AbdelRahman Murphy – Thirty & Up Treasury Of Imam Al-Ghazli #12
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AI: Transcript ©
Okay, assalamu alaikum, bismillah, bismillah walhamdulillah, wa salatu
wassalamu ala rasool allahi wa ala alihi wa
ashabihi ajma'in, welcome home everybody, it's good
to see you, alhamdulillah.
Welcome back to 30 and up.
In the spirit of tonight, I strained my
back on Saturday, so it's okay, I'm fine,
it's just normal, but I'm on 800mg of
ibuprofen, just joking, 1000mg, yeah, oh don't worry,
I got this, I got everything going on,
alhamdulillah, no, I'm just joking around, but it's
good to see everybody here, for those of
you who didn't get the joke, this is
the older crowd, so we're constantly pulling and
straining ourselves.
It wasn't doing anything, you know, heroic or
miraculous, I was helping a lady get her
suitcase down from the plane, and I just
turned, and that was it, that was all
she wrote.
So, lesson, never help anybody, no, bismillah walhamdulillah,
wa salatu wassalamu ala rasool allah.
Okay, so the Slido is open for questions,
if anyone wants to ask any questions, slido
.com and then you can type in 30
and up, all words, tonight inshallah we're going
over the 12th section of this book, it's
already been 12 weeks, wow.
And this is a really amazing quote, this
is a really amazing passage that he actually
pulls from the Ihyaa al-Middin, which, you
know, obviously is his great work, the one
that has the most in terms of probably,
you know, recognition and just people's awareness of
it.
So, again, to kind of set the stage,
the Ihyaa, this encyclopedia or this work that
he put together, it was meant to try
to instill a spiritual understanding of religious practice
back into the practitioners of religion.
So, and this, you know, if it's in
a Muslim majority country and experience like he
was experiencing, then obviously that makes sense, like
when something is normative, when it's normal, it
can become, you know, just natural, desensitized, you
can lose value for what you have.
And so, what ended up happening was that
people, including even some scholars and others, just
became sort of like accustomed to religion being
a matter of like checkboxes, right?
Did I pray?
Did I give charity?
Did I fast?
Yes, yes, yes, and then that was it.
So what Imam Ghazali did is he authors
this text and the idea of the text
was, again, trying to integrate some kind of
spiritual connection back to all of this, right?
What does it mean to pray?
What does it mean to fast?
What does it mean spiritually to do these
things?
And so, beyond the acts of worship that
are prescribed, like Salah, Zakat, and Siyam, there's
also, he wrote about just general good character,
good conduct.
And he answered a lot of very tough
questions with regards to just how a person
lives their life and what they do in
their life.
And one of the questions that he answers
that we're going to go over tonight is
the question of love, but not that kind
of love.
He talks about love with a larger scope.
And really, tonight he answers two sides of
the coin of love.
The first side of this coin is, how
do I know that Allah loves me?
Which is, if you level everything, if you
just look at the world, you know, across
all horizons and you just want to understand
what is the most important question, the most
important answer, this is it.
Like, how can I be sure?
How can I be confident that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala is pleased with me?
And that He loves, this is it.
When you put your head on your pillow
every night, that's gotta be the question that
goes through your heart and your mind.
Number two, and this shows you that Imam
Ghazali is not an unrealistic idealist.
How do I know that people love me?
And the reason why I love the fact
that he put these two together was because
he wanted to demonstrate to the reader that
you don't have to be either or.
It's normal for people to want to be
loved by people.
There's a reason why the Prophet peace be
upon him, he said, إِنَّمَا بُعِثْتُ لِيُتَمِّمَ مَا
كَارِمَ الْأَخْلَاقِ That I was sent as a
messenger to perfect good character.
Why would it be so important for people
to have good character with one another unless
there was something valuable within community, within experience,
within life to be loved and to be
appreciated.
You know, a lot of people, for the
sake of, you know, some people say for
the sake of living their truth.
Some people dress it up with religion, right,
for the sake of the haq and the
deen.
They just act so repulsive and they push
people away.
And they justify this repulsive behavior, this repulsive
character by saying, well, this is who I
am, you know, this is what, if it
means standing up for my religion and people
don't like that, I'd rather be with Allah.
And they try to create this false dichotomy
that I love Allah, so you either love
me and Allah or you don't like me
and that means that you don't love the
religion or Allah.
But we find that the Prophet, peace be
upon him, was never hated even by people
who took him as an enemy.
He was never hated.
There's actually, subhanAllah, a narration.
This is in the Meccan era when one
of the daughters of the Quraishi, you know,
chieftains was being proposed to marry the Prophet,
peace be upon him.
And they were sort of making fun of
this Quraishi tribal leader, the person who again
was like a sworn enemy of the Prophet,
peace be upon him.
They're like, oh wow, that's crazy, your daughter's
going to marry this guy that you hate.
And they were sort of mocking him.
They were saying, you know, like laughing at
this man, that wow, you must have raised
her right, huh?
You know, she's marrying someone that you think
is an enemy.
And he, as again a sworn enemy of
this man, peace be upon him, he said,
wallahi, he didn't say wallahi, but he said,
I swear that there is no one that
I know who would be better to marry
my daughter than him.
Imagine the kind of person that you have
to be, where a person who disagrees with
every fiber of your belief, whatever you want
to call it, your philosophy, your manifest, whatever
it might be, a person who disagrees with
every fiber of that still cannot deny that
you're the best person in character.
It's impossible.
So Imam Ghazali, he has this beautiful passage
where he talks about the connection between the
love that we seek from each other, right?
We want to be loved by our family,
our friends, our community, want to be appreciated.
We don't want to be looked down upon.
Nobody wants to be hated on.
But then he also ties it together with
the love of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And he says there's this uncanny connection that
you might miss.
If you're not paying attention, you might miss
it.
And he builds out this argument.
So let's go ahead and read it together
and then we'll talk about it inshallah.
So he says that when the love of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala becomes strong in
a person, when a person's love for Allah
grows and it becomes strong, what does that
mean?
How do we know that that's the case?
Well, if a person's relationship with Allah becomes
strong, it means that they begin to see
Allah more in their daily life.
So let's take the example of like eating
meals.
If you eat something, the person who loves
Allah recognizes that that is from Allah.
And that's why we say bismillah before we
say alhamdulillah after.
The person's cognizant, right?
If you love somebody and you know that
that person enjoys that meal, like my wife
loves Italian food.
So every time I have Italian food, which
is not often because I'm on a diet,
but which is, you know, when I do,
you take a picture and send it and
you say, what?
Like I'm thinking of you, right?
Because you always connect what you know, your
beloved loves, you always make that connection.
You know, whether it's a spouse, whether it's
a friend, whether it's your parent, whoever you
just send them.
I mean, the famous Arab and Desi parent
behavior is what?
They make fun of this on TikTok.
Like you say you like one thing and
your Desi dad buys a box from Costco
and he's like, I heard you like this,
right?
And it's like 197 pieces of it.
And you're like, I just said I liked
one, you know, or like, you know, you
say you like something and like your mom
slices it up and just quietly puts it
on your desk as you're, you know, doing
something like these are all just love languages,
manifestations of that love.
So how do I know that my love
for Allah is penetrating inside my heart?
My love for Allah is penetrating into my
heart by what?
By being demonstrating my remembrance of him in
every scenario, even in like the mundane things,
especially in the mundane things, right?
But also you don't want to miss out
on the actual acts of worship themselves.
So he says when your love for Allah
becomes strong, the fruit of that, the benefit
of that, the gift now as a result
of that is that you become a person
who you start to fulfill these actions of
worship.
You love Allah.
You start to pray.
You love all the things that Allah has
done for you.
You start to fulfill these acts of worship.
As a result of that, he says, is
that you start to demonstrate your good character
and your morals.
So your love of Allah starts to change
you as a person.
You're no longer behaving in a way that
is rough, that is repulsive, but rather you're
starting to, you know, second guess and check
yourself.
You know, I'm upset, I'm angry, I'm impatient,
but I need to check myself.
Why?
Because this is not the fitting of a
person who loves Allah.
And that person begins to try, as he
says, to inculcate all of the manners that
they have from the holy Qur'an and
from the prophetic example.
And then he says that once you get
to the stage, you'll notice something.
Once you get to the stage, you will
start to notice something.
Or if you witness this stage and other
people, you notice something, which is that now
the journey of you demonstrating your love for
Allah will start to manifest in people starting
to love this person.
So the better that this person gets at
worshipping Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the better
this person gets at having good character, now
this person starts to actually themselves become beloved
to people.
And logically it makes sense, right?
Your behavior changes, you become better in character,
and you become more beloved to individuals.
But there's actually a hadith in which the
Prophet peace be upon him, a hadith actually
in which he tells us the sequence of
how this works.
That if a person is righteous and pious
and works towards this state, Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala appreciates that.
And he announces in the heavens to all
of the creation that I love this person,
so he declares that everybody should also love
this person.
And the angels all appreciate this individual.
And then the angels call out and they
say that we love this person, so everybody
should love this person.
And the hadith actually cascades down to all
human beings.
That this announcement is made, simply why?
Because this person felt close to Allah and
now this love is being reciprocated.
So now he continues, and he says, this
inclination to love this person is either strong
or weak as a result of the status
of faith in the heart of the person
who's observing them.
Have you guys ever seen someone who is
like a devoted good person and you can't
explain why but you really, really just are
magnetically attracted to them?
Have you seen this kind of person?
Like you might go to the masjid and
just see this person and you know nothing
else about them.
Like you've never, maybe you don't even know
their name.
And you look at them and the way
they carry themselves, the way that they pray,
and you just feel in your heart this
deep sense of appreciation for this person, this
respect.
And even like to this point, like this
love, this admiration.
This is kind of what this is alluding
to.
But he says, and this is the scary
part, he says that the response that we
have to this person is actually an indication
of who we are.
Those who are stronger in faith see goodness.
They admire this person.
Those who are weaker in faith, they start
to see things and they become irritated by
it.
So they see the person who prays and
they're like, this person prays too much.
They see the person who's nice and they
say, this person's too nice to people, needs
to be more real, more serious.
They see the person who spends time reading
Quran in the masjid, they say, why aren't
they with their family?
Why aren't they, don't they have a job?
They see the person who wants to spend
time coming Tuesday night here and they're like,
this is so inconvenient.
They pick seven o'clock, 7.30, we
can't even get coffee.
They start to see negativity all around them,
even though objectively the heart that is pure
sees nothing but like good things.
Now I'm using, when I describe this individual,
I'm using like the majhool, right?
I'm making this like an ignored or an
invisible person because this person, you know, vacillates
between every one of us.
We all have our days.
I mean, basically he's describing a hater.
This is like a pure hater, someone who
has in their heart a void and so
with that void, they cannot see anything that
they appreciate.
They're empty.
You know, they say in Arabic, the person
who is empty cannot give anything.
So this person being empty, when they see
beautiful things, they can't recognize it.
To them, the sushi at Nobu is the
same as 7-Eleven.
They don't have the dhokh, the difference, right?
They can't tell.
So when they see someone spending time reading
the Qur'an, they're like, this person is
wasting time as if they're reading something that's
nothing.
So he says this inclination is weakened or
strengthened according to the strength of the faith
of this person.
He says, but if this person's faith is
strong, they actually don't even need any substantial
connection or relationship with this other individual to
feel this feeling of appreciation.
Basically the one who's empty needs a lot
of convincing.
But the one who is full, the one
who is fulfilled, needs very little convincing at
all.
To the point where, if we take this
to the opposite extreme, the one who is
fulfilled and full, when they see something, even
if there's a 50-50 chance it could
be something else, they always assume what?
The best.
They always assume the best.
But the person who is empty on the
inside, when they see something, if there's a
50-50 chance, they'll always assume the worst.
All of this is predicated on one status
and that is, how is your relationship with
Allah?
And then Imam Ghazali ties it all together
and says, the way you see the world
and the way you see others is the
way that Allah sees you.
If you're positive, if you're loving, if you're
appreciative, if you are generally benevolent, if you're
a person that is optimistic, if you're a
person that is accepting, that is gracious, all
of these things, then guess what?
That is the way that Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala will treat you on the Day
of Judgment.
That's the way that He sees you.
If you want to go to sleep at
night confident knowing that Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala loves me, then you have to inculcate
those characteristics that you also want to receive
from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
This is why the hadith of the Prophet
alayhi salatu wasalam always tie together the traits
between humanity and the divine.
Meaning what?
The hadith that says, if you're not thankful
to Allah, you'll never be thankful to people.
And what does this mean?
You can't flip a switch between who you
are with Allah and who you are with
the population.
We call that hypocrisy.
We call that being a hypocrite.
When a person is not congruent in their
relationship with Allah and their relationship with humanity,
we say that's a hypocritical status.
So then he says, this love that this
person has of this other individual when they
appreciate them has no ulterior motive at all.
This person loves this individual simply because they
see them doing things that Allah loves.
They are pleased with them.
And because they love them, Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala loves this person back in return.
Okay.
And I was out of here, got a
little bit, you know, I should have, I
should have recommended everybody to put on their
floaties because that was a little deep.
But I think that we can, we can
extrapolate some very valuable lessons here.
The first, kind of what I started with,
but just to restate it now that we
know what this passage says, is that it
is totally and completely normal and human to
want to be loved by people.
There's a very popular discourse now that is
becoming a lot more apparent in which people
are told, don't care about what anyone else
thinks.
All you have to care about is yourself.
And all you have to do is live
true according to what you value and that's
it.
Now look, there is always a place for
independent integrity in the heart of a Muslim.
We are not pushed by the macro culture.
If people say do this, we don't do
it unless Allah says so.
If people say stop, we don't stop unless
Allah says stop.
However, there is a line that can become
extreme in which a person forgets that they
exist in a collective.
Imagine if we all adopted this to like
its ultimate level, this idea of what?
I don't care what you think about me.
Imagine the fabric of our community being pulled
apart because we would do things and say
things and we would finish those statements in
our head by saying I really don't care
how you feel.
On the opposite side, listen to this story
about the Prophet Isa.
Messenger of God, yes?
We need a little bit more consensus, yes?
Okay, alright.
A little worried, alright.
Everyone repeat it for me.
Okay, so look.
Messenger of Allah, okay?
No doubt.
I mean even the character of the Prophet
Isa, even before revelation, before Wahi, undoubted, undisputed.
After Wahi, of course, no question, okay?
It's Ramadan.
Heightened stakes, heightened spirituality.
Everyone's heart is pure, everyone's feeling it, we're
vibing.
May Allah give us Ramadan.
We know Ramadan, right?
We know that feeling.
You become like the best version of yourself
ever.
You know the normal like bukwas and like
stuff that you think about people, the garbage,
right?
That you think about people, that stuff is
expelled from your heart.
It's expunged because Ramadan is a time in
which you cleanse yourself from that, okay?
And on top of that is the last
10 nights.
Oh boy.
It's the peak season.
The Prophet Isa is doing itikaf in his
masjid.
Itikaf is when you spend the last 10
days and nights in worship of Allah in
seclusion.
You basically check in to the masjid and
you spend the days and nights worshipping Allah,
resting, worshipping.
It's just a time of focus.
Sabbatical, it's a spiritual sabbatical to worship Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Okay?
So he's there.
Now, his wife comes to visit him and
to check in, which is normal.
He didn't have phones.
Like now when we do itikaf, we're just
texting like, hey, is everything good?
Everything all right?
Okay, this and that.
You know, sending door dash home like, hey,
I miss you, right?
So she comes to the masjid and checks
in.
He, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, can't leave the
masjid because part of itikaf is that you
have to stay in the masjid.
So he's standing in the doorway of the
masjid.
It's nighttime.
And he's standing and he's speaking to his
wife in the doorway.
So I want you to imagine that you
just drove by Roots and you see like,
Shaykh Abdul Nasser, Mufti Kamani, you know, Shaykh
Mikhail, just standing in the doorway and there's
just a woman there and it's late at
night.
No one else is around.
So two companions are walking by.
And they see this.
And you know, like the response you have
when you think you saw what you shouldn't
have seen.
So the narrator actually says in the narration
that they actually started to walk with more
purpose.
Like they felt like they were intruding on
like a private conversation.
So they kind of sped up.
But you also do that when you are
concerned that you saw something bad.
The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, they can't
tell who he's talking to.
Just looks like a woman.
Late at night.
He calls them back.
Says, hey, come back, come back.
Hold on.
This is where he paused the story.
Why does he care what they think?
Doesn't he just live his truth?
Doesn't he have to just not care?
I don't care what you think about me.
When he called them, he's like, I don't
care what you say.
Tell anybody.
That's not what he said.
You know what he said to them?
He said to them, this woman is my
wife.
I'm talking to my wife.
Don't think any differently, please.
They respond and they say, ya Rasulullah, we
would never.
Oh my God, we would never.
We would never assume anything of you.
Like they were so like, I mean, heartbroken.
Like, ya Rasulullah, you shouldn't have to even
feel like you have to defend yourself to
us.
They were basically like pleading with him.
Please, don't think that of us.
You know what he said?
He goes, I know.
But Shaytan, his whispers run through you like
blood.
Isn't that so interesting?
It's so interesting because again, we almost wear
it as a sign of maturity, the cloak
of maturity.
Like, ah, I don't care what people think
about me.
He's the messenger of Allah.
You know, Allah could have just revealed the
next day, for those two who were walking
by the masjid, it was his wife.
Like, it would have been in the Qur
'an.
You know what I mean?
I'm not joking, by the way.
In the hadith of Isk, Aisha radiallahu anha,
right?
That's another example.
There was a story made up about the
wife of the Prophet, A.S. That she
was unfaithful.
Horrible thing.
A rumor propagated by the hypocrites.
And she did defend herself until she came
to a point.
Okay, and this is where I'm gonna get
to.
She did defend herself.
She did advocate for herself.
She didn't say, I don't care what you
think about me.
No, that's not a spiritually sound disposition to
have.
That's not how we behave.
It's almost an overreaction.
I understand, like, I understand when parents told
you growing up, What will people think?
What will people think?
I get that.
That's not healthy either.
We don't live a life of every step
we take, we're assessing what people think.
That's dangerous too.
But we also don't fully turn and say,
I don't care what anyone thinks.
Because that's not how our Prophet, A.S.
taught us.
What we learn from this religion, from our
Prophet, and from the companions, A.S. is
what?
You do everything in your power, normatively, to
establish what you know is true, and then
you let Allah take care of it.
And this is what Sayyida Aisha did.
She did.
She did advocate for herself.
She did defend herself.
She did say that this did not happen.
She told her parents, she told her family,
she told her husband, she said, this did
not happen.
And then, the Prophet, A.S., told her,
If this is true, Allah will defend you.
And Allah revealed in Surah An-Nur, defending
Aisha and saying that this never happened.
This was a rumor started by the hypocrites.
But she did not leave it and not
touch it.
She said, no way, this did not happen.
She defended herself.
So, bringing this back now to what Imam
Al-Ghazali says, I don't want anyone to
adopt the modality that we find in the
popular discourse today that as long as you
know who you are, don't care what people
think about you.
Part of dawah, part of actually being people
that are enthusiastic and are encouraged to teach
others about Islam is that we functionally do
care what people think about us as Muslims.
Not to the point where we are petrified
and we make things up.
But we do walk differently in public spaces
knowing that we represent something much greater than
us.
We know that.
When I'm tipping a waiter and my name
is Muhammad, I'm sorry, Muhammad Habibi.
You get the privilege of when you meet
the Prophet, A.S., on the Day of
Judgment, you share the same name.
You get that privilege.
But you also got to tip pretty high.
You can't.
You can't not tip well if your name
is Muhammad or Abdullah.
Like, you get the benefit of those names,
but you're going to lose some cash.
Right?
Why?
Because, can you imagine?
Can you imagine on the Day of Judgment
meeting the most generous man to have ever
lived and what's known about you is that
you were cheap?
Can you imagine that conversation where the Prophet,
A.S., would literally give his shirt off
of his back and you can't tip an
extra three dollars?
This is not about sohbah, by the way.
This is not about sohbah, okay?
This is about understanding what we carry.
We do.
We're not petrified.
We're not socially and mentally paralyzed by the
idea of what people think.
That's the other extreme.
But we do actually care.
And when we do this in a way
that is healthy, healthy in a way that
is productive, then what we find is we
find that we will start walking and moving
and carrying ourselves and interacting in a way
where we will have confidence that this is
what Allah loves.
We will act.
Like, when you tip more than you want
to tip, I know it sounds like a
dumb example, but it's real.
When you add a little bit more than
you want to, your nap's over, by the
way.
When you add a little bit more than
you want to, you walk away from that.
And instead of just feeling like, what did
I do?
You'll feel what?
I did that for Allah, and I know
that Allah now is smiling at me.
I feel this sense of goodness knowing that
Allah is pleased with me.
When someone says something to you, someone shoulder
checks you, someone cuts in line, someone does
this at the airport, at this, at that,
and you have every right as an individual,
as a person, to just go off on
them.
Right?
And you can blame it on everything.
You know, every culture is so funny.
You guys ever heard the term, like, hot
-blooded?
Every culture is like, oh, you know us,
fill in the blank, whatever culture.
You know us, right?
We're so angry.
At this point, like, every culture is angry.
And that's not an excuse to be angry.
Imagine, I want you to imagine this.
Has anyone here ever been on a canceled
flight?
I'm sorry, have you ever gotten off of
a canceled flight?
Okay.
What's the emotional state of the people in
line?
Frustration is a very polite and academic way
to put it, doctor.
They are temper tantrum.
People are having tantrums.
And you know what?
Look, it's not fun.
It's not fun.
But is it the person's fault who's rebooking
your flight?
Is it their fault?
Are they the one who...
No.
No.
But the way in which the people are
talking to that individual, screaming, yelling.
I was just at the airport.
I literally just flew this week.
Yelling, screaming at this person.
Miskeen, miskeen that they didn't do anything.
Person just checked in, just clocked in for
their shift.
Now, and my mom taught me this.
May Allah bless our parents, man.
My mom used to say this amazing line.
She said, anytime you do dawah, anytime, like,
you're nice to somebody, always let them know
that it's because you're Muslim.
She said, like, they owe you five seconds.
So she would always say, like in this
scenario, for example, hypothetically, she would walk up
to that person, and she would say, like,
I'm so sorry people are treating you this
way.
Like, she wouldn't even start with the flight.
I'm so sorry people are treating you this
way.
It's not your fault.
And those people, subhanAllah, when you say something
like that, they almost like break down.
And then she would slip in.
She's quick.
You know, in my faith in Islam, we're
taught to be patient.
Well, I'm not joking.
Wallahi, you think I'm joking.
I'm not joking.
In my faith in Islam, we're taught this
is not right.
As a Muslim, me, Muslim, I swear to
you, there's a secret that I have not
said about her.
So she worked in the hospital in Chicago.
She was a dietician.
And she used to go, and, you know,
she had to, like, obviously, it's a tough
job because you basically have to tell people
in the hospital, you can't eat that.
There's people who are, like, in there for,
like, cholesterol, their heart stuff.
And they're like, we want, like, French toast
and bacon.
And she's like, you're gonna have, like, steel
-cut oats and, like, sliced strawberries for the
rest of your life.
Like, she basically had to come in, and
she was the grim reaper of people's appetites.
Because that was her, she had requirements.
Like, you want this, you can't have that.
You have to pick from this menu.
And so she engaged with a lot of
frustrated people.
And so she would just walk in and
say, yeah, you know what, we believe in
Islam, that God gave us this body as
a trust, and we have to take care
of it.
She would start doing tafsir to, like, these
patients.
Which I know is, like, not legal, technically.
But whatever, right?
So the point I'm trying to make is
this, is that if a person wants to
be loved by Allah, they first have to
ask themselves in any given situation, what would
Allah love for me to do right now?
If I want to walk away from this
moment knowing that Allah loves me, I have
to first check and see, what would Allah
love for me to do right now?
It might be in a moment of anger,
I hold my tongue.
It might be in a moment of stinginess,
I give.
It might be in a moment of, you
know, selfishness, I prefer somebody else.
Think, there's a beautiful story for that.
The companions of the Prophet ﷺ, this is
one of my favorite stories, and then we'll
finish here because Isha comes in a little
early.
The Prophet ﷺ walks into the masjid one
night, and he announces that there are some
guests coming, can anyone host them?
And one of the men, he says, Yes,
I got it.
Tell them to come to my house.
They can stay with us.
Then he goes home to his wife and
he says, Hey, is it okay?
Is it okay if we have some guests?
I'm just wondering, right?
So she says, the worst case scenario, she
goes, What?
We don't have anything.
What are we going to serve them?
We have nothing to serve them.
And he goes, Oh, I already committed.
Because they wanted to impress the Prophet ﷺ.
Yeah, I'll do it.
So I already committed, I already committed.
She goes, Oh my God.
So then she's like scrambling, scrambling.
Of course, she wants to impress him too.
I said, Okay, scrambling.
And they find basically enough ingredients to make
like one dish of food.
All right, so there's like two or three
guests.
There's them.
It's not enough.
So they're trying to think, What do we
do?
This is so bad.
This is so embarrassing.
And then they say, Okay, I have an
idea.
We'll invite them.
We'll set them up.
We'll serve them.
We have one light in the house, one
candle.
We'll serve them their meal near the light.
And then like, you know, you're my wife,
like we'll eat together.
And we'll serve ourselves in the back where
it's a little bit more dim.
And we'll give them all the food we
have.
And then in the back, we will just
pretend like we're eating or like make noises.
This is actually Sahih Hadith.
And it's preserved in the Quran.
So they do this.
They pull off this amazing plan.
Incredible, right?
Talk about, by the way, sincerity.
Sincerity is being as creative in goodness as
you would be in evil.
Like people are so conniving and scheming and
plotting to accomplish bad things.
Sincerity is like when you invert it.
And you're like creative.
And you're thoughtful.
And you're like, there's no limits to what
I'm going to do to accomplish this goodness.
Right?
So they do this.
And the guests come and they serve them
all the food.
And then they're sitting in the dark and
they're, this is delicious, you know?
And everyone's eating.
And they go to bed hungry.
They go to bed with no food.
And this isn't like us where you're like,
Yeah, I could do that.
No, no.
They probably haven't eaten all day on top
of this.
They didn't have a fridge or a pantry
like we do.
This is like their one meal a day
they gave away.
Okay?
The next morning, the man goes to Fajr
at the masjid.
He walks in.
And he sees like the beaming smiling face
of the Prophet ﷺ.
Just looking at him, he's just like so
happy.
And he says to him, Allah has revealed
about you.
Can you imagine?
Allah has revealed about you.
He's so pleased with what you did.
He revealed about you.
And the verse says, it describes the character
of this person and his wife.
And Allah says, وَيُؤْفِرُونَ عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ وَلَوْ كَانَ
بِهِمْ خَصَاصًا They preferred others over themselves even
when they were the ones who also had
needs.
Like that.
What would Allah want me to do in
this scenario?
And he did it.
She did it.
They did it.
It was hard.
It was not always easy by the way.
It was difficult.
It was annoying.
It was inconvenient.
All the above.
But they did what they knew Allah would
love.
And within a few hours, they're preserved and
memorialized in the Quran.
We read this.
That their story is now immortalized as those
who chose Allah and Allah loved them.
وَيُؤْفِرُونَ عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ وَلَوْ كَانَ بِهِمْ خَصَاصًا You
can look up the whole story.
It's there.
So these moments, Imam Ghazali says, if you
commit to this as a philosophy, you will
be loved by Allah.
And look at how much love you feel
in your heart for these two companions.
You don't even know their names.
But you were like, if I met them,
they would be heroes to me.
I love them and I want to be
like them.
And this is the fruit as Imam Ghazali
says, of doing the things that you know
Allah Ta'ala loves.
May Allah Ta'ala love us and make
those around us love us.
May Allah make us beloved to those who
love us.
And additionally, I want to also add one
thing.
This is something that one of my teachers
taught me which I think is important.
You won't be loved by everybody.
And that's okay.
But one thing that's interesting, okay, is that
there are people whose love is not worth
chasing.
And you can define that threshold by a
person who doesn't think that Allah is worth
loving.
So if a person behaves or acts or
speaks in a way where they are effectively
saying, that, you know what, forget that whole
religion thing, forget that.
Then what you learn from this whole talk
tonight is, maybe that person's love is not
worth pursuing.
And pursuing that is going to bring more
destruction and detriment to your life.
Pursuing the love of a person that should
not be loved, it only brings pain.
It only brings destruction.
Only chase the affection and appreciation of those
people that you admire, that you look up
to, that spiritually they have something.
Seek the love of those people.
Not only scholars and teachers, people.
People that you admire, people that are doing
things right, people that are just living life
in the right way.
When you look at them, say, man, I
want to be friends with that person.
What can I do to be friends with
them?
And if you find that you yourself or
the people you surround yourself with, etc., are
negligent of that relationship with Allah, then you
either have to change quick, you got to
flip that script, or you have to maybe
pull back a little bit.
We don't have to communicate, but you got
to pull back a little bit.
Maybe it's not as much time.
Maybe it's in certain environments.
Maybe I can play ball with these brothers
on Saturday, but I'm not going to like
have deep conversations on Friday night with them.
Because those conversations are deep in topics that
are not beneficial.
They're talking about things that are not benefiting,
right?
And I got to make that call myself.
May Allah Ta'ala make it easy, inshallah.
Okay, let's do some Q&A.
We have outside before we do Q&A,
speaking of doing what Allah loves, we have
this week is Ghazza week, and we talked
about a little bit last night, but I'll
re-emphasize here that this genocide that we
are witnessing happening to our brothers and sisters
in Ghazza is something that if you're like
me, you try to become an optimistic person
when every tragedy is happening.
You try to think about there's no way
that the world, that the powers that be
could let this continue.
And subhanAllah, here we find ourselves.
But there is one thing amidst all the
tragedy that is true, and that is that
if you speak to Brother Humayun and those
who work for HDF and other relief organizations,
is that the money that we give is
getting in.
And I know that the dominant impression that
the Zionists want to leave upon Muslims is
that you can't help them no matter what.
Because they don't only want to destroy the
Muslims, they want to destroy the hope that
we have and the connection that we have.
But they have, alhamdulillah, teams on the ground
delivering food and aid, shelter, clothing, all types
of things to our brothers and sisters.
They're putting smiles on their faces even if
it's brief.
So I want everyone in this room tonight,
inshaAllah, to commit to giving.
There's a table outside.
Just give whatever you can.
The number is irrelevant to me.
The number is irrelevant to even Humayun.
It's just give.
Just give something.
Don't walk by that table and not be
a reason to give hope and relief to
somebody that doesn't have it.
If you enjoyed something to eat today, if
you enjoyed something to drink today, should they
not enjoy it too?
They absolutely should.
May Allah Ta'ala make us relief.
Okay.
Is Isha 8.15 or 8.30?
8.15?
8.30, okay, we're good.
All right.
It was 8.45 last night.
Okay, alhamdulillah.
All right.
Bismillah.
It's not marriage related but it is marriage
related.
Is it okay to attend a church for
a wedding of a close friend?
And then there's like a nervous smile.
Okay.
So, Bismillah.
It is not impermissible in Islam and Sharia
to walk into a church.
That's not impermissible.
Like you can walk into any building, any
house of worship of any religion.
You can walk into those buildings.
They're not condemned.
They're not evil.
You don't get sins simply by stepping into
four walls and a roof that is used
for worship of something else.
You would be responsible and accountable for participating
in any rituals.
And that's where, again, we would draw the
line, you know, in a formal classy way.
Right?
So if you go to someone's wedding to
celebrate for them, number one, I would first
advise that you be careful that the environment
is not an environment that challenges your morals.
And that's even with Muslim weddings is that
we should make sure that we don't put
ourselves in environments where we feel tension.
Right?
We want the heart to feel at ease.
Okay?
And if you have to go because of
the status of your relationship, your family, your
close friend, then limit the time that's there.
Right?
Limit the time that's there.
Or if you have to, then sit further
away from the stuff that you don't feel
comfortable with.
Right?
Basically, do your best.
Right?
Do your best.
But if there is a function, a ritual
side of the function, like a religious ritual
side, then that is where you would draw
the line.
That is where you would say, I'm just
gonna step aside for a second.
Right?
So if there's some sort of like standing,
a prayer that's offered, etc.
Dude, when I did interfaith stuff, they used
to like sing and everything.
And I'm just, you know, I don't know
if you guys ever saw the Derrick Rose
all-star, how everyone else is dancing and
he's not.
Okay, look it up.
Derrick Rose all-star game, not dancing.
On the all-star game intro, they have
all the players and they're all dancing and
he's just staying like this.
That's me during interfaith sessions when they're singing
songs.
They're all singing.
They're vibing.
And I'm just like, Allahu la ilaha illa
huwa l-hal.
I'm just, in my head, I'm like, okay.
So the ritual is where you draw that.
But you're not, you don't have to be
flamboyant or boisterous about it.
Right?
You can be classy.
You can be a person that's, you know,
you have decorum.
But you also don't just kind of fall
into it because everyone else is doing it.
Right?
So kind of have that as your line.
Allahu alam.
How do we respond to Muslims trying to
fit Islam into postmodern ideologies, i.e. feminism,
scientism, spiritualism, instead of following Allah and his
messenger?
You know, my, this is a good question.
Someone's already loading the maps up.
My thoughts on this are that we
light candles.
We don't curse the darkness.
Right?
We fill glasses with water.
We don't try to shatter the glasses.
So a lot of Muslims are falling into
confused states spiritually because there's a lot of
opinions about what existential facts are out there
in life, like this or that and what
I should believe and what I should feel.
That's all there.
But the real question is, do I as
a Muslim know enough about my own theology,
my own religion, to be able to identify
that this actually goes against the grain for
me?
Right?
So how would a person know what to
follow if they didn't know what to follow?
I know it sounds, you know, like a
cyclical logic, but if I have never read
The Life of the Prophet, for example, if
I've never read a book that covers his
life, we're not talking about book.
We're talking about book.
Okay?
If I've never done that, how do I
expect to go toe-to-toe with, you
know, Nietzsche and Kant and all these, like
I can't.
So we are trying to really, really advance
our intellectual standing and we're trying to go
against, but we need to make sure that
we have, you know, the bread and the
milk and the eggs spiritually ourselves first.
So my response to this would be the
best way for a Muslim to try to
respond to all the isms that are out
there is through, number one, worship of Allah
Ta'ala, which is combined with seeking knowledge,
right?
Being a person that attends classes and things
like that.
Number two, right?
So 1A, 1B, worship and knowledge.
Number two is community, your village.
Being around people who think like you, who
value the same things that you value.
You know, even the most spiritual and pious
person, if they're left alone, will struggle.
They'll struggle.
It doesn't matter how strong your faith is.
You cannot isolate.
It's not possible, right?
There's only, I met a girl, subhanAllah, she
came here as a refugee from Syria and
she had a very religious family, very religious
upbringing, etc.
She came here and all of the friends
she made, not a single one of them,
was Muslim like her, okay?
And that's, to me, I'm not trying to
be the boogeyman, like I don't believe that
you can't have non-Muslim friends.
I don't believe that.
I think that you can.
But we have to also define friend.
Okay?
That's important.
I'm legal mind, so we have to define
everything first.
So if you're talking about a person that
you get along with, that you occasionally have
lunch with, etc.
Fine.
But if we're talking about a person where
you basically align your entire worldviews on things
and you try to integrate what you believe
in all that, that's not going to work.
That's not going to work.
And so my advice is that a person,
if they want to be close to somebody,
they want to have sincere friendship with somebody,
they need to first make sure that that
person is compatible, not just socially, but also
on a moral level.
Do we both think the right things about
life?
What makes people good?
What makes life good?
What makes God happy with me?
Right?
If those questions are aligned, then the relationship
should be fine.
Marriage tip too, by the way.
So I would say we need to fill
the glass instead of talking about how empty
it is.
We need to fill the glass.
And beautifully, one of my teachers said, if
you find something dirty in the bottom of
a glass, you can try to scrub it
out with your fingers and your hands, but
the easiest way to do it is just
flood it with water.
He said when you flood it with water,
the sediment will bubble to the top and
pour over.
So instead of trying to talk about scraping
some bad things out of someone's heart, he
says just fill it with goodness.
Just fill it with goodness.
The more you fill it, the more all
that sediment will come out.
Oh, wow.
This is an interesting one.
We have too much time left to end.
How do you stop yourself from lying out
of fear of like hasad or envy or
the evil eye?
I find myself not telling people what I'm
up to in life out of fear that
they will give me hasad.
Okay.
So all of your relationships should be in
circles, concentric circles, okay?
If you feel like you have a lot
of friends, you don't have any friends.
If you feel like I have 50 friends,
you don't have any real close friends.
And this is maybe like I can say
this in 30 minutes, but if I said
it in hard work, everyone would just start
crying and leave, right?
So the concentric circles, this is when you
get older, you realize this.
You're like, yes, I have like four friends.
Like and I'm totally okay with that.
So you have the concentric circles, okay?
Let's call the closest ones companions.
Okay.
These are the people that you're going to
be really close with.
These are the people that and what's the
condition for this person?
The ones you're super close with that you
share information with that you do.
The condition that I have that my teachers
told me is does this person make dua
for me?
If they make dua for me, I will
tell them everything about my life.
I'll tell them the good and the bad
because I know that they're going to take
that to their prayer rug for me, right?
Now, if you ask that about your...
I'm not talking about people who make dua
when you ask them.
I'm talking about people who will make dua
for you unprompted just because they love you,
right?
So that's a small circle.
Outside of that circle, we can say friends.
These are people that you've met, that you
align with, that you get along with, that
you socialize with.
But it might be one of those things
where if it's out of sight, it's out
of mind.
If I'm not with them, we don't really
think about each other.
But when we're together, everything is very good.
We pray together.
We laugh together.
We enjoy food together.
That's fine.
Good.
And outside of that, you probably have like
acquaintances, people that are pleasant, people that you
get along with, but you're not necessarily that
close with.
They don't know a lot about you.
You don't know a lot about them.
Then outside of that, you might have co
-workers, colleagues, classmates, and so on, right?
This question about lying out of fear of
hasad, the real question is, what circle do
you stop talking about your life in?
In the first circle, if you fear that
a person in there is going to wish
ill upon you, they shouldn't be in that
circle.
You need to remove anybody from that circle
that you are afraid of, family not included,
right?
Okay.
You cannot do that.
You cannot be close to people that you
have to watch over your back, that they
have ill will for you.
And this is an important lesson.
Not everyone is going to be your best
friend.
If you find yourself oversharing to the other
circles, friends, acquaintances, and so on, then yes,
the lesson is stop talking.
Be careful.
Be careful what you say Okay.
Now, you guys want to hear like the
big surprise?
Be careful what you post.
Can you guarantee that everybody following you is
in that circle?
I mean, even Instagram figured this out.
They have your public and then they have
the close friends, right?
Like literally, even like Mark Zuckerberg is like,
come on, man.
Why are you sharing this with everybody, right?
So, even him, right?
Even him, he understands.
So, the point being is that you should
really, really, absolutely protect your life.
I believe this, by the way.
We believe as Muslims in preserving and protecting
the sanctity of our privacy.
We believe in this.
Okay.
We don't assume everyone's evil and we don't
assume that everyone has it out for us
because that's a little bit narcissistic.
However, we also don't believe that everybody is
just pure-hearted and good.
Like, we're in a place where we say,
you know what, not every single person I
meet needs to know how much I make,
needs to know the square footage of my
house, needs to know the new car that
I got, needs to know my kids' grades,
needs to know this and this and this,
that I got promoted.
No.
Absolutely not.
Because even if it's not hasad, let's say
that the person doesn't envy you or they
don't make dua against you, whatever, okay?
All that is the extreme scenario.
May Allah protect us.
There could just be some people who are
just straight-up haters.
And you don't ever want to put your
life into the hands of a person that
hates you because the manipulation and the passing
of information, all of that is negative.
It's negative.
So, the answer to this question is actually
less about what you say and it's more
about restricting who you say it to.
You should be allowed in life to share
your accomplishments and your struggles with people.
But those people need to earn it.
They need to deserve that.
And they need to show you that they,
in possession of this information, will do the
right thing.
They'll take it to Allah.
And they will help you, both spiritually and
also, they will help you as much as
they can materially.
Okay.
What's something...
We'll end here.
What's something I can incorporate into my life
to help me increase my trust of Allah?
I pray all my prayers and I still
feel like I am negative.
Okay.
There's something that I do.
Again, everyone might have a different answer.
There's something that I do that I think
is really helpful.
Go back...
So, this is hard for young people.
It's easier for older people.
I say that as now, one of you.
Okay.
Getting older.
Whoa!
Relax.
It's not an insult.
There's a sale on chicken.
Right?
Everyone gets excited.
We're old.
You get excited when there's a sale on
groceries?
You're old.
Khalas.
Okay?
Alright.
So, what I will say is as you
have more life experiences, you mentally start to
factor in all the times that Allah Ta
'ala saved you from something or Allah Ta
'ala took something away that would have been
destructive or Allah Ta'ala put something in
your path that was never meant to be
there but it was what you needed.
I mean, there's literally like an entire...
You could probably fill out an entire inventory
sheet.
Okay?
So, you and I have to actually do
the work of aggregating those stories.
You have to.
This is...
You know when they talk about remembrance?
This is remembrance of Allah.
Remembrance of Allah can be as meaningful as
sitting and going over the moments.
I literally do this with my wife.
We sit there and we're like, do you
remember how broke we were?
Like a young couple, you're like, wow.
We used to make...
My first job, I made $28,000 a
year and we used to go to Afrah
and noodle wave.
Do you believe that?
And we used to go and eat dinner
and she's like, how much money do we
have left?
And I was like, I don't even know.
But this almond sriracha chicken is so good.
You know?
And the reason I share that is because
you look at those moments and then you
look now and you have a kid or
a couple of kids or whatever.
Like this is Allah's path for us, right?
And guess what?
You all have your own stories like that.
Every single person does.
Where you were somewhere and now you're here.
And yes, there are also pretty bad things
that happen too.
Like that's just also reality.
I lost family members, my parents, health, all
of these things, right?
So it's not all gonna feel good.
But there are a lot of stories that
we overlook that are remembrances and reminders of
Allah's favor upon us.
And it's crazy because when you look at
the reviews on Google, you'll see that the
most passionate reviews are the one stars.
No one ever writes a great review as
a four or five star.
Five stars, it was nice.
But the one star, it's like, Bismillah ar
-Rahman ar-Rahim.
Where do I begin?
It all started last week when my husband
suggested.
No, I'm serious.
I'm 100% serious.
We memorialize negativity way more than positivity.
We memorialize it.
We document it.
It's like our memoirs.
But the positive things are just like footnotes.
That leads us to being negative in our
outlook of life.
We have to reverse that.
The truly pious person sees the negativity in
their life as footnotes and sees the positivity
as the bulk of the text.
And they say, Allah has done too much
good to me.
My teacher used to say this, I loved
it.
He wouldn't say, Allah has given me so
much.
He'd say, Allah has given me too much.
He wouldn't say so much.
He would say too much.
Allah gives me too much.
And we would always say like, Shaykh, and
he's like, no, I don't deserve it.
And that was his disposition.
And I thought it was very powerful.
May Allah give us positivity and optimism.
May Allah Ta'ala make us those who
trust in Allah.
May Allah Ta'ala make us remember all
those times that He carried us through our
difficult dark moments.
Ameen, Ya Rabbil Alameen.
May Allah Ta'ala make us those who
are beloved to Him and others.
Ameen, Ameen, Ya Rabbil Alameen.
Subhanak, Allahumma bihamdik, nashadu an laa ilaaha illa
anta nastaghfiruka wa natubu ilayk.
Jazakumullahu khairan, everybody.
BarakAllahu feekum.
InshaAllah, Isha prayer is in just about three
minutes.
So if I could ask everybody, if you're
sitting on the back jacks to help me
line them up, on those black chairs to
fold them, put them on the dollies.
And if you sat on furniture and it's
in the other direction, if you could just
turn it around, would appreciate it.
And I'll see you guys in the masalah,
inshaAllah, for prayer.
Wassalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.