Ikhlaas un Niyyah

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 most honorable of the prophets and messengers, Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, and his companions, with much peace and much love. Dear brothers, about the Ameer of the Believers, Umar ibn al-Khattab, said, I heard the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, say, The deeds are only by intention, or as he said, The Ameer of the Believers, Umar ibn al-Khattab narrated that he heard the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, say, The deeds are only by intention, the reward of the deed is based on its intention. And about the Imam al-Nawiyah, peace and blessings be upon him, said in his book, Al-Riyadh al-Saleheen, in the introduction, The intention is to be manifested in all deeds, in all words, and in all situations, both clear and light. Imam al-Nawiyah, peace and blessings be upon him, said in his book, Al-Riyadh al-Saleheen, in the introduction, That the intention, the awareness of the intention, is important in all deeds, in all actions, and in all words, in all situations, that we might find ourselves in. Al-Bari'zatu wal-Khafi, Whether this is in the external environment visible or whether it is internal to us, in our hearts. I remind myself and you that on the Day of Judgment, this will be the basis on which we will be judged. We ask Allah to grant us Ikhlas al-Niya, sincerity of our intentions, because without that sincerity, the action or the speech will look the same, but it will either have no reward or it will actually be incurring a sin. We have the famous Hadith, which is considered to be one of three, which encompass the entire Deen. So this Hadith is considered to be something which is equivalent to one third of all knowledge. And that's called the Hadith of the Salas, the Hadith of the Three. Rasool Allah said on the Day of Judgment, the first person to be produced before Allah will be a scholar, will be an Alim, and he will be asked, what did you do for the sake of Allah? And he will say, I memorized the Kitab of Allah, and I used to teach the Kitab of Allah, and I used to teach the knowledge of Islam. And it will be said to him, you are lying. You did all this so that you would be known as a great scholar, as a Hafez, as a Qari, as a Mufti or whatever. And this was done. This happened. People knew you and they called you by all kinds of titles and so on and so forth. And today there is nothing for you and this person will be thrown into the Hellfire. Who is this person? He is a Muslim, he is an Alim, he is a Hafez of the Quran. And he will be thrown into the Hellfire, why? Because of the Fasad Fi Niyah. Because of the problem and the conflict of the intention. Then the second person to be produced before Allah will be a philanthropist. He will be somebody who Allah had given a lot of wealth and he spent it in charitable things. And he will be asked, what did you do for the sake of Allah? And he will say, I, Ya Allah, you gave me a lot of wealth and I spent it in your path. I spent it in your path. I did this, I did that, I did that and so on and so on. I helped these people and whatever. And it will be said to him, you lied. You did all this so that you would be known as a charitable person, as a philanthropist and this happened. In the world you were known as this great person who did so much of good and this and that. Built hospitals and masajis and madaris and God knows what. So that reward you got in the world. Here there is nothing for you and he will be thrown into the Hellfire. And the third person to be produced before Allah will be somebody who fought in the path of Allah and who died. And he will be asked, what did you do? And he will say, Ya Rabb, I fought in your path and I died for your sake. And it will be said to him, you lied. You fought for yourself because you wanted to be known as a great fighter, as a brave person. And you died. And here there is nothing for you and this person will be thrown into the Hellfire. So somebody will be thrown into Hellfire. Somebody who was an Alim, somebody who was a Saqeeb, who used to give Saqawat. And somebody who was apparently Shaheed Fi Sabirillah. All three, first three people in the Hellfire, these are the first three people. Not Kuffar and Munafiq and Mushriq, first three people. May Allah save us from this. So I remind myself and you that the Ikhlaas of the Niyya is the number one thing that we should guard against. Our scholars say, it is like going into a fair like Nawaz or something, right? Going into this fair and you have your wallet and you have a wad of money with you. Where will you keep your hand? On that pocket, right? Because you are afraid somebody will pick your pocket. There is a lot of crowd, people are milling around. This is how we should treat our Niyya. As something which is so valuable that we need to keep track of it minute by minute, second by second. And this is what Shaitaan does. Shaitaan hijacks you midway. We start with a good intention, Alhamdulillah. We start with a good intention. But as we proceed, Shaitaan comes and hijacks it. We start with intention of praying, of doing Salah. In between, Shaitaan comes and says, there are people watching, Mashallah. So you stand some more, show some more Khushu, bend your head a little bit more. You appear to be a little bit more holy. If you are reciting Quran, you recite it even more nicely. So that people will say, Mashallah, Mashallah, Mashallah. What a great intention, O! The listener does not understand, nor does he know the principles of Tajweed, nor does he know anything. He is only listening to the tune. He is listening to the song, not the Quran. May Allah have mercy on us. This is the tragedy of most people. You don't understand the Quran, for you it is only a tune. We need to change this. The whole point of this is not simply to keep on lamenting day after day the same old story. It is to change that. How can we change it? How can we ensure that our intentions are pure? And we can do that by making istighfar. Somebody asked, Sheikh Al-Husaymi, Rahmatullah Ali. He said, ya Sheikh, I recite the Quran well. And people know this. So if I am there somewhere, people will push me forward and say, please lead salah. So he said, if I am leading salah, for example, if I am leading in Salatul Fajr, I would like to recite 30 ayat, 40 ayat. But as I am reading, as I am reciting, when I am reciting 5, 6 ayat, I get this thought that people, I am doing it for the people. I am doing it to please the people. So I, instead of reciting now 30 or 40 ayat, I recite maybe one or two ayat and I finish. Because I am afraid that my salah will be counted as something which is done to show people. And if you are doing that, that is shirk. Now imagine the tragedy of that. The Imam is on the Musalla, he is reciting the Quran, and because of his niyyah, he is actually committing shirk. The people behind him who are praying, they love the Qiraat. And this Qiraat is making them and giving them the ability to have khusho and to connect with Allah SWT. So they are good. But he is committing shirk. What is more tragic than that? So this man said, I am afraid of that. So therefore I cut short my Qiraat. What should I do? Because this is a dilemma. Every time somebody pushes me forward, I have this problem. So may Allah bless Sheikh Abu Husayn bin Rahmatullah and fill his khabar with Noor. He gave a beautiful advice. He said to him, when you are reciting and you have this doubt that maybe I am reciting now for the people. He said immediately make istighfar. In your heart. You are not going to insert istighfar in your recitation. In your heart. He said make istighfar and instead of you had decided originally to recite 20, 30 ayat, he said recite 40. He said this is shirk. Shaytan is trying to deprive you and deprive all the people behind you of the sawab of connecting with Allah SWT of khusho. So therefore he inserts this doubt in your mind to say no, no, no, you are doing it only to show people. So make istighfar, alhamdulillah. This is the beauty. I want to close with this. The issue of the niyyah is beginning and how do we protect the niyyah? One by continuously keeping track of the niyyah. To make sure that shaytan has not hijacked it anywhere. And if we find or we have some doubt then what must you do? Make istighfar. Immediately. Allah SWT kept the door of tawbah open. This is the greatest blessing of Allah SWT. Allah SWT kept the door of tawbah open. No matter what you do. I am not encouraging you or myself to do something wrong. I am saying that no matter what happens, the door of tawbah and istighfar is open until we see the Malaikah. Until we see the Malaikah. Except we don't know when we will see them so the meaning of this is not for us to relax and say I have plenty of time. No. But continuously to make istighfar and tawbah, continuously to seek forgiveness of Allah SWT. And Allah SWT promised to forgive. Promised to forgive. And tawbah inshaAllah maybe tomorrow or something we will look at what is tawbah and the details of it. But for today this is enough. We do two things. One is we start with the correct niyyah and the correct niyyah is only one. Very simple. What is the correct niyyah? For the pleasure of Allah. Khalas. Nothing else. Lillah. Lillah. Like yesterday we said. Inna lillah wa inna ilayhi raju. I belong to Allah and to Allah is my return. So we are from, we belong to Allah SWT. So remind yourself. My niyyah is to please Allah. Nobody else. And then as we proceed continuously to keep track of that and then to continuously make istighfar and tawbah. Allah said, fa istaghfiru summa tawbu ilayhi. Make istighfar, apologize to Allah SWT, repent and then turn towards Allah SWT. This tawbah,