruth's wife and then you have Asi Arad Al Anha her husband Firaun right all the relations that you can find Allah gave example doesn't help you does not help you what helps you is your Aqidah and your Amal nothing else and in the case of the Prophet his own uncle Abu Talib and not just uncle his uncle was also Abu Lahab but Abu Lahab was also against him and so on but Abu Talib was his closest and biggest and best supporter and he supported him till the end he did not his support didn't waver until he breathed his last but despite that Dabhi Sharif Aslam said very clearly this is not enough to save him he said Allah will make his suffering the least in Jannah so they asked him Ya Rasulullah wh

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 is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions. Peace be upon him, and upon his family and companions. And what is next? Imam Zuhri, one of the great Muhadiths, and also one of the teachers of Imam Malik, he said that Islam spread the fastest after Fatah Makkah because for the first time, the non-Muslim was able to see the life of an ordinary Muslim up close. Let me repeat that. Imam Zuhri said that Islam spread the fastest after Fatah Makkah because for the first time, a non-Muslim was able to see the life of an ordinary Muslim up close. Now please notice, he did not say that Islam spread because for the first time, people were able to come and listen to these great Khudwas and these great Bayans, and they were able to see Rasulullah up close, or Abu Bakr al-Siddiq , or Umar ibn al-Khattab , and so on. No, no, no. Ordinary Muslim. Islam spread because of the non-Muslims. Islam spread because the person looked at the carpenter, and he looked at the barber, and he looked at the farmer, and he looked at the shepherd, and he looked at the ordinary person who he was dealing with on a daily basis, and the Islam that he saw, the Islam that he saw was so beautiful that... Please come, please come. The Islam he saw was so beautiful that people came to Islam. Islam was spread by the winning of hearts, not by the sword. Islam was not spread by the sword because what happens if you are successful in a battle? You live, the other one dies, right? Now how many people can make a dead body say, , nobody. Islam spread by the winning of hearts. How did it happen? Because the ordinary Muslims saw the life... Ordinary non-Muslims saw the life of an ordinary Muslim up close. They were able to go to their house. They were able to talk to them. They were able to see them. They dealt with them in business, and this converted them, converted their hearts. Now you might say, what relevance does that have to us here in Lake George? Tell me, why is it important? Why? Yeah. To make an example. To make an example. To make an example. To make an example. To make an example. To make an example. To make an example. To be a good example, right? Here, remember this, whether you like it or not, whether you think it is fair or not, people are going to look at you and they will say what? There goes a Muslim. They don't know who is Zuhair. How do they know who is Zuhair? There goes a Muslim. There goes a Muslim. Now that picture, that impression, they will carry away. They will know, they will carry away. They will not even check that with you. They will not even ask that with you. They are not going to come to you and say, you know what? I saw you behaving like this, but is this how your prophet used to behave? You think they would ask this question? No. As far as they are concerned, this is what a Muslim does. If it is good, alhamdulillah, mashallah, great people, man, look at this. What if it is bad? Same thing. Oh, this is what Muhammad taught them. This is what Muhammad taught them. So, we want to make sure that we give people the right impression about Islam. And that means no matter where you are. Point I'm making is that we must be very clear. You are in the hotel. They are looking at you. People are watching you. You go out of the hotel. How you park the car? What you do with the car? You go to the, now you're going to go to restaurant. You're going to be in the restaurant. You will order your food. You go upstairs. You should, you're going to sit and eat and so on. I'm not saying don't have fun. Right? Of course, have a, have a half week, came here to have fun. So we'll have fun. But when you have fun, make sure that that fun is responsible. Right? According to decorum, not screaming and shouting and yelling and disturbing people. None of that stuff. And as I told you, two jobs. What are the two jobs? What is the first job? Do the right thing. What's the next job? Help others to do the right thing. All right. You're talking about how people, their actions won their hearts to Islam. The many stories in the Sira. And that's why studying the Sira is very, very important. It's a beautiful story. The Sira of this man in the market of Banu Nadir, which was the market of Medina. It is Jewish guy. He comes to the market and he comes to one of the Muslims shops and he asked for something and he examines it and he says, okay, this is good. Can you, how much is it? Is it so much? So, okay, give me. Now, this salesman, the shopkeeper, the shop owner, he says to this man, I got a request for you. He said, what? He said, see that shop in the corner? Other end of the market. That shop? He said, yeah. He said, that guy has the sam

Correction: One of Charlie Munger's earliest jobs was as a weather forecaster, not as an Air Traffic Controller as mentioned in the reminder. Auto-generated transcript: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the 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, and he is the most obedient and the most generous. Humbabadu, I am going to ask you a question and you have to answer. Today is going to be an interactive thing, so I need you to answer. My question is, what do you need to do to be a total failure in your life? Completely failed. Seriously. Tell me. I need to know from you. Total failure. You want a complete failure. What do you need to do? Ya bukkun hafa? Not praying. Give me a hand. Hamdila. Very good. Excellent. What else? Seriously. Complete, total failure. Akhil bhai. Disobey everything. Disobey everything. No, no, no. Seriously. Tell me. Total failure. Follow Shaitan. Follow Shaitan. Yes. Now what else? No, business. If you want to completely sink your business, totally gone. What do you need to do? Tell me. Seriously. I am asking you a serious question. Complete failure in your business, in your studies. Complete failure. Yes. Lying to your parents. Yes. Lying to your parents. Lying to your parents. See, this guy is brilliant. MashaAllah. Ma'aHmood. MashaAllah. Ali, what do you do to completely fail? Total failure. Total failure. No goals. No goals. Fantastic. Now that's talking. What is complete failure? Complete failure. Complete failure. Complete failure. Stay comfortable. Stay comfortable. Fantastic. Hamza. Yeah, Hamza. Total failure. Okay, while you think, yes. This guy here, what's your name? Ayub. Ayub. Ayub. Disrespecting family. What else? Farhan bhai. Farhan bhai. Not being punctual. Not being punctual. All right. So I'm going to expand a little bit more, which is? Not keeping to your word, right? Punctuality is that. You're supposed to be there. Okay. All right. What else? Don't do what's in your control. Don't? Do what's in your control. Do not do what's in your control. Fantastic. Yes, Ma'aHmood. Don't lie to your parents. Don't lie to your parents. You know, I'm asking this question. It's not a dumb question. I'm teaching you a tool. I'm teaching you a tool. If you apply this tool, you will be the most successful person on earth. Okay. What's the tool? The tool is list and write down how can you be the biggest failure? Seriously. Biggest failure. Right? This is not even my own. This is what Charlie Munger used to do. Charlie Munger died at the age of almost 100 a couple of months ago. He was Warren Buffett's advisor and also business partner with a billionaire many times over. And a very, very wise man. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala gave him good health all right till the end. So there are interviews of him in his 99th year plus plus. He had a principle and his principle was invert, invert, invert. So they asked him what is the meaning of invert? He said whatever you need to do, think of the opposite of that. He said he started his career as a in an airport, small airport. He was an airport traveler. He started his career as a military pilot, as a, as a military pilot. He started his career as a military pilot. So he qualified to be a traffic controller. So he qualified as an air traffic controller. So he qualified as an air traffic controller. He started that. So he said, I sat down and I said, how can I be, how can I completely fail as an air traffic controller? Which means that when I'm controlling the traffic, planes are crashing, people are dying. There's planes are burning down. plane that comes into this airspace which I'm controlling collides and crashes. How can I make that happen? He said, I made a list of things. And then I did the opposite of that. Right? So he has a great career because now he knows what will make him fail and he does the opposite of that. Like you said. How to fail? Don't do what is in your control. Things are in your control. You don't want to do that. You will talk about what Imran Khan should do and what MBS should do and what ABS should do and what ABC should do. But what must I do? Let that wait. Inward, inward, inward. So I want you to do this. I want you to do this serious exercise if you are serious about your careers. More dunya wal akhirah. Like he said, stop praying. Fastest road to Jahannam. Right? You stop praying. Where will you go? Where will you head? So I want you to do this exercise. Sit down. If you are interested in yourself, sit down. Take a piece of paper and write down. How can I completely fail? List things down completely. One, two, three, four, five. And then do the opposite of that. I will fail if I comp

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. 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 upon his family, peace and blessings be upon him and upon his family, From now on, my brothers and sisters, we are on a journey. All of us are on a journey. Our journey started in the knowledge of Allah the Exalted. When Allah decided to create us. And we remained there for as long as Allah wished. And from there, when Allah decided to give us wajud, give us existence, Allah told us in the Qur'an that He took all the generations of Adam together and He sent us into what we know as the Alam al-Arwah, the world of the Prophets and Messengers. The world of the souls. And in the Alam al-Arwah, Allah reminded us and took a promise. He said, Allah said, وَبِرَبِّكُمْ And we all said, قَالُوا بَلَا شَهِدْنَا We all bore witness. We all said, yes. Allah said, am I not your Rabb? And we said, yes, you are our Rabb and we bear witness. Everybody. Every human being. Every human being ever created from the beginning, from Adam all the way up to whoever is the last. Their souls accepted Allah as the Rabb, their Rabb and as the Rabb. Everyone. The good ones, the bad ones, the evil ones, everyone. And then when Allah now in these two places, in Alam al-Arwah and in the Yalwa of Allah , He said, And we remained and we remained for we don't know in terms of our time, there's no way of saying it. And Allah took care of us. We did not have to do an hour living, we didn't have to go and beg for food or have a shop or do anything. And then Allah sent us from the Alam al-Arwah into the womb of our mothers, into the Rahm of our mothers. And we remained in the Rahm of our mothers for nine months. Some kids say six months. Some kids say five months. Some kids say seven, eight, nine months, but nine months is the regular period. And in this nine month period, we were in a place which was completely dark. Sunlight never reached there. We were inside water because we were in a sack filled with amniotic fluid. And we used to breathe water. You are not breathing air. And during that period, we were sustained. We were given our Giza. We were given our Giza. We were given our food from the mother, but without the mother's control. The mother could not stop it. The mother could not give more. So Allah sustained us. Even when the mother could not keep anything inside, Allah sustained us. And then we came out into this world. So the rules of sustenance are as follows. We are not allowed to eat anything. Allah Arm compassionate. In ourhängal naqsh반ı orman giyâsbell, Since we have quien see still after your third age. Then you will not阿kh Portal on ether. The knowledge will be discont restorantal. If we forgive by understanding Allah in this world we will have freedom. But we need to transgress too. Sat dodna to nee ripari ahlu kebulur because We cannot live in our own mother's heart. live for nine minutes inside water. Different rules. And then from this world, we will go into the belly of the grave, the belly of the earth. And that is called Al-Alam Al-Barzaq. The world behind the wall. And the rules of sustenance and the rules of existence there will be different. Not the same as these rules. And then when Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala wills, we will be resurrected and taken out from there. The Sur will be blown and we will come out of the graves. And we will be gathered in the Maidan of the Hajar. And there we will remain for as long as we can. As long as Allah wills. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Khamseen Sana, then He said Khamseen Al-Fasana. He said Al-Fasana and Khamseen Al-Fasana. Thousand years and fifty thousand years. And the rules of existence, we are existing there also. Rules are different. And then from there, we will be assigned to our permanent place. And we ask Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala to decree that this permanent place for us is InshaAllah Jannatul Firdous. But there is also another place. An-Nar. Jahannam. That place is also true. That place will also take people. This is the journey. And in this entire journey, there is only one small period in which we will be able to take people. And that period is the period that Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala gave us iqtiyaar. He gave us control. He gave us limited control. That is this life. And I say limited control because in in Allah's mercy, Allah did not give us complete control. For example, while you are sleeping. While I'm sleeping, our digestive system works. Our vascular system works. Our brain function works. Right? Everything works. You have no control over that. I cannot stop my digestion, I cannot stop my blood flowing, I cannot stop my heart beating. Supposing Allah had given all this control to you and said, you run it, any way you want

The troubling decline in conscientiousness - https://www.ft.com/content/5cd77ef0-b546-4105-8946-36db3f84dc43 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1953811277463122162?s=48 Auto-generated transcript: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. And all praise is due to Allah, the 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 upon his family and his companions, are very much in acceptance. And after you, my brothers and sisters, today I want to talk to you about something different. The other day I told you there are two ways of learning. One is to make mistakes yourself, feel the pain, suffer. You learn, you don't learn, we don't know. And the other way is to learn from people who have experience. So people who have made those mistakes learn those lessons, and now they have that ready-made experience which they are happy to share with you. My experience of people, is that if you approach them respectfully, sincerely, then they will share their experience freely. I've never in my life had anybody who did not share his experience, provided they are approached respectfully and with interest. What any potential mentor wants to see is whether you are going to waste his time or not. Because if you are going to waste his time, he doesn't have time to waste with you. So if you are kind of, you know, yeah, I would like to know, so tell me your story. No, sorry, I've got other things to do. Like feed my chickens maybe, right? That's more satisfying. Why would I tell you a story? Who are you? So you have to show who you are. You have to show your desperation, you have to show your seriousness. And that when the person is talking to you, he's not wasting his time, he's not wasting his experience. With me, my first and foremost, I have a checklist in my head to check seriousness. And my first check, first point of checking seriousness is, if I give you a time, will you take the time or will you argue? Simple as that. No matter what the time is. I might tell you, I'll see you at 4am. Will you say, yes, sir, I'll see you tomorrow at 4am? Or will you say, oh, 4am. Oh, you know, I, that's not convenient. I am sleeping at that time. I'm in the second installment of the third dream. Sorry, then goodbye. Find somebody else. I mean, I don't usually say 4am. I say 2am, but that's a different issue. Seriously, bye. Many people come to me, many young people. Can you mentor me? I say, sure. But I have a criteria of mentoring. I say, what's that? I say, what's the date today? It's the 9th of August, 2025. So I tell him, come back to me, on the 9th of August, 2026. One year. This one year, you must pray tahajjud every day. And this is between you and Allah. You can tell lies to, to me, you can't tell lies to Allah . Pray tahajjud every day. And if on the 364th day you miss tahajjud, you go back to counting one. When you complete 365 days of tahajjud, then you come to me and talk. I want to see how serious you are with your own life. Because you want advice about yourself, right? You're not, you're not asking me advice about how I should, how I will succeed. You want to know how you can succeed. So prove to me that you are interested. And somebody who is not praying tahajjud, doesn't really want success. He's doping. Because if you have no time to stand before Allah , Allah is coming specifically for you to the first heaven. And Allah is announcing, is there anyone who needs anything from me? Is there anyone who needs my help? Is there anyone who needs my protection? He says, no, no, not me. Because I'm busy sleeping. Then why should I be interested in you? I'm not interested. So that's the first thing. Second thing is, if I have a mentoring contract with somebody, there's zero tolerance, absolutely zero tolerance for not keeping time, not arriving at the right time, whatever time slot was given, you are late and then you want to waste my time some more by telling me some story of why you are late. I'm not interested. Why should I be interested? You are supposed to be here at first. You are supposed to be here at 4 p.m. You're not there at 4 p.m. I'm gone. Why you are not there at 4 p.m.? Believe me, that's the least interesting thing in my life. I'm not interested in that. So seriousness with that. Third thing is, demonstrate that you are serious about learning. So number one, carry a notebook. Take notes. Nobody has the memory which they think they have. Nobody. Take notes. And then any assignment that is given to you, make sure you complete that assignment. No excuses. Again, no excuses. Many of you go to college and you get college degrees and you think that when you get hired, that people are hiring you because of your degree, because of the

https://youtu.be/FOTYkyxFzeI The troubling decline in conscientiousness - https://www.ft.com/content/5cd77ef0-b546-4105-8946-36db3f84dc43 https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1953811277463122162?s=48 Auto-generated transcript: My brothers and sisters, I get asked this question, which goes that I want you to be a mentor. So I say, please write down, write me a letter or note in which I want you to list your challenges, your questions and your goals from this mentorship relationship. And why are you asking me to be a mentor? To be a mentor. To be your expectations. So I get this answer. Can I just call you and tell you? Can I send you a voice recording? So I said, no, you can't call and tell me. We will speak on the phone obviously at some point, but not now. And you can't send me a voice recording. What you can do and you should do is, write the thing down, send me a note. And the reason for that is because when you write things down, there is a connection. There are actual connections between, neurological connections between your writing and your thinking. Ideally speaking, write on paper with a pen. Not even on your laptop or phone. Sit down with paper and pen and write. So that's the reason. So I say, please write down. Okay. There is an actual relationship between the act of writing and thinking. And that is the next positive relationship. What it does is that writing clarifies your thinking. Writing clarifies your thinking. So as you are writing down and you write down this is my problem, the answer itself will come to you. So you will discover that, well, I thought this was a problem, but actually maybe it's not. Maybe I already have an answer. So I thought I needed this mentor for this reason and I don't. So alhamdulillah, good for you. So sit down and write. And then once you have done that writing, then list those things, that whole list of things you put there, list them in order of priority. Which is the most important? Which is the next? Which is the next? Okay. Okay. So in order to do that, in order to list the priority, you have to have a goal because there is no way that you can prioritize something unless you have a goal. Get it? So something is more important. Why? Because it helps me to achieve my goal in the most energy efficient, carbon efficient, calorie efficient, you know. Okay. Brain power efficient. Be efficient, 따라 masi We're making every experiment possible because they just want it in their wonderland, the … So this one is the mo inb priority because this is… Oh my God. This is the one spot, be patient. Because even though it may not be efficient in all these ways, but it will be more difficult and so on, so on, so on, it gives me the biggest bang for the buck. It gives me the biggest advantage, it is the biggest rock that I have to take care of. It is the forest frog that I have to eat, Do you know the level of quality? frog I have to eat. It is the elephant in the room. Call it whatever you want. We have lots of metaphors and lots of, you know, examples we talk about, but you solve the biggest problem. The rest of it can only be, you know, easier because the most difficult one you did. You slew the dragon. The dragon is dead. Now, whatever else is there, even if it's a tiger, even if it's a lion, it's not as bad as a dragon. It's not breathing fire, right? So, therefore, you've done your job. Makes it easier. So, define that. Prioritize it. Which one, which one? In this context, what people get confused is, and I get this all the time. Oh, Shaikh, but you know, what you're saying is true, but it's not easy. So, I tell them yes. Now, let's therefore understand one more thing, which is, you sit down and ask yourself, which do you want? Because these are two opposite things. Which do you want? You want success or you want easy? The two are not the same. The two are never the same. You want success or you want easy? Which one do you want? So, you're looking at a tree. We are now walking in Ashiro the Wild. So, we're going through the forest part of it. It's beautiful, very, very tall. Aspens and poplars as well. A lot, very tall tree, maybe a hundred foot tall, maybe more. So, suppose I say, well, if somebody comes to me and says, you know, I want to get to the top of the tree, what shall I do? What should you do? I say, start climbing. Right? Start climbing or learn to fly. What else? Start climbing. He says, no, but that's not easy. Yeah, sure. You told me you want to get to the top of the tree. You told me that you want to get to the top of the tree. You didn't say you want easy. You want easy, go sit by the trunk of the tree on the bottom. And if you sit down, you get... That's gravity assisted. Gravity will help you. You don't have to make an effort to go down. You have to make an effort to go up. And that's the principle of tower dynamics, right? The law of entropy

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honour of the Prophet and the messengers, Muhammad and the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions. And peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions. My brothers and sisters, today I thought I will talk about some of the very common mistakes that I see here all the time. These are small but they are very important. So it's very important to get these things right. So first of all, the way Adhan is called. Many of you call the Adhan, many of you like to call the Adhan. Alhamdulillah, it's good. But the way people call Adhan, except for one or two, it's all wrong. The most common mistake is that people call it Adhan. The most common mistake that is made in the calling of Adhan is Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Now, in the Arabic language, according to the grammar, if you are going to combine these two phrases, Allahu Akbar is said twice. But if you combine the two phrases, at the end of the first phrase, Allahu Akbar, there is a Dhamma. There is a Pesh. Allahu Akbaru. And the next Allah has to be joined with that Dhamma. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Not Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. So please keep that in mind. Otherwise your Adhan is wrong. So Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Right? Second thing is, Allahu Akbar, many of you pronounce it as Allah Akbar. If you listen to it, it sounds Allah Akbar. Doesn't sound Allahu Akbar. The who is very important. Allahu Akbar. The Akbar is connected with Allah. Allah is the greatest. Otherwise, Allah Akbar are two different, two separate words. What's the connection? So, Allahu Akbar. Right? I'm deliberately not saying which nationalities do these things. But you know. And nothing to do with being Arab or not Arab. This is the issue of Tajweed of the Arabic language. So this is the first mistake which is made. Second thing is, The Ra. Allahu Akbar. Some of you when you call the Adhan and Iqamah, you put a Shadda on the Ra. A Tajdeed on the Ra. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar, right? All of you. Be careful. Blessings to all of you. So policing Allah and he bestows merciful mercy. Then you go to learning. So especially if you're listening to this накka, if you're watching this listening to this it's like watching a lecturラ at our alarm radio, has been there mostly for thatear gossiping. I think, see that? Have only gotten to have – it's the most important động vivre. How many people are listening? If you want to make a DB, if you want to practice, because what's the compare them to, be happy, whatever you want to may be. So it's almost that old-fashioned, you learn, look. At this high place that as long as you say a few times Allahu Akbar, a few times Ashadu wa la ilaha illallah, this is enough. You can just say as many times as you like. So some people will say Allahu Akbar twice, then they will say Ashadu wa la ilaha illallah twice, then they will say something else. Please, there are two ways of calling the Ikham. First way is Allahu Akbar four times. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, and then two, two, two, two, two. Ashadu wa la ilaha illallah, Ashadu wa la ilaha illallah, Ashadu anna Muhammadun Rasulullah, Ashadu anna Muhammadun Rasulullah, Hayala sala, Hayala sala, Hayala alfa la, Hayala alfa la, Qad qaamati sala, Qad qaamati sala, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, la ilaha illallah. So four times Allahu Akbar in the beginning, then everything two, la ilaha illallah once. The second one is two times Allahu Akbar, everything else once, appropriately. Except Qad Qamatul Salah which is twice and the La Ilaha Illallah once. So Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Ashadu wa la Ilaha Illallah, Ashadu anna Muhammadu Rasulullah, Hayalul Salah, Hayalul Fala, Qad Qamatul Salah, Qad Qamatul Salah, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Illallah. Right? There is no third way of doing it. So don't just mix up a few times Allahu Akbar, a few times, no. There is a proper way of doing the Qama. Third thing is, Ashadu an la Ilaha Illallah. I have heard people saying Ashadu anna la Ilaha Illallah. There is no Ashadu anna la Ilaha Illallah. Ashadu an la, and then the noon joins with the laam. So Ashadu an la, it's not Ashadu anna, Ashadu an la Ilaha Illallah, Ashadu an la. That noon becomes silent, joins with the laam. Ashadu an la. Ashadu an la Ilaha Illallah. Same way, Ashadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah. Now this is the issue of when the anna comes, the word after the anna has a fatah. So Ashadu anna Muhammad, many people say Ashadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah. No. Ashadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah. Ashadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah

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 upon his family and his companions, and a lot of respect. And after that, my brothers and sisters, we just finished Salat al-Maghrib by Jam'ah. Alhamdulillah, in terms of the reward of this, Rasulullah said this is to pray this, any Farsala by Jam'ah has 25 to 27 times the reward of praying it on your own, by yourself. About Salat itself, about praying by itself and that also not for Sunnah Salat, which is the two Sunnah of Salat al-Fajr. Rasulullah said, the two Sunnah of Salat al-Fajr are better than all that is contained in the heavens and the earth and between them. Combine them all. So, in this, so if this reward for the Sunnah Salat prayed alone is that much, which is more than everything in the earth and in the heavens and whatever is in between, then what is the reward for the Farsala prayed by Jam'ah? This is the beauty of this Deen. This is the beauty of this Deen. That Allah gave us things which are apparently small and insignificant. How long did it take to pray? You know? Totally maybe, five, seven minutes, 10 minutes, let's say. Nothing more than that. May not even be 10, maybe about five, seven minutes. And the reward for that is? Now, think about this. Think about this reward in the context of the place where this reward is going to be really visible for us to see. That is on the day of Yawal Khayama, the day of judgment. On the day of judgment, the difference or the value of one Hasana, just one good deed, is the difference between Jannah and Jahana. Just one. Just one single good deed, the value of that is, it can spell the difference between Jannah and Jahana. So what about Farsala, prayed by Jam'ah in the Masjid, all of this reward, I mean. Now, what does this teach us? What does Salah teach us? One of our, one of our, Ashaati is one of our teachers. May Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la fill his cover with Noor. Ma'an Yunus Patel, Sir, Ram Thiru Laleh. He went to, I actually met him on that trip. He was going to Makkah. I was going somewhere else. I can't remember where, but I met him in Dubai, in the lounge, in the Emirates lounge. And he said, I'm going for Umrah. I said, I requested him, please make dua for me and so on. He finished Umrah, he's sitting in the Mataf in front of the Kaaba, he passed away. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la called him to himself. Now, he used to say, Salah begins outside the Masjid. Salah begins outside the Masjid. You might say, I go to the Masjid for Salah, I'm praying. Yeah, sure, of course, obviously Salah. But he said Salah begins outside the Masjid. So we said, Shaikh, what do you mean? He said, your religion is what happens after Salah is over. The quality of your religion, the level of your Iman and Yaqeer and so on. He said, this is measured by what you do outside the Masjid when Salah is over. So what does it teach us? Some things, I'm not, this is not an exhaustive list, but some things it teaches. First and foremost, Salah teaches me that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and obeying Allah is more important than anything else. This is the first lesson. That is why whatever else I might be doing, when the time of Salah comes, Salah begins outside the Masjid. So we got to go pray. We can't be doing something else. We can't say, oh, but you know, my office, my shop, my business, my this, my that. No, no, no. Time for Salah, we go and pray. So the first and foremost thing we learn is that Allah and obeying Allah takes precedence over everything else. Second, it teaches us the importance of purity, of Taharaq. Because our Udhu is the key to Salah. Without the Udhu, there is no Salah. So purifying myself, Udhu, if I need to kusar, may I kusar. Make sure that the body is pure. I've done the Udhu. And then only we go into Salah. So the importance of purity, the importance of cleanliness. Third thing is the importance of Tawajjo, the importance of focus. Because Salah is Ibadah and the Ibadah begins with the Niyah. If there is no Niyah, there is no Ibadah. When you, for example, when the Adhan is called, when the Masjid is calling the Adhan, what are we supposed to do? First thing, reply to the Adhan, which is whatever the Muslim is saying, you say it, say also the same thing. So it's Allahu Akbar, you say Allahu Akbar, it's Allahu Akbar, it's Allahu Akbar, and so on, except for Hayyara Salah and Hayyara Fala, you say, La Hawla Wa La Quwwata Illaha Bida. And then when this Adhan is over, then what do you do? You send Durood on Rasulullah . First thing, people make these mistakes. First thing you do is send Salat and Salam on Rasulullah . You don't immediately say Allahumma R

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, listen to this. We continue with the list of the checklist that Ibrahim A.A. gave to the people of Basra when they asked him why their dua is not accepted. And we are on the sixth of the ten reasons that he gave. And he, in the sixth reason, he said, you say that you fear Jahannam. You say that you fear the Hellfire, you fear Jahannam. But you do not flee from it. You do not run away from it. Now, one of the things that happened in Islam, and there's a whole history behind it which I won't go into now, is this false belief that there is no need to fear Allah. The fear of Allah is not like the fear of anything else. Because when a person fears something, they seek to run away from it, escape from it. You can't run away from Allah for any reason in any way. The fear of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the fear of offending. The fear to offend, the fear to disobey, the fear to displease the one we love the most. This is at the highest level. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, وَالَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَشَدُّوا فَلِلَّهِ Very the believers are those who love Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala more than anyone or anything else. And therefore, at the highest level, the muddaki is the one who fears to offend the one he loves the most, and that is Allah. But however, there is also, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala described himself and described his punishments. In Allah, Allah said, وَشَدِدُوا لِخَابٍ Who was Ali ul-Adhar? So there is no running away from that. And therefore, it's also the fear of disobeying the one who has the power to inflict severe punishment if he wishes. And we ask Allah to protect us from that. Now there are two main reasons why Muslims disobey. And this is a very important thing because you're not talking about here, what people, who don't believe in Allah at all. That's a different issue. Alhamdulillah, we believe in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We don't deny Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We are not falling into kufr. But we disobey. And that is two reasons. One, we have become and made ourselves the slaves of our desires. Instead of being Ibadullah, we are Ibadul Hawa. We are the slaves of our desires. Number one. And number two, may Allah protect us from ourselves. إِلَّا مَشَاءَ اللَّهُ Except those who Allah has mercy on, we lack faith in the Akhil. We do not have yakin in the Akhil. We believe in it at an intellectual level. But we do not have yakin in the Akhil. We believe in the Akhil. But we do not have yakin in the Akhil. But we do not have yakin in the Akhil. Now that borders on disbelief. I remind myself, I knew that the biggest strength of the Sahaba, Ridwar and the Alayhi Majma'in, was that they took the word of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala literally. If Allah said something in a certain way, that is how they understood it. And that is how they treated it. That is how they responded to it. That is why, for example, we are so many people, we are so many instances of the Sahaba asking, Ya Rasulullah, are there dates in Jannah? What is the size of that fruit in Jannah? Literally. They are not saying, Oh, Jannah is, you know, it's a good thought. There is a share that comes to mind which I won't interrupt. The only other person here who understands Urdu poetry is sitting here and telling, He and I share these things. He and I share these things. He and I share these things. And he is piling because he knows the share. But I won't talk about that here. But the point I'm saying is, Jannah is not a nice concept. It is real. The Sahaba took it as real. When Rasulullah said, He said, In Jannah, some of you will have palaces which float in the air. The question they asked him was, Ya Rasulullah, how will we enter that palace? Think about this. They didn't say, How will it float in the air? How can the palace float in the air? They didn't ask that question. He is saying, The palace floats in the air. We accept that. We believe that. That's not the question. The question is, Okay, now if it's for me, How do I get in there? Literal belief. Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, You will enter it like a bird enters its nest by flying. Now this reality of belief enabled them to work for Jannah. That is why we have, For example, the story of Abu Dahad al-Ansar Ghazal Anu, Which I have mentioned to you many times before, So I won't say it now. But a man who goes and gives his entire dead garden, Plus house, plus well, plus the works, Away for one tree in Jannah. Rasulullah said, One tree in Jannah. Right? He's giving up something concrete. He had the most valuable piece of realistic, Real estate in Madinah at the time. He gave it away. Sold it for one single tree in Jannah. It's a beautiful story. I've said it many times before. Those of you who haven't heard it, Come for the Isha Khatera, For the Maghrib Khatera. Ask me, I'll tell

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 upon his family and his family, are many a Muslim and many a Muslim. My brothers and sisters, many times people come to me and say, I want to be a speaker. I want to be a speaker. Teach me how to speak. I remind myself and you, and I warn myself and you, not to do what the best of us, the most critical people, the most amazing people, who lived before us, don't do what they were afraid to do. So think about it. There is probably not even one from the Sahaba or the Tabataween, who are the best of the best. There is probably not even one of them who is mentioned as a great speaker. Who attracted huge crowds and who had XYZ followers. Right? Not even one. Whereas unfortunately we live in a time when that seems to be the way in which scholars are judged and assessed and valued. This is not a sign of anything, except the ignorant times that we live in. So those people who are very keen to learn how to be great speakers and so on, and may Allah have mercy, they have those who they see as their role models, who are known to be so-called great speakers. They charge big fees and so on. So there is that desire and greed for money as well, which comes into it. So be aware of that. Because see what, how careful people were. And these are the true scholars, the real scholars of this Deen. See how true, how careful they were with this Deen and with what Allah gave them. They treated that, what Allah gave them, which is knowledge of Islam, they treated that as a big responsibility and burden. Burden not in the sense of, they were not complaining about it, but burden as in the sense of great responsibility. Not something that they were keen to get or keen to have, not something that they ran behind, not something that they used to make posters and to, you know, attract followers. They were not they saw this as a huge responsibility and they were extremely, extremely careful about what they said or did. There is a famous story of Gambali Krahuntullari where a man came from Kufa and said to him that I have come from Kufa and we have heard about you and you are a famous man. Because people used to say in the time of Imam Malik, the scholars of Islam in the world used to say, how can I give a fatwa when Malik is in Madina? So the man said, I have come with 40 questions. So I want to ask you. Imam Malik said, okay ask. He asked his 40 questions and Imam Malik answered 8 and for the 32 he said, Allah O Allah. He said, Allah knows best. So the man said, this is very disappointing because now what will I go and tell the people in Kufa? Malik said, that is very simple. Tell them that you are mistaken. Malik is not a great scholar. Because, how can I tell you something about Allah about which I am not sure? So you are asking me a question. I am not sure of the answer just now. If anything you have to wait and then I will have to check and I will have to find out and then I will tell you. But right now, Allah knows best. This was the way of our Salaf. This was the way of the people of true people of knowledge. Ibn Abbas said, Ibn Abbas used to he never said that so and so you know he he never sort of said about anybody that this one will go to Jannah and this one will go to Jannah. He would say, I don't know whether he will find he is talking about somebody's you know action. He would say, I don't know whether he will find this among his good deeds or his bad deeds. Now that does not mean that, he was not sure of what the man is doing. He was sure but he didn't want to take the risk of saying something with certainty when it might be something which may have some kind of you know some kind of other possibility. So this is something that we should really you know we should really take very very seriously. So when people come to me and say I want to be a speaker, I tell them look don't run, don't rush in as they are saying in English. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. So don't be a fool. Because the moment you start speaking you take the position of the teacher then you are in the position of the Prophet . You are in the position of Rasul Allah . You have become a Mufti, you have started legislating and may Allah have mercy on us. There are people today who legislate and say all kinds of things. What Allah made haram they make halal. What Allah made halal they make haram. And their excuse is the worst excuse of the whole world which is to say that times have changed or the country is different. So we are in America. We are special. We are not like others. This is such a completely idiotic thing that people say that you are not like others. You may not be like others because this country and this culture seems to

Auto-generated transcript:Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. We come to the fifth of the points that Ibrahim A. Ibrahim A. mentioned. The reasons why dua is not accepted. And the fifth was he said, you say that you desire Jannah, but you do not work for it. That you say you desire Jannah, but you don't work for it. You have known Allah, but you do not fulfill his rights. You read the book of Allah, but you do not live by it. You claim to love the messenger of Allah , but you do not fulfill his rights. You claim to be the enemies of Shaitan, but you align with him. And the fifth one is you say you desire Jannah, but you do not work for it. Allah said about Jannah, about Paradise, Allah said, Allah has indeed purchased. Allah has indeed purchased. Allah has indeed purchased. Allah has indeed purchased. Allah has indeed purchased. Allah has bought from the believers. Their lives and wealth in exchange for Jannah. Allah says, I have taken your life and your wealth belong to me. In exchange for this, I have given you Jannah. This is the deal, this is the sale that has happened. Allah is using the word sale. Bought. So, what happens in a sale? You buy something. If I pay for it, then to deliver that is responsibility of whom? The person I paid to, right? If I buy your car, I give you the money for the car, and then you don't give me the car, then you are at fault. Because we had a deal. The deal was, pay me so much, I give you the car. I pay you, and you don't give me the car. Allah is saying, our deal is this, give me your life, give me your wealth, I give you Jannah. Simple. Give me your life doesn't mean commit suicide, no. Give me your life means live your life according to my commands. Spend your wealth. Earn. Spend your life. And spend in the way that I have told you to do. That's it. And Jannah is yours by right. Jannah is yours by right, because Allah said, I bought it, which means now that to deliver it is Allah's responsibility. Allah does not go back on his word, right? The beauty of this is, if we live our lives the way Allah has made it possible, then we will be able to live our lives the way Allah has made it possible. That means that we are beautiful, which means that Islam has made it possible for us to live our lives, which means we will be able to live our lives the way Allah has made it possible for us to live our lives. And if we earn halal, and we spend halal, we also end up having a very beautiful life in this world. This is the duty of Islam. Islam does not say punish yourself, beat up yourself every day, eat one meal in one week, right? In the burning sun, go and stand outside until? all the hair on your head is gone. No. In freezing cold, go and stand naked in the water. No. Worship Allah with dignity, with comfort. Be good to people. Speak the truth. Don't tell lies. Don't deceive. Give people more than you receive. Be kind to your neighbors, whether they are Muslim or not Muslim. Doesn't matter. They are your neighbors. They have a right on you. Be good to them. Be good to your family. Right? Treat your spouse, your wife, your husband with respect and with love and affection. Show that. Treat your children. Raise your children as good, responsible citizens of the land. Be good to the country. Be good to the earth. Don't pollute the water. Don't pollute the air. I mean, just imagine, if you do all of this, you will be the most beloved person in the world. Everyone will love you. So you've got a beautiful life. Even if it's one, I mean, supposing the truth was that with death, everything ends. Even then, this would be the beautiful way to live because I live beautifully. I have a lovely life. My life is full of friends. I am highly influential. I am highly powerful and so on in a very beautiful way. And then I die. Nothing comes after that. No problem. My life is beautiful. But here, that's not the case. Here, your life will be beautiful. And then when you go before Allah, Allah said, now Jannah is yours by right. You bought it from me. I sold it to you. Now, what's the problem with that? But we think that it must come without effort. It does not come without effort. Nothing comes without effort. Shaitan deceives us. And the deception is so dumb if you think about this. There are some things that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala fixed. They're not going to change. Nobody can change them. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told us what those things are and he told us they are fixed. There are other things which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave us the pen and said, write your destiny. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? So now, which of these should you focus on? The ones that are fixed and cannot be changed, focus on them? Or focus on the ones that you can actually do something about? Dumb question, right? But we behave in dumb ways, what to do? Allah

Auto-generated transcript:Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Ya Ikhwan al Kiram, my dear respected brothers, sisters, elders. We are on the fourth of the pieces of advice that were given by Ibrahim A.S. to the people of Basra when they asked him why their duas are not accepted. We live in a time today when we desperately want our duas to be accepted. Because most of us are completely immersed and we are caught up in things that seem to be completely out of our control. And the only thing we have is the recourse to asking Allah for His help. And if that help doesn't come, then that is a very serious matter. And this was the state of the people of Basra and they asked him this question. They said, why is it that our duas are not accepted? And he gave them ten reasons. That's a checklist for all of us to think about. The first three reasons I mentioned in my last two khutbas. The first one was, he said, you have known Allah . But you do not fulfill His rights. You have known Allah , but you do not fulfill His rights. And the second one he said is that you read the Kalam of Allah. You read the Book of Allah, but you do not live by it. You read the Kitab of Allah, but you do not live by it. And the third thing he said is that you claim to love the Messenger Muhammad . The Messenger Muhammad , but you do not follow him. You do not make his itiba. The fourth one he said, he said, you claim to be enemies of shaitan, but you align with him. You follow shaitan. Now, Allah had told us the history of shaitan. Why shaitan became shaitan. Allah said, And We created you, then We made you in the form of images. Then We said to the angels, prostrate yourselves to Adam and prostrate yourselves to him, but to Iblis. He was not of those who prostrated himself. He said, What prevents you from prostrating when I have commanded you? He said, I am better than him. He said, You have created me from fire and He has created you from clay. Allah said, Allah is saying to Adam and saying to us, surely, We created you and shaped you, then commanded the angels and said to the angels prostrate before others. Make sajdah of the azeem, the sajdah of respect, make it to Adam . So they all did, but not Iblis, who refused to prostrate with the others. Allah said, what prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you? And of course Allah knows. But Allah , whenever He asked these questions, this is to establish evidence for the slave or against him, by his own utterances, by his own replies. So Allah is asking him, why did you refuse? What prevented you from prostrating, from obeying my command? And he said, I am better than he is. I am better than he is. Ana khayrun minhu. You created me from fire and you created him from clay. Khalaqtani min naar wa khalaqtahu min naar. You created me from clay. You created me from clay. The biggest lesson that we learn from the story of shaitan's fall into disgrace and worse is the problem of arrogance. The problem of exclusivity of saying, no, everybody else is doing something, but I am different. Everyone else says something, but I have a different opinion. In my opinion. The Qur'an says this, the sunnah says this, the hadeeth says this, the ayama says this, but in my opinion. And I've said this a million times, but in my opinion, is the name on the door of Jahanna. Because if you have an opinion, in the presence of the Kitab of Allah, in the presence of the hukm of Rasulallah , Allah spoke this word, Hasan. He went pretty far, came about, he came about, where not in Shaitan, we find life. But come upon me nowadays, the same person, who was called Hanab and Al-Habib etc. He came down, came after Allah . He's gone. Even when we rebelled. He came down now, everything is right after Allah does not do Allah . Even when you searched the medicines there, you see that she came up to comparison, and your opinion is different from those things, then you are doing what Shaitan did. You are doing exactly what Shaitan did. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Make sajda, the malaika made sajda. What Shaitan said, no, no, hold on a second. This doesn't look right. In my opinion, I should not be making sajda. That's what he's saying. He did not refuse to make sajda to Allah, which we do. May Allah have mercy on us. Allah said, pray Salah at its time. No, we have time, we have this, we have that, we have something else, something else. Think about this. Shaitan did not refuse to make sajda to Allah. He refused to make sajda to Ghairullah. And he had a logic. There was a reason. He was doing that. He was not doing that because he said, No, I didn't understand. No. I understood. I thought about it. And I came to a different conclusion. And my conclusion, I believe, is better than yours. You are telling me to make sujood to something which is not worthy of worship. Sounds logical, right? That's the problem with such logic. The logic that takes

https://youtu.be/k4zxobFSTCA Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honorable and the most merciful. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon all of his family and companions. And peace and blessings be upon him, and upon all of his family and companions. And peace and blessings be upon him, and upon all of his family and companions. Brothers and sisters, we have been talking about the four, what I call the universal truth. So what is the first one? Time passes. Time passes. Second one? Liking doesn't matter. Liking doesn't matter. Third one? Anyone third one? Liking doesn't matter. Two ways to learn life's lessons. Smart way and the dumb way. Smart way is learn from others. Dumb way is go through it yourself. Now it doesn't mean that everything can be learned from others. Something you will go through yourself. But if you take the help of experience, then you reduce the amount of pain you need to suffer. Fourth universal truth. That learning has four steps. Learning has four steps. Number one, diagnosis. What is it that you need to learn? What is the problem? Think about it like going to hospital. The most important thing in the hospital is not all the information. Not the qualification of the doctors. Not the medicine. It is can they pinpoint what is wrong with you? Can they find your disease? Right? If the diagnosis is wrong, nothing will work. Number two? Intervention design. What will work for what you have? You got a certain disease. What is the cure for it? Number three is implementation. What is the cure for it? What is the cure for it? What is the cure for it? What is the cure for it? What is the implementation? Actually applying the cure. And number four is monitoring results. Seeing does it work or does it not work? Is it working or is it not working? Now, these four things are possible only in face-to-face dealings. Now, this is the reason why the importance of the muslih, The importance of the person to correct, The importance for the person to correct, The importance for the person to correct, teacher. Right? So, face to face, you cannot learn these things just like you cannot learn, just like you cannot cure a problem you have, a disease you have, by talking on the phone to the doctor, it doesn't work. You've got to go. He has to look at you, he has to examine you physically. Right? He's got to poke you somewhere, is it hurting? He's got to put you on a scanner and take you out. All this has to be done. And just like you can't watch a YouTube video on what is wrong with you and prescribe medicine for yourself, first of all, it's illegal, secondly, it'll kill you. Same thing. Same thing. So, watching videos and TikToks and online courses, doesn't work. This is the, the biggest mistake people make with regard to learning Islam. They think that learning Islam is like learning God knows what, you know, anything else. Any theory thing. Learning history. You can learn history by watching a video or reading a book. I mean, how else do you learn history? You can't go back in time. But learning Islam is like learning to cook. You have to do the stuff yourself. Right? No matter which video, you have to do it yourself. It's like, it's like martial arts. You have to do it yourself. Only then will you understand it. Only then will you, will you, will you have a feeling for this day. Okay, this is how it feels to, is to fall. This is how it feels to save yourself from falling. And so on and so on. So, it's very important. Physical, personal presence. So, it's not that you can't learn anything online, but the quality and the application of it, not for online. But therefore, what must you do? First and foremost thing to do is to focus on your legacy. What do you want to be remembered for? As this question to yourself, what do I want to be remembered for? And write the answer. Because one day we'll be gone from here, you know. You will go from this world itself, or you will go from whichever location you are in, or you go somewhere else and people will think of you. How do you want them to think? What do you want them to think? Right? Gaining popularity is the easiest thing in the world. For example, if I hadn't told you to come from there to here, I'm sure you would have said, I'm sure my popularity index would have been higher than it is right now. Right? What good is that? What good is that? You learn something now which is of lasting importance. In Hadith Jibreel, which is one of the most important Hadith in our body of knowledge in Islam, Hadith Jibreel came, that whole incident happened in the last year of Rasulullah's life. So it was like a culmination of everything in Islam, the key points Jibreel came and he taugh

https://youtu.be/PC9zuzh4x3E 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, are the most obedient and the most generous. Dear brothers and sisters, I am doing this series of reminders called Universal Truths. I call them the Four Truths. And we spoke about two of them. What was the first one? Time passes. First one, time passes. Second one? Leave your likes. Leave your likes. Liking doesn't matter. Liking doesn't matter. Right? Because everything beneficial is usually painful. So if you say, I will do only what I like, you will never learn anything. Third, truth. Truth. There are two ways to learn life lessons. There is a smart way and there is a dumb way. There is a stupid way. The smart way is to learn from others. The stupid way is to insist on making the mistakes yourself. The smart way is smart because what you learn from the other is the extraction, is the learning, is the essence of what he learnt. He suffered the pain, he suffered the expense. After the pain, he thought about it, he conceptualized it. What he is teaching you is the essence of that. You get it for free. The stupid way, just because I fell into a hole and I learnt something, does not mean that if you fall into the same hole, you will learn the same thing. You may learn nothing. You may just break your leg. Right? So it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that if you make the same mistake that your father made, you will not learn anything. It doesn't mean that if you make the same mistake that your father made, your mother made, your uncle made, your teacher made, that you will learn what they learnt. No. The learning is not related to the mistake. The learning is not related to the hole you fell into. The learning is related to what the person does with that. Because experience is not what happens to you. Experience is what you do with what happens to you. So the learning is not related to the mistake. Learning from others is simple. It's free. And learning, insisting on learning yourself is risky and costly and painful. But guess which one most people try. Especially in this culture. This culture is based on the fact that you are not a person. On the worship of the self. This culture is based on what you call raising the self-esteem of the child beyond all reasonable limits. A child has done nothing. He's just born practically. He's in grade A. Or grade 1 or grade 2 or grade 3. He's 5 years old, 7 years old. And he's told, man, you are the best in the world. Oh, you are fantastic. So he's already best in the world in grade 1. Now where does he go from there to? Right? If you're already the best, then there's only one direction you can go to, which is downhill, right? Now obviously, if anyone wants to argue the opposite and say, should we abuse children? I say, go get your head examined. I mean, it's not a world of two opposites, right? Nobody says abuse children. But this is abuse of children to give them this false impression that they are the best. They're not the best. They're nice kids. So learn. But to learn from others, you need humility. You need to be humble. You need goal clarity. You need to be clear as to why you are listening to that person. You can't just sit there and let the sound come. No. You must look for things. You must take notes. You must ask for clarification if you need clarification. What does not help is a know-it-all attitude. Oh, I know everything. These old people, old fogies, old school, they don't know anything. They don't know how to talk to people. They are from back home. America is a different place. You've heard all these things, no? They don't know how to talk to people. What do I care? What does not help is impatience. What does not help is disrespect towards the people. What does not help is disrespect towards the teacher in imagining that you can remember everything. You don't take notes. Or you just make a video. Or you record voice. And you think you can learn. You can't learn. If you want to learn from people, value experience. Because Rasool Allah said, لَيْسَ الْخَبَرُ كَالْمُعَيْنَة He said, the khabar, the information is not like actually seeing. So the person, the older person, the more experienced person has seen, for you it's only information. That's why another thing in Arabic, اسأل زَوِي الخِبْرَةِ وَلَيْسَ الْمُتَعَلَّمِينَ He said, ask the experienced. The experienced, not merely the educated. There are many young people who stayed with Rasool Allah . There's Ibn Abbas, there is Anas bin Malik, RadhiAllahu Anuma, right? They literally stayed with him in his house. And then there were others, Mu'

https://youtu.be/qJ2y3S4Iryk 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 upon his family and his companions. I am starting the series on what I call the universal truths. And we spoke about the first of them yesterday, which was, do you remember that? What was the first universal truth? Anybody? What passes? Time. Time. Time passes. Time passes. Therefore, what must you do at the end of each day? Notes. Keep a note and ask yourself, what did I gain today? Right? So, this is a very, very important thing. End of each day, what did I gain today? And again, we have the Hadith of Prophet Muhammad. He said that for a Muslim, no two days are equal. He said no two days are equal. Each day must be better. Better than the previous day. These are, if two days are equal, like yesterday and today are equal, then you wasted one day. Second universal truth is that liking doesn't matter. Liking does not matter. Whether you like something or not doesn't matter. Now get this into your head. Drill this down. Make a, take a drill, make a hole. Put it inside. Right? Liking doesn't matter. The reason I'm saying this, especially with Souvath emphasis, is because this culture, the American culture, is built on the exact opposite. And the opposite is liking is the only thing which matters. Right? I like to live, I have a lifestyle choice that matters. I like to see, I'm a male with a big beard and I like to see myself as a woman. That matters. So I will come to you and say I identify today as a woman. And you are supposed to treat me like a woman. I'm a five-year-old kid. I'm not exaggerating. You can check all of this out. I speak to teachers. I speak to professors. College here, which is a women's college. Women only. Smith College. Women only. Women only. But any males who identify, themselves as females are also admitted in this college. Why? I like to see myself like that. As I told you, you can check all this out. I'm not exaggerating. This whole culture is built on I like. What I like matters. Nothing else. And I'm saying to the opposite. The universal truth is what you like. Does not matter. So take this word. I like. Write it on a piece of paper. Write it on a piece of toilet paper and flush it down the toilet. For you to get an understanding of exactly what to do with that. Don't even throw it in the garbage. I don't even want to see it there. Flush it down the toilet. I like does not matter. Liking does not matter. And you know why? Because everything beneficial is disliked at first. Everything without exception. Everything beneficial is disliked at first. Everything beneficial is painful at first. Ask people who are who who are who yearn to have children. Right. You don't have children. You want to have children. You are begging Allah to give you children. You're doing this treatment, that treatment, what not treatment to have children. And Allah grants your wish. And you get. Pregnant. What happens? What happens? You can eat a cheesecake every day. You can't even keep water down. You vomit and vomit and vomit. You're living on IV fluids for how long? Ten minutes? In some cases, nine months. You cannot get out of bed. And after that. You have to take a shower. You have to have a shower. And then you're going to the bathroom. But in the delivery process you undergo pain. Like nothing on Earth. It is Allah's mercy that he makes the woman forget the pain of delivery. Otherwise no woman will have a second baby. Frankly it beats me how a woman wants a second baby. But Allah makes them forget. So they have child after child. The pain. I'm not exaggerating. This is research data that the pain that a woman feels in childbirth is the worst pain that any human being can ever feel. There's no pain more severe than that. And that is the reason why a man came to Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and he said, Ya Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he's talking to him in Medina. He says, I took my mother for Hajj and she cannot walk properly. So I carried her on my back for the entire Hajj journey. He carried her on his back from Madira to Mecca through all the Manasik of Hajj, brought her back. He said, have I fulfilled her right on me? Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, you have not even fulfilled the right of one delivery pain that she felt when she was giving birth to you. Right? Everything beneficial is painful at first. Everything beneficial you will dislike. Nobody likes walking five miles a day. Somebody says, if the secret of health can be put into a bottle, I will put 10,000 steps into that bottle. The secret of good health is to walk 10,000 steps every single day of your

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, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, and peace and blessings be upon him. And many, many. And after that, my brothers and sisters, today I am planning to start a series of khatiras, inshallah, over the next few weeks, called the Universal Truths. These are the fundamental universal truths, and they don't depend on whether you are Muslim or non-Muslim, whether you are Pakistani or Arab or what, whether you live in America or you live in the moon. They are true for all time, and they are true for everyone. The importance of universal truths is that it is very important to know what they are, and it is extremely important to remember them and to live by them. Because... If you don't, then you pay a very, very high price, both in the dunya as well as in the akhira. So, first of the universal truths is that time passes. Time passes. The only thing you get by waiting for it is death. Nothing else. Everything else has to be worked. You have got to work for everything else. So, time passes. No matter what you do or don't do, time will pass. And it will not return. You cannot make time. Nobody can create time. You cannot save time. Get all these terminologies out of your mind. I am saving. You are not saving time. You are doing something else, which is good. But it is not. You are not saving time. I will make time for... No, you can't make time. Nobody can make time. Allah makes time. You can't save time. You can't keep it for another day. You can't store it. You can't stockpile it. You cannot manage time. Also, another thing we say, how are you a good time manager? No. No. When I do my class on maximizing the benefit of time, I ask this question. I say, how many of you are good time managers? So, usually a couple of people will put up their hands. They are good. Fantastic. You are a good time manager? Yes, sir. Okay. So, today, in today's time, give me five minutes extra. Can you do that? You cannot do that. How will you do that? The day has 24 hours. You can make it 24 plus 5? No. So, if you are telling me you will give me five minutes, what are you really doing? You are managing... You are teaching me to manage your priorities. That's all you are doing. Rearranging how your day is. That's all. Nobody can manage time. Nobody can create time. Nobody can save time. Nobody can stockpile time. Nobody can bring it back. What you can do is to value or add value to your time by using the time intelligently and maximizing. So, you're adding value to your time. That's all. That's all. So, if you are doing that, you are managing your priorities. Now, to do that, you have to remember one very important thing, which is that excuses don't change reality. Excuses do not change reality. If I lose my wallet and I come and tell you, you know, I was in this place. There was a huge crowd. And this happened. very true, this is a bad time, I can understand why you lost your wallet, don't worry, don't feel bad. Will my wallet come back because I have a good excuse? No. Loss is loss, period. Nothing will bring it back. You can make all the excuses in the world, it will not bring it back. Sometimes when people come to my class, they come late. When they say, they will tell me, sir, I am sorry. I tell them, you might be sorry, I am not sorry. Why should I be sorry? You have not caused me any loss. You came half an hour late, you came 10 minutes late, maybe in that 10 minutes something happened in this class which could have changed your life, you lost it. Right? But what is the usual excuse? Little child goes to school late, teacher I am sorry. Teacher says, I am sorry. Teacher says, it's okay. So you are conditioning them to believe that the excuse is actual reality. It's not reality. It is not okay. It can never be okay. It can never be okay. Oh, there was traffic. Hello. You are going to school, you are going to work at the peak traffic time. What did you expect there will be? Not traffic? If you didn't expect traffic, you are stupid. You are supposed to expect traffic. Leave early. Right? Leave early. Just put yourself in another place. Supposing you are going to catch a plane. You think the plane will wait for you because you had traffic? What will you do? You will actually check in maybe into an airport hotel and you say, I don't want the issue of traffic in the morning. I am going to pick my bag and walk through the corridor to the gate. Period. Okay. Excuses do not change reality. If you have an excuse of wasting time, it will not come back to you. That time has gone and you are the loser. The greatest truth is that if you are consuming, now listen very carefully, if you are consuming,

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 gatheri

Auto-generated transcript:Peace be upon you. Peace be upon you. Peace be upon you. The meaning of the ayat which I recited from Surah Al-Hajj, Allah SWT says, As we know, the Hajj is the essence of Islam. It is the commemoration by emulation, of the beautiful life, and especially certain incidents of the life of Ibrahim AS, and his small nuclear family. Each of these incidents, demonstrates and emphasizes the essence of Islam, which is submission. Islam means to submit our will to the will of Allah, and to the will of Allah. It begins with Ibrahim AS, the command he was given to take his family, his wife Hajar AS, our mother, and his newborn baby Ismail AS, to the barren valley of Bakka, which was later to become the city of Makkah. He took them there, he left them there, and all the tafsir, the details of that, we know, I won't go into all that now. And he made dua to Allah SWT for them. And that dua itself is worth study in detail. What he asked for, why did he ask for that, the sequence of what he asked, all of these are things which are worth studying. I think I've done several khutbahs on this. And then later on, he goes to visit that family, when his son, Allah SWT says, is old enough to walk with him. So we are not looking here at a strapping teenager or a 20 year old, we are looking at a little boy, old enough to walk with him. And then he is given the command to sacrifice that son to Allah SWT. And he takes his son, and as they are walking, he says to his son, I have been commanded in my dream, I have been commanded to sacrifice you, to do zibā for you. Look what you see. Fanzur. look what you see the son does not say look where where should I look what am I supposed to see which would have been logical responses he doesn't say that he knows what his father means he knows what his father means when he says look fan Durma that era I mean these the way Allah subhanahu ta'ala has described these things in the Quran are things to really seriously reflect on and ask ourselves where am I with respect to this we allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is not mentioning these stories for our entertainment Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is setting standards for us to emulate standards which we will be helping to follow and we will be helping to follow and we will be helping to follow held accountable for an accountable to and the Sun says what is the response his response is do what you have been commanded to do and Inshallah you will find me among the Sabir in and then as they go on this journey Shaytan comes to them in three places and tries to tempt them and tries to misguide the son. And eventually Allah sends a ram to be sacrificed instead of Ismail . And then later on Ismail is commanded to go back. And by then Ismail is grown and they build the Kaaba as Sharif on the command of Allah . The rituals of Hajj, the Manasik of Hajj commemorate every one of these. They commemorate first the Sai of Hajj where she ran from mountain top to mountain top, from Safar to Marwat. Soon after they were left there. And then they are buried there in that valley. And then it commemorates these places where shaitan tempted them which is the position of the Jabrat. And then the sacrifice itself. The Udhiyya, the Khurwani. And then of course the Tawaf of the Kaaba. Because by then the Kaaba has been built. All of these are the Manasik of Hajj. And of course Allah commanded these to be arranged in a certain sequence. And then they are buried there. And then the sequence which we learn from Muhammadur Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa ala alihi wa sahibu salim. Where he said to us, Take from me the Manasik of Hajj. Take from me the rituals of Hajj. Qudu anni Manasikako. Learn from me. Take from me your Manasik. Your rituals of Hajj. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala loved the actions of these three people. This little family. Ibrahim alaihi salam, Ismail alaihi salam and Hajar alaihi salam. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala loved their actions so much that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala converted them into acts of worship. Into the Manasik and stages and rituals of Hajj itself. Hajar alaihi salam ran from mountain to mountain not because she was worshipping. Because that was her need. She was looking for some sustenance to see if she offers some help. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala converted this into a ritual of worship. And so on all of them. So when we go for Hajj, this is, it is a fard. So first and foremost anyone who's has the money and the physical ability to go for Hajj, must make the Niyah, must make the Azam to go for Hajj. And must make the preparation for Hajj. And must make the preparation and inshaAllah ta'ala may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make it easy for them. But when you go, go with this awareness. Go with this awareness. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make it full of Barakah for all of those who went for Hajj this year. May Allah bless you, may Allah accept all your duas. Allah subhan

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honor of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family and companions. Tasliman kathiran kathira. From my brother and sisters, Allah, the Exalted, mentioned the issue of integrity in Islam. Integrity is the very meaning of Islam. The very meaning of Islam is integrity because Tawheed is to give what is due to the one to whom it is due. And it begins with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And what is due to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is that only He, Jalla Jalaluhu, should be worshipped. And that no one must be worshipped instead of Him or along with Him. This is what Tawheed is. And therefore in Tawheed we begin with denying the worship of anyone and everyone. And then we confirm that worship is only to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Tawheed begins with Nafi. La ila. There is no God. La ilaha. There is no God. Illa Allah. Except Allah. And that is the isbat. That is where we confirm that except Allah. That is the fundamental principle in Islam, is to behave with integrity. And that's why in Surah Al-Ma'idah, the first ayat, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Ya ayyuha alladhina amanu, awfu bil'uwa, wal'uquud. Allah said, O believers, honour your obligation. Honour your trust. Honour whatever has been given to you in amanah. Honour your word. Honour your promises. Anything which begins with Ya ayyuha alladhina amanu is a hukum of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. It's a command of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. It is obligatory on us to obey that command. So Allah said, Ya ayyuha alladhina amanu, awfu bil'uquud. O you, O believers, O you who believe, honour your obligations. Honour your word. Honour your promise. I remind myself and you that if we do not do that, then we come under the punishment of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. In Surah Al-Anfal, Allah said, Ya ayyuha alladhina amanu, awfu bil'uquud. Ya ayyuha alladhina amanu, la takhoonu Allah wa rasoola, wa takhoonu amanatikum wa antum ta'alamoon. Allah said, O you who believe, do not do khiyana. Do not betray Allah and His Messenger, nor betray knowingly the things entrusted to you. And this includes everything which Allah has ordained, which includes, which includes your, anything as in material thing, and it also includes anything as in something which has been, which you have been entrusted with as a trust. Meaning, something that somebody says, this is a secret, this is something which I am telling you in confidence, and do not share this with anyone. All of these come under amanat. All of these things are things which are entrusted, which are something which we are obliged to, we are obliged to fulfill and not to betray those trusts. Right? Not to do khiyana in it. In Surah An-Nisa, Allah said, Inna Allaha ya'murukum an tu'addul abdullah, an tu'addul amanati ila ahliha, wa idha hakamtum bayna an-nasi an tahkumubil adl, inna Allaha ni'ma ya'izukum bih, inna Allaha kana sami'an basira. Allah said, indeed Allah commands you to return the trusts to their rightful owners. Meaning, keep your word, keep your promises, don't betray. And when you judge between people, judge with fairness. What a noble commandment from Allah to you. Surely Allah is all-hearing, all-seeing. Rasulullah , in a Sahih Hadith, in Bukhari and Muslim, he said, narrated by Abdullah ibn Amr , who said that Rasulullah said, there are four characteristics. There are four characteristics. Whoever has them all is a pure hypocrite. He's a pure munafiq. And whoever has one of them has one of the characteristics of hypocrisy. He has one of the qualities of nifaq. Until he gives it up, when he makes a covenant, and these are the four qualities. One, when he makes a covenant, he betrays it. When he speaks, he lies. When he makes a promise, he breaks it. And when he disputes, he resorts to all. Obscene speech. Four characteristics of the hypocrite, of the munafiq. What are they? First and foremost, when he makes a covenant, he betrays it. He gives a promise, I will do something, he does not do it. He makes a promise, I will not do something, and he does it. He makes a promise, this is secret between you and me, I will not tell anybody else, but he goes and tells somebody else. Right? So first one, makes a covenant, he betrays it. Number two, when he speaks, he lies. Third, when he makes a promise, he breaks it. And four, when he disputes, he resorts to obscene speech. He resorts, he curses, and so on, when he speaks. Four qualities of munafiqeen. And Allah said, They will be in the worst fire, the worst pit of Jahannam. Right? And Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, If someone has all of them, then they are completely and totally munafiqeen, completely and totally hypocrites

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, the 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 all his companions. Peace be upon him, and upon all his companions. Now we have looked at two reasons why du'as are not accepted. Meaning, if we want du'as to be accepted, we must fulfill these things. The third one which Ibrahim A.S. said was, he said to them, you claim to love Rasulullah, you claim to love the Prophet Muhammad , but you abandon his sunnah, but you abandon his way, you abandon his teachings. Allah told us why he sent Rasulullah , the purpose of the Nuzul of the Prophet , and he called him his blessing. Allah said, لَقَدْ مَنَّ اللَّهُ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذْ بَعْسَ فِيهِمْ رَسُولًا مِّنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ يَتْلُوَ عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِهِ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةَ وَإِنْ كَانُوا مِنْ قَبْلُوا لَفِي ضَلَالٍ مُّبِينٍ In Surah Al-Imran, Allah said, which means indeed Allah has done the believers a great favor by raising a messenger from among them, reciting to them his revelations, purifying them, teaching them the book and wisdom, for indeed they had previously been clearly misguided. It is worthy to note that Allah, even though the Quran, is a blessing of Allah, even though everything we have is a blessing of Allah, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose to call the teacher of the Quran, the Rasul alayhi salam, as his special blessing on the believers. It must be understood that Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is the key to the treasure called Al-Quran al-Kareem. He is the password to the database, the roadmap to Jannah. Without the password, without the key, the treasure chest, the roadmap will not open. You may hold it in your hand, but it cannot benefit you because you can't use it to find the road or to walk on it. Islam is all about practice. Who is a Muslim? The one who practices Islam, not the one who knows about Islam. There are many people who know a great deal about Islam. There are many heads of the departments, heads of Islamic studies in many American universities, full tenured professors, who know more about Islam, certainly than I do. But they are not Muslim because they don't practice Islam. For them, Islam is another ideology which they know about. Islam is all about practice, not only about belief, not only about knowledge. Without the example of Islam, without the example of Rasool Allah , we cannot practice Islam. There are two questions in the mind of anybody. One is why, the other one is how. The question why comes when you say, why should I obey? Why should I follow the Prophet? Why should I obey Allah? I obey Allah because I believe in Allah. And then I say, how should I do that? That's equally important. Without the how, the why cannot be implemented. And that is why the Sunnah is the key to the Quran, to the Ridha of Allah and to Jannah. Allah emphasized this particular point in two ways. One, by the use of the word, Laqad. Surely, indeed, verily, in the beginning. Laqad mann Allah. Surely, indeed. Allah could have simply said, I have given you a blessing. No. Just surely. He is drawing our attention to that. He said, notice this. And then, by how He, Jalla Jalaluhu, ended the ayah, where He said, وَإِن كَانُوا مِنْ قَبْلُوا لَفِي ذَلَالٍ مُّبِينٌ And Allah said, for indeed, before this, before the coming of the Prophet , they were clearly misguided. Please reflect on the fact, that the people had been following some ideology, before the advent of Islam. Because they obviously, like, anybody follows something because you consider that to be the best, and so they followed whatever they followed. But when Allah sent Islam and sent the Prophet , Allah said, all that was before is misguidance. Follow this. Because this is the clear path. And as they say, when the destination is chosen, the path becomes clear. That was and is the problem. The question I ask you to ask yourself, and I ask myself with word of mouth, I can ask myself with word, what is my destination? Where do I want to go? Allah asked this in the Quran, He said, أَيْنَا تَزَبُونَ Where are you going? And that's the question we need to ask ourselves, where am I going? Because based on that destination, the path will become clear. Nobody in his right mind will believe that all paths lead to the same destination, they don't. Not in this world, not in the hereafter. The path has four aspects, four stages, four key actions that we must do. Allah sent Rasulullah to take us through those four stages. One, recite the ayat he received, recite the revelation. Two, purify the listeners. Three, teach them those ayats in all their aspects. And four, show them the wisdom by practice. If I were to use four words to illustrate this, I would say inform, prepare, teach, and demonstrate.

Auto-generated transcript:Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillah. My respected brothers, sisters, elders, you are on the second point of the piece of advice that the great scholar Ibrahim Azam al-Hathul Ali gave to the people of Basra. They asked him, why is it that we supplicate to Allah? Why is it that we make dua? But we find this dua is not accepted. We ask for protection, we don't get protection. We ask for sustenance, we don't get sustenance. We ask for different things, we don't get them. Our dua is not accepted. What is the reason? And he gave them a list of ten things, which is a checklist for us to use in our own lives and see how we fit in and how we fit in. And how we fit in. And how our life fits into that. The first of them I dealt with last Jum'ah, which was, he said to them, you know Allah, but you do not fulfill His rights. He said, you have known Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, but you don't fulfill His rights. The second one, which we will talk about today, he said, you recite the book of Allah. You recite the Kalamullah, the Kitabullah, the Quran. The Quran is the book of Allah. But you do not act upon it. You recite the book of Allah, but you do not act upon it. I remind myself and you that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sent us His book, His word, His literal speech as the light of guidance, as a criterion between right and wrong. That is why one of the names of the Quran is Al-Furqan. By mentioning stories of previous generations the Quran warns us about dangers and pitfalls in the journey of life. The Quran gives us information that only the Creator can give about the Day of Judgment and beyond. It tells us what to expect after we die, which only the one who will not die, Al-Hayyul Qayyum, can tell us. The Quran came to prepare us for a life that is certain, but about which we know only, what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala told us, and that is the life after death. The Quran came to show us what choices to make, which paths to tread, which lifestyle to adopt, and which priorities to have if we want salvation and eternal success. The Quran and its teacher Rasool Allah , the Prophet Muhammad , did not come to force us to make these choices. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Nahnu alamu bima yaquloon Wa ma anta alayhim bi jabbar Fazakir bil-Qur'ani man yakhafu wa aeed He said which means, we know what, we know best what they say, and you, O Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, are not there to compel them to believe. So remind them in the Quran, those who fear my warnings. So remind them in the Quran, those who fear my warnings. They are not there to compel them to believe. So remind them with the Quran, those whose hearts are alive, those who understand. The Quranil Karim did not come only to be memorized and recited in a beautiful tone, written in artistic calligraphic fonts, and used for barakah and blessing to be recited before meetings, at weddings and funerals. It did not come to be carried on top of the head when entering a new house, or to be distributed to others by those who do not even read it themselves. The Quranil Karim came for one purpose only, to be read, understood and followed, as one follows a map to a destination they have not been to yet. You would follow such a map very carefully because you know that to miss a turn or take a wrong turn could mean the difference between life and death. In such a case, while you may be impressed with how beautifully the map has been drawn, your focus and concentration will be on following the map and walking along the paths that it shows. That is the choice that we must make with respect to the Quran. It is critical to learn Arabic, the language of the Quran, to the level of a native speaker, to be able to truly understand and appreciate the power of the narrative. Allah sent prophets to different people with miracles which challenged those people. It challenged them about things that they were the proudest about. In the case of Musa , in the case of Moses, he came with a miracle which appeared to be magic, where he threw his staff on the ground and it turned into a snake. But it was not magic. It was real transformation of one thing into another. And that is the reason why, the first people who believed in Moses, in Musa , and they converted to Islam en masse, were the magicians of the Pharaoh. Egyptian magicians were world famous for their very powerful magic, and the Pharaoh used them as means of intimidating and controlling his people. But when they saw what Musa did, because they were experts, they instantly recognized that this was not magic. It was not a magic trick. And they fell in sujood and prostration and accepted the religion that Moses brought, which is Islam. The religion that every prophet, from Adam peace and blessings be upon him, to Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him, brought. And therefore, Greek or Greek upon Greek, every medicine was highly developed and was ver

https://youtu.be/VgF-49Prbb8 Marriage Advice 3x3 Do you want to remain happily married? Then don't do 3 things and do 3 things: DON'T: 1.⁠ ⁠COLLECT GARBAGE: Have a selective memory. Remember only good and forget all bad. Garbage always stinks and only you will smell it. 2.⁠ ⁠TRY TO MOULD, CHANGE OR SCULPT: If you didn't like what you saw, why did you marry? If you liked what you saw, why do you want to change it? Your spouse is not a rock, a lump of clay or a patient in your hospital. They didn't marry you to be changed. So change yourself to like them. 3.⁠ ⁠CRITICIZE: Nagging never works. If they wanted a nag he'd have married a horse. Forgive and seek forgiveness. Nothing works like SORRY. Do you want Allah to forgive you? Then forgive your spouse and thank them for giving you so much practice. DO: 1.⁠ ⁠LAUGH: Always at yourself and with others. A sense of humor is like air. You need it to remain alive. Laugh especially when you're having problems. Laugh at yourself for marrying someone so irritating…and you thought you were clever. And laugh because she was stupid enough to marry you. Couples who can laugh together, stay together. 2.⁠ ⁠THANK: Thank your spouse because there's no thanking Allah without thanking the people. So thank them for all the so-called small things. You will know the value of those small things when they are not there. 3.⁠ ⁠SHOW YOUR LOVE: Demonstrate your affection. They're not mind readers. Even if they are, they like to see it. So show it. And do that at least three times a day. I've been married 40 years and at least I'm happy, so I should know. Last two as a bonus: Say yes as much as possible. Say no only to things which are against the Shariah. Smile a lot. Keep your mouth shut especially if you're angry. And remember that perfect happiness is only in Jannah. Finally: Give her your cheque book. Tell her it's hers to manage. If she spends it all you'll both fast until next pay day. If she needs more money she should ask Allahﷻ for it in Tahajjud. Make her the authorized signatory in the bank. And live happily ever after. Parting shot: All of the above applies equally to both spice …my plural of spouse. That's why they call marriage the spice of life. They don't? Well, they should. Auto-generated transcript: In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honourable 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, and upon his family and companions. I want to begin by a very beautiful story about Shaqeeq al-Balqay. One of the great scholars of Islam, he was a student of Ibrahim Adam, as well as he benefited from the teachings and sohbat of Jafar as-Sadiq. And Shaqeeq al-Balqay says to his wife, if the whole of Balq supports me, and you do not support me, then I will fail. If the whole of Balq supports me, but you don't support me, I will fail. And I cannot succeed without your support. My brothers and sisters, Alhamdulillah, I have been married for 40 years. So, I speak from experience. I have a formula for people who are married, and people who want to get married, and people who want to stay married. If you are not married, and you don't want to get married, then good, all power to you, you are sensible. But if you want to get married, if you are married and you want to break up, then you can leave now, most welcome. Whatever you are doing is good, keep doing it, you will break up. But if you want to be married, or you are married, and you want to stay married, then listen. I call this three by three. Do three things, and don't do three things. Do three things, and do not do three things. Now, we start with a don't. Number one, I say don't collect garbage. Right? Do not collect garbage. Have a selective memory. Remember only good, and forget the bad. Let me assure you, one thing which I can tell you with compassion, and with complete certainty, there is nobody in the world, no man, no woman, who will never give grief to the other one. Never. Including Rasulullah , his wives, our mothers, may Allah be pleased with them, gave him so much trouble that Allah revealed Quran about this. Ayat of Surah Al-Hizab. Rasulullah separated himself for one month. Rasulullah separated himself for one month. And Allah revealed Quran. And Allah said very clearly, if you don't want to stay with my Nabi, I will ask him to divorce all of you in a nice way, and I will give him better than you. So if your wife is giving you trouble, good luck. If the wife of Rasulullah gave him trouble, who are you? Right? And vice versa, same thing. Don't think that men are free from, men give enough trouble to their wives also. They are free from all the other things. They are free from all the other things. They are free f

Auto-generated transcript:My brothers and sisters, the fourth thing that Ibrahim said to the people of Basra as being the reason for them and for their duas not being accepted. He said, you claim to be enemies of shaitan, but you align with him. SubhanAllah, see the beauty of this and see where Allah have mercy on us, how these things apply to us today, apply to us, our actions, our behavior, our priorities and what we do. Now Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala described and told us. The story at the beginning when shaitan became our sworn enemy. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said. He said, you have created him from clay. He said, fall down from it, and whatever you have to be proud of, come out. Come out, you are from the small. He said, warn me until the Day they are resurrected. He said, you are from the seen. He said, because you have made me, I will go back to them, your straight path. He said, you are from the seen. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said. He said to them, come from between their hands and from behind them, from their foreheads and their foreheads, and do not find them. Many are grateful against them. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, fall down from it, you are from the seen. balls of clay. We shall not withstand you of them, because Hell will be a place for all of you. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reminded us In surah al-araf Ayat from 11 to 18 Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reminded us And he said Surely we created you Then shaped you Then said to the angels Prostrate before Adam So they all did But not Iblis Not Shaitan Who refused to prostrate with the others Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said What prevented you from prostrating When I commanded you He replied I am better than him I am better than he is You created me from fire And him from clay Allah said Then get down from paradise From Jannah It is not for you to be arrogant here So get out You are truly one of the disgraced He appealed Then delay my end Until the day of their resurrection Allah said You are delayed Until the day of their resurrection Until the appointed day He said For leaving me to stray He is blaming Allah He says For leaving me Allowing me to stray I will lie in ambush for them On your straight path I will approach them from their front Their back Their right And their left And then you will find Most of them ungrateful Allah said Get out of paradise Get out of Jannah You are disgraced And rejected I will not let you go I will certainly fill up Jahannam With you and your followers All together Now See the curse of this How Where arrogance lands you Here is Satan Allah commanded him to do something He refused To obey the command Allah said Allah commanded him He was a jinn But he was so pious And so knowledgeable And so good That his ranks were raised And he was allowed to be with the angels So Allah ordered all the angels And he was in that group Allah ordered all of them To make sajda to Adam Here we are not talking about sajda of worship We are talking about sajda of Tazeem A sajda of respect So The Question of bowing before Allah There is no sajda Of worship Of ibadah Of abudiyah To anyone other than Allah But sajda of ta'zeem Used to be at one point in time And we have examples of this Also in the Quran In other places So Allah ordered The angels to bow Before To make sujood to Adam And Iblis Refused And when Allah Now gave him a chance Right Allah Could have thrown him out Right away But didn't He said Why did you not bow Why did you not Make a prostration And make sajda to Adam When I had commanded it And of course Allah knows why This is to establish The evidence in favor Or against the slave And he said He said I am better than him You can say that You created me From Fire And you created him From clay So Arrogance Based on race He said I am of a superior race Than him Subhanallah See where it got him And then In store He has given the chance to Make tawbah and istighfar He did not do that Instead He insisted on his Abundance On him being correct He insisted that he was right And then on top of that He When Allah Subhanallah When he He responded to Allah Subhanallah In an arrogant manner So Allah Subhanallah Said get out of here And then when he said Get out of here He said He then Blamed Allah Subhanallah He said You have Allowed me to stray And so I will I will Misguide these people Meaning The children of Adam Which is all of us From the straight path And then instead of Making istighfar Instead of making tawbah He could have Even at that stage He could have said I am sorry I misunderstood I apologize Forgive me Instead of that He said give me time He said give me time Until the day Of their resurrection Right And then what will he do In that time He will try to Misguide them And Allah Subhanallah Said you have the time And you go And you misguide If you want to misguide And You will be You are rejected And they will be rejected Whoever follows You will be rejected Allah said I will fill

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the 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 upon his family and his companions, a lot of peace and blessings be upon him. My brothers and sisters, in this whole issue of the questions of how dua can be accepted, sometimes I remind myself and you, and this is a reminder for all of us that we sometimes do things. The intention may be good, but we find that the results are not good. Now, you might say, well, if the intention is good, why is the result not good? Because in the deen, especially, and of course also in dunya, a good intention alone is not sufficient. With the good intention, we also need the right method. And the right method is the method of Rasulullah s.a.w. The method of the Anbiya, alayhi salam. If you consider the time that Rasulullah s.a.w. preached Islam, when he first announced Islam, how did he do that? He did that in the way that Anbiya, alayhi salam, present their message, which is clear, without any embellishment, without any change. Without trying to water it down, without trying to sugarcoat it, without anything, just straight as it is, as Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala ordered and commanded, the Anbiya, alayhi salam, presented that just like that. Rasulullah s.a.w. stood on Safa and called out, which was like an alarm call for the people and they came running. And he said that, I have come to announce to you that there is no one worthy of worship, and I am not worthy of worship. I accept Allah, and that if you do not leave the worship of others than Allah, that you are doing, then you will be punished by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now, if you think about this, and if we look at it from our perspective today, and the kinds of arguments that we seem to present, when we talk about dawah, people talk about how we must, make the message palatable and how we must sweeten it, and how we must present it in a way which is acceptable in the culture of the people that we are preaching it to. And that is how, for example, music came into Islam, even though it is prohibited, and it came in the name of dawah. Because people said, well, you know, these people are used to singing, and these people are used to singing, and they are not used to singing. And these people are used to dancing, and these people are used to drums, and these people are used to flutes and to, you know, harmoniums and so on. So therefore, we will sing khawalis and we will sing anashi, but the anashi will be sung with music and so on, because this is what these people are used to doing. This is how they worship their gods. And therefore, if we substitute the name of our God for their God, the job is done. Think about this. That is exactly how it came to be. Now, please understand that, interestingly, the reason why the leaders of other religions permitted many things, which were clearly prohibited in their scriptures, was to become popular and to attract people to their places of worship. The plea has always been the same. If we are too strict, we will drive away the youth. If we are too strict, we will drive away the people. But just look around you. Look around you, especially in America, especially all over Europe. And see what the result of this permissiveness has been. Right? Not only is there a degeneration of the values and ethics and morals of society, but even the places of worship that they tried to populate, there is, they were unsuccessful. Right? For example, adultery and fornication. Sex outside of marriage. This has been prohibited in all religions, without exception. You want to get married, you want to have sex, you get married. But there is no sex pre-marriage and no sex with someone who you are not married to after you get married. So that's called adultery. The other one is called fornication. So no sex outside of marriage. This is the rule in all religions. But see what's happened in the West. Sex outside of marriage is the norm. It is not only accepted, but this is the norm. People not having sex until they get married or after they get married, being faithful to their partners is the exception. Right? The average lifespan of a marriage, I was told the other day, something I was reading, it said, the average lifespan of a marriage in America is eight years. Which means that almost everyone that you meet is, if they are married, it's their second marriage. They have married somebody and they have divorced. The divorce is the norm, not remaining married. And think about it, just one generation before that, that is the fathers and mothers of the people who are currently married. So people who are now in their, you know, say thirties and so, their parents, their norm was to remain married. And we have a lot of older people who are, who have been marr

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 noble Prophet and the messengers. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, may peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions. Tasliman kathiran kathira. After that, my brothers and sisters, we are talking about the advice that Ibrahim Adham, Rahmatullah Ali, gave to the people of Basra. What he said to them when they asked him why their duas are not accepted. And as I mentioned before, he enumerated ten reasons why their duas were not accepted. We have looked at the first two, which is, he said, you have known Allah, but you do not fulfill the rights of Allah. And the second thing he said is that you have, you read and recite the book of Allah, but you do not act upon it. You do not act according to it. The third one he said is, you claim to love Rasulullah, but you abandon his sunnah. Just think about this. In many countries, they celebrate the birthday of Rasulullah. So first and foremost, they celebrate the birthday of Rasulullah on a particular day. It doesn't matter which day it is. On a particular day, usually they do it on the 12th or Abiyul Awal, on a particular day, and as a function, and, you know, people gathering together and reading Naath and Nasheed and whatnot, reciting and then giving speeches. That itself is wrong. It is not the sunnah. Rasulullah never did it. He never told anyone to do it. The Khulafa Rashidin didn't do it. None of the Sahaba did it. It is something that was started by the Fatimi Khulafa, the Fatimi dynasty, the Shia dynasty in Egypt, 300 years after Rasulullah passed away. So first of all, this is a, let me give you the historical data on this. So celebrating Miladun Nabi is completely and totally against, the sunnah of Rasulullah . Data part, if you think about, if you just look on the stages of people who are celebrating this, this event, we don't even know which date he was born. So anyway, in that name, every time I have looked, I have seen the majority of them are people who do not have beards. The beard was the sunnah of Rasulullah . So how ironic. That you claim to love Rasulullah , you will sing a Nasheed in praise of the Nabi , but you will not follow his sunnah with regard to his appearance. Your day begins with the manhus, with the, with the, with the, with the, nahusat of shaving your face, of taking away the sign of Rasulullah sunnah from your face. Your day begins with that. How ironic is that? Right? Now think about this. Allah told us why he sent Rasulullah . And he called the Rasulullah his blessing, his ni'mah. Allah said in Zawah Al-Imran, لَقَدْ مَنَّ اللَّهُ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذْ بَعْسَ فِيهِمْ رَسُولًا مِّنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ يَتْلُوْا عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِهِ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةَ وَإِنْ كَانُوا مِنْ قَبْلُ لَفِي ضَلَالٍ مُّبِينٍ Allah said, Indeed, Allah has done the believers a great favor by raising a messenger from among them, reciting to them his revelations, purifying them and teaching them the book and wisdom. For indeed, they had previously been clearly astray. Think about this. Allah called not the Qur'an, but the teacher of the Qur'an as a special blessing, as his ni'mah on the believers. And he emphasized that in two ways. One, by using the word لَقَدْ, surely indeed. And by how he ended the ayah by saying, وَإِنْ كَانُوا مِنْ قَبْلُ لَفِي ضَلَالٍ مُّبِينٍ For indeed, they had previously been clearly astray. The Qur'an obviously is a ni'mah of Allah. It is a ni'mah of Allah. Islam itself is a ni'mah of Allah. But the reason Allah is calling Rasulullah the special ni'mah and not calling the Qur'an the ni'mah is because the Qur'an is locked. It's like a chest of, which is full of precious jewels, but it needs a key to be opened for you to access them. And that key is Muhammad . Without that key, the rest of, full of jewels cannot be accessed. You cannot use what Allah has given because you don't have the tool for that. You don't have the key for that. Muhammad is the password to that database of success called the Qur'an al-Karim. Without that password, that database cannot be accessed. Now what can be clearer than this? To show that it is only the way of Muhammad . His blessed sunnah, which is the right way, and that everything else is misguidance. Please reflect on the fact that people had been following some ideology or the other before the advent of Islam because they considered it to be the best way. People, they were not living under trees. They were not living as complete, like animals. They were not. They were living according to some system. And the two big systems of the time were the way of the Romans and the way of the Persians. These were the two dominant civilizations of dynasties of the time. And the Arabs followed some of

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the 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 upon his family and his companions, and peace and blessings be upon him. My brothers and sisters, the second question and second reason that Ibrahim Ahmad Hebron said to the people of Basra as the reason why their duas are not accepted, was he said you recite the book of Allah, but you do not act upon it. I remind myself and you, subhanAllah, that the purpose of all these reminders is for us to think about ourselves and say what is it that I am doing in my life and where does that fit? Does it fit the people who Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, when Allah said, Udhoni astajib lakum, ask for the knowledge of the Prophet, and the knowledge of the Prophet, and the knowledge of the Prophet, and the knowledge of the Prophet, ask me and I will give you, who was Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala addressing? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala was addressing the Sahaba of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wasallam. He was addressing the most obedient people that ever existed. He was addressing the best generation. He said, Udhoni. Now by definition, the promise of Allah, ask me and I will give you, extends to the end of time. But also, the condition of who those people should be also extends to the end of creation, to the end of time. Because the dua is for, Udhoni is for the people who are obedient to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. It came for them and it will be for those who are like them. Ittaba'hum bi-ihsan. Those who make their ittiba with excellence. I can understand that. I can understand and I can accept and certainly for myself, we cannot hope to be anywhere close to the Sahaba. But at least we need to be on the same path as them. We cannot be going in the opposite direction and expect our duas to be accepted like the duas of the Sahaba, Ridhwanullahi alaihi majma'in, used to be accepted. So let us be very clear in our minds and say that what is it that I am doing, which will make me somebody whose dua is never rejected. And that is to recite the book of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and to act upon it. In another place Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Ya ayyuha allatheena amanu lima takooluna ma la tafa'aloon kabura maqtan inda Allahi an takoolu ma la tafa'aloon Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, Oh you who believe, how is it that you say something that you do not do? And it's a big issue with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Kabura maqtan. It's a big issue with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that you say something which you do not do. So he's talking about living by our word, by living by what we proclaim to believe. Now Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sent us his book, his word, that is the actual speech of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said in a manner that pleases and is in keeping with his majesty and grace. So he sent this to Jubail-e-Salam and Jubail-e-Salam came and conveyed that by word, by speaking to Rasulullah . Rasulullah heard that, he memorized it, and he conveyed it again as speech to the Sahaba and the Sahaba listened to it and then they repeated it to each other and they memorized it and they wrote it down and it was preserved and it has been preserved in perfection from the time it was revealed. Alhamdulillah, till it reaches us. Now Allah sent us his book, which is the light of guidance and as a criterion between right and wrong. It is Al-Huda and it is Al-Furqan. These are the names of the Quran Al-Bajid. This is the guidance and it is the criterion between right and wrong. By mentioning stories of previous generations, the Quran Al-Kareem warns us, warns us about dangers and pitfalls in the journey of life. The Quran gives us information that only the Creator Allah can give about the day of judgment and beyond, about Jannah and Jahannam and so on. It tells us what to expect after we die, which only the one who will not die, Al-Hayyul Qayyum, Al-Hayyul Qayyum can say and can give. The Quran Al-Kareem came to prepare us for a life that is certain, but about which we know only what Allah told us. It came to show us what choices to make, which path to tread, which lifestyle to adopt and which priorities to have if we want salvation and eternal success. And therefore, everything begins with making a choice. A choice to live a life in obedience to Allah or the choice, may Allah protect us, to live a life in obedience to Khairullah, to something or someone other than Allah, including yourself. The path to eternal salvation and eternal success is only and only the path that leads, that is a life that is being led in order to please Allah alone. There is no other path. So anyone who believes that every way leads to Jannah, all paths leads

Auto-generated transcript:Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa Salatu wa Salamu Ala Ashrafil Anbiya wal Mursaleen. Muhammad wa Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Ala Alihi wa Sahbihi Salam. Tasliman Kaseeran Kaseera. Homma Baadu. My brothers and sisters, we are looking at the list of reasons that Ibrahim Adhem, Rahmatullah Ali, gave to the people of Basra, the reasons why their duas were not being accepted. As I mentioned to you, the reason I am mentioning this to you and wish to remind myself and you that this does not only refer to the people of Basra, but it refers to us today. Why is our dua not being accepted? Maybe for one or more of these reasons. And the first of those reasons is, you have known Allah, but you have not fulfilled His rights. You have known Allah, but you have not fulfilled His rights. Now the rights of Allah SWT, what are they? In the right of Allah SWT, the first and foremost right of Allah SWT is the reason He created us. He said, I have not created the jinn and the insan, the human beings, for anything other than to worship Me. So the right of Allah SWT is that we worship only Him and obey only Him. We stand in Salah and we say, We don't say, We worship only you and we obey only you. Exclusivity in worship and obedience is the condition of acceptance of that worship. Not only worship and obedience, but both only for Allah. This means that when there is a temptation or a suggestion or even compulsion to include anyone or anything else in the worship and obedience of Allah SWT, this must be done. This is the definition of Shirk. Shirk is to include something or someone other than Allah in the worship of Allah or in asking help from Allah SWT. Now we must remember that obedience is worship. Obedience is worship. Itaat is Ibadah. We have the story of Uday bin Hatim RA, before he became Muslim, who came to Allah SWT and said, I came to visit Rasulullah SAW and was wearing a cross on a chain around his neck. Rasulullah SAW saw him and he recited this ayat of Surah Tawbah, where Allah said, Ittaqadhu ahbarahum waruhbanahum arbaban min doonillah walmasihabna maryam wama amiru illa liya'budu ilahan wahida la ilaha illahu subhanahu amma yudhahum wa ila ilayhi shrikoon. Allah SWT said, which means, they have taken, Allah said, they have taken their rabbis and their monks as arbab min doonillah, as objects of worship, as deities, instead of Allah SWT, as well as Masihah, son of Maryam, Jesus, the son of Mary, as lords, as arbab, as gods to be worshipped, besides Allah, even though they were commanded to worship none but one ilahum wahid, one Allah, one God. There is no God worthy of worship except Him. Glorified is He above what they associate with Him. Now, when Rasulullah SAW recited this ayah, Uday bin Hatim, before he became Muslim, he politely dissented and he said, Ya Rasulullah, we don't worship our priests. Rasulullah SAW asked him, is it not true that your priests have made some things which Allah SWT has prohibited halal for you? Meaning, is it not true that your priests have permitted something which Allah has prohibited? And that they have prohibited some things which Allah has permitted. Uday bin Hatim said, yes, that is true. And if you look in the Bible, you will see that both pork as well as alcohol are prohibited. But we see the Christians use both of them quite freely and so forth also with other people of the book. So he said, yes, that is true. Rasulullah SAW said, that is worship. So what is worship? To obey someone in opposition to Allah SWT. To obey Allah SWT. To obey Allah SWT. To obey Allah SWT. To obey Allah SWT. To obey Allah SWT. To obey Allah SWT. To obey Allah SWT. To obey Allah SWT. To follow a rule or a law in opposition to a rule or law of Allah SWT is worship of that thing or that rule maker instead of Allah. So let us see what we do with what Allah SWT permitted and prohibited starting with Salah. Let us see who we obey when it comes to how we earn our living, how our businesses, our conduct and behavior, our likes and dislikes, the food we eat and our cultures. Do we follow the sunnah of Rasulullah SAW or our own whims and fancies, customs and practices? To follow someone or something in opposition to the word of Allah SWT and the teachings of his messenger SAW is to worship them instead of worshipping Allah SWT. That is why Allah SWT called such blind followership of desire shirk. Allah said, Allah said, In Surah Al-Furqan, Allah SWT said, Have you seen, O Prophet Muhammad SAW, the one who has taken, those who have taken their own desires as their God? Have you seen the one who has taken his or her own desire as their God? Will you then be a keeper over them? Will you intercede for them? Will you, will you try to, protect them? Will you advocate for them? And this is a question which is really a prohibition which is framed as a question. Will you do that? Meaning, do not do that. That gives us a sense of the gravity of th

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honor of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and his companions, peace and blessings be upon him. My brothers and sisters, Alhamdulillah, we live in times where more and more it is essential for us to live and be in a state where our duas are accepted. Because we are faced with situations, either directly or we find other people are faced with situations. So we are indirectly affected. We seem to be completely out of control of human beings. But at least out of control of those human beings who are affected. Because after all they are created by human beings, so they are not out of control. But at least the people being oppressed, the people on the receiving end of the problem, they don't seem to have anything to do with the problem. They do not seem to have any control on the problem. So, and we are therefore, we have to turn to Allah because there is only He, Jalla Jalaluhu, who has complete and total control over everything. That is His Shaan. And therefore we turn to Allah. Now, when we do that, we know Allah told us to turn to Him. He said, Allah said, I will give you and I will accept your dua. I will listen to you. Yet we find that we ask Allah over and over again for many things. And these are good things. These are things which are critical and essential for us. But we find that this dua is not acceptable. It is not. We know Allah listens. There is no doubt about that. But we also know that we are, we don't get what we ask for. So big question is, uh, why does that happen? Why is it that we are in the situation where we are asking Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, Allah told us to ask and we are asking it, yet we are not given and it doesn't happen for us. To answer the question, let me tell you, uh, give you the reasons from the, in the voice and in the words of, uh, one of the greatest of the scholars of, uh, Islam, Ibrahim bin Adham, Rahim bin Ali, who was the son of one of the nobles of the kingdom of Balkh, which is in modern day Afghanistan. Um, his most famous student was Shaqeeq al-Balki, Rahim bin Ali, whose student was Hatim al-Assam, Rahim bin Ali. I did a series of, um, lectures and classes on the wisdom of Hatim al-Assam, Rahim bin Ali, uh, which, inshallah, maybe we will, repeat because people's memories are short. And, uh, also because it is important to remind ourselves again and again about these very important matters, even if our memory is good. Um, in those stories also is the very beautiful story of the daughter, little daughter of Hatim al-Assam, Rahim bin Ali, which at some point I will also tell you. Now, Ibrahim bin Adham, Rahim bin Ali was known for his asceticism, um, and, um, he is the one about whose story I have mentioned to you of how he went, uh, to the first Sheikh that he found when he left his kingdom. And, uh, this Sheikh made him stay in the stable of his horse for 12 years. Uh, he went to, he met the Sheikh and he asked him, he told him, I want to be a student. And the Sheikh said, well, uh, there is one condition. The condition is that you must obey me. I mean, I'm not going to obey you completely and totally. I mean, uh, Ibrahim Adham said, of course, I mean, you know, that's why I'm here. You're my Sheikh. Of course I will obey you. So he said, then he pointed to a building, an outbuilding, uh, away from his house. And he said, go and stay in that building. Now Hatim al-Assam went there and he found that it was a stable of a horse. It's very surprising. Why would the Sheikh send him to stay in the horse stable anyway? So in that stable, he, uh, cleaned it out and he, uh, put his, uh, bedding to, on one side. And, uh, he, um, in the evening, when the groom of the horse, the man who took care of the horse, when he brought the horse to the stable, the, the Sheikh. um, had left the stakeholder who was responsible for it in Hart black 솔직히 Cham Thatsoo, efficiency, kickoff, name, style of work, how did he gjorde icune Kield segen sev haises India which which we know de news milan I wonder he got no help form like, U diligence langshak They were all, every accountability was done at the same time drop the fleet. South of India, five days Right Yeah, I met, uh, a couple friends at the hotel, While he is sweeping the stable, he flicks a bit of dirt and dust on Ibrahim Adem. Ibrahim Adem is a prince. He is a nobleman. And in his own experience, he probably never even saw a groom because his horse would be brought to him by his ADC or somebody. And here is a groom who is so careless that he cannot sweep the stable properly without throwing some dust and dirt on a man who is sitting there in Musalla. Obviously, he gets irritated. Not that he does anything. He doesn't sort o

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 company of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon him and his companions. Peace and blessings be upon him, and upon him and his companions. And I will continue. My brothers and sisters, One of the most fundamental factors and features of this life, this earth, I would like to say this time, but I think it's not just this time, it's all times, is the fact of uncertainty. And that is the reason why one of the most critical skills and abilities to develop in life is the ability to deal with ambiguity, the ability to remain with equanimity, the ability to still steer a course to your destination, despite whatever is happening around you in the world. Uncertainty and ambiguity is the only certainty in the world, in life. The one thing about which you can be absolutely certain is that I do not know what will happen tomorrow. Right? And as I said, I would like to say that this is a principle, I would like to say that this is a peculiarity, this is a peculiarity to this time, but that's not true. This has been the situation as long as humanity has lived on the face of the earth. Tomorrow is always uncertain. Take the time, I'm just going to give you one example. Take the time of the best of the best, of Rasulallah . If you read his seerah, and you should read his seerah, you study the seerah, not just read his seerah, if you study the seerah, what comes across? What is it that comes across? Stability, absolute predictability, total certainty, or total instability. Completely unpredictable. We don't know what will happen tomorrow. Which one? Is it an hints怪 . Is it deflectibility ? What's the praising ? Is it conclusion ? What is it? There's one clear question that depends on the situation of humanity. What's theajobal universe? It's going up and going down, it's going up and going down, and it's making discoveries. Let's be honest to make an excuses wherever sums backdrop a poem. This realise these minimal things- this change in enjoyable things, BC or whether you are talking about 4000 AD, whether you are talking about a bird flying through the air or a mosquito or a bee or a locust or whether you are talking about stealth bombers or A380 twin deck aircraft or a Cessna single seater, single propeller, anything that is in the air is affected by the law of gravity. Yes or no? So if I come to you and I say, you know what, this was true, we don't deny that, but today we live in America and this is 2025, the law of gravity does not apply. What will you say to me? You will say, no. You will say, no. You will say to me, your brother-in-law is a neurologist, why don't you ask him to prescribe a brain scan for you? Because something is, first of all, we have to see whether you have a brain itself and then we see if that brain is functioning or... And I can give you many examples, I don't want to waste your time. You have enough intelligence to figure out more examples. Take any fundamental law. What is fundamental about a fundamental law? That it does not change with time and place. Yes? If it changed with time and place, it would not be a fundamental law, as simple as that. And that is why the importance of Al-Quran Al-Kareem. Because the same one, Jalla Jalaluhu Amma Nawaluhu Al-Hayyul Qayyum Malikoo Samawati Wal Ardh Khaliqoo Kulli Ashyaa Wal Ahwal Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala Jalla Jalaluhu The same one who created the law of gravity, the same one who created the law of thermodynamics, the same one who created every fundamental law, created laws of life, which are also fundamental. Which we know today as, in the Shari'i Stira, in the Islamic terminology, we call them Halal and Haram. What is Halal and Haram? They are fundamental laws. They don't change with time. They do not change with time. Pork. I'm going to ask you a question. Give me answers. Pork. Halal or Haram? Haram. You sure? Yes. Thousand years ago, was it Halal or Haram? Thousand years. So now it will be Halal or Haram. What about alcohol and all intoxicants? Alcohol and marijuana and you name it. Any drug, anything which alters the mind, no matter how it is taken, whether you drink it or you smoke it or you inject it in your blood or whatever. Halal or Haram? Haram. Today, tomorrow, day after. In America, is it Halal or Haram? Haram. Right? It is Haram. I'm talking about Islamic law. I'm not talking about somebody who changes the law. No. No. In Morocco, in Syria, in Pakistan, in India. Haram. Zina. Fornication. Adultery. Halal or Haram? Huh? Why so weak? Halal, right? So if I come to you and I say, you know, I agree it's Haram. But I've got a peculiar situation. My situation, nobody wants to marry me. Nobody will

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 honor of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and his companions. May peace be upon him and upon his family. My brothers and sisters, may Allah bless the questioners. One of my friends asked me a question based on the Fajr Reminder which was sent yesterday. And he asked, he said that I said in the Khatira, which I did, that to make a will against the Hukam of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is haram. And that is true. If I did not say to make a will against the Hukam of Allah, my apologies, but that's what was meant. And JazakAllah for the question. The Khatira was on whether it is permissible for anyone to change the laws that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created. On the basis of times have changed, geographies have changed, people have changed, cultures have changed, whatever, whatever, whatever. The question was, is it permissible or would it be permissible for people? And by people, I don't mean ordinary people like myself. I mean, even the ulama, even the scholars of the time. If all of them get together, if every single scholar, on the face of the earth at that time, if they all get together and they decide and they pass a resolution or they pass a or they make a fatwa or they give an opinion to say that any of the laws that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala made is no longer viable, no longer permissible, no longer applicable, no longer valid. Then there. Their collective opinion would be trash, would be rejected, and they would face the wrath of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala on the Day of Judgment for trying to change what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala prescribed and commanded in the Quran al-Kareem. They would, in fact, leave the fold of Islam if they pass a ruling to say that anything which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala prohibited is permissible. And if anything which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala prohibited is permissible, then they would leave the fold of Islam. So they would leave the fold of Islam if they pass a ruling to say that anything which Allah has permitted is prohibited. Both ways, if they permit something which Allah has prohibited, they would leave the fold of Islam. And if they prohibit what Allah has permitted, they will leave the fold of Islam. Now, having said that, the question was therefore, can I write a will or not? There are two points to understand this. First of all, to write a will against the rules of Islam. The rules of inheritance that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentioned in the Qur'an al-Kareem would be haram. If somebody wrote that will, then that action would be an action of kufr. If somebody wrote that will with the belief that his reasoning and his logic was correct and that the Qur'an is faulty and that the Qur'an should be changed and therefore since the Qur'an cannot be changed, therefore I will change my will and I will write a will in opposition to the Qur'an. For example, in the Qur'an, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives the son two shares and the daughter one share. Now there are people who say this is unfair, this is anti-women, this is something which should be changed and they write a will giving their decision. So, the person who says that will, then he will write a will and the daughter will be given the same share. Now, this action is haram. To do that is kufr. And a person who does that with understanding, with believing that he is right or she is right has left the fold of Islam. Wallahu a'alam. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guide us. Now you might say, well, I would like to give my son or daughter an equal, son and daughter in equal share. So, let me step one, take one step back. So, let me step one, take one step back. And say that first and foremost, your son and your daughter and you are the creatures of Allah. Allah created you. You are the slaves of Allah. Allah knows what is best for you. You do not know what is best for yourself. And that is the whole meaning of Islam to accept this fact. Number one. Number two is will refers to decreeing what should happen after you die. So, this is a very, something which is, should be clear and should be obvious, but it is not. Because many times, for example, in my business consulting practice, sometimes, mostly sons do this. They come to me and they say, what is my share in my father's property? So, I ask them, is your father alive? They say, yes, he is alive. So, I say your share is zero. You have no share in your father's property. Your father's property is your father's property. He can do whatever he wants with it. He can donate it to his cat. I am not saying that doing it is a good thing or that doing it is correct or doing it is something that he should do. But he has the p

https://youtu.be/cacSqpWOgSg Auto-generated transcript:It's a beautiful misty morning and we are walking here in Ashley, Razawai, in cyclist from a telephone, granting us these opportunities, the beautiful places and this company of good friends. There was a man called Hakim At-Tai. He was the chief of a tribe in Nets called At-Tab-Bahit-Bannu-Tai and his son Uday bin Hatim became a Muslim. He was one of the Sahaba. Hatim At-Tai was known for his generosity. And I remember one of the earliest stories that my mother told me, and I must have been a meek, I mean I was definitely under 10, I was probably maybe five or six years old, was the story of Hatim At-Tai. And she used to say Hatim Tai. So the story that my mother told me was that Hatim At-Tai was one day a man, he had a horse. He had a particular stallion which was very famous all over Arabia for its breeding and for its speed and all the noble qualities of a horse. And he was a very famous man. He was a very famous man. He was a very famous man. So Hatim At-Tai was famous as the owner of this horse. So a man came to him once and his intention was to buy this horse. So he came to his village. He came and met him. And as is the norm in our culture, when you meet somebody, even for a transactional reason, you don't immediately go there and start talking about the transactions. I've come to buy you a horse. I come to buy a car. I come to buy you a vehicle. I come to buy you a car. I come to buy you a vehicle. And this man bought me a horse. And it was a very, very nice horse. There was a courtesy involved. And you meet the person. And the person, you know the other person shows their hospitality to you. And so on. And all of this is part of the part of our culture. So this man went there and Hatim At-Tai, he came to see him. So Hatim At-Tai invited him home. And as we know in Islam, a guest has a right to be hosted by you for sure. And this is the case. This is the case. This is the case. three days without question any guest so he has a right to be hosted and so hot on tight no he we hosted him and so on and at the time of the meal they had this yeah wonderful roast meat and so on now they passed two days pass and then the man said to him I have come here with this intention of requesting you to sell your house to me so how do I say to him for once I wish you had not followed our culture he said what do you mean he said because we are going through a very difficult time in terms of drought having a massive drought here in this country and when you came as a guest said the only thing I had was the horse and I slaughtered the horse to for you to eat and if you had told me you came by the horse I wouldn't have started us now see this see the level of generosity see the level of you know the the hospitality toward the host what in Urdu we call mehmanawazi another story about Hathiman Tai which Maharani just told me is somebody asked him they said who do you know anybody who is more generous or have you met anyone who was more generous than yourself because Hathiman Tai was known for his amazing generosity as I mentioned and the man said yes I know someone who was more generous than me and he said I am not a generous person I am not a generous person than I am so this man said what's the story who's who this person so have to meant I said is somebody who owned 10 sheep so this person asking the question he said this is a strange thing a person owns ten sheep and he's more generous and you say yeah so he said what's the story so the story is that only when given services people have the capacity but to I went to the village of this person and so as this usual custom of people are being hospitable and this man he slaughtered one of his sheep and he brought him brought the meat and so on cooked it and brought it for heart even tie now how to a tie he said when I was eating the sheep and eating the meat he said I love the brain the mothers so this man noticed that I loved the minute so he said to him you stay here I'm going back he left he went away for a period really long period time and then he came back with a lot of bread beautifully cooked and as well and he said as I was leaving happened to pass by his place I see blood everywhere and I'm seeing carcasses of the sheep so he asked this man what happened here so I said no you love the brain of the sheep so I brought you the brain of all the sheep and I said you eat more and these sheep for you some 1500 Ceneri they should also leave you some life and it was just lie down horsehat Cu taking the dead body also thinking like that came long upset his feeling but he just said no I'm not saying people should be left in that we again troubling on this the son brought them so our elder brother OFVB Series? But maybe this business for my staff por reflection? Well there was a farmer called a gathering of some sheep and sheep were really being slaughtered in these