AbdelRahman Murphy – Thirty & Up – Treasury Of Imam Al-Ghazali #4
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Assalamu
alaikum.
Welcome home, everybody. It's good to see.
We have, some more chairs are coming, by
the way. We have one of our volunteers
grabbing them.
So just,
sorry for the delay in that, but there
should be a dolly of chairs coming in.
If you need a chair,
just grab one off there.
Welcome back. We're continuing our reading
of,
this beautiful text
compiled by
doctor Mustafa Abu Suway.
It's called,
Kunuz Mir'Al Ghazali, the Treasury or the Treasures
of Imam Al Ghazali, where he put together,
his his favorite or some of his favorite
quotes
from all the works of Imam al Ghazali
into, like, a anthology.
And all of these different quotes or these
passages,
he assigned to each of them their own
theme.
So, you know, some sort of thesis statement
or word that had to do with each
one of them.
We have so far covered 3 different themes.
And I'm gonna give you the name of
it, because I feel like it kinda sets
the tone for the conversation. The first is,
obviously, as many scholars begin their books with,
the right intention. Right? Setting the right intention.
The next theme was, are you in the
wrong business? Where he talked about
setting that good intention for your everyday life
and making sure that you're not just living
life for the sake of gaining more and
more.
The next one was seeking felicity where we
talked about where true true happiness comes from,
and that was last week.
And this week, we're going to be talking
about,
a very important skill and something that everybody
should have and
especially at the 30 and up level, at
the 30 and up stage,
everybody should definitely have
experienced
this skill with hopes to master it, with
hopes to become a person who does this
often. He titled it introspection.
Introspection is the ability for a person to
look within
and not to look outside of themselves, but
to look inside of themselves.
Introspection is something that is deeply rooted no
pun intended.
Deeply rooted in the Islamic tradition.
Imam Ghazali has an entire
section of his
big encyclopedia called the
it's called Kitab al Murakaba wal Muhasaba.
He writes a book actually, an entire volume
about becoming a person that is better
at taking account of yourself and taking,
measurement
of all of the things that you've done
and being able to see how those things
affect you. Now you can't do that.
You can't grow unless you're a person who
can look within,
and you can't look within unless you're a
person who you are introspective.
Right? Your perspective is introspective.
And so, Imam Al Azali, he writes about
his own story,
and he has a book that he wrote
called,
It's called Deliverance from Error. That's literally what
it's called. The deliverance from misguidance or from
error. And this is actually what he called
his autobiography.
It's a very interesting title.
Imagine, like, you wrote a a a a
book about yourself, your life, your memoirs, and
you called it like, I was wrong a
lot.
You know? What kind of state would you
be in to to to admit that? You
must be in such a very deeply introspective
state. So he,
as who he is and who he was
and what he accomplished, he wrote his autobiography
and he called it deliverance from error, meaning,
like, I was basically wrong.
And and
Allah through his grace, he guided me and
saved me. And the story or the entire,
you know, crux of this autobiography,
it revolves around his story.
And his stories we talked about in the
first session was the story of an individual,
a man
who
was incredibly successful
in terms of his pursuit, his knowledge, his,
you know, career. Right? He's a teacher. He's
a scholar
and has achieved
the highest levels that anyone could imagine of
his time. Right? He's teaching at the Nizamiya,
which is our equivalent of, like, the Ivy
Leagues, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etcetera.
And he's at the top of his game
at a very young age, and everyone around
him respects him. He's basically the best of
the best, and everyone around him is older
than him or is more veteran than him,
and they still aren't as good as him.
So you can imagine the kinds of,
you know, the the good that comes with
that. Right? But you can also imagine the
bad that comes with that. Whether it's, like,
the arrogance or whether it's, like, the concededness
or whether it's, you know, a person thinking
to themselves about how much better or how
much more they know than others or the
inability to admit fault or all of this
stuff. When you know that you're in a
good position, when you know that you're right,
you it kinda gets to you. Right? Inflates
your head a little bit. So in this
book, he actually talks about
the the the the ascent
to this height of success,
and then he talks about
why that success was actually the cause of
his downfall
and then what actually he discovered in his
own self at the bottom of the bottom
when he was absolutely removed from all of
his success, that's when he said he discovered
his relationship with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
It was when he removed himself from the
worldly success, and that's when he said I
started to realize
actual faith, actual spiritual success.
So let's go ahead and read from this
section.
So at this point,
Imam Al Azali is basically speaking about the
summary of his mistake.
And he
says, he says,
He says that
I took some time
and I thought deeply about the state of
my
myself.
All of my my feelings and all of
my, you know, inner states.
And this is honestly the beginning of introspection.
You know, many of us, we like to
listen to things or watch things or read
things. And sometimes we do that out of
interest, but sometimes we also do that out
of avoidance.
Right? We avoid silence because silence is the
medium in which reflection introspection is born. When
you're in a state of silence is when
you start thinking about your taxes.
When you're in a state of silence, when
you start thinking about how you should watch
your what you what you're eating. Right? My
cholesterol, my blood pressure. When When you're in
that mode of silence is when all of
those thoughts are given
an opportunity to manifest in your mind, in
your heart.
It's only when you're distracted by other things
that you're allowing other thoughts to guide your
thoughts. And so you can take yourself where
you wanna go. Right? If you're in a
good mood, you watch a comedy. If you're
in a bad mood, you watch a tragedy.
Right? If you're in a hopeless romantic mood,
you watch a romantic comedy. Right? And then
you cry and eat ice cream.
You you you let the medium take you
where you're feeling you wanna go. But
in silence
is where the heart actually starts to take
you where you need to go.
So he says here, the first step now
think about this.
To his inevitable success, the first step that
he has ever
that he ever took in order to find
that point of success
was he says,
I had to look deeply in myself.
I had to look in the mirror, but
not the physical mirror. I had to look
in the spiritual mirror, and I had to
look and see what is it about myself
that I need to fix. This is a
question that we avoid. You know, many times
when we're frustrated,
we look and we point the finger outward.
There's a statement that's attributed to Isa Al
Mariam
alaihis salam, prophet Jesus, where he says, anytime
you have one finger pointing outward, remember you
have 3 pointing back at you.
Right? So this idea of being a person
that looks and says, is it me? Like,
am I the problem?
Maybe I'm the issue.
We're very quick to say that other people
have caused difficulty in our life.
But maybe we're the ones that are actually
tripping on ourselves,
And then we look up at those around
us, and we blame them.
This is something that, like, with children,
you see it all the time. Kids, they
get frustrated. Something happens. They look up, and
they try to blame somebody else. No. The
reality is that it's it was actually you.
This happened a couple days ago. My son
tripped on a pillow,
and he fell
and he hurt himself, but I think he
was more embarrassed than hurt. Alright? So you
can laugh. It's okay. Everyone's holding their breath.
He tripped. He fell. He was embarrassed. He
started to cry because he was embarrassed. And
then he goes, who put that pillow there?
The reality was he was playing a video
game and he wasn't focusing. He was walking
backwards. Right? He was so in the zone
that he wasn't aware of his surroundings. He
walking backwards and he tripped. So I said,
look. That pillow has been there for a
few hours.
It's not about who put the pillow there.
Maybe you need to be more aware of
your surroundings, and he got
mad at me. You know, kids don't like
it when you're right. Right? So the point
being is that it's childish. It's childish for
a person to feel something, experience something, and
then look around them and say, who did
that?
Right? When in reality, even doctor Martin Luther
King Junior, he said that when you look
at oppression,
when you identify oppression, you first have to
make sure you're not the oppressor.
You have to check on that. Before you
go out and fight for justice, you have
to make sure that you're not gonna be
inadvertently protesting against yourself.
And so if a and and now put
that down to a micro level. Right?
When we look at all the situations in
our life that we don't like, how much
have we contributed to that?
A lot of our wounds are self inflicted.
And only once we focused on removing
that self infliction,
do we then have the right to say,
hey. You know what? Like, maybe I do
have to look at people around me and
have some tough conversations with them. But make
sure you're having the tough conversations with yourself
first.
Make sure that you're comfortable doing that. So
he said this. I considered my state of
affairs,
and he said, I realized
that I was the one.
He says,
which means that, like, I was immersed
in my attachments.
I was, like, drowning in my attachments. The
imagery here is so powerful. This is why
is so beautiful.
Imagine a person who's swimming and
they are holding on to things while they're
swimming and those things are causing them to
drown.
The natural response in order for a person's
life to be saved would be what? Let
go.
Let go. Don't carry those things. You can't
swim. The weight is pulling you down.
And any person logically would say, yeah. Do
it. And they would let go. They would
let themselves float to the top.
But,
the
way he's describing it
is that he basically is giving us the
the perspective that in these moments, it's not
purely logical. It's very emotional.
Like, the attachments,
you can't look at them from a logical
lens because logically, you would always make the
right decision. It's fight or flight. You would
always decide. Like, I I need to save
my life. Let go. Right? Let go of
all these things. Imagine a person who's drowning
and they're carrying their purse and their shoes
and everything. You would say, let go and
swim. And they say, no. But I love
this purse.
But I love these shoes. But I love
this basketball. I love I love that. Imagine
how foolish they would seem. Come on. Quick.
Hop on. No. No. No. But I want
my PS 5, and they're holding it and
they're drowning.
You're gonna die with that thing, but I
love it. Right?
That's
the imagery that he's presenting.
He said, I felt myself drowning. I felt
myself sinking. I felt myself unable,
but I wanted to be attached to these
things.
So then he says,
they were surrounding me from every side. Right?
I had been flanked
by everything.
And then he says, I did the hardest
thing possible.
He says,
He says, I started to just like I
scrutinized myself,
then I started to scrutinize all of my
deeds.
I started looking at why I do what
I do.
Why do I do
all that I do? Like, why do I
perform these deeds that I perform every single
day?
He said, I looked at my teaching. I
looked at my works that I had authored.
And he goes, I started with
the most beautiful
things, the things that I was most proud
of.
And I asked myself the tough question.
Why do you do this?
What do you get from this?
Did you really do this for the sake
of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala?
So then he says,
I found
that I was more I was more concerned.
When I looked at truly what I had
accomplished, I was more concerned about all of
the externalities
than I was about actually what I said
my intention was.
It actually wasn't about
hosting
my guests to my house for dinner. It
was about making sure my house was so
beautiful that I would get all these compliments.
That's what I wanted. You know, when you
have a party, you invite people over.
The Islamic intention for that is to feed
people
and to honor your guests. That's one of
the Islamic ethics.
Right?
To take care of your guests. That's actually
an Islamic prophetic principle.
But in the process,
we can get our wires crossed.
And instead of it being about the guest,
it's actually about what?
The host.
It's about us.
And this happens in many different ways. You
know, a lot of times people when they
get excited anyone here, like, ever been,
the house that was hosting for, like, a
wedding?
You had family coming for, like, a wedding?
Did anyone's parents, as a result of that,
buy completely new furniture
that they couldn't afford and didn't need?
Right? 60 months financing zero interest, but, like,
that's fine because your aunt is coming. We
haven't seen her in 23 years.
We need to have new furniture for your
aunt, like the tags are still on. Right?
Like, think about it. Does anyone here ever
have you guys ever put that disgusting plastic
stuff on your couch that people sit on
in the summer? It, like, sticks to your
body. Why do we do that? To preserve
the couch. Why don't you preserve your dignity
and take that off? Right?
Because that is so unwelcoming.
Right? And I get it. We all wanna
keep our things nice, but in some way,
in some way, shape, or form,
we should go above and beyond
for the real intention, which is to make
sure our guests feel honored when they're in
our home.
My good friend, Ostadh Abdulai, teaches Arabic here
at the seminary. He always says, his parents
always taught him and he always tells us,
you know, people will come over and you
don't have anything really to eat. You just
kinda have, like, leftovers.
And you feel bad. You're like, I'm so
sorry, man. You're like warming up stuff that
you cooked 2 days ago. You're like smelling
it to make sure it's still good before
you serve it. And you feel you're apologizing.
And he always I love this line. He
goes, my parents always taught me, it's not
about the size of the home. It's about
the size of the heart in the home.
And everybody can feel that.
You can feel mansions that are vacant, and
you can feel tiny shacks that are
expansive,
so full. SubhanAllah.
Right? So think about for a moment, why
do we do what we do? Does anyone
here get really stressed out about buying a
gift for somebody?
Yeah. Why? We get stressed out. Now we
tell ourselves, well, I wanna make sure I
pick something they like. And that's a good
intention. We always wanna buy something for somebody
that they like. Wanna make sure that we
get them something that they're gonna enjoy. But
a lot of times, we get that confused
with, I wanna make sure that I don't
disappoint them because I don't wanna be known
as a bad gift giver.
So I gotta get exactly the right thing
as opposed to realizing that, actually,
your gift and your time and your love
and your contribution is more important them than
whatever it is that you give them.
And anyone that loves you
and anyone that you love, they'll admit that.
Right? Doesn't really matter if it's brand name
or it's expensive or what, but if it's
thoughtful, that's what matters.
About the guest thing, I will never forget
my teacher, Subhanallah. 1 of my teachers,
We were sitting
and he I told the story before, but
it just fits.
He sits in his house, brand new carpet.
And these this family with these young kids
comes over,
and they served, like, fruit punch or grape
juice. And this kid goes white carpet and
spills grape juice everywhere.
It literally looked like someone got stabbed. It
was like red splattered.
And the parents were, like, so devastated
because they were embarrassed.
You know, these guests that had brought their
kids, they were basically, like, shrinking into themselves.
I mean, if you guys have had young
kids, you know what it's like when you're
embarrassed that your kid is, like, doing this
or that or screaming.
And my teacher, I'll never forget I saw
him. You know what he did? He took
a glass, and he tossed it on the
carpet
in front of them.
And, like, after he first, he tried to
tell them, like, relax. And they were like,
no. No. No. No. No. And they were
taking paper towel and just rubbing it into
the carpet even more.
Right? Always dab. Never scrub. Right? So he
was like they were like scrubbing it in.
It was just becoming like deep fuchsia. You
know? It was at that point, like, you
just and he literally goes, stop. It's okay.
Stop. It's okay. And they go, no. No.
No. And he just takes a cup and
he pours it, and he goes, it's okay.
It's okay. It's just carpet.
Like, nobody got hurt.
We don't wanna make the kids feel bad.
It's just carpet. Why would we make people,
humans with souls that Allah created, feel like
material is more important than them?
And think about how many times, like, you've
been made to feel that.
You know, when you were a kid or
you have kids and they color on the
wall, it takes
2 seconds to paint over that.
But the self esteem and the worth of
that child can very quickly be made to
feel
low because of the reaction. So all of
this goes back to what Al Qazadi is
saying.
Why do you do what you do? Think
about.
Right? Why do you do what you do?
Are you really disciplining the kid because they
need to learn their their lesson, or are
you upset and, thus, as a result of
your anger, you need to express that? Mufti
Khemani once said something very beautiful. He said,
never discipline a child when you're angry
because you're just trying to satisfy your anger.
The intention is muddled. Your intention for discipline
should always be tarbia,
teaching, rectifying,
Islah.
Right? Trying to make sure that that mistake
is learned from and never repeated. And he
says, if you're in a state of anger
and you're disciplining it could be a child.
It could be anybody, honestly.
If you're in a state of anger and
you're disciplining, you're actually not trying to achieve
rectification.
You're trying to achieve revenge.
That's what anger is trying to accomplish. Anger
has no other gratification but revenge.
That's why you need to let the anger
go away before you address the situation. May
Allah make it easy. So he says,
I looked deeply
at my works and he goes, I took
the best of the best.
I took the things I was most proud
of, and I started to see why did
I do those things. And he said, I
realized
I realized
that I did these things for the praise
and the fame of people. I wanted to
be appreciated.
I wanted to be known.
I wanted people to attach and associate
all of my work with me
and not with something greater than myself.
I wanted people to think of how much
of a genius I was.
I wanted people
to
laud on me praise.
He says, I realized then
that because of this,
he said, there would be no benefit for
me in the hereafter.
I came to that realization.
Because I lived my life constantly seeking approval
of people
and only concerned about what they thought
in every manner, whether it was hosting for
a dinner, whether it was hosting for a
wedding, whether it was buying them a gift,
whether it was this, this, this. I my
intentions were always
for people, and I realized that nothing that
I said I did for Allah was actually
for Allah.
So then he said, I meditated upon my
intention. I thought about it.
And he said, I realized
that I needed
he said, I realized that I needed to
rethink why I did what I did.
And so he said, I became certain that
at this state, I was on the verge
of a deep precipice,
and I imagined myself, listen to this, plunging
into the hellfire.
I saw myself on the edge of a
cliff,
all of my deeds pulling me down into
the hellfire
unless I was ready
to remedy my state of affairs.
So this is the quote from El Alazali.
This is what he's talking about. Now doctor
Mostafa Busway is gonna give us some things
to think about. He's gonna give us some
analysis here. And I'm gonna read it, and
then we'll talk about it inshallah. He says,
if one word
can capture
solution to all of life's problems are you
ready for this?
This is expensive stuff, and this is free
tonight. Okay?
He said, if one word that joke is
so on point with what we're talking about.
He said, if one word
could could present Imam Ghazali's
solution to the problems that we experience in
life, it would be this word, detachment
Detachment.
In order for a person to attain
eternal
salvation and felicity in the in Jannah,
they have to reach a state
where they are detached
from all the externalities
of things
that are in front of them.
He says this means
that they would have to forego
different things that their soul desires in order
to prove their sincerity
to Allah
For example, doctor Mustafa writes, he had to
forego
the money and fame, which was the source
of all of this.
His position at the Nizamiyyah
College in Baghdad.
So what does he do when he reaches
this high state? Some of you might remember
from the story that we told in the
beginning. He reaches this high state. He becomes
the dean. He becomes the person who is
the name behind the college.
He is the brand.
Okay? And at this moment, when he reaches
this state,
when he realizes this, after this moment of
realization, you know what he does? He wakes
up the next day and he disappears.
He disappears.
He just goes completely missing. No one knows
where he is.
And he doesn't do it for, like, a
day. You know some people when they stop
social media, I need a break.
And then they just, like, 3 days later,
they're like, I came back on to,
you know
or they're like, I'm gonna be off TikTok.
Can you send me the YouTube link of
the TikTok later so I can watch it?
He's not not a fake break. He took
a real break. You wanna know how long
his break was?
Not 1 month,
not 6 months, not a year, 11 years.
He disappeared.
He traveled. Not like our travel. Right? Alright,
guys. I gotta take a break. Follow my
blog account. Right? My travel vlogs.
No. He left.
He left. He packed up some belongings. He
got a riding animal and he left.
And he left from Baghdad and he went
all the way through the Levant,
down through Isham,
down through the Gulf, through Mecca, through Medina,
through
Al Quds, stayed in Al Quds. He wrote
his Ihia there through North Africa, and then
he made his journey back to Baghdad.
11 years.
Almost as long as it takes to get
on a flight with Southwest. Hey. Okay. So
so 11 years,
it took him I want you to think
about this.
Introspection
led Imam Al Ghazali
to leave his comfort,
And he left his comfort
until he was even more uncomfortable. Like, most
of us are only uncomfortable until we can't
bear it anymore. He pushed beyond that.
And he said, no. In order for me
to truly tame
this desire inside of me, I have to
become uncomfortable beyond
what I'm comfortable with.
There's a certain level of discomfort that we're
still comfortable with. He went beyond that.
So then he says,
why did he return to teaching after these
11 years? Doctor Mostafa asked a question. Because
he did all that and then he came
back.
So it's interesting. You almost think to yourself,
like, what's the point? You left for 11
years and then you go back to teaching
in the same position, in the same city,
at the same college. Aren't you just gonna
get infected by the same virus again? No.
Because what introspection gives you is the ability
to be immune to that disease.
You learn the tricks.
You learn what your soul is telling you.
You figure it out.
You learn that in certain moments, you do
things because you want people to notice. And
so what do you do? You actually act
in opposite of that.
So you're sitting somewhere
and you wanna donate something and there's people
around you and you say to yourself,
you know, you raise your hand. Everybody's like,
wow.
And you're imagining this all in your head.
Again, there's always an analogy for children. Today
was my son's first day of school,
and he has a new lunchbox.
Exciting.
Alright? It's a it's a Jordan Michael Jordan
lunchbox. It has the Jordan. I'm from Chicago,
so it's just it's it's wajib upon us.
Some Jordan artifacts in the house. Right?
And he literally I want you to think
about this. He literally my son is, like,
verbally saying this. He's 7, so don't judge
him too
hard. He's like, I can't wait to take
this to school. I'm gonna walk in, and
all the kids are gonna say, wow.
Where did you get that? And he's gonna
say, I got it at Dick's Sporting Goods.
And he's going through this whole fantasy in
his head.
Right?
He's He's going through the whole fantasy. Oh,
the screen just turned off. Oh, yeah. That's
okay. So he's going through this whole fantasy
in his head of what everybody is going
to say
when they see his lunchbox. And I'm sitting
there, and I'm like, nobody's gonna notice.
How do I break it to him?
And as much as we're laughing about it,
in my head, I'm actually worried because I'm
like, I don't want you to ever do
something
only for the expectation that people are gonna
say, wow.
Because you know what? When they don't say,
wow, you're not only going to feel like
a fool, you are going to be a
fool
because you did it for them. So I
say to him, do you like the lunchbox?
He goes, yeah. Do you really like it?
Yes. Okay. So does it matter if people
notice? He goes, no, not really.
But I just want them to notice. I
said, yeah. But if you like it, that's
all that matters. He does it all the
time. You got a haircut? He's like, everyone's
gonna be so impressed.
Right?
The point being is this childish
motivation,
we have the same thing. It grows with
us.
And unless we introspect
and look at that
and interrogate ourselves as to why we do
things, it actually becomes so embedded within us
that we start to act pathologically
seeking out the approval of other people without
even realizing that we're doing it. And we
think everybody does it, and it's normal, and
we're just weird
And we're just weird.
Have you guys ever seen somebody in public
dancing for a TikTok
or taking a photo they're gonna post?
And in the real world,
it's so absurd.
But in their head, they can't even see
the people around them. They just see the
viewer.
That's kinda how we live.
Right? May Allah protect us. It's very scary.
So how do you fix that?
He says, what did Imam al Ghazali do
that allowed him to come back and teach
again?
And he says what he did
was still unique even till today. He successfully
detached himself.
It took time. It took environment change.
He had to be away from the things
that made him comfortable.
You know, the prophet, alaihis salatu sallam, teaches
us this time and time again. It is
necessary for a person if they realize that
their environment or the people that they are
around
affect them.
They have to introspect.
This is not judgment. A lot of people
say, well, I don't wanna be judgmental. That's
true. You shouldn't be. Judgmental. Judgment is for
the day of judgment and you're not doing
that.
Nobody here is saying, I can't be friends
with you. Why? Because you're going to hellfire.
Nobody's saying that. You can say, hey. You
know what? I need to spend a little
bit more time. Right? We socialize. We hang
out. But I'm realizing that in this environment,
I'm the weak
link.
I can't handle it.
When I'm with you guys,
I'm the one who ends up saying things
that I regret.
I'm the one who ends up skipping my
prayers. I'm the one who ends up spending
money foolishly. I'm the one. Don't blame others.
Blame yourself. Imam al Ghazali didn't say he
didn't go to the Nizamiyah and say it's
all your fault. Stop praising me. Stop coming
to my classes. No. He said, look. I'm
the weak link. I'm the problem. So
look deeply into into yourself
to detach yourself from those worldly things.
Something even more painful happened, you wouldn't believe.
He detached himself.
He gave up his position,
and this is bad. You wanna know who
filled his vacancy?
His younger brother.
How many of you have a younger sibling?
And how many of you spend a lot
of your time mentally critiquing the way that
your younger sibling does things?
How many of you
feel confident that your younger sibling could step
into your life and do exactly what you
do the way you do it?
No way. You're all older siblings.
I'm a younger sibling, by the way. Right?
I get it. I understand. It's very common.
You look at somebody who's younger than you,
cousin, sibling, you're like, you're so unserious.
You're never gonna be successful.
Come, I'll buy you lunch again. You know,
like, it's just
his younger brother took his spot.
Imagine him hearing the news. Now he's not
jealous, of course. He's not. He's but imagine
him saying, wow.
My brother?
Out of everybody?
And again,
sometimes Allah will test you
by giving
the thing you want to exactly the person
you don't want to have it.
Not saying that about him, but think about
your own self. How many times have you
desperately wanted something, it didn't come to you,
and you're like, oh, Allah.
If not me,
then definitely not them.
Please,
anybody else. But, O Allah, please do not
give them what you did not give me.
Make us the only 2 that you deprive.
Right?
And Allah
in his wisdom will give it exactly to
that person to show you what? You don't
make these decisions. I do.
He will teach you that because if the
world were in your control, it would look
a lot worse.
It would look really bad. So Imam al
Ghazari's younger brother replaced him
and he also did some other really difficult
things. He took all of his wealth
that he had gained as a result of
the status, and he gave it away.
Because sometimes when you tell the story and
you don't you leave out that part, you're
like, well, he's just a traveling millionaire.
It's pretty nice. No. He gave all of
his wealth. He reduced himself from the status
of a cosmopolitan,
of a person who could live anywhere, pay
for anything,
till he reduced himself to the status
of a very humble,
very, very needy person.
He gave all his wealth away and he
left Baghdad
where he was most famous
and he went to cities where he would
be anonymous
and obscure.
One of my teachers always quotes this beautiful
couplet by Ibn 'Azza'allah.
He says Ibn Atha'alah says,
bury yourself
in the earth of obscurity.
It's a metaphor,
like a a seed, he says.
Take yourself like you take a seed and
place it into the soil. So bury yourself
into the earth of obscurity. When you put
a seed under the soil, nobody knows what's
there.
It's invisible. It's obscure. Right?
Because he says listen to this line. He
says, because
the thing that is not buried never grows
properly.
If you take a seed and just throw
it on the concrete and water and let
it let sunlight hit it, it's never going
to grow properly.
It's never going to grow properly.
But if you
if you put it in the soil and
bury it in water and let it grow,
it only can grow as a result of
what? The fact that it was buried in
the first place.
Imam al Ghazali, for 11 years, he buried
himself.
He chose anonymity
because he realized that only in this state
will I be able to grow.
And this is one of the challenges that
we experience
in this era is
constantly being visible,
constantly being seen.
We talked about this a little bit last
night.
The danger
of this is so ubiquitous.
It's actually intense. You know, I mentioned last
night in particular
that I said that one of the saddest
things about this era of social media
is
the parasocial attachments that we make to people
online.
And these Muslim couples and these influencer couples,
and they go through these tragic life events
like divorce.
And the Muslim Ummah is, like, shook.
But their best friend's also going through a
divorce and they don't care.
It's so weird.
They're more concerned about these 2 people that
they've never met that can't recognize them in
public than they are about their own sibling
who's struggling.
And this all comes from, again, this hyper
fixation on visibility.
Social media specialists will tell you, if you
wanna succeed in social media, be more visible.
Post more. Post more. Post more.
As Muslims,
we see this as being a particular challenge
to our spirituality.
We do. We have to admit it. It
doesn't mean that social media is haram, but
what it means is that it is a
deeply, deeply disturbing challenge.
And we have to do our own bury
of ourself, a burying of ourself before we
take on these challenges. So Al Ghazari,
he realized he was struggling.
He disappeared for 11 years. He gave away
all of his wealth. He went to places
where he's completely obscure
so that he could do what? Wash his
heart
from all the effects
of this fame. He got rid of everything.
He scrubbed it out.
In the language of some of the scholars,
he was in the state of jumul.
Jumul means literally the antithesis of fame. He
was in obscurity
because he wanted his heart to settle down
by being unknown. You know, what is a
person who has an addiction? May Allah protect
all of us and give shifa to those
who suffer from addiction. What does the person
who has an addiction have to go through
in order for them to become clean from
that substance?
They have to go through a deep state
of withdrawal.
And the heart has its own withdrawals.
You know, you may have felt a withdrawal
if you're used to being praised a lot
and you walked into a room dressed to
the nines and nobody said anything.
That stinging pain.
Why aren't people noticing me?
Right? Why didn't anybody say anything about my
haircut? Just joking.
Why didn't anybody say anything about this or
that? Why didn't people compliment the food?
Why?
That is the stinging pain of withdrawal for
the heart.
Allah gives you that moment so that you
can be in the state of,
oh, okay.
And that pain is a blessing because it
teaches you that your intention was a little
bit off.
Right? It's okay to wanna be dressed nicely,
but we get dressed nicely for what sake?
To praise Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala because he
gave you these beautiful clothing.
Right?
And only doctor Mustafa says once he had
gone through this detox
was he able to fully redirect himself
substantially to Allah? Have you guys ever had
like a spirituality yo yo where you go
back and forth?
You know what I'm talking about? So you
make some progress. You go back. It's like
2 steps forward, 2 steps back, 2 it's
frustrating. Right?
Some weeks are better than others. That is
human. But here is a human solution to
that human problem, which is
sometimes you're carrying too much baggage and it's
pulling you back.
And you have to reassess pretty much everything.
You know, people say, like, question your life.
You have to reassess everything.
What habits do I continue to do that
are pulling me back?
I feel growth, hamdulillah,
I feel good.
And then a couple days later, I just
feel myself falling back into it. Well, I
need to do a scientific experiment. What did
I do in the 48 hours that's pulling
me back?
Did I say something? Did I watch something?
Did I listen to something?
I was talking to a friend once who
was dumped by his girlfriend,
Haram. But he was dumped.
Haram both legally and also in the Arabic
way of haram. Like, haram.
Okay?
Actually forbidden, but also really poor guy. Okay?
So and I remember we were talking
and he was like, I'm just devastated.
And I remember being like, yeah.
That that I mean, I felt for him.
I wasn't making fun. I will I'm not
that kind of guy. I'm not gonna be
like, well, you know,
you shouldn't have. I I leave that for
later once the tears have dried.
But I was like, yeah. That that's really
tough. And he says,
He goes, yeah. It doesn't help that I
keep listening to these sad songs.
Like, every step you take forward, you just
pull yourself back,
make some progress,
and you just listen to another sad song.
And it the song is talking about, like,
you know, like, maybe in another world, we'll
be together. And he's like, do you think?
And I'm like, no. I don't.
I really don't. Like, you need to let
that iPhone die. Like,
Spotify I'm canceling your account to Spotify.
It's self inflicted.
That's the thing. Right?
So he had to do all of this
11 years
just to successfully redirect himself
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
If he did not return to the path
that led to Allah, doctor Mustafa writes, he
would be squandering his chance to reach
his eternal
destination of paradise.
Doctor Mustafa says, imagine people driving on a
road,
certain that the road will lead them directly
to their beloved people, their beloved ones,
only to realize after a while
that they were on the wrong road.
Imagine that you were going on a road
trip and you were heading in one direction,
and then at some point, for some reason,
your GPS, your Google Maps got messed up
and it re
navigates and calibrates and you realize you're going
the wrong way.
He says, surely,
these people would have to make a u-turn.
He said if they paid attention to the
road signs along the way
and not only been so focused on the
device in front of them,
they maybe would have picked up on the
signs that told them
before they were told that they were heading
the wrong way.
Do you see what he's saying?
If only they had had their eyes up,
they might have seen
that, hey, that sign doesn't say Austin. It
says Houston. And who on earth is going
to Houston?
I'm just joking. A lot of Houstonians here
tonight. My fellow apparently.
I'm supposed to go to Austin. Why am
I going there? I'm supposed to go to
and you would look at the signs and
you would say, I'm supposed to go this
way. Why am I going to Denton again?
Right?
And even before
the app had notified you, your senses would
have kicked in. You would have said, I
need to let me let me pull over
and check something out because this doesn't seem
right.
Your intuition kicks in.
So Imam Ghazali says the heart
is the home of your spiritual intuition.
And if the heart has too many attachments,
you can't pick up on these signs.
What do we always say
when the tragedy or the crisis happens? We
always say, what? I should have seen it
coming.
I should have seen it coming.
I knew.
I I remember
them saying this. I remember her, him, that
I remember all of that.
Every 6 weeks, every 10 days, every I
remember.
But the heart was too
focused
on attachments to actually change direction, change course.
He says,
had you paid attention to the signs, you
would have not lost precious time.
And the smart people do not hesitate to
change course. Once they realize they are on
the wrong course,
they will immediately turn around and even try
to make up for lost time.
He says there is a person
SubhanAllah. He's from Al Quds, doctor Mustafa.
That's where we met him.
He says there is an imam at the
Dome of the Rock at Al Aqsa Masjid
in Jerusalem
who keeps
making the supplication,
asking Allah not to let distractions
cut him off from Allah.
He says as to what constitutes a distraction,
quite frankly, it is everything in creation.
This is a profound supplication from someone
who more than anything wants to be connected
to Allah,
which is the etymology of the word salah,
the prayer that we perform.
The heart can accommodate only one thing or
the other,
but not 2 things at the same time.
We'll go ahead and open it up to
some q and a inshallah.
That's doctor Mostafa's analysis.
Amazing as always,
if you go to slido.com
and if you type in the code, which
is,
30 and up, all the words,
30 and up,
you can submit some questions inshallah. Magrib is
in about 15 minutes.
So if you,
if you need to make wudu, inshallah, you
can go ahead and make it now. So
if you go to slido, s l I
d o dot com, 30 and up, all
words.
Then inshallah, we can, do our q and
a for about 8 to 10 minutes before
we break for mohrab.
30 and up.
In the Why Trials Happen series, you spoke
about a book that you are writing hasn't
been published yet. Inshallah.
I'm working on it. Make dua.
How do you stop from over criticizing yourself?
This is a really good question.
Raise your hand if this is something that
you
connect with. How do you stop from being
overcritical?
Okay.
Very good question.
Ibn al Ta'illa,
he has a beautiful line.
So being overly critical let let me give
one scenario just to demonstrate, like, how this
might manifest.
So a lot of times we're overly critical
of things
and we,
what's the word?
We become, like, very dis disappointed or even,
like, you know, self deprecating.
We we kinda beat ourselves up because of
the things that we think that we should
accomplish or achieve.
It ibn al-'Az says that this is comes
from a spiritual void.
Two things. Number 1 is that if it's
a sin,
if it's a sinful thing that we're doing
and we're beating ourselves up about it,
ibn Attaula says it's more beneficial to focus
on the energy of repentance than it is
to beat yourself up.
A person who beats themself up constantly over
a sin
without spending time repenting
may actually be dedicating that energy in a
way that is this is kinda harsh. He
says, you're kinda giving yourself too much importance.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, the vanity has found its way
into thinking about this sin. Let me give
a human example to to illustrate this. Alright?
Let's say that somebody
promised that they were gonna bring you coffee,
and they forgot.
And you're sitting down, and they're like, I'm
so sorry. And you saw all of the
you saw all the regret. Oh, I forgot
to bring you coffee.
And you're a good person, so you're like,
don't worry about it. It's fine. It's fine.
I'm good. I had coffee this morning anyways.
I'm good. And they're like, no. No. No.
I forgot
to get you coffee.
And you're like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry
about it. It's not a big deal. Next
time, insha Allah.
And they said, no. Like, I should never
forget
to get you coffee. That's on me. And
you're like,
be quiet.
At this point, you're not hearing what I'm
saying.
And your focus is vain because you're focusing
too much on you still.
If your real intention was to get me
coffee, once I say don't worry about it,
then you should let it
go. But your fixation
on your mistake instead of the fixation on
the mercy of Allah
is its own form of vanity.
If Allah promises forgiveness
and we spend more time fixating on the
mistake than seeking forgiveness,
what are we doing?
Just turn to Allah and ask for forgiveness.
Don't fixate on the mistake.
The mistake will cause a point of regret.
That's good. Use that point to repent and
move on.
That's what Allah wants. Allah does not want
a person to beat themselves up and self
deprecate and become
a shadow of themselves melting into nothing but
remorse and regret. No. A person needs to
realize that Allah's mercy will always overcome their
mistakes. So that's 1, if it's a sin.
If it's like a mundane action,
if it's like, oh, man. I'm always struggling.
I'm always this. I'm always that. I'm not
good at work. I'm not good at this.
Then
there's a few, maybe, you know, avenues, like,
mental health wise that a person can take.
Maybe there's a little bit of anxiety there,
you know, some even low low level anxiety
that's maybe a little bit more constant that
a person can maybe seek therapy for. But
generally speaking, the reality is that it's a
it's an issue of perspective.
Right? Do what you can. This is why
I always tell people
that Qadr, destiny,
is one of the greatest gifts of Islam
because you just do what you can, and
then you just stop.
You just give up. Like, at some point,
you're just like, I did everything I could.
Now if you didn't do all that you
could,
then you can go ahead and be hard
on yourself.
That's okay.
You know, if you're like, man, I misfudged
her again. Like, do you have an alarm
clock? You're like, what's that?
Be a little hard on yourself.
That's okay.
But if you've done everything you can
and you still are not getting
the outcome of your desire,
then just say.
Whatever Allah desires is what happens. I I
can't do much more than that.
I can't do much. I can't do better
than that. Wala, I can't.
How
can you tell if you're doing something for
Allah or for people
if even upon reflecting, it feels like you're
doing it for both? By the way, it's
not wrong to do something for both. We
give charity for Allah, but we also want
to help people. Yes?
That's that's a good intention. Here's the test
though.
If you remove the people, will you stop
doing it?
Or if you remove the intention of sincerity
for Allah, would you stop doing it?
So if you're doing it for people,
then a person will easily forget about Allah
and they'll just give charity and they'll get
their tax write offs and they'll forget. But
let's say, for example, that the tax write
offs disappear
and the smiles disappear. And let's say that
you give charity to somebody and they're like,
that's it?
Let's say that you went up to somebody
and you gave them a bunch of money
and they're like, wow, I thought you were
generous.
What's happened to the prophet, alayhis salaam?
The prophet, alayhis salam, he gave charity and
the person said, Oh, they said Muhammad was
generous.
Can you imagine that?
And the prophet,
alhamdulillah, just grabbed his sword.
He's like, that's the last thing you'll ever
say. The prophet
said, why? He said, give him more.
Because he wasn't doing it for the person.
This person could be the most, like,
worthless individual in the world. If you're giving
charity for the sake of Allah,
doesn't matter what this person says. I'm gonna
do it.
Abu Bakr as Siddiq used to give charity
and then that person
was involved in a rumor about his daughter
Aisha,
and he stopped.
And Allah corrected him and said, oh, hold
on. Were you doing it for Allah or
for him? Because if you're doing it for
him, then you can stop. But if you're
doing it for Allah, never stop.
So if you wanna check your intention, just
play that game.
Remove the variables.
If you remove people, are you still motivated?
If the answer is yes, you're sincere. If
you remove Allah from the equation
and you're still motivated,
there's a problem.
Right? We wanna make sure that we never
leave Allah out of that equation.
For young working professionals, Islamically, how do we
balance supporting family,
whether here or abroad and saving, especially if
family asks for money constantly?
So,
again,
not every answer is gonna be easy.
And I think everybody has responsibilities, but you
have responsibilities.
You have
you're allowed in Islam to have responsibilities and
boundaries. They're not conflicting.
Right? Responsibilities
and boundaries meet at the at the boundary
of those two things.
So we all have responsibilities,
but then there's also boundaries which are typically
another word for, like, our own responsibilities maintaining
those.
So if you have, like, a mortgage to
pay,
a car bill to pay,
you know, your utilities to pay, but your
family is asking
doesn't have to be family sometimes, friends or
people, are constantly asking,
then you can say, I can I'm happy
to help. This is how much I'm able
to do.
Right? And that's a responsibility
being met by a boundary. And only you
know. I can't give, like, a detailed breakdown
financially of this. Only you know what your
responsibilities are. And everyone in this room, their
responsibilities are different. Their earning capacity is different.
Everybody in this room can figure this out
on their own. But But what I want
you to take away from this question is
you're allowed to fulfill your responsibilities while having
boundaries. Of course. Absolutely.
Right?
Your family is not entirely entitled to your
wealth, especially
if you have
responsibilities
of your own. Let's say that you're married
and you have your own spouse, your own
kids, etcetera. Absolutely.
You have to make sure that you take
care of all people that are depending on
you in that way.
We'll do one more question.
How do you keep your faith when you
feel like you've hit rock bottom?
The fact that you're thinking about faith in
that state means that it's there.
Because most people at rock bottom,
if they don't have a connection to Allah,
they're not thinking about Allah.
Think about it. If you're in the worst
possible scenario
and you think about your relationship with Allah,
that's a good indication.
Because typically, the human being usually reaches out
or yearns for
the resolution to their problem. Okay? So that's
there. Now the thought is good, but it's
not enough.
We always know that action is demanded. Belief
has to meet with action. Okay? So if
a person's at rock bottom and they think,
man, I need a lot to help me
with this. How am I gonna get through
this? Okay. Ask yourself the tough questions.
Have I done he literally just finished the
chapter. The word salah
comes from the same etymological
root in Arabic as connection.
Have I been doing the things that are
prerequisites
for me to have this connection to Allah?
Or do I feel like I'm calling a
friend after a long time?
Do I do my duas feel intimate or
do they feel very distant?
And usually the answers to those questions are
related directly to the consistency that I've had
in my prayers. Look. Spiritual strength is not
found
nor is it discovered except by
consistent
regimented religious practice.
Right? Everybody who has massive achievement in life,
they always tell you the same secret. What's
the secret?
Work hard.
Just work hard.
Do it every day.
Do it every single day. The person was
able to achieve some financial success in their
career.
They don't just say I woke up one
day and I was super rich.
That's typically not how it goes. That's not
the norm.
Right? It really but what about okay. That's
cryptocurrency.
Right?
That one weird kid in high school who
bought a lot. If you're here, by the
way, rootsdfw.org/sustain
is a wonderful website.
Okay?
No. Generally speaking, people that were successful worked
really hard. If you've ever accomplished anything, look
at your own life. You stayed up late.
You studied for exams. You went to class.
You took those exams.
You did things you didn't wanna do, you
woke up and went to work on days
you didn't want to, you worked hard.
Allah gave you tofiq but at the end
of your hard work. It's a recipe. Right?
People that accomplish things with their health, they
did a little bit every day.
They didn't just suddenly, you know, you work
out and you look in the mirror, you're
like, why don't I look better?
This is day 1.
Right? That's day 1.
Keep going. It's the same with spirituality.
But actually,
the the the generosity of Allah is that
spirituality has a much higher return rate and
it's much faster.
So you can't compare it to saving up
or working out. It's a bad analogy, actually.
I blame myself.
It's the it's the only thing I can
think of. But a spiritual turnaround, Allah Ta'ala
puts so much barakah in it.
Once you decide to come back to him
and make that commitment, there are challenges. But
once you decide,
Allah expedites and catalyzes all those decisions.
And you start to see the world differently.
And simply even by seeing the world differently,
you start to feel different about Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. So may Allah make it easy
for this person.
But just start taking that step. Don't worry
about all the prayers you've missed. Just pray
the next one. Just keep going to the
next one. Just do the next one, inshallah.
Okay?
We'll do one more.
Oh, man.
Some of these are like
entire lectures.
How do I stop myself from getting angry
at those who are uncaring
or even proud over horrible events like Gaza
or and Bangladesh? I'm so angry but I
can't get over it.
Yes. SubhanAllah. I mean, I I think that
the the anger that you have is good.
The anger that anybody has when they see
injustice, of course, is good.
But we also have to meet the prophet
had the most reason in most scenarios that
he dealt with oppression to be angry.
And he took the energy of anger, and
he translated it into something that was productive.
And that's really again, when we talk about
intention, this is a good way to wrap
it up.
When you're angry about something,
you can choose to perform an action that
will serve the cause
of what you're angry about, or you can
choose to serve yourself.
People, when they're
engaging in advocacy,
have to think
very importantly about what they're serving.
Am I serving myself or am I serving
the cause? And in fact, when I serve
myself,
I've actually taken away from the cause.
So if I were to say, you know
what? I'm really upset
about the genocide that's happening in Gaza right
now. May Allah give them victory.
And I went and I just started
going to the Bank of America and I
just started breaking people's car windows.
And when they walked out, they're like, what
are you doing? I'm like, you don't care
about Gaza.
It's true that I'm angry.
It might be true that they don't care
about Gaza either, by the way. That might
be accurate.
But did what I do accomplish
and make progress towards the goal that I
wanted to accomplish, or did it take away
from it? It took away from it. I
served myself. I got my anger out, but
I didn't actually help the people of Gaza.
In fact, I've hurt them.
There was a sheikh in in the UK.
His name is Adam Kelwick.
And you gotta heard about all these anti
Muslim protests in the UK. And, like, people
being chased down and, like, attacked and stuff
like that.
So there's been counter responses, of course, Muslims
in the UK
doing their thing.
And the sheikh, he decided to go out
there, and he decided to go and meet
these people who are protesting Islam and Muslims,
and he decided to invite them in the
masjid, feed them, give them chai, and win
them over.
And everyone's questioning his tactics, but he's
slowly become this person now that is transforming
all of these
intensely conservative British people that were anti immigration,
anti Muslim, to now they're like, yeah. I
guess I do like chicken tikka masala. I
guess I do. You know?
And the story is becoming very powerful
because even though he was angry at first,
he realized I need to manipulate the situation
to my benefit.
Right? The prophet was a chess master. He
understood how to do that. And so there
is a there is a place for protest.
There is a place for making noise. There
is a place for definitely
letting people know that we're not gonna be
silent.
But there's also a place for taking all
of the energy that we have and directing
it towards a a beneficial medium. So we
ask to give us tofiq.
Everybody.
We're gonna go pray now because they're gonna
start in just a couple of minutes. If
you could help with any of the chairs,
if you use a chair,
just fold it and take it back to
the dolly in the hallway and put it
there. If you've sat on any of the
furniture, if you could just rearrange it the
way it was, and if you sat on
the back jacks, if you could help line
it up, I'd really appreciate that.