AbdelRahman Murphy – Heartwork Guided Steps To The Path Of Allah #13
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AI: Transcript ©
Okay.
Welcome
home everybody. It's good to see you. Alhamdulillah.
For those of you who are,
you know, regulars here, we're happy to have
you back. For those of you who it's
your first time here, we're happy to welcome
you here. We hope, inshallah, that you feel
at home, insha'Allah insha'Allah.
We don't have a ton of time tonight
because Maghrib
Sultan Maghrib keeps, sliding earlier and earlier with
the sunset.
So we're gonna begin, insha'Allah.
We're gonna have our reading, and then we're
gonna have our q and a. If you
wanna type your questions out, you can send
them to our slido, which is, slido.com,
s l I d o dot com, and
then the code is heart work. And then
you send those questions in, and then I'll
have them here. And we'll go over q
and a, today at the end
of our reading.
Tonight's reading,
we're reading from the book by Al Harath
al Muhasibi,
his text which is called,
the book or the guide
for those people that are seeking closeness and
nearness to Allah
And we're reading from his advices and his,
his counsel
to those people that want to live their
life in a way that is going to
bring them closer to Allah,
both internally and externally.
And he's giving a set of advices for
everybody
on how to improve this. And one of
the things that we we talked about last
week that we kind of ended on, which
is where we're gonna start today,
is that anytime you engage on a journey
or embark on a path,
there's obviously, like, the forward motion. Right? You
can go forward.
But then there are things that you might
do. There are things that you can do
as a person
that will take you back.
So
you don't wanna negate all the progress that
you've made.
And last week, he began and discussed with
us,
the the struggle
of what we in our tradition call nifaq,
which is spiritual hypocrisy.
And we talked about the difference between,
like, the definition of hypocrisy from the English
language where somebody does something that they don't
mean,
or they
say something that they don't do, etcetera, like
the the basically, the difference between speech and
action.
But spiritual hypocrisy in ifaf is different. It's
like the highest form of that sort of
hypocrisy where a person
engages in a behavior,
and in their heart, they have the exact
opposite
feeling for that behavior. So a person, for
example,
they engage
they say that they believe, but in reality,
they don't believe.
And that's what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when
he speaks about the Munafiqoon
in the Quran, those people who are hypocrites,
this is what he's talking about. Now
Imam Muhasibi here is not saying that everybody's
a hypocrite and that we all have to,
you know, realize and recognize our hypocrisy,
but he gives us some traits.
And he says that this is how the
hypocrites behave. This is how the hypocrites
act. And if a person
doesn't watch themselves,
they're gonna start to behave like this. Now
what's at stake? Well, all of your forward
progress can be negated
by this type of behavior. I'll give you
an example. Okay?
You as a person
can
have prophetic character. You as a person can,
you know, be the kindest,
most soft in your language,
and you can be so generous and magnanimous,
and you can be somebody that's really reflecting
the example of our prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam.
And then
you slip and fall into the behavior
of a hypocrite by telling lies.
Now what happens to a relationship
when somebody is found out to be
a person who lies or tells lies consistently?
What happens?
Naturally, that relationship starts to fall apart. People
find it very difficult. People find it very
challenging
to be in a close relationship with somebody
that is not truthful
or somebody that backbites or somebody that is
harsh with their words.
You know, you could have somebody that you
love very dearly,
but because they're so harsh when they get
upset,
you don't wanna take the chance of being
around them because in the case that they
get upset, you don't wanna be a victim
of their sharpness and their harshness. Right?
So all of that is what subhanallah, Imam
Mohasibi, is saying. He's saying you could make
a lot of progress,
but just as much progress as you made,
you can quickly undo a lot of that
if you're not careful.
Right? So it's as important to make sure
that you're worried about growing,
but it's equally important to make sure that
you're not erasing all of the growth that
you've done. And that's where we're at today.
That's where we're reading about today. And now
he gives us some advice
on how to be a person
that protects themselves from this hypocrisy.
How do you protect yourself from negating all
of the hard work that you've done? Right?
So it's like a person goes to the
gym, they work out, they feel great, and
then they go home and they stop at
Dave's on the way.
And then they get themselves, you know, a
nice little chocolate
lava molten lava cake.
And then after that, they have a nice
you know, they go out and they they're
craving some boba.
They did all of that hard work, but
they negated all of it.
Or you worked really hard and you get
paid, and on payday, you feel so accomplished,
Masha'Allah.
I worked all that much and I got
this much. But then you spend it on
something
or you do something that gets you a
ticket, and now you've wasted all of that
hard earned money on what? Because you drove
a little bit fast or because you parked
in the wrong place or whatever.
So Imam Abu Hasibi says, look. Just as
much work as you put in, we have
to make sure we don't erase all that
hard work. How do we do it? And
he gives us some advice. The first thing
he said, and this is kind of where
we're gonna begin, we ended here last week,
is he says,
be a person
that
always sits with
the people
who are morally intelligent.
Okay?
He says, be an individual I'm trying to
find the exact Arabic here for us.
He says, be an individual
who only sits.
He says, don't spend time
with people that don't
show the ability
to make good intelligent moral decisions.
And here, by the way, we talked about
this last week. I'm gonna say it again.
Intelligence here is not
scientific intelligence
or academic intelligence.
Because we said there's a lot of people
that are very intelligent academically,
but they're horrible ethically and morally.
And there are a lot of people that
don't possess the intellectual,
you know, credentials
and merit that we oh, wow. Harvard. Oh,
wow. Stanford. Oh, wow. Yale. But their core,
their soul is so beautiful.
So here he's not talking about,
a person who's intelligent
up here. He's saying a person who's intelligent
here. By the way, the Quran speaks about
this. The Quran actually equates this is gonna
blow your mind.
Allah
when he speaks about intelligence,
he actually equates it not to a person's
IQ,
but he equates it to a person's,
character.
In the in Surat Al Hazurat, which is
basically an entire chapter where Allah talks about
how to how to behave, right, as a
Muslim.
Allah ta'ala, he says to the believers, he
says,
don't, you know, don't raise your voice above
the voice of the prophet, a sota, salam.
Don't become a person that talks to him
just like you speak to anybody else. Don't
be a person who speaks rough and harsh
to people, etcetera.
And then he actually says, subhanallah,
when he describes the people that don't engage
in good behavior,
he says, but rather a lot of them
are not intelligent.
So according to the Muslim,
intelligence
is not only the ability to have complex
understanding of math and science and reading and
literature, and that's not intelligence for us. Intelligence
is when a person can make the right
decision
that will affect them spiritually and morally. Intelligence
is when a person knows
that if I say this
or if I do this or if I
don't do this, it's going to affect my
relationship with Allah. That's an intelligent person regardless
what degree or what credentials they carry. So
he says, sit with the spiritually intelligent people
and those people who have taqwa, who remember
Allah.
And the thing I love about this is
that he's saying that, you know, you don't
even have to be a person that qualifies.
Like, you don't have to be the most
spiritually intelligent person or the most god fearing
or the most god conscious. But as long
as you sit in the company of those
people, you're gonna benefit from them, and you
will be elevated amongst them. You'll be a
person that is sort of like you blend
in because you chose the right people to
spend time around.
And then he says only sit in the
presence of people that show this insight, that
show this concern and this care
for their heart
as much concern and care as we show
for everything else. Look. I went to ISNA
this weekend too.
Okay?
If you wanna see what the ummah cares
about, just go to a Muslim conference.
Alright?
All the Vaila girlies were there,
all right? All the brothers, Masha'Allah,
wearing the tight t shirts on the arms.
Look, we care a lot about our image.
Innallaha jameelun waihbbu jamal.
Allah is beautiful and he loves beauty. Right?
And I realize it's a struggle. May Allah
make it easy for everyone to find a
righteous spouse.
I get it. Okay? I'm not here to
hate on that. But what I will say
is if we cared as much about our
heart,
as much as we care about our external,
maybe this challenge would become a little bit
more solvable.
Because people find each other attractive, and then
they begin the process, and they begin to
see that what's at the core does not
represent what was on the outside.
And it's like a a terrible shock.
You're so beautiful physically.
Why are you this way internally?
It's because that's all we care about.
And so Imam Muhasabi here is saying, the
hypocrite,
all they care about is how they present
themselves.
That's all they care about. That's where their
concern stops.
Their
reputation,
their physical presence,
their brand,
attribution, what they wear, what they drive, all
of that. That's all they care about. But
at their core, they're nothing.
Like a shiny red apple that is rotten
in the core.
And that experience is the most it's even
more painful.
It's even more disappointing. May Allah protect us
from being those people.
So
he mentions here this, and we have a
verse in the Quran. Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
he says,
Oh, you believe.
Right? Remember Allah, have consciousness of Allah,
and be with those
who are truthful.
Those who are truthful. Truthful in what?
Well, the when you look at the explanations
of the Quran, anytime the group of people
who are truthful is mentioned,
the scholars of the Quran, they explain it.
And they say, what were they truthful in?
It's not just that they were truthful in
telling the truth. That's, of course, one of
the things. But they were truthful in their
claim. And what's the claim? The claim is
that as a Muslim, when you say I'm
a Muslim,
I believe in Allah, I believe in his
messenger sallallahu alaihi wasallam. When you say that,
you're actually not stating a fact yet.
You're stating a proposition.
You're stating a hypothesis or a theory.
Right? When you say I'm a Muslim, you're
making a claim. Now what backs up that
claim
is when you actually behave that way.
That's why whenever Allah mentions, You ayuha ladinaamanu,
oh, you who believe,
he always follows it up with actions.
Right? Ittakullahu
waqunuma asadiqueen. Remember Allah and be with those
who are what? Who are truthful.
Keep your promise. If you say I believe
in Allah, keep your promise.
How do you keep your promise that you
believe in Allah? When it's time to pray,
you pray.
When you say there's nothing more important to
me than God. Right? That's your Twitter bio.
God first.
It's so impressive. Right? But then when it's
time for Fedr, who comes first?
When it's time for alzur, is it work
first? When it's time for Asr, what is
it? Is it the gym first? When it's
time for Maghrib, is it food first? What
is it?
Right? So all of our actions and our
statements have to be congruent
because Wallahi, as much as we think we
can trick everybody here and you can, by
the way. You can definitely trick people here.
You know, everybody in this room
can trick everybody here into thinking that they
are the best person in the world. But
on the day of judgment, there's no trickery.
There's nothing.
There's only the truth.
And that truth is going to be apparent.
Doesn't matter how many people you tricked into
believing that you were someone special here.
Try to work and make sure that Allah
knows that you're special.
That's the key. And then, subhanAllah, as a
result of that, we're promised by Allah and
his messenger, peace be upon him, that what?
If Allah knows that you're special, you will
be special.
You will be loved. And we'll talk about
that. He'll explain it a bit.
Okay.
Now he continues
when he keeps explaining,
and he talks about the power of sitting
in the companionship of somebody
that is righteous.
You know, many of us, we struggle with
being good people all the time. It's not
possible. Right? We can describe perfection, but it's
hard to live it. So
one of the things that we learn, subhanAllah,
is that when you spend time in the
company of people that are admirable,
you naturally start to take on those traits.
It's just like when you sit in the
the the shop of a person who sells
perfume, the prophet
used this analogy.
You sit in the shop of someone who
sells perfume, you're naturally gonna smell good,
or at least you're gonna enjoy the fragrance
while you're there.
So one of the tricks to avoiding nifaq,
hypocrisy, this is a tip he's giving, is
spending time with good people.
And he says, subhanAllah,
there are people
that if you
invest your time to spend with them,
they will actually have an impact on your
heart even without directly trying to address you.
Like, they won't have to give you advice.
You know, somebody that you sit with and
you admire them and you love them because
you look at them and they're just really
good. You know, as we say in our
era, like, wholesome such a wholesome person.
These types of people are the ones that
simply being in their presence. It doesn't matter
if you're at a halakah. It doesn't matter
if you went to Jummah with them or
if you just play basketball with them or
if you just went shopping with them or
if you just went and got one of
the 1,001
Yemeni coffee shops
with them. We need to sell it. We
need to give Yemen their flowers, masha'Allah.
The Yemeni coffee shops are taking over, alhamdulillah.
Right? At this point in Dallas, we're about
to have more Yemeni coffee shops and gas
stations.
There's an opportunity there. Yemeni coffee shops and
gas. Okay?
So
the reality is that if you are willing
to spend time with people now here's the
trick. Oftentimes,
Shaytan and the nefs, we don't wanna spend
time with people that are, like, ostensibly and,
like, very noticeably better than us because it
makes us remember our own shortcomings.
Right? It's like being around a group of
people that are doing something really well, and
you're not very good at it. So in
order for you to do this, you do
have to swallow a little bit of humble
pie. You have to be willing to accept
that,
And you have to be willing to say,
you know what? I'm not gonna let my
my nefs or my I'm not gonna let
that get the better of me. I know
that me being in the company of these
people is good for me. Right? And it
helps me.
And,
there was no one better at this than
the prophet, alaihis salatu sallam.
You know, when the prophet, alaihis salatu sallam,
came to Medina I want you guys to
understand something. Okay?
When the prophet, Muhammad, alaihis salatu sallam, peace
be upon him, when he moved was made,
was forced to migrate from Mecca to Medina,
a lot of times that is is shown
as being like a really, really easy smooth
move.
Right? Go to Mecca, go to Medina. And
for those of us who have been to
Medina, you know, you love Medina. Everyone falls
in love with Medina. It's so nice. It's
so peaceful.
Right? But Medina was not that way
when he arrived.
Medina
was known as a as a city or
a town
that had
it had some bodies of water in it,
but those bodies of water, they were not
very clean. So there was a lot there
was some pollution there. And as a result
of that, there was some sickness.
And so Medina was not really, like, looked
at as a desirable location
at the time. Of course, now we know
it's Mandina Tun Munawara. It's the illuminated city.
So now it's the most desirable. But then
premigration,
it was not. It was like Denton. If
someone's like, where do you wanna go? Like,
Denton. Like, no.
Right? So
there was some there was some adverse reaction
to going to Medina.
Okay? The other thing about Medina that I
think people don't think about historically, and you
only know this when you read a biography
on on the life of the prophet, a
s s sallam. Really important. Everybody in this
room, you need to have
one biography that you can be reading on
his life. Doesn't matter how fast you read.
Doesn't matter. One page a day. Just to
keep that going.
One thing that's interesting, subhanAllah,
is that Medina was a pluralist society.
There were other religious groups there. It wasn't
just Muslims.
And it wasn't like Mecca because Mecca had
the traditional
pagan Arabs.
So Medina had some people that were they
had Jewish tribes.
They had other religious groups. And now, of
course, they have some pagan Arabs, and now
they have the Muslims.
So it was it was a city that
had
a little bit of diversity and mixture. So
one of the narrations that we have upon
the arrival of the prophet, Iso al salam,
this place that is a struggling city, the
two main tribes, Aus and Khazraj, were battling.
They were warring with each other.
There's obviously a little bit of, hesitation
amongst some of the
Jews of Medina because
the the final prophet has been announced, and
he's coming, and he's not from Jewish lineage.
So this is a problem for them. They
don't like this. They're trying to really push
back on that because they wanted they wanted
the last prophet to be from Jewish lineage,
and it and he was not. So there's
all this drama
just waiting in Medina for the prophet, alaihis
salaam.
And everything that they said about him in
Mecca,
you know, he's this, he's that, he's a
liar.
All of those things, like, the wind is
carrying them. This it's carrying all these rumors
into Medina, and and the Quraysh are trying
to spread these rumors about him as much
as they can. Okay? So now
understand that's the context, and now the prophet
is arriving.
And you have these people that accepted him,
the tribes that pledged allegiance to him,
and they're waiting for him. But you have
also in the people, in the mix, some
skeptics.
You have people that don't believe.
So there's all these Muslims that are, like,
waiting.
You know the famous? Right?
So I just gave Sunday school, you know,
a recall for everybody. So they're waiting. They're
gonna sing. They're all excited. But amongst them,
they have what? They have
some skeptics. One of them, his name is
Abdullah ibn Salam ibn Salam,
and he was a rabbi.
And these people, again, more than anything,
wanted to be able to point out
a contradiction
or something to be able to say, See?
He's not a prophet.
They wanted to have that leverage so that
they could,
you know, disengage from this requirement of believing
in him and say, you know what? The
final messenger is coming, and he's gonna be
from our people.
So this narration is coming from Abdul Adnan
Salam,
the rabbi,
and he says listen to this narration.
He says,
when the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he
says,
When the prophet, Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi, sallallahu alaihi.
Everybody, when they heard that he was arriving,
everybody got up and they ran to the
outskirts and they waited on the border to
greet him. And the prophet is not coming
with a large delegation. It's just him, Abu
Bakr as Siddiq,
and a servant or 2, maybe from people
from Qoba, from the city nearby. Maybe they're
joining him. So it's a very small delegation,
and they're coming. And I want you to
imagine the horizon of the desert,
and they're sitting and they just see these
2 or 3 figures with an animal just
making their way slowly. Of course, all of
the all of the apprehensions are building. People
are excited. People are looking. And they he
said that when the prophet
came, when the prophet
arrived,
he says,
that he says that the prophet
came and everybody announced
and they said that he has come.
And he says, I looked at the face
of the prophet
He says, as soon as I saw his
face
like, think of this.
He was so good as a person.
He was so pure as an individual
that this man, who's a rabbi,
is saying the moment my eyes
laid upon his face,
I knew immediately
that his face was not the face of
a liar.
I could tell right away.
And this is a guy who, at that
moment, wanted more than anything to yell what?
Liar. He's a liar.
But he said as soon as I saw
him, I knew.
Now
what is the what is the lesson here?
The lesson here is this.
All of us have people in our lives
that when we look at them, when we
spend time with them, their presence reminds us
of something.
Their presence reminds us of something. And the
hard part is this. Their presence reminds us
of something that we
know we have to fix.
You might have a friend in your life
that is really, really, really good about their
prayers
or really, really good about their the language
they use or very, very good about
just generally their their akhlaq.
Or maybe they dress a certain way that
you know Islamically, you admire that.
We all have friends that have certain traits
that we look up to.
And it's important to keep that friendship
because every time you engage with them, just
like Abdullah alaihi salam is saying, I knew
he wasn't a liar. As much as I
wanted to say he was a liar, I
knew he wasn't. And that was the moment
he accepted him. We all have friends that
when we look at them, their face, their
beautiful face is reminding us, you have to
be better.
And don't push those friendships away.
Don't get rid of them because they make
you feel self conscious. No.
Appreciate the fact that Allah put those people
in your life. Now here's the other side
of the coin. You might also be that
person for somebody else.
There is a point where you possess a
trait that Allah has given you that might
be to you very natural and intuitive.
To you, it's nothing special. But to somebody
else, they're really struggling with that.
And your presence in their life
helps them get better. This is what it
means to be part of an ummah,
is that we all help each other. May
Allah give us tawfiq.
Okay. So he says
the the the the the mere
presence of somebody can be a good
trait of companionship and only sit try to
be as careful as you can to make
sure that you sit with people that you
admire. Then he continues. He says, the prophet,
he
says, which of the companions are are best?
Like, which friends are the ones that are
best? He said, the one whose appearance
simply
appearance reminds you of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
The one whose speech
increases you in knowledge
and the one whose actions remind you of
the hereafter.
You know, there's a beautiful science in in
Islamic studies
where you look at what the Quran or
the hadith say, and then you apply
the the inverse of that
to be able to figure out the inverse
of what the question was. So
the question was what? Oh, messenger of Allah,
who are the best friends that we can
have? Don't raise your hand. I know everyone's
like, I'm them. No. Right?
He's saying this is a this is a
a a vague question. It's nonspecific, nondefinitive.
So then the prophet, alaihis salam, gives 3
traits. What are the 3 traits again? Number
1, he says what? The one who simply
their presence reminds you of Allah.
The one who when they speak,
your your knowledge is increased, and we'll talk
about that, and the one who
their actions
do what remind you of the hereafter.
So let's go ahead and flip the coin.
What is the worst kind of friend
that a person can have?
Number 1
is that their presence
makes you forget about Allah.
That when you're with them, you don't remember
Allah.
Can you imagine?
By the way, everyone now is like, yeah.
I have that friend. No.
Wrong.
Are you that friend?
Are you that friend? Are you the person
that when people come into your presence,
your presence causes people to forget about Allah?
And it's not intentional.
Just like the presence of somebody reminding about
Allah is also not intentional.
Right?
That friend can be a little bit try
hard. Right?
Right?
I'm like, chill. Right? You sound like a
Ramadan
NBC series. Right?
It's not always the it's it's it's the
organic remembrance of Allah.
It's a person who they're so beautiful and
wholesome. So now are are we the person
that our presence takes away the remembrance of
Allah?
And it's not about the very obvious things.
You know, sometimes you think it's how you
dress,
it's how you walk, it's how you talk,
this and that. No. This is way deeper
than that.
This is way deeper than that. Who are
you as a person?
You know, the hijab cannot hide an ugly
heart.
The beard
cannot
mask an ugly person.
It doesn't matter if it's fist length or
not.
It's a reality.
All of that is important.
No doubt. Hijab, beard, whatever. All that's important.
No doubt.
But at the core of the issue is
your core,
And that's what
elevates and really magnifies all of this.
Number 2, the trait of the worst kind
of friend after their presence disturbs you and
dissuades you from remembering Allah. Number 2 is
that this person, their speech,
you gain nothing from it.
You gain nothing from it because the first
person is what? When they talk, you learn
something. You learn about Allah. You're reminded about
Allah. You learn about yourself.
Right?
Just the way they speak, you learn. It's
not even necessarily the content.
Sometimes you can learn from even how people
speak. You know, I'll tell you an example
about this. Right? So when these big, big
scholars visit
and they give classes and lectures,
In America, we're taught that when you have
a question for a teacher and the teacher
said something, it's not rude
for you to say to the teacher, you
said, like, in class. Right? So if the
teacher said something in class, you can be
like, I have a question. You mentioned this,
this, this. It's actually not seen as inconsiderate
as rude or or impolite. But in the
Islamic education sphere,
making the confrontation about student and teacher is
really impolite.
So
what you say, and this is beautiful,
is you say what? It was mentioned.
You remove the person from the action. You
make it what? In Arabic, they say you
make it invisible. Majjuhu. You make you you
remove the doer. Why? Because you wanna obviously,
the teacher said it, but you don't want
it to come off as we're battling now.
You, like, stand up. You're, like, fight.
That's not what you want. So if you
have a question about something the teacher said,
you say what? It was mentioned. It was
mentioned
or I heard or something to remove the
confrontation.
Because naturally, if you said something and I
said something and I say, well, you said
this. What happens to the nafs is what?
Agitation. Oh, now we're battling.
So I was with one of my teachers,
and we were sitting in front of one
of his teachers.
And
he said something
in the conversation,
and later on, my teacher said, Sheikh, it
was mentioned. And I remember looking at him
being like, what do you mean it? He
said it.
I didn't say that, but in my head,
I was like, this is a long time
ago, but it was really, like, like, 10
years ago. I said, what do you mean
he said it? So later I asked. I
said I said, Sheikh, did you did you
forget? Or like and he goes, no. He
said, you should never ever
make the question confrontational.
It's not good adab with your teachers.
And so even just, subhanallah,
was the hadith say the one whose speech
increases you in knowledge?
It wasn't that I learned about the question.
In fact, I even forgot the question, actually.
But I remember
the way the question was posed.
Now think about
forget the teacher student relationship. Think about your
relationship with your parents,
your friends, your children,
your spouse. Think about
how many fights are caused because why? Because
the framing of the conversation is confrontational.
As opposed to saying,
it's not you versus me. We're on the
same team. We're trying to figure this out
together. As opposed to being what? I and
you are battling to figure this out.
Right? How many of those confrontations can be
avoided
if we learn this trait? So a person,
when they learn from the speech of somebody,
that's a good companion.
But now the opposite is
if the friend is somebody that when they
speak, you don't benefit at all.
And in fact, their speech is only filled
with what? Maybe it's filled with backbiting, slander.
Maybe it's just filled with nothing. It's just
empty. You know, a lot of people, it's
like when we write essays for school, just
word count.
Just talk, talk, talk, talk. And at the
end of the night, you're like, what do
we even talk about? There was no substance.
And then the last trait that he mentions,
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, is that this person
that their actions remind you of the hereafter.
So the obvious opposite is that a person
whose actions distract you from the hereafter.
And this
can be very slippery.
But a person who's more focused on this
dunya than the akhirah. And we can do
this. We can take this a whole lot
of ways, but I'll let you carry that
and interpret that or
apply it on your own
So
this is Imam Muharasibi
giving that advice via the hadith of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Now one of the things that the prophet
he mentions that is very beautiful in another
narration
is he describes the people
that have good vibes, good good spiritual vibes.
And he describes these people, and he gives
the best,
certificate or the the best recognition of their
status.
Because a lot of people are like, well,
you know, I wanna I also, you know,
I I feel like I wanna be me.
I wanna have my personality. I wanna have
friends. I wanna do this and this, and
that's all fine.
But you should never ever seek
to want to have friends or relationships at
the expense of being a good person.
Right? Ultimately, your goal is not to have
friends. Your goal is to be a good
person. And naturally, what we hope is that
good people will attract the friendship of other
good people.
But the prophet,
he says that Allah in a hadith
mentions
the ultimate value of being a good person
is that on the day of judgment,
think of this.
We are told on the day of judgment
that everybody that you know and you yourself
are a liability for somebody else, even family.
Everybody.
You're gonna have friends fighting on the day
of judgment.
You're gonna have family fighting on the day
of judgment. Best of friends,
spouses.
You know, yomayafirul
maroo min akhihi wa ummihi wa abihi wa
sahibatihi wa bani. Allah says even the parent
will be running from the child, the child
running from the parent, the sibling running from
the sibling, the spa everyone's gonna be running
from each other because why? Because it's like
a it's it's a huge liability.
But he says there's one person. That's the
general.
There's a concession. There's one person
that on the day of judgment,
Allah describes them with the most beautiful phrase.
He says about them
that these people,
that they remember Allah
and they don't lie or cheat or steal
or backbite, they're good good companions. All the
traits we just covered, he said on the
day of judgment,
they will never be a source of grief
for anybody that knew them.
Nobody will look at them and say, man,
I wish I didn't know you.
I wish in the dunya I never met
you. Isn't that kind of scary? That phrase
in the day of judgment can be uttered
a lot. I wish I never spent time
with this person. I wish I never called
them or texted them. Our texts were just
filled
with backbiting. I wish I never texted them.
I wish I didn't have their number.
And that person in the dunya was your
best friend,
or the spouse, or your family.
But there is one type of person, the
person who carries all those traits that Allah
says on the day of judgment,
anyone who knew them will say, you caused
me no harm.
You were the best companion
because today is the day where you have
no negative impact
on my destination, which is paradise. You have
no negative impact. May Allah make us good
friends.
Okay.
Now the next trait that he gives, and
inshallah, we'll go into q and a right
after this,
is we talked about this a little bit,
but he's gonna kind of, beef it up
a little bit for us here. And he
says
that the next trait to make sure that
you're not a hypocrite and to make sure
that you're not going against yourself remember, when
we talk about hip hypocrisy here, we're talking
about a person negating their progress.
So the first one was good company. Okay.
Now he's talking about
humbling yourself to the truth. What does this
mean?
Raise your hand
if
you came to find out or learn something
that
directly went against the way that you behave,
and that thing was an advice or a
command or something good for you. You learn
something that was good for you, and then
you looked at your life and you're like,
I am the exact opposite. Raise your hand.
I'll tell you my story.
I have a lot of these. Did I
ever tell you guys you guys know the
the the Arabic,
white cheese? It's called puck.
Okay.
When I was, like, when I was, like,
18 years old, because we're used to, like,
ought to be breakfast, I thought that stuff
was healthy.
Okay. Later did I find out that literally
it adds 1 pound per teaspoon
that you eat. Okay? So I'm putting that
on everything. I'm like, puck. It's cheese. It's
dairy. Right? You can always figure it out.
And then, subhanallah, you're like, why are my
pants not fitting?
And there's just, like, 6 empty puck chars
behind me. Right?
So
when you come to find out, for example,
like Nutella I thought Nutella at some point
when I was younger, when I was like
a kid, I was like,
man. Alright. I'll have Nutella, the healthy stuff.
Finally, my brother is like, that's not healthy,
bro.
The reality is when you come to find
out these things, you realize,
wow, I have to change.
Like, this is staring me directly in the
face, and it's saying you have an issue.
Right? Whether it's cream cheese, whether it's Nutella.
Right? You have a problem.
I I I purposely use the light hearted
examples because some of the heavier ones are
really heavy.
But you come to realize that there are
certain patterns of behavior that you and I,
we don't even really realize anymore, but we
are embedded. We are in that groove,
and then we learn something whether it's the
religion
or whether it's something from, you know, just
general etiquette from the sunnah of the prophet,
a sieza, the Quran. And we learned that,
man, I've been doing this wrong the whole
time.
You know, imagine somebody, for example, that is
very, very harsh and tough and their language
is very and then they read about the
life of the prophet, a sieza, a sieza,
and they come to find out that he
was the most soft spoken.
He reserved
his direct communication for very serious moments.
But his general behavior, 99.9
percent of the time, he was the softest
of people.
Now that person that's lived their entire life
being harsh as nails, tough as nails with
people, and they've scared away all of their
friends and family because of how they attack
them. That person now at the age of,
who knows, 30, 40, 50, even sometimes older,
is coming to realize I messed up.
And if only I knew this earlier, my
life would have been so different.
So he says here, humble
yourself to the truth
and make yourself a servant of it.
When you come to hear something from Allah
and his messenger,
don't try to negotiate all the time.
Don't try to bargain.
This isn't a marketplace.
If Allah and His Messenger
and we're not talking about the differences of
opinion, all of that. We're just saying clear
things.
If Allah and His Messenger have said, for
example,
pray,
it's not it's not time to negotiate that.
Oh, but I'm really busy. You know, the
prophet
was pretty busy.
I know he didn't work for a Fortune
500, but he was pretty busy.
Right?
Oh, I don't have time for this. The
negotiations are the beginning of your downfall. And,
subhanallah,
what he says here is so beautiful.
When truth arrives at the heart of a
person,
all argumentation should stop.
Ali, Sayyidina Ali radhiyahuan,
the cousin of the prophet, alayhi, salam, he
said something very beautiful. He said that knowledge,
when it arrives at the heart of a
person,
it knocks on the door.
He says, if the door answers
with action, I e with change,
the knowledge walks in and stays.
But if the door is not answered, meaning
what? The person doesn't change?
If they come to learn something and they
don't change even a bit
of who they are, the knowledge leaves.
Think about
what's at stake.
The more I ignore
the truth from Allah,
the less I will be able to recognize
the truth.
And there will come a time,
years later, decades later, where the truth will
be right in front of my face
and I will be unable to admit it.
Because why? Because I have ignored it for
so long, I can't even recognize it.
There are some you know, when you see,
for example, the situation that we're witnessing right
now
in Gaza, may Allah give them victory. May
Allah make the Muslims victorious in the situation
and Sudan and all over where there is
just clear guys, this is not debatable. It's
not ambiguous.
It's clear.
It's defined
as a genocide. It is defined as a
crime
over and over and over again.
And then you sit and you engage with
these people
that have denied truth
for decades.
And you show them pictures and videos and
statistics, and you lay things out for them,
and you explain to them. And they say,
what? No.
It's not true.
It is a form of mental incapacity.
Allah has removed
their ability to see the truth.
What a horrible punishment. Allah has taken away
the ability to see the truth.
And this is only one example.
But imagine a person that has ignored prayer,
has pushed it off.
A person that ignored
the Quran.
A person that ignored
the hadith, the life, the story of our
beloved messenger, ai sate wa sallam, for years.
And then when it's finally presented to them,
there will come a time, ibn Atta'illah says,
where you will want to engage with it.
But because you became so averse to it,
it avoids you like oil avoids water.
It's not it's not just a light switch.
There's a priming of the soul.
There's a preparation of the heart.
There's a condition,
a health
of this person that has to constantly be
growing towards Allah in order for any of
this stuff to stick.
In Surat Al Baqarah, which is the first
major long story of the Quran, so it's
the second chapter,
Allah addresses
the
hypocrites, and he describes them as people who
see the truth.
But when they see the truth, it pushes
them away from the truth even further.
And this is the result of a person
who ignores it when Allah gave it to
them so constantly in their life. So our
responsibility
when it comes to the truth
is even if we can't be perfect,
we never wanna reject it. Even if we
can't follow it exactly. I know. I know.
Look, we're all human.
No one is saying here you're gonna walk
out of these doors, walk out of this
lecture and be Angel Jibril.
We have a friend, by the way. We
call him Angel Jibril.
Because as far as we know, he's perfect.
Okay?
But the point being is we know that
that's on expectation.
But you know what's an expectation
everybody can achieve?
Everybody can at least recognize the truth is
truth.
Even if you can't follow it exactly. We
can recognize it. I can say that salah
is beautiful
even if I'm not there yet. I don't
pray. I can say that the prophet, alaihis
salatu, salam's life is amazing even if I'm
not representative of him yet.
I can say that the hijab is amazing
even if I'm not there yet.
And my respect and love for the ideal,
Allah's promise is that if I maintain that,
he will take me there.
He'll get me there if I want to.
But if I keep pushing it away over
and over and over again, at some point,
every person that's not welcomed in leaves the
door.
Every person that's not welcomed in the house
will walk away.
And that's the case with truth and knowledge.
May Allah give us the ability to be
humble with his truth. Let's go ahead and
do some, some q and a.
Oh my gosh. You guys upvoted.
Again, marriage. Oh my goodness.
Okay. This is a this is a good
question.
If I wish to marry someone outside
of this person said Arab culture, but any
culture,
but my father refuses to give him a
chance due to his cultural background, what should
I do?
So there's there's there's like a scientific answer
and then there's like a applied answer.
Okay?
The best case scenario is that everybody in
the situation of a
a proposal
is on board. Everybody is supportive.
Everybody is is because you need the support
of,
really, everybody as much as possible. Okay?
That's the best case scenario. However,
there are some situations where a person
finds somebody, the prophet,
he said, listen to this hadith. He said,
if you find a person who is good
in their character and good in their deen,
then let them get married. Otherwise, you'll be
spreading facade.
And,
you know, I do tell this to people.
I say, look, if you keep preventing people
from getting married because they're not from your
village or from your Belad or from anywhere,
you're just increasing zina.
I said, that's all you're doing because this
person wants to get married. It doesn't matter
if they're from Peshawar
or from Punjab or anywhere
or if they're from Palestine or Egypt. It
doesn't matter.
As long as the person's faith and character
is sufficient, is pleasing to you, then that
should be what what is, you know, and
compatibility wise they match, then that should be
all that you look for.
So the prophet,
he prophesized
this problem. He actually told us that it
was gonna happen because he said if you
become a people
that don't that you create more expectations than
what I gave you, you're gonna be increasing
facade, which is open sinning.
Okay? Which means the more you make marriage
difficult for dumb reasons. I'm not talking about
good reasons. There are some people that are
like, I wanna get married. I'm like, go
back to Sesame Street. You know? Like, you
need you need to get a job. Right?
And I I'm with you. Like, I think
there are some people where it's like they're
a little bit, you know, in in fantasy
land when it comes to getting married. Right?
I wanna get married. Who's gonna take care
of you? Blah blah. No.
It's not how that works. Okay?
But
the people who are genuinely mature enough, genuinely
ready, and the only reason they're being held
back is because of culture.
Now
this also there's an important layer here.
You also when you find someone who's not
from your culture or your parents' culture or
the culture you grew up in, you also
have to admit and understand that things will
be different.
If if they don't, for example, share all
of the same now you're gonna be gaining
some things. That's true.
But you're also
your parents might also be losing some things,
which you have to be able to be
smart enough to emotionally engage with that.
For example,
my wife is Bangladeshi.
Okay?
And her grandmother and I, our communication
is adorable,
is hilarious,
but is very minimal.
It's all body language.
That's it. I give her hugs, high fives,
fist bumps.
You know, she looks at me. I look
at her.
We can't really communicate. Like, we cannot talk
about the political
climate of Bangladesh. Like,
you know, I could just be like, wow.
And she's like, I'm like,
and we just that's it. And and we're
there. Right?
And and and, you know, I've been married,
Hamed, now 15 years, so, like, we're kind
of beyond the whole, like but I will
say, like, it's a challenge.
It is a challenge. Like, I'm sure I'm
sure that
there is a world where,
you know, my wife's grandmother would have liked
to be able to have a conversation with
me. I'm sure. But but to her credit,
she was the most supportive of our marriage,
especially in the beginning.
And she was the one that was like,
I don't care if he speaks Bangla or
not. If he's good, just let them get
married. That was my my wife's grandmother. So
she was like the one who took the
the the, you know, the the hardest fall,
so to speak.
Not being able to speak with or communicate
with in in complexity,
me as her granddaughter's,
husband. So
what I'm trying to say is this. Yes.
There is a world where Islamically,
you know, multicultural
marriages are the inevitability.
If you're trying hard to preserve it, you
have, like, one generation left. The
my my father's Irish. My mother's Egyptian. My
wife is Bangladeshi.
My kids are the future of American Islam.
Like, you have a half Bengali, quarter Egyptian,
quarter Irish kid named Musa Murphy who people
still
are gonna think is a convert himself
even though his grandfather converted. Like, there's there's
no hope, you know, in terms of preserving
this pure bloodline. Right? Like, you're a Slytherin.
Like, there's no hope.
Just
you just gotta you just gotta, like, embrace
it gracefully.
But at the same time
and that's and that's really the consequence of
moving here for economic prosperity. Like, if you
wanted to have that sort of, like, homogeneous,
then you should have really just,
like, stayed. You know? And I no. No.
I say that I say that very respectfully.
That's why my mother, by the way, when
she was like,
blah blah, you know, early on, she said,
why don't you marry an Egyptian? And I
was like, you didn't marry an Egyptian.
Like, you married dad. Dad is as white
as puck. You know, cream cheese. Like, you
all get that callback?
So you can't you can't
I realized the pun there and I was
not intentional.
You can't enforce upon me marrying
an Egyptian when you married an Irish convert.
Like, you know what I mean? And she
said, you're right, Hamed. Like, she's like, you
know, you're right. Like, I I I concede.
So the inevitability
is like 1 generation, 2 generations. Like, how
long can we hold this out?
But but that doesn't mean that we need
to act as if everything's just gonna be
the same. Like, there are gonna be challenges,
and young people who are trying to get
married have to be honest about those challenges.
You can't tell your parents, like, it doesn't
matter. No. It does matter
because now your kids won't be able to
speak to their grandparents
unless you really work hard at it.
And it's not gonna be easy for everybody.
So you can't just sort of ignore and
erase all of their concerns. That's that's part
of being emotionally immature.
But embracing the concerns and trying to mitigate
them and trying to reach a compromise
will demonstrate
again that this is not a tragedy looming.
This is something that you can work through.
I'm having trouble quitting music. I feel like
it distracts me from Allah.
I feel like Allah is disappointed. Okay. So
this is a very good I love this
because
there is a whole discussion about the permissibility
of music or impermissibility of music.
Generally speaking, there are scholars that say that
all scholars agree
that
impermissible
music is that which the contents are impermissible.
So no one is arguing, oh, music is
permissible, and they're like, here. Let's play, like,
Cardi b's greatest hits. Like, no one no
one is saying that's fine. Okay? We're talking
about things like instrumentals, etcetera. Some scholars are
saying there might be an argument. There is
an argument that is not impermissible, etcetera.
But no one is debating if the content
is wrong. Everyone knows that that's wrong. So
this person,
may Allah bless you. You're very mature. For
you to be able to say, you know
what? I realize it's a weak point. I
realize it's something I struggle with. That is
a
huge, Masha'Allah,
growth point and growth opportunity.
My my advice to anyone who's having trouble
quitting music is you simply have to find
a replacement.
Cutting cold turkey is difficult. You have to
find a replacement. You can listen to, of
course, a nasheed if you really, really need
something melodious. I mean, Quran for me is
just like when when I feel,
like, an itch to listen to music, which
I really don't anymore, because you get to
a certain age where all music is just
the same. But when I listen to Quran,
music just sounds like a children's toy.
When you listen to a good reciter,
you're like nothing compares to this.
And I'm saying this not as, like, a,
you know, a person who's, like, like lame.
I I I mean this
genuinely.
My entire high school and college career, like,
many concerts, way more than I wanna admit.
But when you listen to Quran,
all of that stuff just sounds so off
key. No pun intended.
A a beautiful recitation of Allah's book will
always
extinguish
all of the distractions.
Okay? So make it a part of your
morning. Make it a part of your day
and see how that starts to affect, you.
And then also just listen to silence.
A lot of us, we listen to stuff
all the time because we don't wanna listen
to silence because silence kinda, like, makes us
think. Listen to silence. Okay? We'll do one
more and then we'll go for Maghrib Insha'Allah.
Oh, god.
If a dear friend I'm just gonna answer
it. Okay.
If a dear friend is having a mixed
wedding with music,
now you're just combining all of the questions.
You're like, and there are djinn there. It's
like
and the djinn is a dog. It's like,
oh, god. Okay.
How can we politely decline the invitation? If
we attend, how can we make it as
haral as possible? Smiley face. Okay. I know
exactly
what gender you are now. So okay.
So look.
Look. Responding to the invitation is a prophetic
trait.
Whether or not you can come, whether or
not you can attend, you have to let
them know. If you can attend,
you should attend. But the amount that you
attend
does not need to be the entire duration
if you don't feel comfortable there. There have
been many weddings. Look. I have to go
to weddings. I'm kinda like the one that
makes it sort of a wedding in a
way.
So when I go there, okay, and everyone
puts the napkins on their head and the
DJ, like, stops,
Right? And they play, like, the Quran and
all that.
And I go and and and you just
gotta, you know, you have to wish the
family well, make dua for them, etcetera. And
then when the dance floor stuff happens,
I politely you know, that's when ESPN on
my phone in the lobby, like
and that's okay. But to skip the entire
thing,
to not even
get make the effort to get dressed, bring
a gift, say salaam,
give hugs,
and then depart,
to me, that's more destructive than anything.
You know, the entire
gathering itself is not impermissible. There might be
elements of it, and that might be something
that the person themselves, they're fighting a hard
battle against their family, whatever, but you can
at least show up for 10 minutes
and to show your love and support
and give something
and, you know, give them a tight hug
and make dua for them. And then, you
know, they'll forget when you when you head
out because you were there. You were there.
You did your part. Okay?
So this whole black and white thing where
it's like either don't or do go. No.
Don't be so lame. Like, be creative.
Be creative. Like, what's a way that I
can go, I can show face,
I can give my love and and duas,
my gift. And then anything that makes me
uncomfortable, I can leave.
And that's that's the beauty of Islam,
is that you can be creatively spiritual in
a way that doesn't sacrifice your principles, but
you also don't ruin the relationship.
Okay? It's just it's just it's it's a
tough battle for a lot of people, and
so don't be the one that leaves them
hanging. Okay? Now if it's very if every
part of it, if every element of it
is questionable.
Right? No. I mean that, really. If there's,
like, if alcohol is flowing and this and
this and whatever and, like, belly dancing and
all that, then maybe what you do is
you say, hey. I can't make it, but
here, I'm sending my gift. And you send
your gift anyways, and then you take them
out for coffee the day after or something.
But you don't ever just, like, ghost the
person completely.
Right? But you have to gauge, you know,
your spiritual
standing and principles. May Allah make it easy.
May Allah give us the ability to practice
everything we've said and heard. We'll see you
next Monday.
If you sat on the chairs, please help
us by stacking them. If you sat on
the backjacks, please help us by lining them
up. We're gonna head to the Musalla.
I have to head over there because Maghrib
time, and then we have actually a brother
who's been attending hard work who wants to
take Shahadah tonight. So I have to make
my way over there inshallah. Okay?