Abdal Hakim Murad – Fast to Give Ramadan Moments

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.

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