AbdelRahman Murphy – Heartwork Guided Steps To The Path Of Allah #11
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Okay.
Welcome home, everybody.
It's good to see everybody here.
So there's a,
today
is the
the hottest day, apparently,
in the year
for us,
this year.
And,
according to, you know, according to what they
say, of course, Allah knows best, but according
to what they say, it's only supposed to
get cooler from here. So I know there's
somebody I know who moved here,
and she she moved here last night, actually.
So this is, like, the first day in
Texas for her
and,
and and her son, her her son and
her husband are here. Her husband moved, a
few weeks ago
and, she came after and she was like,
what on earth is going on? I said,
look,
that's one way to think about it.
I said, another way is that it's only
gonna get colder from this point on.
Cold is relative, like, tomorrow is 99, 100.
Right? And then from there inshallah. But but
I want I want everyone to keep this
energy in January
when,
Chicago and other places that we love, right,
Chicago, 4th holiest city in the world,
When they are frozen over
and when here on a random Tuesday in
December, we'll have, like, a 63 degree,
forecast.
But, you know, it's interesting,
there's there's a hadith actually which talks about
severe weather.
And the hadith mentions
the prophet, he
says that,
in in the unseen realm, right, the the
hellfire actually
is a creation of Allah The hellfire actually
has,
almost like a sense of, like, sentient being.
And so the hellfire actually speaks,
in the Quran, actually, there's like a there's
a dialogue between the hellfire
and between Allah.
That the hellfire will say
or the hellfire will be asked,
are you full?
And it will respond by saying, are there
any more?
And that ayah is to demonstrate and describe
just how large the capacity of the fire
of * is. May Allah protect us from
it.
And so
the hellfire has the ability, all on his
best how, but it has the ability to
sort of, like, process and communicate. And so
this hadith is narrated by Abu Hurairah, very
interestingly,
said that the prophet
said that on the very hot days
of
summer or of the of the year,
that a person should actually delay
their luhr prayer
until the day cools down a little bit.
And this is because back then, of course,
people would be operate there's no air conditioning
and they'd be walking to the masjid. So
if you walk to the masjid during, like,
the the the zenith of where the sun
is at its peak and it's just beating
down on the earth and there's no shadows,
there's no shade,
then what they would do is they would
actually delay the prayer
of the masjid
because of this extreme heat. And you also
see this on the other side, the prophet,
if
there was an extreme rain,
if there was very heavy rain and heavy
wind, they would actually combine
some prayers together.
If the weather was really bad, they would
combine the prayers at the masjid.
And it's really funny because in those times,
of course, like, there's
it makes complete sense. In our day day
and age, like, there's a little bit of
a drizzle and you're at the masjid, the
uncles are like,
let's do it. Let's combine. And you're like,
no. No. You'll be fine. You have a
windshield. And, you know, everyone's trying to apply
this hadith. But the point that I think
is beautiful is that in the religion itself
built into our deen
is the awareness and the consciousness that Allah
shows us that he cares for our comfort.
To the point where something like salah think
of salah, prayer.
Prayer doesn't move.
The Adan times don't move. These things are
fixed.
But for the comfort of the person performing
prayer, the prophet, alaihis salatu salaam, is told
and tells us that when it's raining, you
can combine them. Because you don't want people
to be in danger. If they're out and
it's raining really heavily and they're driving or
they're walking, you don't want them to be
in danger. Or if it's very hot, you
don't want this person to be experiencing, like,
the extreme heat. And so the the the
prayer is delayed.
And the prophet,
he actually says,
that that the intense heat that you feel
on these days, it's beyond normal heat.
This heat actually comes from the the raging
of the fire
of Jahannam.
And
it this fire calls out to Allah, so
interesting, and makes dua and says, oh, Allah,
my flames are scorching hot,
so allow me to take some relief. And
so Allah allows the fire to take 2
breaths,
1 in the summer and 1 in the
winter.
And the 1 in the winter, the scholars
say, is when it's like deep, deep cold.
That frigid cold.
And the 1 in the summer,
a lot of those best, but it's probably
today.
So we ask Allah to allow this to
be a reminder for us.
You know, Muhammad Ali, Rahimahullah, the famous boxer,
he used to hold a a a, you
know, a lighter.
And very famously the story goes that whenever
he felt the desire to sin or disobey
Allah,
he would just light and he would hold
his hand over it very gently.
And in holding his hand over it, he
would obviously have to pull it away very
quickly.
And so he would tell himself that if
I can't handle just a few seconds of
a little lighter, then how can I handle
eternity in the hellfire?
And he would use that as a reminder
to himself. So take today as a reminder.
If you don't wanna be outside today, if
you don't like it out there,
then remind yourselves and all of us can
run ourselves that we don't wanna be anywhere
near the hellfire in the afterlife. May Allah
protect us. Okay.
Today, we're gonna continue insha Allah with
the
amazing text that Imam Muhaasabi has written for
us, al Risallat al Mustardashireen.
And we talked a little bit last week
about this idea of what it means to
draw near to Allah sincerely and to draw
near to him in a way
that is,
in any moment, whether it's good or bad,
is thinking of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Now
we took a little bit of a poll,
like like a very non academic
survey.
And we found that, you know, by raise
of hands, and we'll do it again, how
many of us find it easier to do
things like pray, make dua, etcetera,
when times are not going well, when things
are bad? Raise your hand if you find
it easier during those times to raise your
hand to Allah. Okay. And when times are
good,
generally, like, we have a almost like a
low level state of gratitude constantly,
but
it's it's usually the case that people don't
find deep deep inspiration
to turn back to Allah in times of
gratitude because the gratitude is a is a
thing that is it it can it can
confuse a person.
Right? The experience of being in the state
of providence, of privilege,
it doesn't instantly pinch a person and wake
them up. This is why when you wanna
wake somebody up, you have to turn on
the lights.
Right? If somebody's in a nice dark room,
it's cold, they got the blanket on, what
do you do? You pull the blanket off
of them, because that jolt, that shock
is what gets them up.
But if a person is comfortable, it's very
difficult for them to
rouse from the slumber that they're in. So
if we're talking about dunya
and we're talking about our experience, as long
as things are going well,
we're sleeping,
we're napping.
And it's only those moments where Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala pulls that nice comfortable blanket off
of us
with some difficulty. In Dallas, it's probably a
flat tire
with a nail. Right?
Or it's some sort of sickness or financial
difficulty or something. Something didn't go your way.
That's the lights being turned on.
That's the blanket being pulled off. And then
you wake up and you realize,
oh, man. I overslept. I have to go
back to Allah.
So Imam Muhasabi, he says, and this is
an interesting trick. I love this. Instead of
focusing on just the the times of negativity,
he says
that make sure
that you don't forget Allah in the times
of good.
Make sure that you remember him in every
time. And last week, we talked about, like,
those little experiences, those moments of mercy, of
Rahmah.
And we said that become a person
that in every scenario you think of Allah.
The happiness that you feel when the waiter
or the waitress
comes out of the kitchen at the restaurant
with your food.
The happiness that you feel when you get
a promotion or you get an offer. The
happiness that you feel
when something that you didn't want to do,
let's say you had plans and they get
canceled, Alhamdulillah.
Right?
You're like, yes, I get to sleep
or I get to just scroll until it's
too late and then still sleep late.
Those moments where Allah gives you that little
just burst
of relief, of rahma,
that's a time where you need to remember
Allah. Why? Imam Abu Hasibi says, because
if you can remember Allah during times of
good, then you'll be able to call on
that muscle during times of difficulty.
And he mentions here something very important,
and the commentator mentions this as well. He
says that, and I'll read it and explain
it. He says that the cognitive frames, which
is basically just a fancy way of saying
the mindset,
The mindset that a person has that allows
them
to engage with their religion
comes from their everyday experiences.
You know how we say oftentimes the phrase
dean and dunya? You guys ever heard that
before? Balancing deen and dunya. Alright. It's like
every MSA conference in the last 20 years.
Balancing deen and dunya. There is actually no
such dichotomy
in in in traditional Islamic studies.
The scholars don't talk about behave this way
when it comes to religion and behave this
way when it comes to your worldly life.
No. For them, it's just you're Muslim.
This is it. This is the expectation.
And no one's perfect, but this is your
ideal. This is what you strive towards. So
we don't operate under the framework of
the the dual world. Right? And this is
why a lot of us become slightly 2
faced.
We operate one way in the masjid and
another way at work. We operate one way
at home and another way at school.
This this ability to switch faces,
to take off one mask and put on
another, depending on where we are, is due
to a fundamental misunderstanding of who Allah is.
Allah does not suddenly become unaware when you
walk into work,
and suddenly does not become more aware when
you walk into the masjid.
That's not how it works.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is equally aware
of who you are, what you're doing, what
you're thinking, what you're feeling, and everything you're
experiencing
at any given second.
Whether you're in the depths of Sujood and
Ramadan
or whether you are
trying to hide the thing that you're most
embarrassed about.
Allah knows.
And so the commentator here says,
our mindset as a person, how we think
of ourselves, our psyche,
is all built around
how much we bring religion into our everyday
lives.
And we're like averse to this. We like
to deal with religion when it's comfortable,
but the moment that religion tells us to
do things, you know, it's kinda funny. I'll
never forget
Thanksgiving time. It's crazy to even say that.
Right? Thanksgiving in November when it gets a
little colder. Right? Today is like the oven
that bakes the turkey is today.
Okay?
Thanksgiving, there's a big discussion about whether or
not people it's permissible to celebrate
Thanksgiving, birthday. For how many of you in
in this room is haram for birthdays? You
guys, your birthday's a haram. Okay. Well, I'm
sorry. No happy birthday for you. Okay?
So there's a big discussion and this the
discussion I'm not I'm not gonna make light
of it. The discussion goes, you know, is
there such a thing as a celebration? Because
the prophet alaihis salaam said that for the
believers, for the Muslims, there's 2 celebrations and
those are the 2 aids.
And so based off of this narration, some
people have said, well, any others any other
annual regularly celebrated thing is impermissible. So they've
said birthdays, etcetera. And this is usually what
a lot of religious parents do until you
have kids. And then the grandchildren, now all
of a sudden birthdays are halal.
You guys notice this?
Okay. No. You guys don't have kids yet,
but you'll understand. The hypocrisy becomes very clear.
Anyways, so point being is that
these events, right, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all that well,
Christmas we know because it's a religious holiday,
but Thanksgiving, birthdays, all this kind of stuff,
there's a little bit of debate. So the
questions come up every year.
The questions come up every single year.
Does a person
have the ability to buy turkey? Is it
okay if a person gets a turkey? Is
it okay if they enjoy a meal on
this day with their family, with their friends?
Is that okay?
So there was one time a brother who
came to the masjid and he was actually
asking
about this question and he asked the imam,
he said, oh, imam, is it permissible for
for me to do this, to have thanksgiving
meal with my friends and family?
And the imam started
to go through the different Islamic evidences,
and he said, like, yes, this or no,
this, and he was explaining. And then he
set a point, and I thought this is
so interesting. He goes, well, you know, if
we look at it from the Islamic lens,
and then the brother turns to him, the
brother who asked him turns to him and
says, woah. Woah. Don't bring Islam into this.
You guys get me here?
Is it halal to celebrate Thanksgiving? And the
imam goes, well, if we do this, this,
this and he goes, if we bring in
the Islamic bread and he goes, woah, woah,
woah, don't bring Islam into this.
I just wanna know, is it okay or
not? And it was almost like a riddle.
The imam was like,
what do I do? You know?
And but that statement, don't bring Islam into
this, is, like, fundamentally problematic.
There's a deep problem with that statement, don't
bring Islam into that. What do you mean?
What do you mean? Our entire life is
predicated about
upon
whether or not
Allah Ta'ala loves or does not love something
that we do.
That's that's the entire that's the fulcrum. That's
the crux of our existence.
So to to say or feel something,
don't bring Islam into this. No. That's not
how this operates. In fact,
we as people should think deeply
about this question before we engage with anything.
I'll give you another example. There's a sheikh
Salman al Oda.
He's a very well respected scholar
from the Middle East, and people asked him
about social media.
Is it permissible? Is it not?
And you know what he said?
You guys ready?
Okay.
He said, I don't know.
That was his answer. They said, is it
permissible to have Instagram? He goes, I don't
know. They said, what about Facebook? He goes,
I don't know.
And look at this. He said something very
powerful.
He said, I can't legislate on this. I
can't give an answer because we don't know
yet how it affects our religion.
We don't know.
And now you're seeing the FDA
giving official recommendations
to parents
that if you have a child in high
school,
that you need to limit their time on
social media because it has adverse effects on
their physical and mental and emotional well-being. Subhanallah.
And I remember back then,
you know, people poke put out that fatwa
where he said, I don't know, and they're
like, oh my god. Islam is so
incapable of the modern world, but look at,
subhanallah, how smart he is. He said, I'm
not gonna give an answer because we actually
don't know how this stuff works.
We don't know how it messes with people's
brains. We don't know
whether or not, right, these filters are going
to make us feel less about ourselves. We
don't know
what decisions
constant exposure will have on us.
SubhanAllah.
So going all the way back, the the
author here says what? He says, the Muslims'
job
is to try to engage with Islam
in the mundane
actions.
One question you should ask is that, is
this something that is pleasing to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala? Is this something that is displeasing
to him?
If I'm doing this, is it a problem?
You know, the prophet, a sate wa sallam,
one time was asked by somebody, what's the
what should I do? What's the ruling? And
he said a very interesting answer. He said,
he said, he said, seek fatwa from your
heart.
Seek fatwa from your heart. Meaning what? Ask
yourself, what do you think? Now this guy
wasn't like, I think it's haral, deuces. Right?
He just leaves and does whatever he wants.
No.
The prophet was telling him that if your
heart is in a good enough state, you
should really, really, every person
who has a baseline understanding of virtue and
vice,
dare I say, like, almost like a childlike
understanding of it, that person should be able
to, you know, deduce whether or not something
is okay.
Just based you don't have to we're not
talking about legal stuff. We're not saying you
don't wanna sign a, I think this is
Haram. Boom. But the person should know in
themselves, like, you know what? Doing this, wearing
this,
watching this, listening to this,
buying this, behaving like this is either good
or not good.
And every Muslim is empowered to ask themselves
those questions.
Everybody.
That's your relationship with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So then he says,
the moment that your everyday experiences
start to tally up and give you
constant remembrance of Allah in every moment, he
says, that's when you start to feel Islam
in your heart.
As long as Islam is a stranger in
your life, Islam will feel strange.
But the moment
that you allow iman to find a home
in your existence,
then it's going to always feel familiar,
and the decisions that you make will match
the familiarity that you have with your faith.
He says one thing that we can do
in order to understand
this point
is that realize that every single person that's
involved in our life
was brought to us by the sake of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Every single person.
Right? Those people that you love, those people
that you don't love, and those people that
are in between.
Right? The people that you deeply care about,
those people that you
do not care about. Oh, man. Love, forgive
us. Those people that you just wanna have
some space from.
But you know what's crazy? Some of the
best lessons in life can be learned from
the people that you don't wanna learn them
from.
And this is why Imam Al Ghazali, he
actually said, like, one of the tools that
a person can really have, they can work
on is being able to
extract lessons from somebody that you don't like.
Because the person that doesn't like you will
oftentimes be the most honest with you.
Your friends will hide your flaws because they
love you, and they don't wanna ruin the
relationship. But your enemy will just call you
out.
Right? You'll get into an argument and they're
like, yeah. That shirt's ugly anyways.
And all your friends are like, no. It's
not. And you're like, no. No. It must
be. That person would have no reason to
lie. You're all liars. You love me. That
person's telling the truth. Imam al Zali said
this. So he said
that,
realize that everyone is who's in your life
was brought to you by Allah.
For some reason,
whether that person is adding something,
or testing you, or giving you, or taking
from you, every single moment was brought to
you by Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And when you realize that, you will understand
Allah Ta'ala's bounty and his
grace in every single way in your life.
May Allah Ta'ala give us this.
Okay. Then last week we finished on this
point, the point we talked about. Well, we
kind of finished on this and then we
started the next one. We didn't make it
too far. But he
says that when you pray, one of the
ways to make this something very, very habitual
is that when you pray, always pray your
prayer as if it's your final prayer.
And this sounds really difficult and dramatic,
but you don't have to make it that
way.
When you stand up to pray, all you
have to do is just tell yourself in
your head, doesn't have to be a a
loud dramatic announcement,
hey. Where are you going, Abdul? I'm gonna
go pray. This might be my last one.
Don't say that before boarding a flight. Right?
Just don't say that. Okay?
But you say it internally to yourself.
Right? You tell yourself, like, what if this
is in fact my last and again,
all of us are familiar enough, all of
us are connected enough with communities, with families,
where we've experienced and we've seen the the
the the the youth
that we grew up with or that we
are close to pass away.
Many people in this room are connected to
people that passed away at an age that
is completely normatively unexpected,
but I don't say too early because nothing
is too early. Allah's decree is exactly when
it's meant to be,
but we feel in our heart that that's
so strange that I'm 36,
and this person's 36, and they passed away,
and I didn't. I don't expect to pass
away at 36.
We still have hopes and aspirations and dreams.
We don't think about our our our passing
days.
May Allah taught to give us a good
ending when it comes time for us. So
you don't have to necessarily make it a
big dramatic moment, but just when you stand,
tell yourself
that if this were to be the last
prayer that I prayed, would I regret it
in the grave or not?
Would I regret it in the grave or
not? Now a lot of times we say
this before we pray. You stand and the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam would tell everybody,
pray this as if it's your final prayer,
prayers as if it's your departing prayer.
But I want to challenge everybody
by asking yourself the question after you finish.
So when you say,
just in that moment say, is that prayer
something that if this were my last day,
I would feel comfortable presenting that to Allah,
or do I not even know what prayer
I just prayed?
Do I have to think for a moment?
Did I just do 5 Raqa for Maghrib?
Right?
You know one of those Maghribs where you're
like, what what where am I? Right? What
day is it? Because your mind was so
occupied,
so completely just
totally overtaken by something else that you didn't
give the prayer its due right. So don't
you can ask yourself before, that's fine. But
if you ask yourself after, that's really where
you feel the weight of that question.
Is this where I'm going to be? Is
this really the the status, the presentation that
I wanna have before Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala?
And why prayer? Prayer because the hadith tells
us that if a person's prayer is good,
everything else will be fine on the day
of judgment.
The first thing that's looked at is salah.
This doesn't mean, by the way, that the
person's, like, you know, you can pray and
then do whatever else you want. No. What
this means is that prayer is so powerful,
and being consistent in prayer is such a
unique challenge. It's not easy, by the way.
It's simple,
but it's not easy to always conquer yourself
in your schedule.
Whether it's sleep, whether it's busyness,
whether it's motivation, there's so many diseases that
can attack the pillar of prayer. But if
you can defend that pillar
and preserve it, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala promises
you that the rest of your day of
judgment will go well.
It's worth
it. All of the things that we have
struggles with,
all of the things that we hope
that Allah will overlook
on the day of judgment, he promises us
a pathway to that if we can guarantee
our prayers. May Allah make us strong in
our prayers.
So he finishes, subhanallah, he says, when you
pray, let it be the prayer of
farewell.
We should pray in a way that's beautiful.
We should dress beautifully
Even if we can't change our garments because
we're at work or we're somewhere where it's
not possible,
we should present ourselves in a beautiful way.
You know, one one of the things that
my teachers taught me was that, you know,
for for for the men who doesn't have
to cover their arms necessarily,
They say that, you know, rolling up sleeves,
but there's a hadith in which the prophet
actually said that the sleeves should not be
rolled up during prayer for men.
And one of my teachers says, part of
this is because it's poor presentation.
It's a bad way to present yourself. Would
you ever walk into an important meeting and
walk in like this?
Unless you're going to Home Depot, no. There's
no way
that you're gonna walk in anywhere like that.
You if you're presenting yourself nicely, you're gonna
present yourself in a way that's proper. Right?
You're gonna pull your shirt, you're gonna and
so when you stand before prayer, it's not
even like, oh, you step into it. Some
people step into prayer like a jump shot.
You know, they step in with 1 foot,
Allahu Akbar, and then the next foot comes
in. You have to step you have to
keep your right? Much like a good jump
shot, you have to have a steady base.
You have to make sure that you're you're
there, you're focused.
Which way am I facing? I'm facing towards
Allah.
Sayyidina Ali radhielahu an, the the the the
relative, the the cousin of the prophet alaihi
wa sallam, when he made wudu, he used
to turn pale and start shivering.
Not because the water was cold, but because
he was really, really concerned,
and they would ask him what's wrong? And
he says, do you have any idea who
I'm about to stand in front of?
He would tell the person, I'm about to
stand in front of Allah
with all my mistakes and all my flaws.
I'm about to stand in front of Allah.
He would become nervous, become anxious
in a healthy way.
So
the commentator here says, when you pray, pray
beautifully.
Pray beautifully in your presentation,
pray beautifully in your execution,
pray beautifully in your environment,
and try your best to pray beautifully
with the amount of time that you give
each movement in salah.
One of the
the the difficulties most people have in prayer
is concentration,
focus.
Right? Raise your hand if you have trouble
focusing in your prayers.
Yeah. It's everybody. And that's why a lot
of the jokes we talk about are, like,
forgetting how many rakas,
which salah, is this aqibla,
where am I? Like, because
Shaytan no. And there's a hadith that backs
this up. Shaitan targets you. There's a funny
story about scholar or this one scholar where
he said I one time forgot where I
placed something, and so in order to remember
I pray 2 rakah.
Because shaitan always brings the most random stuff
to you. Right? Your nafs is always, like,
running in circles when it's time to pray
because you don't wanna focus anything but the
prayer.
So you forgot where your keys were. You're
like, Allahu Akbar. And then you're like, in
the couch. Okay. And then you go. You
break the prayer.
That's not good, but that's it's a story
one time, SubhanAllah. And it shows you again
the the the vulnerability of Salah.
So
how do we pray? And a lot of
times we struggle with this. One of my
teachers, professor Omar Mozelfar, he said
something amazing. He said, if you wanna make
your prayer better,
and you don't have the ability to, like,
learn,
classical Qur'anic Arabic grammar, or you don't have
the ability to memorize, like, let's say that
you're working on it, but it's a slow
project, but you wanna make your prayer better
today. You don't have the ability to change
things right now, but you wanna pray better
tonight. Maghrib, we wanna pray better. He said
there's one thing that everybody has the capacity
to do and if they do it, it'll
help their prayer be better. Do you know
what it is?
Yes.
Everyone has it's like a riddle. Everyone has
the ability to do this and it will
instantly improve your prayer in Maghrib tonight in
30 minutes.
Focus, man. This guy.
Alright. Sunday school.
Alright.
Allah knows best. Right? Yes. Of course. Focus.
But how do you focus? How do you
increase your focus?
Perfect. He said slow down.
Slow when do you make the most mistakes?
When you're rushing. When do you forget things?
When you're rushing. When are when when are
you this morning, I was rushing out of
the house to get my kids to school,
and I forgot
all of my work stuff, me, because I
go to from there to here. And so
I get here and I have nothing and
I'm, like, well, I'm useless.
So now I have to go back home.
Right? Or I I was actually able to
call someone who's my neighbor and he brought
my stuff and SubhanAllah.
Just all from what? From rushing. It was
next to the door, everything was there, I
had everything ready, and I forgot all of
it.
Why?
From rushing. When a person speeds up their
process to make mistakes, slow down.
Everybody in this room
has the ability to slow down.
If we pray
and we feel like this prayer is too
fast,
then we are not giving it the beauty
that it deserves.
You may not know the language.
You may not be able to translate everything
or explain everything,
but if you give prayer its due right
in terms of just slowing down, you will
feel like a more beautiful person who prayed.
You'll feel it.
Everything that is
valuable and beautiful is never
rushed, ever.
Right? May Allah give us good salah.
So he says we should try to make
sure that everything we present to Allah is
beautiful.
Anything less is simply not befitting of him.
Okay. The next one.
He says now here's the next step. So
we're talking about what detaching from,
having too much emotionality whether good or bad.
That's the whole process. So now the next
one. So the first one he said is
what? He says, become a person that relies
upon Allah.
Pray as if it's your last. Make sure
that you pray beautifully. Then he says, know
that you will never experience
this sweetness of faith
until
you have trust
in Allah's decree and destiny,
whether it be good or whether it
be bitter, whether it be sweet or whether
it be bitter.
This is a really tough one.
It's really tough. Whether you look at a
micro tragedy in your own life, something that
happened today, whether you look at something that's
happening over the course of a lot of
time, something you've been struggling with, something that
you've been dealt, whether you're not whether or
not you look at global
tragedy like Gaza, whether or not you look
at there's so many different tragedies
that the heart of a human being
naturally is predisposed
to question
why.
Like why is this happening?
This is not good.
And if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
you know, why can't he just change it?
Why can't he just make it something that
is good? Now this is
an interesting
story line that's always found in the Quran,
in the lives of the prophets,
alaymus salam. You look at all the lives
of the prophets and their lives are filled
filled with bad things.
You could actually probably characterize
their lives as being, if we were to
say it in our terms,
more bad than good
in terms of what they experienced.
If you looked at their life and what
happened and what occurred to them, their history,
it was all bitter, sour, tough moments
with very few moments in between that were,
like, truly
celebratory.
Right? But you never see that these prophets,
these people
ever use these moments to, like, rebel or
resent Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Never.
What was it about them? What was different?
Works were human beings, they were human beings.
They were the best of humans, but they
were still humans. So what is it about
them that changes their ability
to see it? It's all a matter of
perspective.
It's all a matter of perspective.
The prophet
he says, and I'll I'll tell you this
in a narration, it's very beautiful. He says,
He says,
the
life of a believing person
is so unique
because
every single thing that this person experiences
is good. And then he
clarifies,
It's not this way for anybody.
Except for a believer.
You're the only person. If you believe in
God
and you have a relationship with his revelation
and his messenger,
peace be upon him, you have been given
a gift of perspective.
Every believer.
The perspective can be multilayered.
It can be like, you know what? There's
good in this. Or maybe there's no good
in it and you're like, you know what?
There's good coming after this. Or you can
say, you know what? There's no good in
this. There's no good coming after this. Right?
You're also a very negative person, but right?
And you can say, but maybe because of
this, I'll get paradise.
Maybe because of the I'll get Jannah.
So no matter what, no matter where you
stop, the believer always has
the end result of any difficulty is always
something good.
And the the person who's optimistic with Allah,
they actually see Allah in every moment. So
they're like, there's good in this, there will
be good after this, and I'll get Jannah
because of this.
Right? So the more your relationship develops, the
more you're able to have those three levels
be stronger.
But it still doesn't give us
the reason as to why these things happen,
and I'm gonna give you a secret.
One of the things that holds people back
from their relationship with Allah
is the need
and the desire to try to understand
everything that's happening and why it's happening.
And we went over the whole series, right,
why do bad things happen. We did that
whole series.
I wanna give you one line
from this man. His name is Imam Al
Taha. He's a genius. And I wanna I
wanna share with you what he said about
this.
So the question is, why do bad things
happen?
And why can't I know exactly why they
happen?
Right?
Now
he says,
when it comes to the knowledge
of the unseen, this stuff, he says, this
is a secret to Allah alone.
It's a secret,
and you don't have access to it.
The reality is Allah's knowledge is infinite. Our
knowledge is finite.
Some scholars, they they said that, you know,
if you were to compare the knowledge of
Allah to the knowledge of a person,
it would be like the vastness of every
body of water on the earth
compared to one single
drop of mist.
And they said it's even greater than that.
So when you think of, oh, Allah, why
don't you let me understand why this is
happening? You first have to answer the question,
what's the gap between Allah's knowledge and yours?
If you can answer that question, everything else
becomes easier. So he says this is a
secret that Allah ta'ala has not given to
anyone in his creation. Ready?
He goes, no angel knows it.
No angel knows it.
The angels, they obey Allah, but they don't
know the future.
In fact, we have proof of this in
the Quran when Allah created Adam, alayhis salaam.
What did the angels do? Were they happy?
Were they confused?
They were a little confused. They questioned it.
They said, why would you create this human
being?
Because they said, we constantly worship you. We're
praising you. Like, what what more is it
that is needed or is wanted
from this creation, the human being? The angels
are like basically, like, we're doing everything. We're
praying. We're worshiping. We're every kind of devotion
is being fulfilled by us. And Allah responded
with a beautiful response. He says,
I know that which you don't know.
I know that what you don't know. Because
the angels do things perfectly,
but they have no agency or free will.
But we do.
Maghrib's coming in in about 20 minutes. You
and I have the choice
to pray or not to pray.
We we can decide. Allah gave you that.
Allah gave me that.
And when a person decides to do what's
good, even though they have the choice,
they become, Imam Ghazali said, better than all
of the angels combined.
Because they show, they demonstrate
that despite the chance that I have to
do what I want,
I'm submitting to what Allah wants.
Don't ever ever think that because you're not
perfect, Allah does not love you or care
for you. No. When you choose that one
moment to do what's right, you become elevated
above even the angels. So he says the
angels don't know nor does any prophet know.
No messenger was given knowledge of the future
of the unseen.
Now listen to this. He says, now when
you try to dive deep into this stuff
and really try to unpack it and go
to these different sort of positions and how
do I figure it out? He says all
it does is cause you to go further
and further further away from Allah.
So he advises, and he says when it
comes to certain things that you can't understand,
the safe route
is to trust
and to submit
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
That's why in the Quran,
when Allah presents something that's challenging for us
to understand,
like the creation of the heavens and the
earth and the creation of humanity
and provision and all this. Allah never gives
us, like, math equations to figure it out.
It's not like chapter 3. So it's a
trigonometry. Like, that's not how this works. What
does Allah do? Very interesting. Whenever Allah presents
challenging concepts for us to comprehend, you know
what he does?
He asks us,
have they not seen the sky above them?
How it was how it's how it's how
it's being suspended?
Have they not seen the birds in the
sky, how they fly? Have they not seen
the clouds, how they move? Have they not
seen the mountains, how they're pegged into the
earth? Have they not seen the earth, how
it's alive and then dies and comes back
to earth? Have they not seen the vegetation,
that when rain comes down from the sky,
it grows? Then Allah says, why don't they
believe?
He doesn't ask you to use the math
part of your brain.
Sorry. If you're a nerd.
He asks you to use your heart
and to think
about your own existence, not to try to
prove it.
Reflect on your existence. Don't try to prove
it.
And that's what gives you that sense of
tranquility and trust. Now,
when you think, why is this happening to
me?
This sickness,
this family dispute,
this business thing gone wrong, this layoff,
this Rishta that went south.
I know that one's gonna cut deep. I'm
sorry.
And so a lot of people just sit
up. They're like, how does he know?
Right. Because you posted about it. Anyways,
no.
Anything that you go through that's tough,
anything that you've been through, when you can
reflect upon your creation and the fact that
Allah ta'ala
created you, provided, sustained, and is with you
every step of the way,
similar to how a child looks at their
parent and trusts them intuitively, you look to
Allah and you trust them intuitively.
And you know that no matter what, it's
gonna be okay.
It may not always be easy. It may
not always be fun. And it may not
always be sweet. But at the end of
it, I'm with Allah and that's all that
I need.
And the stories of the prophet, salam, give
us this.
Now
there's one last thing that we'll cover tonight.
By the way, if you have any questions,
we have q and a. Slido.com
and you can type in heart work,
to ask the questions inshallah. There's already a
lot coming in. So slido, s l I
d o.com and then you can type in
heart work. We'll do some q and a
inshallah right after this.
He says the next thing
that gives you this sense of
sincerity
and detachment from the emotion hyper emotional
of the love and hatred that you can
experience in life
is he says, speak the truth and act
on it.
Speak the truth
and act on the truth.
And God will increase you in your ability
to see the truth.
So there's 2 things here, actually. I know
it sounds like speak the truth and act
on it, but it's actually 2 separate things.
Number 1,
some people
are a lot better at talking than they
are doing.
Raise your hand if you know how to
do something perfectly but you're really bad at
it.
Raise your hand if you failed at dieting
before.
Okay? Raise your hand if you have too
much dessert sometimes. You know how to do
something perfectly. You could explain it perfectly but
you're bad at it. Anybody?
Okay. An example like Michael Jordan in basketball.
Really good at it. Horrible GM.
Right?
Really, really good at something, but not necessarily
the best at doing what you know.
Okay?
This is okay. It's part of being a
human being.
Like, not everyone
is perfect in executing what they know.
I understand
how to dunk a basketball. I understand
conceptually
when you take the ball and you jump
and you put it through the hoop. I
get that.
Execute that. Have you be maybe in high
school.
Alright. Now my orthopedic surgeon's here. Right? 2
ACLs later,
I'm I'm just happy to sit down. Alright.
Alhamdulillah. No. I'm joking. I'm back to hooping.
Some brothers know.
Okay. So
we can understand something theoretically
perfectly, but the ability to execute it is
very challenging.
In the mundane world, it's fine.
In the religious world, this is called hypocrisy.
In
the spiritual side of our life, this is
what's called nifak.
It's when a person knows,
but they refuse to try.
I know how to pray, but I don't
want to.
I know how to tell the truth,
but I don't. I lie.
I know how to be honest, but I'm
very dishonest in my dealings.
This
in the mundane world, it's fine, man. I
know how to build Ikea furniture, but boy,
I'm not doing it. Right?
But in the spiritual world, you cannot be
the person that knows something and doesn't do
it.
And ignorance is not bliss.
So that's number 1. Now there's another side
to this,
which is that some people are really good
at doing something,
but they're not good
at speaking about it or proclaiming it,
which means that they only do it when
they're comfortable.
They're only in a position of comfort. They
can only engage in it when they're comfortable.
The Prophet,
when he spoke to people about virtue
and what is right and what Allah loves,
he wouldn't only do it. He would also
speak to people about it.
One of the most disheartening
things
that we
are witnessing now as a result of the
Internet culture, all these videos show up and
you see these really, really difficult things that
happen to people, whether it's crimes or whether
somebody's going through an unfortunate circumstance,
they get injured and everybody next to the
next to them on the sidewalk just keeps
going.
Have you guys ever seen these videos?
Somebody, like, gets hit by something
and they get injured and they're on the
ground in pain and people are like, I
gotta go to work.
And they just keep moving.
The lack of courage to do what's right
is
a void in your faith.
The prophet, alaihis salaam, was somebody that when
he saw something that was wrong,
even if he couldn't do much because of
restrictions,
he would always say what was right.
So the the the coin here is 2
sided. Imam Mahasibi is saying, speak and act
right.
Say something good and do something good. And
as a result of those two things, when
you combine those two things, Allah gives you
the gift of what? You become illuminated.
Many of us struggle in making good decisions.
We get confused.
A lot of times that's because we haven't
given ourselves
the we haven't become accustomed to what it
feels like to make good decisions.
We want to make good decisions, but we're
not making them. Well, guess what? You can
only know what a good decision is if
you know what it looks like. And you
only know what it looks like if you
do it and if you speak about it
and if you reference it and if you
recognize it.
A lot of the things that we know,
speaking of Q and A that we're going
to go to right now, a lot of
these questions, I would venture to say that
70% of them, the questioner knows exactly what
the right answer is.
I'm not that special.
I just have a nice wardrobe. But besides
that
thanks to my tailor in Turkey. But besides
that, I'm not that special.
You actually know what's right. I would venture
to say that most people in this room
know how
to do things that will make their life
better in the eyes of Allah.
You don't need me, actually.
I could die tomorrow and you still would
have all the tools necessary to come closer
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
It's not about sometimes knowing.
You already know,
but it's about the courage to do
and to listen to what your heart is
telling you.
That's what makes faith strong.
May Allah give us that courage. Okay. Let's
go through some questions Insha'Allah.
Okay.
Anything that's, like, super personal, I probably am
not gonna answer because it's, like, very personal.
And I don't want to give, like, very
personal answers in the public forum. So I'm
gonna skip over the ones that are, like,
very personal.
Okay.
I work in diversity to help all minorities,
but this includes,
LGBTQ.
Is this Haram and should I leave?
Good question. So look,
there are always going to be different aspects
of different
groups, whether they be religious, whether they be
political, whether they be,
human essence. Right? Orientation.
There will always be differences.
Right? Partnering, for example, with different religions. If
those religions don't believe in the messenger, Muhammad,
salallahu alayhi wa sallam, that's a huge problem
too, isn't it?
So we find in our religion that the
prophet, alayhi wa sallam,
he would never collaborate
on spiritual matters with other religious traditions or
communities,
but he would collaborate
on social endeavors.
Okay. So for example, if there's a church
and a synagogue and a temple
and a group of,
you know, people who believe in in science
or, you know, and and Muslims who wanna
get together and solve, like, hunger,
that's great. You should absolutely be a part
of that for sure. But if there's a
group of people that get together and wanna
and wanna put together a festival that celebrates
Jesus as the son of God, then Muslims
need to see, like, hey. See you next
year at the food festival. You know? Like,
that's where you draw your line. So the
boundaries that we have are not necessarily
the boundaries that we have are not necessarily
people, but it's what the essence of the
work is.
Right? Muslims are allowed to engage with any
individual, whether that person is a believer, a
non believer, whether that person shares your moral,
compass or doesn't
in the work that we can agree on.
But if the work we cannot agree on,
then that is where we draw our line
and we offer, right, thoughts and prayers. You
know, we just we offer condolences or support
or whatever it is, but we don't necessarily
have to be,
you know, the active support in those endeavors.
So
ask yourself the question, is this something that
contradicts my religion? The effort itself,
the effort itself, not the people,
but the effort. Does it contradict my religious
values?
And if it does, then I have to
take a step back.
But if it does not, if the effort
is about cleaning up the city, if the
effort is about pollution, right? The solution for
pollution. Great brand, by the way. I'll take
that one for free.
If the effort is about like animal,
shelters or, you know, shelters for families that
are struggling with,
drug abuse and addiction. I mean, there's so
many different great efforts. Those are fine as
long as you're not contributing to the actual,
disagreeable
parts of the groups themselves.
Allahu 'alaam. Allon is best. Okay?
Let me see.
I am considering reverting.
There were religions that were made before Islam
revealed before Islam. If Islam is the right
way, how did a religion so different exist
before? Great question.
First of all,
you should absolutely,
when you're ready inshallah,
accept Islam.
So the religions that came before Islam, I
would change a little bit of the verbiage
and it would help answer the question. The
religions were not made. They were revealed.
So we believe the prophet, ayesha sallahu alaihi
wa sallam, taught us that along with the
religions that we're familiar with, right, like the
Abrahamic faiths, there were
144,000
prophets that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala sent, each
of them with their own book.
So across the history of time and 144,000
could also be a rhetorical number, meaning it
could have been more.
So we believe that there has been revelation
from God
to the earth
via a message and a messenger
since the creation of human beings.
We believe that.
We believe that. We know some of those
prophets.
We believe that we don't know most of
them.
And we believe that the final one, his
name is Muhammad ibn Abdullah sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. That's our understanding of revelation.
Okay?
Now we believe, as Muslims, that the final
revelation
confirms
and also establishes itself as the superseding precedent
for all other revelations, which means
it doesn't mean that the previous religion or
revelation was wrong
at the time that it was revealed.
So for example, Muslims don't believe that those
who were following prophet Musa are doomed to
hellfire because they weren't following Muhammad. No. We
believe that he, salallahu alayhi wasalam, came with
the Quran which confirms
Musadiq alimaal baynayaday. They used to say, confirms
what we have. The Jews of Medina used
to say, look, what he's preaching is confirming
exactly what we have. So we believe that
the Quran came and confirmed and the only
difference about the Quran from other revelations is
that it's the final one
because it was told to us that it's
the final one.
So
the existence of other religions should not cause
any sort of unsettled anxiety in the heart
of a believer.
Other religions to us are proof
of what Allah said.
There have been other religions.
People deviated from those religions.
Then there was the the religious revelation was
sent to bring people back to what the
teachings were and this series occurred over and
over and over again until today.
And even till today, the revelation that we
do have, known as the Quran and the
son of the prophet,
people are deviating from that too who were
born Muslim just like
just like people previously did. The only difference
is that there's gonna be nothing that comes
to abrogate this one. This is the final
one. Okay? So if a person looks at
the existence of other religions and feels, like,
unsettled,
you don't have to.
That's just the proof of it. You know,
I love Imam Suraj Wa Hajj, may Allah
bless him, give him life. He said something
really nice. He goes, Islam is not the
newest religion. It's the oldest religion.
Islam is the original religion of Allah.
It is what Allah revealed to all of
his messengers,
peace be upon all of them.
So definitely you should convert. Assalamu alaikum. Okay.
Alright.
Next one.
Can I pray with my eyes closed if
it helps my hushu?
So there there are some recommendations
both in the hadith and also from scholars
about not closing your eyes.
But ironically,
the messaging that's given about closing your eyes
is so that it doesn't distract you. Because
if you close your eyes, you might start,
you know, wandering in your in your, in
your head. So some scholars actually, like, Ibn
Taymiyyah
is one of them. He said, if it
helps you to close your eyes, then you
should. But don't fall asleep.
That's actually what he said. Okay?
Please don't forget the question you bookmarked last
Monday. I forgot it.
How can you not
I can go back to it.
Hold on. Let me see.
Someone sounds desperate and it got a lot
of up votes.
Not desperate like that. Why is everything a
defensive thing?
They literally just sound desperate.
Which question was it? It's 3 AM in
Kenya. Roots is amazing? No.
No. We did that one.
Oh, the dogs? Was it dogs? We ended
with dogs?
Wow.
Really?
Okay. Did we talk about dogs? Yes. They're
cute. Okay. Alright. So
gotcha. Okay. Are you sure it was you?
No. Okay. So it's she's like, I heard.
A friend told me.
Okay. So are dog haram?
So no dogs are not haram.
No no creature is haram.
Haram just means impermissible.
You can't be like, it's haram. No. It's
not haram. Like, it is a thing. It's
a creature. It's a creation of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Okay. But the question is not our dog's
Haram. The question is what can be a
human being or a Muslim's relationship with this
creature?
Okay. So pigs, for example, are not Haram,
but they are impure in and of themselves.
So the relationship that a Muslim can have
with a pig
is just reading Charlotte's Web. That's about it.
Like, we can't we can't really do much.
Like, can't use their bristles for the the
hair for bristles. Can't use the skin for
anything. Can't use the meat. Nothing. Like, pigs
are, like, they're they're impure. They're, you know,
just keep your distance. It doesn't mean that
you have to go on a crusade against
pigs.
Let them be. Right?
But you can't use them. Okay. Now cats
are not impure. Cats are pure animals.
So the relationship that a Muslim can have
with a cat
or with birds or with is is a
lot easier.
Okay. Cats don't present any sort of challenges
when it comes to purity in the life
of a Muslim.
Okay. Outside of, like, their, their, you know,
waste,
which is, can be most all most all
other animals as well.
Dogs are
a challenge.
They are are in and of themselves are
not haram but
they provide a challenge in that their moisture
from their saliva and their snout
is
impure
according to the majority of scholar. Overwhelming majority
of scholars. There's a few from certain schools
of thought that that allow for them some
conditions but they're it's impure according to the
overall majority.
Okay. So what does this mean? This means
that if a dog
touches you,
with any saliva or residual saliva
or has a snout, then the thing that
you're wearing or the part that you touch
has to be cleaned
in order for you to be able to
perform prayer.
So look,
if you have a dog, I don't want
this to be the saddest day of your
life.
If you're thinking about getting a dog, don't
do that. Just hold off for a second
for God's sake. Okay?
What I would recommend to people and there's
other concessions for dogs like hunting
or like protection,
protection more like if you live in, like,
Denton. Not quite like other parts of the
metroplex. Okay?
So, look,
if somebody has a dog or they know
someone has a dog, don't be like, I
went to heart work. You and your dog
are both haram.
You haven't learned anything.
What I need you to do or what
if you're listening
is
obviously look. I understand people are connected to
these animals and they're very they love them.
I have cats. I get it. I'm kinda
I'm kinda over them. But,
just the litter part. I love them, but
the litter is a bit much.
You know, I'm taking care of every time
I change the litter, I'm like, oh, Allah.
If there's no other reason I get Jannah
except for this,
just make it make this be the reason.
Right? If a woman got Jannah for
feeding a dog water, then surely scraping the
waste of an animal
to make my family happy. Like, surely this
is enough reason to forgive my sins.
I mean so that's my du'a every day.
So
but the dog, what I would say for
a person who has it is,
prepare a place and a wardrobe for prayer
that the dog can never come near.
Meaning like a room that they never go
into, clothing that they never ever make contact
with. Maybe leave the clothing in that room.
And this is one way to ensure that
your prayers are not harmed. That's the big
concern. The big concern, like we said, is
salah.
You don't want your clothing or your space
of prayer to be,
compromised
with the impurity
of anything
and the dog, right, can be
a problem with this. Okay. So don't let
them go in this room. Don't let them
touch your clothing.
If they if you pet them and touch
them then you have to wash up. You
don't have to make, we'll do it with
impurities per se but you have to wash
up. It's better to make we'll do it,
of course, just in case, you know, if
you if you lost it. But the point
being is there are ways to sort of,
like, thread the needle. It's just very difficult
to own a dog and to really give
it its right and to love it and
to take care of it. It's really, really
difficult,
especially with a family and all that. It's
really challenging when it comes to prayer. So
that's why the majority of scholars,
they say that it is disliked
for people to own dogs outside of the,
concessions, like hunting
concessions,
like hunting and security and all that kind
of stuff. Or people who use them for,
like, mental health or, like, seeing eye dogs,
etcetera. That's fine. That's all okay because that's
all a dispensation that's given for health. Okay?
Now again, remember that this is not a
fatwa. I'm just relaying to you that what
my teachers have have taught us,
and so don't take this and go and
start arguments at home. Most of you, your
parents told you dogs were haram because they
themselves don't like dogs,
and they're spiritually allergic to them,
and they told you you were allergic as
well. So I'm happy that you remembered. Thank
you. That's a good way for us to
end. May Allah bless everybody here. May Allah
give us the ability to practice everything that
we've read and that we've heard. May Allah
give us the ability to always be a
person that prays our prayers with complete focus
and complete beauty. May Allah give us the
ability to accept his decree for us and
to see the sweetness and the purpose and
the wisdom in his decree. May Allah give
us the ability to always speak and to
act upon how we speak and to speak
upon how we act. And may Allah give
our hearts increased light and vision. Ameen Ameen.
Continue to make dua for those in Gaza,
for those across the world, Sudan, Somalia, who
are struggling, you know, the the the the
Rohingya,
and Burma,
and for Bangladesh, please make dua. You know,
one of the one of the taxes of
being comfortable is that you cannot forget those
who are uncomfortable.
That's the spiritual tax. If Allah puts you
in a position of comfort,
it's not
anything about you that's special. You have a
responsibility to remember those who are uncomfortable.
It's a personal responsibility. So every day every
day, make dua for the Ummah of Muhammad
SAWSALAM and for Allah Ta'ala to make it
easy for those who have such difficulty.
Prayer has just been called for,
just a minute ago, so we're gonna head
over to the Musa Allah.
If you can please help out for those
of you who sat on the chairs by
helping us stack them on the dollies And
for those of you who sat on the
back jacks, if you could just line them
up nicely here on the front. Try to
be careful with the plants, on your way
out.