Abdal Hakim Murad – Fast to Give Ramadan Moments
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the negative impact of distractions on mental health and family, as it can lead to feelings of guilt and shame. They stress the need to lighten one's work and think about mental health, as distractions can lead to feelings of guilt and shame. The challenges of life, including financial planning, sharing experiences, and the importance of faith, family, and friends are discussed. The use of hardship and the need for people to feel good about their lives is emphasized. The conversation also touches on the challenges of the Holy Prophet career, including the belief that eating poverty is a real experience, the need for a list of employees to remember them, and the importance of giving and giving, giving, giving, and giving.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah. Well, Ali,
he was Akbar he, woman who Allah, Ramadan Kareem. Once again, we've
been welcomed through the portals of this generous and always
astonishing month.
And we find ourselves in a different kind of life a different
kind of experience breathing a different air. And change is
always good for us.
Through endless mediocre sameness, there is a certain rotting of the
soul. So this change is something that is really part of the benefit
of the of the month. And since this is the age where we are told
to celebrate diversity, diversity in our forms of life, is something
that is particularly timely in the case of welcoming this past month.
So
at the college, we have been reflecting on a number of things
this year and us this month, changes our pattern of work,
students are still here, the staff is still here, the timing is a
little bit different. But Alhamdulillah I think, in many
cases, students find that they work better when they're fasting,
somehow there are fewer distractions
that we have been reflecting on
purgation
often nowadays, we feel that we are overweight into many ways we
are carrying a lot, not just an excess,
around the midriff, but also too much going on in our lives, too
many plates to spin, too many engagements to keep.
This can be quite difficult for those who try to maintain a
spiritual mindfulness and focus in the month of Ramadan. Through
Allah's grace, many of those distractions are taken away,
because many of our more usual routines to do with physical
sustenance is simply not there any longer. The desk is cleared, as it
were, it's quite Zen time.
But nonetheless, we find ourselves weighed down
by so many distractions.
And this is quite a useful time of year to take stock, to clean out
the attic to engage in spring cleaning, to think about what we
need, and what we probably will never need and throw out or better
still give to the food bank or give to the charity shop that
which others will benefit from more than we could. And there is
in this divestment this TED read to use the traditional Islamic
term, a tremendous sense of lightening of the heart that we
are not carrying so much.
Niger and wealthy foreigner is the Arab proverb, which means
something like those who travel light reached the destination more
easily nurture, and morally for literally, those who make light
are saved.
So one of the most useful things we can do for the rest of the year
in the month of Ramadan is to see which of our worldly activities
and
incumbrances we would be better off without
will the ship of our Islam float more safely, if we throw overboard
some unnecessary weights?
Well,
one thing that we can certainly do is to think about
the appalling inequalities which are constantly growing in today's
world,
and just contemplating them, and not doing anything about them
within one's own compass and capacity is another weight that
drags us down adds to our sense of guilt and shame.
Too often Muslims who migrate perhaps for religious reasons, or
perhaps for worldly reasons, find themselves encumbered.
Their arteries are clogged, they just have too much of that dunya
for which they migrated.
And this leads to sometimes mental health issues, sometimes a general
sense of anxiety. Somehow, the more we have, the less Tawakkol we
seem able to cultivate, logically it might have to be the other way
around. But this tends to be the way it is with with too much in
our accounts and our pockets, that our credit card balances more than
we could reasonably need.
There is a certain hardening of the arteries of the spiritual
heart and we feel this
So in the month of Ramadan when we are attempting this teddy read
trying to lose some weight, I suppose physically, we also need
to think about how we can lighten our ship as we move through life.
This is something that is stressed very much in the Holy Quran and
sometimes we cringe or recoil when we look at some of the
absoluteness of its language. Many of the earliest verses of the Holy
Quran were inveighing against the wealth of the Meccan plutocrats,
who were engaged in unhackable to khairthal.
That's so amazing. It's just two words. Al Hakim will take Ethel
and it sums up the entirety of what most human life nowadays is
about. rivalry in worldly increase has distracted you. You can't get
it into English in less than about eight words as part of the
telegraphic condensed brilliance of La speech. Hola, como tech,
Ethel. So this is about rivalry in worldly increase, because we want
a car that looks as good as the car parked outside the neighbor
next door.
But we also want to increase itself, more stuff. And this
distracts us low.
Al heckle law who is a kind of game it's like a sport is like a
trivial pastime. It's like killing time.
But we've been distracted by this worldly increase from the things
that actually really make us happy.
What really makes us happy in life,
faith, family, friends, things like that. And those are not
really conditioned upon how much you have in your bank balance.
Family is so much more important than all of the striving we do for
worldly increase. Go to any graveyard of any religion. And
you'll see what is on people's gravestones. It's about God. And
it's about family.
It will say a much missed grandfather or Nan or that's
always the language. It doesn't say the late lamented, managed to
become chief executive of the personnel department at Unilever.
You never see that on a gravestone. So this capitalistic
society is moving us away from what at the end, until we visit
the graves at those ultimate Nakaba turns out to be the most
important thing when everything else is stripped away. We realize
what is important.
It's not going to be the head of HR, who's sitting at your
deathbed. It's going to be your nearest and dearest and it's going
to be in sha Allah the angels.
So Allah uses some quite
hard language
when he speaks of this, this human tendency to avoid what actually
makes them happy and what is important because we're distracted
by the glitter of the gold.
Well, I asked her when the lady near Kelowna Bhima Tahoe LA home
in Fort Lee who are higher on the home Bell who are shad Rola home,
so your Tawakkol Buffy will be here your milk Leanna Will he let
him era to Samoa to you will alt Allahu be mata maluna Javier.
And I still find these verses
challenging. It's hard to measure oneself up against the high
standards
that they demand. It says something like
let not those who have been given a portion of Allah's generosity
think
that if they are miserly with it, that it is better for them. In
fact, that is worse for them. It will be hung around their necks
on the day of judgment. And Allah's is the inheritance of the
heavens and the earth. And He is all knowing of what you do.
The Sahaba would never read beyond reverse until they had assimilated
its meaning and the meaning here is quite challenging, it's
unarguable.
If when there is starvation and hunger and need,
increasingly in this country, those food poverty in the UK
if we are anxious about when we will be able to buy the new BMW
there is something wrong with us, and the happiness that we think
that that car will bring to us and the status and the successful
competition for worldly increase. And what people will say about us
as we glide obliviously, past them
will not be a happiness equivalent to the happiness that we
experience when sincerely
We express our human solidarity with those who are less fortunate
than than ourselves. To give
is to gain.
Leon Kosal mandolin in South Africa. He says sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam, no wealth is decreased by sadaqa. And anybody who has the
habit of sincere not absent minded or ostentatious charity giving
no one who has been in that state misunderstands it or
underestimated it's a real thing.
Just two days ago,
somebody I've never seen before came up to me in the mosque,
and said they had 100 pounds left in their account.
But they were really their hearts were bleeding because of what's
happening in Syria and Turkey because of the earthquake. And so
they gave 50 pounds out of their last 100 pounds to charity to
support those those people.
A few hours later, 8000 pounds arrived in this person's account.
It was an accidental repayment of some student loan long ago and it
just popped up and she was almost in tears because she's seen the,
the truth of this, that are ridiculous accountancy, whereby we
calculate profit and loss isn't isn't real. We're not really in
control of
money. Even the economists even the Bank of England is not in
charge of the economy. Not possible. Allah's is the is the
inheritance of the heavens of the earth, everything comes from Him,
everything is on loan to him. And if we are generous, and if we lose
some weight, if we engage in some kind of financial liposuction, we
will feel better for it.
So this aspect is very challenging aspect of the Holy Prophets career
are one of the great heroes of history, the great hero of
history, who changed history more than any other man lived in
conditions of very considerable simplicity, shall we say?
Laya, Beto, Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, Dara, Manuel
Edina. DuQuoin spent the night in his house.
And we're worrying about financial planning for the next five years.
And he didn't. He was just thinking about the moment.
One of the great ones of our history had in Assam lived in a
life of real poverty. And he just loved to give and to give. And it
was his great joy to give.
And somebody said, Well, don't you feel a bit inferior when you walk
past the Sultan's palace?
And he said, the only difference between me and the Sultan is one
day. They said, What do you mean? And he said yesterday, the Sultan
had what he had not had what he had, but that's finished and he
can't go back to it.
Tomorrow he will have or he may have what he will have what he may
have. But he's not got that now. So I'm the same
as him. The only difference is today, right now.
A day is just a day.
So this is a different way of thinking. And it's hard to school
ourselves in this prophetic mindset, and to understand what it
would be like to be so happy and to be so poor, but to be poor as
the ultimate say fucker, if tra
voluntary poverty, giving and giving and giving, while
maintaining this is a sharing requirement enough for one's
dependents. You can't allow your baby to
to be thirsty. But nonetheless, all of the excess this
extraordinary is the father till now this incredible cornucopia of
money that somehow doesn't have much Baraka in it that just
gushing forth from the earth at the moment that so many are
experiencing and living in. Some Muslim elites are certainly living
in it. There are Muslim oligarchs and Muslims who aren't generous
enough with the model that Allah has given them. And we need to
think about trying to remember the joy, that is the consequence of
sincere giving, that nobody knows about.
And to try during this Ramadan in particular, to create a list of
recipients. Maybe from Bangladesh or somewhere, you know, somebody
back home, for whom 100 pounds would be extraordinary. Well,
don't forget that person. This kind of stuck there. You have the
good passport, the job,
you will be called to account for your determination to hoard what
you should be giving. There are charities
They can take out standing orders. You can support CMC and support
the next generation of Muslim scholars, which is kind of sadaqa
jariya that goes on, in sha Allah for as long as their scholars live
and their students live in their families live and is kind of self
replicating sadaqa This is a religion of Ireland.
But you should also remember the poor, the destitute, the needy,
that earthquake victims, the rising sea level victims that this
is a world of very great suffering. And this we have a, a
generous God, who rewards us in unimaginable ways, not least in a
certain lightness in the heart, when we give and when we give
sincerely and with the door with presence. So since this is a month
in which good deeds are multiplied, let us think about
this. And remember
that the pleasures that come from spiritual acts are always better
for us than the pleasures that come from physical acts and those
that come from physical acts sooner or later you get
overwhelmed by them and you become sick. But with the sweetness that
comes from spiritual acts, you just become better and better and
stronger and stronger. So we ask Allah Subhana Allah to Allah to
return to this ALMA, the spirit of sharing the spirit of solidarity,
the spirit of mercy, because all wealth is Allah's wealth, we hold
it only on trust and we will be accountable for every last penny
for every last cent
May Allah give you a great Ramadan and a peaceful Ramadan at a family
Ramadan and lift your sorrows and your suffering and your anxieties
and inspire in all of us the spirit of giving, which is part of
the beauty of the prophetic spirit. Baraka Alfie Kohn was
salam o aleikum wa rahmatullah.
Assalamualaikum. Thank you for learning with us. At Cambridge
Muslim College, we are raising the standard of Muslim scholarship to
talks like these, but also through our certified academic programs.
We're training our students to speak to our times and to meet the
needs of our communities. But we can't do this without your help.
Whether it's Succot, a one off donation, or a regular
contribution. Your gift will help us educate more students, elevate
new leaders and illuminate entire communities for generations to
come.