Parameters of success

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 Prophet and the Messengers. Muhammad and the Messenger of Allahﷻ, peace and blessings be upon him and upon his family and his companions. Peace be upon them all. Huma Badu, my brothers and sisters, Allahﷻ gave us a standard to judge for ourselves whether we are successful or not. If we look at our lives in the world, everyone wants to be successful. We have different standards of success, mostly material, if not entirely material. Amount of wealth, amount of influence, amount of gadgets, amount of toys. But Allahﷻ gave us a different standard. Allah began with taking an oath by time. And in another place, Allahﷻ said, do not curse time because I am time. So Allah took this oath and He said, وَرَاسْر. And then He emphasized and He said, { إِنَّ ٱلۡإِنسَـٰنَ لَفِی خُسۡرٍ } Allah said, by time, truly and verily and certainly and definitely, إِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ all humans, again, there is a second lamp of Baqir. Truly, all of humankind is definitely in loss. So Allahﷻ said, Allah began with this and when we say, truly all humankind, it includes everyone, Muslim, non-Muslims. { إِنَّ ٱلۡإِنسَـٰنَ لَفِی خُسۡرٍ }[Surah Al-ʿAṣr: 2] And then Allahﷻ mentioned those who are not in loss. إِلَّا الَّذين آمَنُوا Except those who have faith. وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ And who do good deeds. وَتَوَاسَوْا بِالْحَقِّ And who invite towards the truth. And when they face difficulties in that, they invite towards suburb, to patience and forbearance. Now the purpose of our standard is to measure ourselves against it. And say, how do I fit? Do I fit? Do I not fit? If I fit partially, then what is the part that is missing? Because Allah said, everyone other than this, in loss. Today I think the most important thing for us is to recalibrate ourselves and recalibrate our standards. Because we live in a world which is so completely materialistic that for us to think of something which is non-material is very tough. All our standards are materialistic. Whether it's individual success, whether it's success as in business or whatever, whatever we do, our standards are all materialistic. Numbers, only numbers. Dollar value, this, that. When you think of assets, suppose I ask you and say, list down your assets. Not to tell me for yourself. List your assets. What will you put there? List of assets, what will you put? What are they? Hmm? Property, goods, Correct, right? This much of wealth and property and I've got these flats, I've got this house and this lot. I've got this land and this and this. So many cars, so many planes. This is all this, assets. But the question to ask yourself is, how is this an asset? How do you define asset? An asset is something which has value, which gives you value, and which stays with you. No? You can't sit in a train and you're going, and you say, what is this? This seat is my asset. This is how it is. You bought a ticket and at the station you get off. It's not yours. Doesn't belong to you. Even though you're using it, it's not your asset because it doesn't belong to you. So if you list something which is not, which doesn't belong to me, which is going to go away, how is it, how is that an asset? So if you use this standard and say, an asset is something that belongs to me, that stays with me, that intrinsically has value, and it adds value to me. Then what will be assets? Because whatever we normally think of, you know, property, this is a, it's not, it doesn't stay with us. Good deeds. So do we count that? Do we have that? Is that our focus? Every day in the morning when you get up, in the time you go to bed, did you think and say, well today how many good deeds did I do? Something will happen, InshaAllah. But that's not how you look at your material assets, right? If you're studying, many young people here, you have to go to school, or you go to college, and you must have a certain amount of attendance. You can't say, Satchayal, maybe one day I go, one day I don't go. Somehow one day I happen to turn up at the school, next day I didn't go. Doesn't work like that. You have to go. So the good deeds that you are doing, and you're talking about as assets, these good deeds are, where are they? Do we count them? So Allahﷻ is saying, all that you have is zero. Has no value. Except now our Iman. So this is your Aqidah. Iman in Allahﷻ, Iman in His Rasool and all the requirements of Iman. So Iman in the Malaika, in the books, in the Prophets, Iman in the Day of Judgement, Iman in Jannah and Jahannam. Iman in being resurrected after the death of Allah, after death. All of these things. This is our Iman, the creed. Wa amiru salihat. Which I mentioned before, saying, what deeds are we doing? What is the value of those deeds? Just yesterday, 27th of Ramadan, I got news that one of our friends in back there in Massachusetts, his son, 31 years old, passed away. Cancer. Allah Ta'ala granted him Jannah and Firdaus without his help. Allah Ta'ala gave him death with Iman on the 27th of Ramadan. Alhamdulillah. These are all good signs, Insha'Allah. But what goes with him? What went with him? What he did? Rest of it stays here. So, amiru salihat. We need to be conscious about our deeds and consciously do good deeds and consciously keep an account of that like we keep an account of our material things. If I ask you, what's your, do you have shares? Yes. What's your portfolio value? So, which companies do you invest in? All of these questions you can answer. Right? So, you should not invest in but with good deeds we have questions can we answer what good deeds did you do did you do yesterday? Now, people who are in Ithakaaf because you are in Ithakaaf because you are here you can say something because you know okay, I read so much of Quran I read this but normally in your regular life days but normally but normally in your regular life days time just passes. aminu amiru salihat aminu amiru salihat then then watawa so bin haqq this is the amal bin mahirup amal bin mahirup issue of dawah invite people towards good invite people towards good invite people towards the truth the truth and as we mentioned yesterday the invitation is not the invitation is not only in one way only in one way in multiple ways in multiple ways in the most powerful way of that invitation is through our own behaviour is through our own behaviour being kind to people being kind to people and and kindness begins at home. There are many people which we are, it's easy to be kind outside the home. You know, when somebody opens the door, you say thank you or something, and you thank the waiter when you go to a restaurant. So when you are outside the home, and you are in public places, you are meeting people and so on, you are very polite and nice, and you smile and you thank and so on. When you go home, then you become irritable, and you get angry and do all this stuff, right? That's why somebody asked, he said, how do I know if I am a good person? He said, ask your wife. Yeah? He said, ask your wife. Because there are no curtains, there are no barriers. So that's where kindness has to be. Tawasab ilhaq. Invite towards goodness. Watawasab ilh sabar. And invite towards patience. Because this work of dawah is not an easy job. It is difficult. You are inviting people towards good, but people don't like that. So you get, you get resistance of differing degrees. We know from the seerah, the kind of resistance that Rasulullahﷺ got, which was enormous. Resistance to what? He is inviting people towards Jannah. You are resisting that. He is inviting people away from the fire. You are resisting that. You are fighting with that. But unfortunately, that is human nature. So you will also face it. I will also face it. Allahﷻ gives us, in keeping with our ability, so we don't face the level that He faced, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, but some resistance. You say something good, people don't like it, and so on, so on. So there you don't get irritated. You don't, you know, perpetuate that. You behave with patience. You continue to smile. You continue to be nice, continue to be polite. Winning of hearts. Islam spread by the winning of hearts. Imam Zuhri, the great Muhaddith and the teacher of Imam Malik, I mean Anas, Rahmatullah Ali, he said, Islam spread the fastest after Fatah Makkah. He said, spread the fastest after Fatah Makkah. He said, because hostilities were suspended. Then there was no, no more, you know, Makkah is conquered. That's the end of the story. No more, no more fighting. He said, because after Fatah Makkah, people were able to see the life of a Muslim up close. Before Fatah Makkah, there was tension because of enmities and so on, Muslims and non-Muslims. But after that, he said, people were able to see the life of a Muslim up close, face to face. And that was so beautiful. That was so inviting that people came to Islam. They did not come because of big khutbahs and bans and this and that. There was no fighting anyway. So nobody came to Islam by the sword. They came to Islam because they met Muslims, because they interacted with Muslims. They did business with Muslims. They worked for Muslims. And that was so beautiful that they came to Islam. And the question I ask myself anyway is how many people, how many of us have Hindu or other, non-Muslim servants in our house? And how many of those servants have accepted Islam? How many of us have non-Muslim employees in our businesses? May not be servants in the house, but in the businesses. How many of them accept Islam? Why not? Same Islam. It boils down to what are we doing? We are dealing with that Islam. The same Islam meaning the Islam that came from Allahﷻ is the same. But what we do with it is something else. So I remind myself and you let us focus on our own behavior.