Khutbah – April 28, 2017
Abdul Nasir Jangda – Prepare For Ramadan
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of achieving optimal results and not wasting time in achieving spiritual goals. They stress the need for proper spiritual preparation, praying, and using words like taqwa to describe oneself. The importance of tequila in maintaining relationships with Allah and the value of having it in one's life is emphasized. The potential for a drastic increase in the number of people affected by the tequila is also discussed.
AI: Summary ©
salaam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato. Who you're listening to the column podcast. Thank you very much for listening. If you haven't subscribed yet, go ahead and subscribe today and continue to share these podcasts with family and friends. The following recording is of hooked by gave here in my local community about preparing for the month of Ramadan. So that insha Allah, we can make this Ramadan, the best Ramadan that we've had yet. So go ahead, take a listen. Hopefully it's a source of benefit. And like I said before, share with family and friends
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Allah subhanho wa Taala in the Quran. When he obligates fasting in the month of Ramadan, Allah subhanaw taala specifically tells us what is exactly the objective the outcome, the goal of fasting in the month of Ramadan and observance of the month of Ramadan, where he tells us that oh you who believe fasting has been ordained upon you has been mandated upon you in the month of Ramadan, as it was done upon the people before you. Meaning they also were obligated to fast maybe not in the month of Ramadan, but they were still told to observe fasting as an act of worship. But this is the key point here Allah says that Allah can touch upon that the reason why you've been mandated to fast and
observe the month of Ramadan is so that you may develop something that a lot refers to in the Quran as taqwa.
Now, I wanted to spend a little time talking about this today for a very specific reason. The first reason I want the reason why I wanted to talk about because somebody might be thinking that maybe my calendar is off, and I'm about a month early. But the reality that the free first point, and this illustrates that first point, the first point I wanted to make today is that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam teaches us something about achieving the best possible outcome, the optimal results from any type of effort or endeavor. That and I I hate to use a frivolous analogy, but I'll borrow it just for the sake of facilitating understanding that oftentimes, you'll hear that coaches will
say that the game is actually one from Monday through Saturday, the game is not one on Sunday, but it's one on Monday through Saturday, meaning what they refer to it is whoever prepares practices
puts in the efforts is mentally physically well prepared for the game is in the best position to win the game.
And oftentimes when people will try to take the fly by the seat of your pants or just winging it approach the different expressions where they will not put in any type of effort, any type of
you know, effort into preparing for it, or leading up to the actual event. But once the event arrives, and they'll try to just jump right into it, then they're not able to achieve the optimal results. Either they don't end up achieving what they wanted at all, or they're able to achieve it at a very minimal level, or they have a lot of discrepancies or a lot of faults or a lot of shortcomings a lot of regrets afterwards. And that is how things typically play out. And we've all had experiences of this sorts in our lives. Anybody who's been to school has gone to college has taken any important exams in their lives. You know that
is very well, that if you just try to not prepare for the exam not studying, not read not do the prep at all, and then just try to cram the night before and walk into the exam. How well do you do?
And if you don't end up doing well, if you don't end up passing, if you pass and you make excuses, well, I just wanted to pass, nobody ever wanted to pass. Unless something's wrong with the person everyone wants to excel at what they do. You want to be good at what you do. And if they don't end up passing, then they're just filled with remorse and regret. And then feeling sorry for yourself afterwards doesn't do you any good. If we've ever had a job interview, and you didn't put any thought, any preparation, nothing into the job interview, and just walked in and said, I'm going to just wow this person with my presence. Because I'm such an impressive human being, that probably
didn't go too well for you.
And that's how life plays out and our spirituality is no different. That's what we have to understand. Every experience that we have in this life is a snapshot is a sample of the ultimate reality, our spiritual reality. And the law talks about this in the Quran.
that somebody will Mensa Allah subhanaw taala says Romans are that somebody who strives and works hard for that kind of sound you homeschooled all their efforts will be appreciated a lot doesn't even bring up the results because of they worked hard throughout their lives, to be a good person to live a spiritually Cognizant life to try to make the right decisions at every moment. And they constantly put work and diligence and preparation into it.
Then the last panel, what Allah says their efforts will be appreciated, and all their shortcomings will be forgiven and they'll be rewarded. But on the other side, Allah subhanaw taala also tells us about somebody who maybe was very talented, who was given a lot of resources.
But Allah subhanaw taala talks about them i'm gonna i'm Humala Who am aka sub, all of his resources and all of his talents and abilities will not help that person. But rather that person will say, don't build your own. Or like, give me another chance that
it matters. Matera for akumina Sony hain, that person will say Just give me one more chance. And I'll go back and I'll do it right this time, but that's too little too late. And so what we have to understand is that the spirituality that we're striving for what we want to achieve, does not just happen in the moment, we can just wing it, we can just try, you know, just basically not put any time or preparation or effort into it.
That's not how that works. But we are going to have to prepare for it. And that's why we look at our spiritual regimen. We look at how we're supposed to worship, we look at how Allah has taught us to worship and you'll observe this, we just don't stand up and perform Salah. But what do we do? First thing we're told to do is make sure that our clothes are clean.
And so maybe your clothes are filled. So you've been working outside or whatever the case may be. So the first thing you have to do is make sure your clothes are clean. Then you have to perform will do and achieve bahara enter into a state of purification.
You haven't prayed yet. You're not praying yet. La salatu salam ala to hula hoop, the Prophet ceylonese him That's why he said if you don't prepare properly, it's like you didn't even pray.
And then after we achieve that ritual purification, we say Bismillah we perform a specific ritual, wash our face in our arms and wipe our head and wash our feet. And then afterwards, we say we read your eyes and supplications we say the Shahada, Tina, Chateau la, la la la. That's all spiritual preparation. And then what happens after that, if you're really trying to make the most of your prayer, then you leave your home and then you walk five minutes, or you get in your car and you drive a few minutes, and then you drive to the machine. And then you walk in and then even then you don't just go and start praying your phones right away. You walk in and then you pray to it because
of the Hanson machine. You almost pray to the gods to kind of warm up. You know, people warm up before the game people practice before the game, shoot around before the game. You pray to the cause. Get yourself properly in the right mindset to connect to Allah subhanho wa Taala to dispel and remove all the distractions and then when you stand in front of Allah subhanho wa Taala and you pray you get something out of that experience. This is why a man Buddha would a CG stanny Rahim Allah kujala, a great scholar of Hadith and Fiqh. He has a very huge, beautiful compilation of Hadith of the prophets a lot of the time, the son of the mama Buddhahood, in that he has a very
beautiful chapter. It's called Babel ecamm in the be salani, selama bisola. The chapter about how the prophets a lot, he said, will not just not just pray. It's not just about how we would pray. It's about how we would prepare to pray, how we would get ready to pray, and it talks about everything he would do from listening to the event, responding to the gun, reading this application after the event goes
To perform will do reading the supplications leaving his home, exiting his home reading the supplication walking to the masjid, making the remembrance in the vicar of Allah. Enter into the masjid read a supplication go into the masjid pray to the cause of entering the mosque. And then he would go and then he would pray.
And it was an otherworldly experience. So the reason why I decided to talk about and invoke this particular verse from the Quran, this ayah from the book of Allah. today that is about the month of Ramadan a month before the month of Ramadan is not because my calendar is busted.
But because if we do not get in the habit of preparing beforehand,
greasing our wheels warming up, revving up getting ready, then this Ramadan will end up being no different than many previous trauma bones. Now somebody here might be the exception to the case and they might be thinking, I don't know what you're talking about. My Ramadan was fantastic. Mashallah, may Allah bless you, may Allah reward you. And we all wish we could be more like you. But I feel like I speak for most when I say that, when you look back kind of at your life, when you look back at your previous Ramadan's, there is a little sense of there's a gratitude that at least a lot allowed you to experience and live through the month of Ramadan, but there's a little bit of regret.
There's a little bit of a feeling of missed opportunities.
I was just trying to think what do I have from the previous Ramadan?
driving home last night, I was just trying to think to myself, What do I still have right now that I gained previous from while I was just washed over this feeling of just a little bit of sadness?
That Can I not really name one thing that I have from the previous Ramadan?
We'd never accept that in education, in our careers in our investments.
Where did all my investments go? I don't know. They're gone. That's not an acceptable answer. None of us would accept that. But spiritually, we've become so complacent. And I don't mean for this to be a beat down. It's just an honest conversation. We've become so complacent spiritually, that's acceptable. Hey, what do you still got from last Ramadan, I don't know.
I got this gift I need.
It's in exactly, we'll just, you know, laugh it off, toggle it off and just move right on. I shouldn't be acceptable to us. It shouldn't be.
And Allah subhanaw taala has, is so merciful. Allah is so merciful.
That a month before the month of Ramadan even gets here, Allah subhanaw taala allows us to gather here in the masjid a month before to talk about it.
There can be so many people who don't even get to observe and benefit from the month of Ramadan. And Allah subhanaw taala is giving us the opportunity a month before to be able to gather together and actually talk about it. And think about it. And make sure that we don't make those same mistakes again.
So we have an opportunity on our hands, we just have to remember not to waste it. We have to remember to make the most of it. And we have to start putting work into it. That's the very first point I wanted to make here today. And I hope that this is something that everybody will think about. And this is something that everyone will really kind of take to heart because if we started preparing from now we started chipping away now reading, you know a couple of lines of Quran every day instead of just waiting. We set up these goals which are very admirable, but they're not realistic. I don't read any Koran at all. To these days. I don't read any foreign at all.
Yet somehow I've i i think that a month from now, the first day of Ramadan, I'm just going to flip the switch. I'm going to read a whole Jews on that first day of Ramadan and marieta Jews everyday it's not realistic. But if I started reading a few lines or half a page today, and then kept adding one line every couple of days. By the time Ramadan rolls around, I will be reading about half of Jews every day. It's very realistic.
You want to finish up on in the month of Ramadan. That's very admirable. You want to finish the reading of the Quran in the month of Ramadan is beautiful. But you can start that Koran today. And maybe by the time Ramadan comes around, you're a third of the way through you finished the other two thirds and you did it. But if you keep waiting for that first day of Ramadan to come around, you might not achieve your goal. We still hope that we do but we probably won't. That's just a reality because we know ourselves.
And so we need to start preparing from now.
The second thing I wanted to talk about
is the last panel where Thomas specifically tells us that the goal and the objective from the month of Ramadan is to have achieved taqwa. Now, as I was started off by saying tequila is kind of an interesting word, because we've seen so many translations of it, from fear to awareness to cognizance to this to that
And some of the words don't really make a lot of sense some of the words we don't even know what they mean. So what this stuff will really encapsulate what does it really mean? So Omar brought the Allahu taala, on Omaha top diorama, he one time asked his good friend, another Companion of the Prophet sallallahu, Alayhi, wasallam, Senior Companion whose name was a Buddha. Now, oh my god, Allahu anhu was a leader of the companions of wood, who was kind of known as the sage amongst the companions, the wise person amongst the companions. And even the other Senior Companions, you should really appreciate his wisdom and his thoughtfulness. Because he said, he was not a very public
person or a public personality, he didn't have public office and community responsibilities, like people like Armada did.
So he used to spend a lot of time just very deep in thought and thinking and studying. And so he's a very thoughtful person. So a matter of the Allahu anhu used to sometimes like to take timeout, and go spend a day with him, and just kind of have conversations with him and talk about things with him. And he said, I used to benefit from this. So one time he asked him, he said, how would you explain to somebody who doesn't have any background doesn't know anything, he doesn't have a grasp of classical Arabic and can't look up the root of the word in an Arabic lexicon and read 10 pages about the concept of duckula. This is your common average Muslim, everyday Muslim? How would you
explain to that person what taqwa is good example. He says, Okay, this is how I would explain it.
He says, if you're walking down kind of a path, imagine maybe you go into your backyard, or you're walking to your backyard from the side of your house.
And you haven't really kept up, you know, your landscaping and maintenance and things like that you haven't kept it up. So there's no, there's no pavement, it's kind of messy, there's rocks and branches, and then they're the bushes, the shrubs on the side, I've started to kind of, you know, get out of control. And so there's branches that are sticking out into the walkway. And then on top of that, because sometimes it's a shrub, or a bush. So some of those branches have thorns on them. And some of them are broken off and fallen on the ground. So there's thorns on the ground. And there's branches and thorns sticking out and there's a bunch of rocks on the ground. And there's a
couple of puddles of water randomly sitting around like it's really gotten out of hand, and you got to walk through there. And you're dressed for Juma, you're wearing something kind of like big and flowing. You're not wearing like shorts and a T shirt. You're wearing something like this like a soap. Alright. And on top of that, he gives the example that you're wearing not just any job like a black one, there's a reason why I wear the black hat strategic. Right? So you can have lunch afterwards, and nobody knows, right? But imagine if you're wearing a white robe, a white one.
So now when you're walking through there, he says, How are you going to walk through there? Are you just gonna like just
walk through there? swinging your arms around letting your throat flap around, get caught on the branches and the thorns and get ripped up? And then the water splashing up and putting stains all over the bottom of your clothes? You can do that? Of course not. He said, how would you walk through there. And then he demonstrates that you would pull up your thobe you'd kind of bunch it together, you'd grab on to it, you roll up your sleeves, and then you'd walk through there. Every time you place your foot, you would look where you're placing your foot and you would check and then you carefully you would just run through there. Because you'd get thorns in the bottom of your feet.
You'd carefully tiptoe through there, you turn sideways here turn sideways, they're trying to avoid the branches. And armor says absolutely, that makes 100% sense. So he says that's what turquoise dakhla is that you become so aware of yourself self awareness, and you become aware of your surroundings. And then you are also benefited by the knowledge of what Allah wants you to do and what Allah has told you not to do.
And while maintaining all of that, what Allah has told you to do what Allah has not told you to do, recognizing the the pitfalls that are around you the dangers that you're surrounded by, and then being very self aware that I'm wearing a white robe, and I'm a bigger guy. So I'm going to have to be extra careful here to try to fit through this space. Then you navigate your life. And you think about what you're doing before you do it. And you adjust if an adjustment is needed that stopwatch so all the other translations we have duck was fear and duck was cognizance and Dakota is consciousness and duck was that might make sense to you. But if it doesn't, don't worry, duck well
basically means that you just think about what you're doing. You think about what you're going to do before you do it. And then you make adjustments if necessary. That is
it's a very straightforward concept. And that's why it's so essential who de la
la la quinta, to whom it was so complex and complicated.
Why would I want to talk about it all throughout the Quran, that's how simple it is. It's very straightforward. Think about what you're going to do before you do it and how you're going to go about it and make adjustments as needed. That is taqwa.
Now, Allah tells us that through the month of Ramadan and through fasting we want to attain taqwa. Now, we all understand that that means I've become more regular about my prayer. That means that I cut certain you know, sins or bad habits out of my life, that I tried to spend more time reading Koran making, things like that. We all understand that and that's very, very important. But there's another side of stuff that I wanted to highlight today, because in the weeks leading up to the month of Ramadan, we'll be talking more about spirituality in your prayer in your poron in your fasting, but today, I wanted to highlight one particular site of taqwa that is very severely neglected today.
And that particular site of taqwa that is neglected is something that Allah subhanaw taala reminds us about in Surah Nisa, Whatsapp Good luck ilaha illa de de Luna de Waal.
That Allah subhanho wa Taala tells us taqwa is not only maintaining your relationship with Allah in that thoughtful manner, that thoughtful manner that we described that very awared thoughtful manner, not only just maintaining your relationship with the law, but also maintaining your relationship with the people in your life.
The people that are close to you, your family, your friends, your co workers, your neighbors,
maintaining your relationship with them as well, getting better at being a good son, father, husband, brother, neighbor, mother, daughter, sister, etc, etc.
Whatever relationship whatever role you play in your life in regards to other people getting better at that as well. That's a part of tequila and the profits a lot instead of made it such a point. It's so fascinating throughout the Quran, that in certain Lisa were telling us what led to salary well, or ham, relationships Allah uses the concept of taqwa. You gotta have Taqwa in your relationships.
The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, to you know, Thomas, such a valuable lesson, that not even just relationships, the profits, a lot of them said, even how you treat animals that are in your care,
even how you treat animals, when the profits are loving, some saw a man who was being neglectful and abusive towards his camel. When the profits allottee some saw a man, a camel mode of transportation,
all rights and animal use for transportation by them. So it's used for service and that's fine. But when he saw that a man was being neglectful, and abusive, towards that animal, the profits a lot of the question he asked him is really like he should, it should really make you think the question the profits a lot of the time asked him was first Yes. Who's Campbell is this because Campbell was moaning and groaning out of pain and hunger.
And they had like scars on it from all the weight it had been carrying all the luggage in the emergency, you know, all the stuff that had been tied on top of it had scars on it.
And it was moaning and groaning, dehydrated, and the prophets a lot he said, put his hand on the animal and comforted the animal.
And as somebody go get some water
and then the profits, a lot of them said Who does this animal belong to?
And somebody went and got that brother because they said that, you know the profits a lot. He was asking for you. He's calling for you. And when they went in, they got him. When he came the profits of money, some saw him and the Sahaba said that we could see from his face that he was upset. The Prophet sallallahu Sallam was upset. His face would get more red there was a vein that would kind of bulge in his forehead.
And he would raise his hand when talking to them.
And the Prophet sallallahu Sallam raised his hand and he pointed at the person and he said ask them a question. And the question he asked him was allotted tequila.
Do you not have Taqwa?
Do you not think about Allah? Are you not do not give any thought to what Allah has told you to do and not told you to do? does not occur to you? This is a companion of the prophets a lot. This is a man who prays with behind the prophets a lot. He said, I'm in the machine of the prophets a lot. So I'm in the city of the prophets a lot eternal. He's a Sahabi not the alarm.
very virtuous person.
But the prophets, a lot of them in spite of all of that worship
is asking him Do you not have Taqwa?
In a very you know in a tone that that that displays that he's reprimanding him. Like it seems like you don't have
a lot of tequila.
And he said, Yeah, Rasul Allah. You know, What mistake have I made sincerely, he asked him
profits a lot of them said you abused this animal. You don't take care of this animal. This animal was placed in your trust and the profits a lot of reason was even more severe
in reprimanding people when they would neglect and they would not take care of and they would misbehave and have misconduct in their personal relationships. This Ramadan is still a month away like we talked about in the first point that we have an opportunity to prepare for and get ready for and make the most of and start working on Ramadan from today. This will not only be this Ramadan we have to make the intention today we have to make the intention now, this Ramadan will not only be for us to improve our prayers and our worship, but this Ramadan will also be dedicated to us becoming better human beings becoming better family members, better neighbors, better co workers,
improving our character, our clock, the way we treat people, the way we interact with people, we will get better in that regard. And that together, preparing
and then focusing on our relationship with Allah and improving our relationships with other people. Those three factors together are what will allow us to walk away from the month of Ramadan with the goal that Allah subhanaw taala laid out in front of us and that is taqwa
that we will learn to live a life that is a lot more connected to a lot. We will learn to think about what we're doing and why we're doing what we're doing and how we're about to go about it.
And number two, learning to make adjustments as needed and as necessary. And if we're able to do that, then be eaten Illa inshallah, we hope and we pray
that when this Ramadan is over,
long gone, whether it be a week or a month or the next following year, and when we sit down, kind of buy ourselves and think to ourselves, What do I have to show for from that previous Ramadan?
We'll have a lot more of a substantial answer then maybe we do right now. barakallahu li walakum for another one of our anyway jambalaya to ethical hacking Asakura la Holly welcome Elisa Lucy mean for sofiero in the whole world of Aurora