Khushoo is the soul

Auto-generated transcript: Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil 'Alamin. Wassalatu wassalamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal ghusaleen. Muhammadur Rasulullahﷺ sallallahu alayhi wa alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Tasleeman kathiran kathira famma baadu. My brothers and sisters, we were talking about the importance of khushoo, the importance of concentration and awareness. In Salah, I want to read for you something which somebody sent me, very nicely written. He says, what if I told you the Ummah's downfall didn't begin with politics or culture or society. It began on the prayer mat. What is the first thing lost from the Ummah? It is not hijab, it is not honesty, it is not charity. It is something far more subtle and almost gone. Rasulullahﷺ warned us in the Hadith, he said, the first thing to be lifted from my Ummah is khushoo. Not prayer itself, not fasting, not rituals. Khushoo, the heart inside the prayer. Khushoo, the body stays Muslim. The soul slips away. Think about that again. The prayer remains. The movements remain. The words remain. The masjid remains. But the presence, the presence of Allahﷻ disappears. The humility disappears. The trembling disappears. The softness disappears. The harmony disappears. We keep the shell. We lose the soul. Why is this terrifying? Because when khushoo is lost, you still pray. But your prayer doesn't lift you. It doesn't soften you. It doesnt restrain you. It doesn't change you. You pray with your limbs, but not with your heart. This is how an Ummah decays from within. And it's not a change. The Ummah lost khushu when we started rushing, when we started multitasking, when we started treating prayer like a chore. We started thinking about everything except Allah. Our bodies enter Salah, our minds stay in the Dunya. This is how khushu dies. The painful reality today we know the motions of Salah better than its meaning. We perfect our Tajweed but not our attention. We memorize Surahs but we don't surrender to Allah. We inherited the ritual, not the reverence. Khushu is not about crying. It is not about crying. It is not emotion. It is not drama. It is not fear. Khushu is being present, being humble, being aware, being small before Allah, being sincere, being still. It is the heart kneeling before the body does. Khushu was the secret of the Sahaba. They didn't pray long. They prayed deep. When they stood, their hearts trembled. When they bowed, their egos bent. When they prostrated, when they made sujood, the Dunya disappeared. They prayed like people who knew they would die tomorrow. How to revive khushu? In one sentence. Before you say Allahu Akbar. Say in your heart, Ya Allah, this Salah is for you. In the standard of Mus'ala, before you make your Takbeer Tahrib, say Ya Allah, this Salah is for you. Not for habit. Not for routine. Not for people. Not for discipline. For Him. Jalla Jalaluhu. That attention alone changes the entire prayer. It is not about prayer. It is the Qura'at. The truth no-one tells you. The ummah won't be revived by more lectures, by more institutes, by more seminars, it will be revived, the moment hearts bow the way bodies bow. Revive khushu and you revive a civilisation. So ask yourself, when I pray, does Allah S.W.T. have my body or my heart? Hadhrat Asma'i, one of the great scholars of Islam, he said, I heard the Arabs praying. He said, I heard the Badu praying. Hadhrat Asma'i says, Al-Ismail said, between fear of Allah's punishment and hope for Allah's reward. Both. In the Jauzi Rahul-e-Lahl he said or in the Al-Qayyim, Wallahu'alam, he said this Khauf and Tama are like the two wings of the bird. Hope is one wing and fear of Allah's punishment is the other wing. We need both. You can't have a bird flying with one wing. I have only hope and no fear. Or I have only fear and no hope. Both are wrong. We need hope and we need fear. And that's why Sayyidina Ali ibn Abi Talib asked some of his companions, how are you doing? And they said, we live in hope and fear. Sayyidina Ali said, when you truly hope for something, you pursue it. If you really want something, you go behind it. And when you truly fear something, you run away from it. So I don't understand a person who says that he fears Allah's punishment, yet when temptation comes his way, he does not give it up. Yeah? So he said, I don't understand a person. When a person fears something, he will not go near it. So you say, you fear the punishment of Allah, but when there is temptation, when there is the disobedience of Allah, shaitan is presenting it to you, you don't run away. You go towards this. And he said, I don't understand a person who says he hopes for Allah's reward, yet when hardship strikes him, when he has to face some difficulty, he doesn't patiently endure it. He complains and he moans and he groans. And he complains about Allah. Imam Hasan Basri was walking through the street and he overheard a conversation between two people. One man was complaining to the other man, you know, my life is like this, my life is like that. I have this difficulty, that difficulty. And Hasan Basri stopped and he said, how strange it is that you complain about Ar-Rahman to somebody who has no Rahman. If you are complaining about your life, you are complaining about whom? About Allah. Because your life, Allah made your life. So if you say, I have this difficulty. Yeah, sure, you have difficulty, but why are you telling the makhluk about this? Issue is not to say, don't complain. You are complaining in the wrong place. Why are you complaining to the makhluk? Talk to Allah about it. Because if there is difficulty, the only one who can tell you is Allah. So tell Allah. Why do you tell the people? So never complain. Never, never, never complain. Whatever it is. Because every time we know our akidah about Allah is what? Bi-adhi-al-khair. That in Allah's hand is only khair, is only good. So sometimes when Allah blocks a way for you, this is the way to go. This is for your benefit. You don't understand that. You want to go in this way, and the way is blocked, so you get irritated, you get disappointed. But Allah has blocked the way because if you went on that way, you would enter disaster. You would, you would, something bad would happen to you. So if the way is blocked, say Alhamdulillah. I have said this many times before. I have lived long enough now. I have the perspective of hindsight for many years, for many decades. And I remember to this day, there were some duas that I made. And Allah did not give me. And I made that dua so sincerely. I wept before Allah. I made this dua in sujood, in tahajjud. I made this dua in every holy place I went to. In the Haram, in Sharifah, and I made the dua, Allah knows where. Allah did not give it. Right? And today, 30, 40, 50 years later, I thank Allah. Alhamdulillah that you did not give me this thing which I was begging you for. Because today with perspective, with hindsight, I know what I would have landed in if that dua was accepted. If Allah had given me the dua, what would have happened to me? What would be my state? I know, I understand now. I couldn't understand. Nobody could understand. When you are in it, you don't understand it. When you get out. So at that time, of course I was sad. Of course I was disappointed. Of course I wanted to get what I wanted to get. Allah didn't give. Alhamdulillah. I am so happy Allah didn't give. So we trust in Allah. The whole point of tawakkul, the whole point of tawakkul, the whole point of trust is that we have faith in Allah. We have faith that Allah knows my future better than I know. That Allah has more power and authority than I have. That Allah's treasures have more than I have. That Allah loves me and wants good for me even more than I want for myself. Right? This is our belief. So when this is Allah, He has the power and He wants the best for me, then what do I have to fear? For example, we have our parents. They want the best for us, no doubt about this, inshaAllah. But they don't have the power to give it. They can make dua and so on and so on, but they don't have the power. Your father or mother might want you to have the best job in the world. Can they give it to you? They can't give it to you. They have no power. They have no authority. On the other hand, you may have people in your life, or at least people somewhere in the world who have the power, but they don't care a foot about you. The chairman of Nvidia, he has a lot of power. His capitalization is more than India's GDP. But is he calling you, please come and get a job, I want to give you a great job, you know the game. You live or die, it makes no difference to him. So he has the power, but he has no interest in you. And your parents have interest in you, but they have no power. But with Allah, He has the power and He has interest in you. We have to have trust. We have to trust Allah. And the way we trust Allah, we have to trust Allah. It begins with obedience. Islam is the meaning of submission to Allah. It begins with obedience. If I don't obey Allah, then how do I go and ask Allah for what? So it begins with obedience. And obedience begins with Salah. Alhamdulillah, today we have got all of these people in Salatul Fajr. Even on the first of Shawwal, there will be Salatul Fajr. Even on the second and third and fourth of Shawwal, there will be Salatul Fajr. Fajr will not go away, right? So let us hope that we have the same number of people or more number of people here for Salatul Fajr. Ramadan, yes, Masjid and Masjid is all very full of people. Because we just made Suhoor and so on and so forth. And you know, of course Allah puts this Jasba, puts this emotion with Ramadan. Angela, good. But the purpose of that is to carry it forward in a very positive way. And that is what we have to do in our lives. Our problem is we have made this religion into an event-based thing. We need events. People say,