AbdelRahman Murphy – Heartwork Guided Steps To The Path Of Allah #24
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of protecting one's accomplishments and identifying them. They stress the importance of not sharing accomplishments and not showing them, as well as identifying and addressing these issues.
AI: Summary ©
with my family this morning.
But alhamdulillah we made it.
Good, alhamdulillah.
Okay, so we're gonna get started inshallah because
we already have cut into the time.
Unfortunately, in the middle of delays, changing planes
and all that stuff, I wasn't able to
get our deck prepared tonight like we usually
do, but we'll read a little bit inshallah.
For those of you who want to send
your questions, the Slido is open, slido.com,
and then you can enter heartwork as the
code, and then we'll do the questions from
there at the end.
So we have about four more sessions left
of this text by Imam Muhasibi, he's a
great scholar who's given us an understanding, sort
of a step-by-step on how to
gain closeness to Allah and how to maintain
closeness to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
This is something that, you know, everybody as
they kind of venture and go into adulthood,
as you leave the, you know, the protective
nest of maybe like your parents or your
family, everybody has to figure out on their
own what their relationship with Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala is going to be, right?
There will come a time when people will
not remind you, you know, your friends won't
remind you, your parents won't remind you, people
won't remind you, and so you have to
be able to cultivate your own path, and
you have to be able to train your
heart to be the thing that reminds you,
right?
Because if the heart is not pure, if
the heart is not healthy, then nothing else
that we do will be healthy, as the
hadith of the Prophet ﷺ says.
So Imam Tahawi, or Imam Muhasibi, sorry, he
gives some list of advice and he's finishing
now the text that we're reading, he's finishing
with a series of different advices on how
to gain this God consciousness.
Basically how to remember Allah when no one
around you is reminding you of Allah.
You have to remember Allah on your own.
And he's given so far, we've gone over
a few of them, so he says for
example, you know, to leave every action that
will demand an apology from you.
He talks about, you know, repelling jealousy by
not looking at other people's belongings and their
things that they have.
So we went over a lot of these,
alhamdulillah, you know, protect yourself.
Last week we talked about protecting yourself from
having a bad thought about people.
Not to have bad thoughts and bad suspicions
and bad ideas.
Now this isn't talking about when you know
something is wrong, like if you see something
objectively wrong, you don't necessarily say that, you
know, that's, oh it's okay, it's not a
big deal, right?
But when you see something where it's neutral,
where it's kind of in the gray zone,
you're not sure, then that's where you, your
default should be to anticipate and to believe
the best about people.
So tonight, inshallah, we're going to go into
one of the conversations that he brings, and
that is that he says, he talks about
guarding your intellect, right?
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gave every single
human being, right, two main faculties.
The ability to think, to process, to ponder,
and also the ability to feel.
You know, you have these thoughts, but you
also have intuition.
You have the idea of what you should
be doing, and you act based on both
of those things.
It's almost like you have the science, and
you have the art, okay?
And so your brain is processing all of
the possibilities, and all the percentages, and you
know, if I do this, then what will
happen?
But your heart is more so processing the
idea of, okay, what will this end up
doing to me?
What will this end up, how will this
end up affecting me?
And so Imam Tahawi, you can tell that
I taught Imam Tahawi's book recently.
So Imam Tahawi, he brings up the intellect,
because a lot of times we talk about
the heart, and we focus on the heart,
and how things will affect us, and they'll
affect our heart, but we ignore that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala gave us a very,
very important tool, and that is that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala gave us our intellect
to be able to calculate, and to be
able to think.
You know, the Quran constantly demands people to
think, and to process, and to project, and
speculate with your mind.
What will happen if I do this?
You know, the people of Jahannam, may Allah
protect us from being near them, or amongst
them, when they're asked in the Quran, you
know, why did you disobey?
Why did you reject, or disregard the prophets?
They'll say, وَقَالُوا لَوْ كُنَّا نَسْمَعُ أَوْ نَعْقِلُوا
مَا كُنَّا فِي أَصْحَابِ السَّعِيرِ They'll say, if
only we listened, or if we, نَعْقِلُوا, if
we thought, right?
So the idea is that a person abandoning
their intellect is not something that is good.
If you abandon your intellect, it is one
of the signs that a person is just
following their desires, because they're not thinking through.
I mean, how many of us have made
decisions, and after making that decision, and dealing
with the consequences, we say to ourselves, like,
I wish I just thought it through.
I wish I just thought about it.
If only I had like, mentally thought about,
what will this do?
You know, the words that we say, that
we wish we could take back, okay?
Or the things that we spend our time
doing, that we wish we could get that
time back.
So they say, وَقَالُوا لَوْ كُنَّا نَسْمَعُ أَوْ
نَعْقِلُوا So the first step from that ayah
we learn, is that you have to be
a person who listens.
You have to be a person who hears.
And the job of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ
was to come and deliver this message, which
was to be heard.
It was to be understood.
A lot of us, our intellect is kind
of, it's not marinated.
It's not seasoned.
Have you guys ever had the chicken of
my people?
Right?
Not, oh half my people, my dad's side,
right?
Not seasoned, okay?
So think of life without listening to Qur
'an as being like an unseasoned life.
Like you're living it, that's fine.
But you actually don't have that, the spice
that makes something worth having.
And so when a person listens, there was
a person whispering to somebody right now, he's
half white, that's what that joke meant, okay?
Someone's like, what does he mean, he's half
white, okay?
So the point is that the listening part
is what unlocks the intellect, okay?
We don't believe that religion is the suspension
of intellect.
That's a big misnomer.
If you listen to all the zealots today,
like the hyper-atheist zealots today, they're like,
oh religion is, religion is so foolish, it
teaches people not to think.
That's not true.
The Qur'an literally asks, do you not
think?
Do you not ponder?
Do you not reflect?
Will you not think of the Qur'an?
But it demands you to think about what?
About something of substance.
Think about revelation.
Don't just think about what you want to
think about, right?
Every great philosopher, every great mind is just
you.
There are no better or no worse than
you.
You're just as capable as that person.
Just because somebody, what's become, we just came
back from Washington D.C. by the way,
so that's where we went, we spent some
time looking around, took the kids to some
of the monuments, and you know they got
these big statues, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and
other racists, right?
And so my kids, we're like, we're going
to these places, and we're looking, and so
how do a lot like, the way that
there's like this deep reverence, right?
There's like deep reverence, and I remember looking
at my wife, and I was telling her,
like as we're walking around, I said, man,
when I was in grade school, you know,
you read about these people like they're almost
like demigods, right?
The reverence is insane, and then you get
older, and you see like the things that
they said, and they wrote, and how morally
off they were, how much need they had
for guidance, and you see, subhanallah, these people
are not any more impressive than you or
I.
Yes, they may have accomplished things when it
comes to politics, when it comes to establishing,
you know, a sovereign state, but as far
as moral people, individuals who have a relationship
with their creator, they're not more impressive than
anyone here, right?
What makes somebody more impressive than anyone else
here is their connection to the divine.
That's what makes somebody impressive.
That's why the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam is the most impressive, because he's not
like you or I.
He had a direct uninterrupted connection to Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala, and by bringing that
Quran to us, when a person gets closer
to the Quran and closer to Allah, that's
when they become more impressive.
That's when they start to display these things.
That's why we have these traces, right?
Malcolm X, rahimahullah.
That's why we have these individuals, people who
lived in our time that accomplished great things.
Why?
Because they integrated the divine message into their
heart, and they said, you know what?
This is what's going to make me better
as a person.
So they say, if only we had listened.
The first question for any person who wants
to be close to Allah is, do you
listen to the message that Allah has sent?
Do you listen to the message that Allah
has sent?
We've said this before, but the idea of
like leaving Islam is something that is not
uncommon, right?
You see people that have left Islam or
leaving Islam, etc.
But the one question that I'll ask and
that I challenge, I'm not pushing people, you
know, I'm open to talking to anybody about
their Islam and their belief, but there is
one challenge that I always put forth.
I say, if you've never read the Quran
and you claim to be leaving Islam, can
you really say that you're leaving anything?
Can you?
It's like being like, I'm never going to
that restaurant again.
Really?
What'd you have?
I've never been.
You can't say I'm never going back if
you've never been.
So the person says, I'm leaving Islam.
Okay, did you read the Quran?
No.
Did you read the Seerah?
No.
Have you said the Hadith?
No.
What are you leaving?
What are you actually leaving, right?
Now, that's not to say that people don't
have religious challenges, but do you understand the
point I'm making?
The first step is to really read and
immerse yourself into the book and understand what
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is saying.
And then, as a result of listening and
reading, when Allah Ta'ala brings these examples
and these challenges and these commands and these
prohibitions and Allah Ta'ala asks these deep
questions, deep questions, you know, these aren't questions
that we can ask each other.
These are questions that you can only be
asked when you're sitting by yourself and no
one's around you and the Quran is demanding
you to think and answer for yourself.
It's not about impressing anybody or leaving an
image or hoping that your reputation is a
certain way.
No, the Quran is not challenging you about
your reputation.
It's challenging about your reality.
Who are you?
When Allah Ta'ala asks you, how do
you think about people?
How do you think about people, for example,
that are asking for help, for aid, for
food?
You know, Allah Ta'ala, He mentions the
Quran that the people who disbelieve in the
Day of Judgment.
You know, how many times have we walked
by somebody asking for food or for help
and we just think that, okay, it's normal,
right?
It is what it is.
Inshallah, Allah will take care of them.
Allah equates that behavior of not having sympathy
for the orphan, for those who are in
need, He equates that with denying the Day
of Judgment.
That's a realization that somebody can only come
to terms with.
If we all ask each other, hey, do
you take care of people?
Do you want to help those who are
in need?
We'll say, yeah, inshallah, mashallah, inshallah, mashallah.
Right, dhikr, dhikr speak.
But then you ask yourself, like, when's the
last time that I actually put myself forward
to do what the Quran is challenging me
to do?
Right?
From the ta'am al-miskeen.
The person does not encourage giving the food
to those who are poor.
They only pray to be seen.
They only pray to be witnessed.
They want to build this perception, this reputation,
but in actuality, they are those that are
an obstacle towards good.
May Allah protect us.
So the Quran asks these deep questions.
And by the way, that's from the 30th
juz.
That's not, like, stuck in the middle for
those who are, like, seasoned veteran readers of
Quran.
This is something that we read as children.
Or you hear even in the beginning of
classes, these chapters are meant to make you
think and ponder about who you really are.
So listen, number one, to the message.
Number two is that, be a person who
thinks.
Once your mind has been primed by this
message, you now can start to think in
the correct way.
And I use that phrase very, very carefully.
Thinking on its own is not always going
to be the correct path.
There is a method into how we think.
You know, like, when we study, for example,
the material sciences, there's a scientific method, right?
So they base it off the empirical, the
way that you can obtain data, things that
are observable, things that are repeatable, things that
you can witness, things that you can, right,
quantify, you can write down when I did
this, this change, etc.
Right?
Are you guys impressed or no?
Not yet.
Okay, I'll keep going if you want, okay?
I'm an English major, by the way.
So, the point being is, we have been
primed and trained to think about the scientific
method.
And that's good, right?
Muslims, especially if you read the history of
Islam, right, their contributions towards science, medicine, physics,
mathematics, all of that shows a mastery of
the scientific method.
But there's a spiritual method as well.
There's a way to thinking that is not
scientific, but it's ultimately benefit, it's beneficial to
the spirit.
Imam Ghazali talks about this.
He says, don't try to find answers of
religion through math and science.
That's not how you get there.
He says, math is about finding precision.
Science is about uncovering why.
He says, language is about articulation.
All of these are different ways to uncover
different goals.
He says, but the goal of the soul,
of the heart, is guidance to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
You try to find God through science, might
not get there.
You try to find God through math, might
not get there.
You try to find him through impressive oratory
and speaking, might not get there.
You try to find Allah through his book
that has guided, you will get there.
Everyone will get there.
So the mind has to be thinking in
a way that is correct.
And this is why the Qur'an, from
the very beginning, it challenges a person in
the way that they think.
The Qur'an asks you, do you think
that riches are good?
Do you think that being wealthy is good?
Everybody in here would raise their hands.
Yes, being wealthy is good.
But then the Qur'an says, not so
fast.
It might not be good.
It might actually destroy you.
Al haakumut takathur hatta zultumul maqabir.
Are you going to be destroyed and distracted
by chasing wealth until you visit your grave?
So the Qur'an asks you, you think
materially that wealth is good, but that stuff
can actually mess you up if you're not
too careful with it.
The Qur'an talks about being a person
who's popular and who's famous, who's recognizable, whose
status is known.
My kids, when I was leaving, I was
literally rushing home and then I literally rushed
here.
My daughter, man, subhanAllah, amazing.
She's five.
She looks at me and she goes, you're
leaving already?
By the way, we just spent six days
together non-stop.
Literally, like we did everything that you could
imagine.
It was freezing in D.C. We just,
you know, whatever they wanted, we just did.
And I go, yeah, mama, I have to
go teach.
Why?
I said, because that's my responsibility for the
community is I have a class on Monday
night.
She goes, you came home and you're leaving
just as fast as you came.
And I was like, are you my mom?
Literally, I was like thinking to myself, right?
I was like, are you my mom?
And then I go, mama, I go, I,
you know, if I didn't, if there weren't
people there sitting, waiting for the class, I
wouldn't go.
I promise you, I wouldn't go.
She goes, do those people know that you
have kids?
I was like, they do.
They do.
I swear they know.
Right.
So, but the point being is that, and
then she started talking.
She's like, you know, they should, you know,
those people, they should know you have kids.
Tell them that your daughter wants you to
stay home.
And I was like, I will.
I will.
Right.
The point being is that Islam, the Quran
challenges us with these preconceived ideas.
Right.
And you think, for example, that fame or
status or whatever is all good.
That's what, but SubhanAllah, the Quran challenges you
and says, well, what if everything you do,
everything that you've done, all the recognition you've
ever gained is all against you on the
day of judgment.
Okay.
So the Quran challenges the way that we
think.
And that's why Imam al-Muhasibi, he says,
guard your intellect, protect it.
Don't let the way you think be influenced
by incorrect people, by incorrect means.
Don't let it be marinated in something that's
spoiled, that's rotten.
When we watch things that are haram, when
we listen to things that are haram, when
we sit around gatherings and we let the
things that we know are not good for
us, affect the way that we think.
Without realizing it, we have actually impaired our
ability to recognize Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
We've impaired that ability.
We've stopped ourselves from being able to see
Allah in every situation.
So then he says, in the commentary, he
says, what is the goal of being an
intellectual person?
What is the goal of being smart?
He says the relationship between being a person
of intellect and a person of piety is
that a person of intellect makes good decisions
and good choices.
A person who's smart, they can't, they don't
just display their intelligence on paper.
They display the intelligence in the decisions that
they make.
They realize strategically that if I behave this
way, most likely it's going to evoke this
response.
If I do this thing, most likely it's
going to lead to this result or consequence.
And so your intelligence is only as good
as your decision making.
A person who's very smart, a person who
claims to be smart, can't claim that they're
smart if they keep making bad decisions.
And Allah says this in Surah Al-Hujurat.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, he makes the
connection between two things that you would think
are kind of like not related.
The first thing is he talks about good
character.
When he talks about this group of people
that came to visit the Prophet ﷺ, they
came to visit him from out of town,
and they arrived late at night, and they
came to the door of the Prophet ﷺ,
like late at night, and they started basically
calling his name from outside of his house.
Like calling out, oh, we've arrived, we've arrived.
This is kind of inappropriate.
Imagine somebody ringing your doorbell at like 11
p.m. Even if they had just arrived,
most sensical people, not family, not guests you're
expecting, just visitors, they came, they started pounding
your doorbell at 11 p.m. You didn't
even know they were going to arrive.
You would expect them, what, to say, you
know what, just, you know, get a hotel,
we'll see you in the morning, right?
These people stood outside the door of the
Prophet ﷺ, and they said, oh Muhammad, come
see us, come see us.
The leader of this group became a little
bit embarrassed because he was hoping that he
was going to kind of get that face
time.
Like all of his tribe is looking at
him, they're like, yo, you said you could
hook us up.
Like, you know, he basically was like, I'm
the VIP, and then he comes out, and
no one's answering the door.
So he feels the pressure of what?
Of his status.
He feels the pressure of people respecting him.
And when you feel the pressure of people
respecting you, when you feel that pressure, you
start to make bad decisions, right?
So he says, oh Muhammad, and he's calling
out now to the Prophet ﷺ, he says,
answer, come get us.
And he goes, my praise is high, and
my criticism is sharp.
Can you believe that?
Basically he's saying like, you don't want me
to be critical, you don't want people when
they ask, how was your arrival to Medina,
that I say, oh, we stood outside the
door of the Prophet ﷺ at midnight, he
didn't open for us.
So he says, my praise is sought after,
and my criticism is very sharp.
Like, I can be, I can be tough
if I have to.
So when he said that, now the Prophet
ﷺ didn't respond.
He didn't like come, he didn't, allahu a
'lam, like apparently according to the narrations, he
didn't even hear this.
But Allah responded in the Quran.
Which you know that if Allah responds, and
it's not for you, like you're messed up,
right?
As they say, you're cooked, okay?
So Allah ﷻ, he says that these people,
very interesting.
He says, these people who call out to
you from outside of your house, they're screaming
your name, they're making a, you know, they're
making a ruckus like outside.
He says, these people, they don't have intelligence.
Allah didn't talk about their character.
He could have said that they have bad
character.
He could have said that they're ill-mannered.
He could have said that they're, you know,
they're wild, they're like animals.
Allah could have called them anything.
You know what he called them?
He said, they're not smart.
They're not smart.
And the reason why this is an important
correlation is because our intelligence is only as
strong as our character.
There are people, subhanallah, that Allah has given
very, very high levels of intelligence.
We're talking like at the highest level that
we can measure, right?
In this dunya.
And they make really bad choices and they
lose their license to practice.
You guys know what I'm talking about?
They make horrible choices.
Anyone who looks at that decision, you're like,
what were you thinking?
What were you thinking?
The problem is that when it comes to
character, they weren't thinking.
And all of that success and all that
intelligence, gone.
You talk to some of the most successful
people in business, in medicine, in law, in
their fields, and you ask their spouses and
their kids, what are they like?
They'll say they're horrible.
Steve Jobs, all of us have these very
questionable products, right?
Steve Jobs was known to be an innovator,
a thinker, right?
But you look at his relationship with his
family, you look at how he was seen
as a boss, and all of the employees
that worked for him, they said he was
what?
He was tough, ruthless.
No one wanted to be around him.
Very difficult person, right?
SubhanAllah, Allah tells us that your intelligence, your
accolades, your degrees, your diplomas, everything that you
have, your LinkedIn, it's not going to show
up on the day of judgment.
It's not going to be there.
So your intelligence is proven by your character.
That's what the commentator here is saying.
He's saying that people of high intelligence and
character, they don't become angry.
He said nothing removes your decision-making ability
quicker than anger.
When you become frustrated and angry, you do
things that you know you shouldn't do.
You say things that you regret.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, repeatedly told
somebody.
He said, O Usani, Ya Rasulullah, give me
advice.
The Prophet said, La Taghdab, don't become angry.
He said it again and again and again.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, said do
not become angry.
Why?
Because in a state of anger, you make
very unwise decisions, okay?
Another reason why a person needs to be
of good character and not just of high
intellect is because you and I have humble
beginnings.
We're humble people.
You might drive something shiny.
You might live somewhere nice.
You might have like nice clothes, right?
The Vela, Vela girlies, right?
Representing MashaAllah.
Brothers might have something.
We might all have like the outer manifestations
of nice things, but we're just very humble
creation.
Allah Ta'ala, He gave us honor, but
that honor is only correlated with our piety.
There's a reason why out of everything that
we could have been created from, Allah made
the human being from dirt, from clay.
Even Shaytan, Iblis, when he had trouble, when
he was refusing to bow to Adam, peace
be upon him, he even brought up this
rejection.
His point was what?
Ana khayrun min.
I'm better than them.
Khalaqtani min nar wa khalaqtuhu min teen.
Like you made me from fire.
Fire is better than clay.
You made me from something better than them.
So the substance in which our father Adam,
peace be upon him, was made from and
subsequently our substance is a very humble substance.
And there's no reason for a person to
feel better than somebody just because they can
dress up dirt better than somebody else.
Or because they can put makeup better than
somebody else.
It's just clay.
Or because one person made of clay drives
a car that has a different logo on
it than another person who's driving a car.
The person driving the car is not better
than the person waiting for the bus.
The person who puts their clothes in the
washing machine is not better than the one
who's washing it by hand.
These are false understandings that the mind that
is not cultivated by iman cannot think properly
about.
Right?
And so he says, intelligence reminds the person
that you are nothing but dust.
You are nothing but dirt.
And subhanallah, how incredible and how poignant and
sad and scary is it that when we
pass away, when we die and we are
buried in the earth, what do we say
when a person is at their janazah?
We say what?
The phrases from the Quran is that what?
You were made from dirt, right?
And you will return to dirt and you
will become dirt once more.
How poignant is it?
How powerful is it that when we're buried
into the earth, if you open up that
person's grave and you were to look and
see what was of them, there would be
nothing left except for their bones.
And this was the power of the Quran.
Allah Ta'ala, He tells us that just
like I made you, the earth will take
you back and I will bring you back
in the state that you were in.
There was a famous story of Hassan al
-Basri, rahimahullah.
The story is amazing because it shows you
that scholars have swagger, right?
Mashallah.
Hassan al-Basri, rahimahullah, he was a very,
mashallah, he was a sharp, sharp guy, okay?
And some of the narrations also say that
he was very like, he had broad shoulders,
he was very like, he was a handsome
guy and so he kind of had that
confidence.
So one time he was walking and he
bumped into somebody, accidentally bumped into somebody who
was known to be like a very wealthy
and pompous person, like an arrogant person.
And that person looked at him and kind
of gave him this look like, what's wrong
with you?
And he asked him this question, which I
guarantee you the moment he asked him, he
regretted it.
The arrogant person said, do you know who
you just bumped into?
And Hassan al-Basri, someone who's really quick
with their words, you never want to leave
a question open-ended for them, right?
Because you're opening yourself up to the raw
session and it's a narration, so now it's
preserved in books.
So you know what he said to him?
Think about, I want you to understand how
smart this person is, that he was able
to come up with this on the spot,
okay?
I know we have some kids in here,
so I'm going to try to translate it.
But I want you to imagine him saying
this in the most powerful, intense way possible.
He looks and he goes, do I know
you?
Yeah, I know you.
And the guy kind of feels like, uh
-oh, what have I done?
And he said, you came from the loins
of your father and mother.
He said, and when you die, you're going
to be eaten by worms and turned back
into dirt.
And in between, you're just a bag of
feces and urine.
Like, you know the super hot fire?
Like, all the people who read the meme,
you know what I'm talking about?
The kid?
Everyone in that street was like, oh my
goodness.
They're like, I'd like to report a homicide.
You know, like, this guy just got murdered,
right?
In front of everybody.
Because he, why?
He opened himself up with what?
With arrogance.
He got bumped.
He got angry.
He lost his intellect.
He challenged an incredibly smart person, left the
question open-ended, and that guy murked him,
right?
He said, yeah, I know who you are.
You came out of the private part of
your mother and father.
And when you die, you're going to be
worm food.
And in between, you just carry feces and
urine all day long.
That's all you are.
And subhanAllah, if you were to look at
that definition, all of us qualify.
He wasn't saying it to him, saying like,
this is exclusive to you.
He was saying, your problem is that you
forgot that this is who you are.
When a person forgets that this is who
they are, they start to get inflated in
their sense of self and ego.
May Allah protect us, and may Allah protect
us from seeing ourselves as bigger than we
are.
Okay?
So he says, make sure you spend time
with intelligent people.
Make sure you learn from them.
Make sure you sit in the company of
people that you admire their character.
You know, I want everyone to do this
homework, especially, you know, this weekend, there's a
lot of families getting together, people traveling, whatnot.
I want you to do this important reflection.
Are you ready?
I want you to think about what are
the things, or what is the thing?
Let's pick one.
What is the thing about you that you
don't like?
This is hard work.
There's a reason why this is called hard
work, because like, we're not coming here to
like, we're not coming here just to sit
and laugh.
Like, we need to actually do some stuff.
What is something about yourself that you don't
like, that you wish was different?
Okay?
So you don't have to say it out
loud, but just think about it.
Now, as you spend time with your friends
and family, I want you to identify the
opposite.
I want you to identify the admirable trait
in those people that you don't have.
So I'll give you an example, right?
If I feel like, man, I wish I
was more generous.
I wish I wasn't as sensitive to like
money.
You know, if somebody asked me for something,
I wish I didn't think first about the
cost or whatever.
I wish I was just more generous, right?
Then what I should do is I should
spend my days and nights, as I'm spending
time with people, I should try to find
examples of generosity and see what inspiration I
take from that.
Let's say that I'm somebody that talks too
much.
I share my opinions a lot.
I want to sit in a room with
somebody that's able to be quiet.
And it's a really, really controversial topic, but
I want to look at that person and
say, man, how do they do it?
And I want to watch and learn from
them, be inspired by them, how to change
my behavior.
That's why he doesn't just say, be intelligent.
He says, what?
Spend time with people who are intelligent.
Spend time with people that you respect.
And we're not talking about intelligent book smart.
We're talking about heart smart people that are
intelligent here.
Spend time with people.
One of the things that I always do,
and this is why it's important to have
friends that are a age, and you also
shouldn't have all friends that are younger than
you.
That's kind of weird, right?
You should have a spectrum of friends and
you should have friends that are older than
you because they have inevitably gone through experiences
that you haven't gone through.
And so you should be able to look
at them and say to them, like, hey,
what should I be expecting here?
Let's say, for example, that you're not married
and you have friends who are married or
they've gone through the process and now you're
trying to go through that or are in
the middle of that process.
Like, don't talk to your other single friends
about marriage.
Talk about the blind leading the blind, right?
You guys are just all in a dark
room bumping into things like a bunch of
hungry people asking each other for food, okay?
Go seek from the people that have gone
through it.
Seek from them, right?
One of the worst things is when people
who don't have kids talk about what kind
of parents they're going to be like.
Come on now, right?
Is that Michael Jackson meme where he's eating
popcorn?
I love those conversations.
I'm in a WhatsApp group with a bunch
of dudes who don't have kids.
They're like, well, I'm a dad.
I'm like, be quiet, right?
Be quiet.
Actually, I just take a lot of screenshots
because then later when they're like, I'm never
going to let my kid near a screen.
I'm like, you are literally Abu iPad.
Like, your son is like, you know?
And it's because why?
Because we all have this crazy removed ideal
understanding of who we are.
So go speak to people who are experienced.
There's a statement in Arabic where they say,
ask the one who has experienced it, not
the one who is wise.
And what they mean by that is the
person who's wise can always answer in theory.
Like, a person who knows stuff in theory
can say, yeah, we should all be patient.
We should all be this.
We should all be that.
But ask the one who's lived it because
there's a wisdom there that is unlike anything
else.
Ask the person who's gone through it, okay?
So seek some advice from people that are
a little bit older than you.
Also, he gives the example and he says
the reason why clay, subhanallah, why did Allah
Ta'ala make us from clay?
He says clay is malleable.
It's firm enough to be strong, but it
can be changed, right?
You know, when they mold clay, when the
pottery people, they're spinning the, I don't know
what it's called, when they're spinning the wheel,
the spot of pottery, pottery wheel.
There we go.
Thank you.
Persons spinning the pottery wheel, they're molding it
and they're able to manipulate the shape of
that.
You're not a finished product.
And the more you see yourself as being
like, okay, this is who I am, the
less chance you're giving yourself to change.
When you look at yourself every day in
the mirror, remind yourself that you're not finished.
There's a lot of change that you can
accomplish.
There's a lot of things that can be
different about you as long as you just
put forth the effort.
Now, yes, some things might be more difficult
than others, but you're not a complete perfect
being yet, right?
We have to give ourselves the chance to
change and remind ourselves that that malleability is
important.
The next advice that he gives, and then
we'll wrap up here and go to Q
&A, is he says that
when in doubt, and this is like a
good way for us to leave off for
this week, when in doubt, no matter where
you find yourself in life, always give yourself
a chance to have a private moment with
Allah.
You know, there are certain realizations and certain
thoughts that a person can only have when
they are not in the presence of other
people.
The whole core of this entire book is
about gaining taqwa, God consciousness.
Even though good company is very important, we
just talked about being friends with people, being
friends with smart people, watching them, observing them.
You can only derive inspiration so much before
you yourself have to go and you have
to paint your portrait.
Like you can observe the art of others,
but then you eventually have to pick up
the brush, and you can't produce your picture,
your portrait, constantly being surrounded by noise.
So this is why in our tradition, Islam,
we actually have a very high level for
spending some time by ourselves, being alone.
It's actually an important part of everyone's day.
You should not constantly be in the company
of other people.
It's good to be in company with good
people for a good point of time, right?
But there should come a moment, and this
is why SubhanAllah, the Prophet peace be upon
him, we pray, you know, for example, we
pray Isha in the masjid.
We're taught the congregational prayers are of more
reward than the solitary ones, correct?
If I pray in the masjid, I'm given
more reward than if I pray by myself,
okay?
So congregation, very important.
But then the Prophet peace be upon him
says in a hadith, he says, do not
make your homes like graveyards.
Do you know what that means?
Muslims don't pray, we don't perform the salah
in graveyards.
So the Prophet peace be upon him's practice,
his practice was to pray and then to
go home and pray his sunnah.
Because you pray with the community, but then
when you go and pray by yourself, there
are some things, there are some moments, there
are some realizations that only you can have
when you are only by yourself, when you
are alone.
So he says, maintain a connection to Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala by having what he
calls a spiritual retreat.
Ibn Ataullah, he says, if you spend all
your time with other people, it doesn't matter
if they're like the best people ever.
It doesn't matter if they're all scholars and
if you spend your time with other people,
you're not going to be able to have
realizations that you need to have.
This is why a lot of people jokingly
say they have like their best ideas in
the shower.
Because you're like alone.
And this is why subhanAllah, think about this,
when you're driving and you're trying to find
something important, what do you do with whatever
you're listening to?
You turn it down, right?
Because your mind cannot process while taking information
in, while listening.
So if you're constantly, for example, going crazy
in the group chat, right?
If you're constantly in the presence of friend,
there are people that I know that just
walk around on FaceTime.
Like, this is like the most exclusive vlogger
I've ever seen in my life.
They just walk around FaceTime like, who are
you talking to?
There's actually, I've gone over to people's homes
and I walk in and they're alone, but
their phone is just on FaceTime.
And it's like just a ceiling, just a
ceiling fan.
And then the other person's also got it.
They're talking like, you realize these things can
also just make calls.
They don't have to be on videos, right?
But I feel like SubhanAllah, we have been
trained to fear being alone because we don't
want to have those thoughts.
We want to hear things because those things
tend to divert us from thinking the real
things that we have to think.
For example, if I'm with my friends having
a good time, I haven't thought about if
I've called my mom lately.
I haven't thought about that.
I haven't thought about reaching out to my
friends or my family if I'm being distracted
by the other things.
Those thoughts and realizations can only happen when
I'm by myself.
So he says that after spending time with
these intelligent people, make sure that you spend
time alone.
And he gives some good reasons why.
I'll go through a list of them.
Number one, he says, if you're alone, you
can't backbite unless you like just talk to
the wall.
It's kind of weird.
He says, it saves you from ruining your
tongue.
He says, number two, it saves you from
ruining your vision, which by the way, means
that you also got to be alone from
this thing.
You got to throw it to the side.
One of the worst things that I think
we are struggling with as a community is
the addiction to technology through cell phones.
And you think it ends, but subhanAllah, there
are people coming to me now like 30
years old, four years old, they say like,
my parents are addicted to this.
Like they're on their phones all the time.
And they're like, my children, my siblings, we
are having trouble connecting with my parents because
they're constantly sending us political updates on Imran
Khan from WhatsApp.
Right?
For those of you who don't know, Pakistani
politics, it's a * of a drug, as
they say.
All right.
So he says, the third thing is that
when you spend time alone, is that it
saves you from hypocrisy.
How?
Because a person who's alone has to come
to terms with their internal ugliness.
You have to come to terms with that.
It's like, if you never spend time alone,
it's like living in a house with no
mirrors.
You can't actually see what you look like.
You think that you look a certain way.
You hope that you look a certain way.
Then you look at the mirror like, oh,
that's me.
That's being alone.
Alone is one of the greatest, being alone
is one of the greatest mirrors for the
soul.
Because you start to hear your thoughts.
Okay?
It helps you be content with all the
blessings that Allah has given you.
When you're with other people, you start to
what?
Compare.
It's natural.
You look at somebody else, you're like, oh,
that's a nice, wow.
That's nice.
I wish I had that.
But you don't have those thoughts if you're
by yourself.
Right?
If you are by yourself, disconnected, you're able
to experience true contentment.
He says it protects you from missing your
worship.
Because when you're by yourself, you're able to
keep track of time.
Says it protects you from having good dua
and conversations with Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
I'll give you guys the four things.
If you want to have a good dua,
you want to be able to make dua
to Allah, there's four things you have to
think about.
There's four categories.
Okay?
Number one are the things that you are
the most grateful for.
Talk to Allah about what you're most grateful
for.
Number two, talk to Allah about what you
regret the most.
Number three, talk to Allah about what you
are most hopeful for.
And number four, talk to Allah about what
you most fear.
If you go over those four topics with
Allah in dua, I promise you, for those
of us that are like, I don't know
what to say, you are actually going to
run out of time before you run out
of dua.
You talk about all of your grateful moments,
all of your regrets, all of your hopes,
and all of your fears.
I'm talking like dig deep.
We're not saying like don't be surface level.
With your fears, like really talk about it.
We learned all of these by the way.
I didn't come up with this by myself.
This is from the Quran.
All the duas of all the prophets focused
on these four emotions.
Gratitude, regret, hope, and fear.
If your duas circle around that, you're going
to go for hours talking to Allah.
But you can't do that around friends.
Like hey, you guys want to go get
wings?
Hold on.
Allahumma.
Don't be that person.
That's not that's not okay.
You need intimate discourse with Allah.
It gives you a sense of relaxation for
the heart, not just for the body and
for the mind, right?
A lot of times we spend time with
people because we seek to unwind with our
mind and our bodies.
Like we want to just relax, have some
good food, right?
Just catch up, just kind of talk.
But we don't give our hearts a chance
to relax.
The hearts also need to relax.
SubhanAllah.
And he says ultimately it protects the believer's
soul from all of the vileness and the
disputation that they might come into.
We ask Allah to give us all the
benefits of being in good company and spending
time by ourselves.
We ask Allah to protect us and to
protect our minds and to give our minds
the ability to affect our character and to
make our minds a pathway towards piety and
to make our intellect something that guides us
to him and does not take us away
from him.
Ameen.
Okay, let's go ahead and discuss some of
the Q&A and then we'll go over
for salah.
How should we react to seeing Muslim girls
taking off their hijab?
So anytime you see anybody that is doing
something that is not what is pleasing to
Allah, your first response should be to make
dua for that person.
Always.
That's always the first response.
You make dua for that person.
What's interesting is like the approach that people
take towards cursing or reprimanding, you don't find
the Prophet, peace be upon him, doing that.
You don't find him doing that, right?
What you find him doing, peace be upon
him, is you find him reminding people but
he also had a different status than you
and I, right?
So he's the Prophet, peace be upon him,
he's beloved to the person he's speaking to.
If this is like a TikTok comment, you're
like, I can't believe you, right?
The reality is like this person doesn't even
know you.
So your disbelief, your shock, and your disapproval
probably means nothing to them and if anything
will just push them further away.
So what we should do is we should
always make dua for people.
We should make dua to Allah to make
things easy for them, right?
And just because somebody took one step away
from Allah doesn't mean they can't take 10
steps towards Allah after that and come back,
right?
There's stories from the companions like that.
People that really struggled, they took a couple
steps back and they made massive gains forward,
right?
So we should make dua to Allah.
We also should not take people that are,
you know, we should be careful who we
kind of anoint as a role model.
That's a really important thing as well.
Just because somebody dresses well and looks nice
doesn't mean that they're my role model spiritually,
right?
They can be my role model, like I
love Khairi, right?
Like Khairi is like, you know, the best
ball handler that I think, you know, when
all is said and done, he's the best
ball handler probably ever in the NBA.
But no offense to him, like I'm not
trying to study Fatiha with him, you know?
I'm not gaining my spiritual, because that's not
what I look to him for, right?
I love Jalen Brown, right?
He goes crazy.
MashaAllah, he went to Umrah, right?
Great.
I'm so happy for him.
I really love him.
I appreciate him.
I look up to him for his ability
to be a good Muslim as far as
he is trying in the spotlight, but he's
not my Shaykh, you know?
So you can look up to people for
certain things while they are not your religious
guide.
It's important, right?
And also, your religious Shaykh might not be
like your physical trainer.
Unless it's Shaykh Abdullah Dero, then he's everyone's,
right?
Physical trainer, MashaAllah, okay?
Allah protect us.
So just be careful.
Be careful with who you put your heart
and soul into for everything, right?
Besides the Prophet, nobody can fit every, can
check every box, okay?
Advice on using LinkedIn in this day and
age while our religion teaches us not to
show off.
Okay, good.
So religion teaches us not to show off,
but to be visible to get a good
job.
You are allowed to present your accomplishments in
the professional realm.
The religion teaches you not to show off
your spiritual deeds, right?
And to let your, and to not let
your worldly deeds make you think that you're
better than other people.
But if you did a certification, if you
did something for five years, if you got
promoted, you don't have to say, oh, it's
arrogant of me to, no.
It's only arrogant if you think that because
I'm a project manager, I'm better than you.
That's a problem.
But if you're like, no, I worked on
this, I accomplished this, put it up there.
Get your bag.
Donate to Ruth, like, yes, let's do it,
you know?
But don't let it, okay, so the Prophet,
peace be upon him, when they asked what
is arrogance, he said, rejecting the truth and
looking down on people.
Okay, so as long as you're not doing
those two things, then sharing your accomplishments is
not wrong.
What Islam taught us is to not share
our spiritual accomplishments, to not pray tahajjud one
night and say, yep, you guys see the
bags under these eyes?
That does not come from a person that's
sleeping at tahajjud time, I'll tell you that.
That's not what we should be doing, okay?
What is the ruling on a woman who
wants to preserve her eggs, freeze her eggs?
Allah knows best.
I don't know the ruling on that, so
I would seek fatwa from a scholar who
knows the ruling, inshallah, okay?
So I'm gonna like de-gender this, not
in that way, but I'm gonna like remove
the gender from this question because it's potentially
applicable to both sides.
I know this person that likes me, they're
really good for me and they would treat
me right, but I'm not attracted to them,
what do I do?
So I would say two things.
This is very applicable, I would say two
things.
Number one is there's kind of a two
-sided coin, okay?
You first have to identify, like, how do
you even quantify attraction?
Because if you're a person that is constantly
looking at things that are impermissible, if you're
constantly gazing, for example, at * or things
that are basically * on either side, then
you would have to first say to yourself,
is my metric, is my scale, my compass
of attraction, is it broken?
Because maybe there is somebody that is truly
beautiful, but because I have this sickness inside
of me, I can't see how beautiful they
are because they do not measure up to,
you know, whatever, okay?
So that's, first is you have to be
honest with yourself.
Is money my primary attractive meter, okay?
Is fame, is this, is this, is this?
If your measurement of attraction is not something
you're proud of, then you have to work
on that, okay?
You have to find attractiveness in things that
are truly beyond skin deep, okay?
Like I always say, a gym membership and
a good sense of fashion can always fix
anything physical, okay?
But the second thing that I'll say is,
it is somebody's, it is definitely your right
to be attracted to somebody that you marry.
Imam Ahmed actually said that before you look
at everything else, you should first gauge whether
or not you have potential to be attracted
to this person because, he said, you don't
want to look at everything else and be
in this scenario.
He said, because then you feel like a
jerk and tbh.
He says, because if you find someone whose
deen is good, their character is good, their
family is good, everything is good, and then
you say no because you're not physically attracted,
you're going to feel bad.
So he says, Imam Ahmed, his advice is,
Imam Ahmed Mohamed, he said, check and make
sure that you have some capacity, some for
physical attraction before you move forward because you
don't want to be the person rejecting a
perfect individual just based off of some preference.
So there's two sides of the coin.
Number one is, is your measurement of attraction
broken?
If it is broken, then you got to
pause everything you're doing and you got to
fix that.
It might require therapy, it might require detox,
it might require a lot, but you got
to fix that.
And then the other side of it is,
if your measurement of attraction is generally healthy,
then the other side of it is, absolutely
one of your rights is to be attracted
to the person that you marry and one
of their, hopefully, rights is to feel attractive
to you.
May Allah Ta'ala give everybody in here
a righteous and attractive spouse.
Ameen Ya Rabbil Alameen.
Barakallahu feekum everybody.
And we'll end there on a high hopeful
note.
Now I know what everyone's going to pray
for during Isha.
Okay, take care inshallah.
May Allah accept from us.
Isha is in two minutes.
Yeah, and it's in the Musalla.
For those of you that haven't been here
since our renovation, we're renovating our masjid for
the next couple months.
So our current Musalla is what was the
multi-purpose hall.
So it's right there.
So you walk through inshallah, step in and
join us for Isha in two minutes.
If you sat on the back jacks, if
you could help us stack those, we'd appreciate
it.
Jazakumullah khairan.
And then after salah, if you want to
come help stack chairs, we'd appreciate that as
well.
Jazakumullah khairan.
Wassalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.