Abdullah Hakim Quick – New Muslim Corner – Understanding Practical Ehsan
AI: Summary ©
The importance of Islam is discussed, including its cultural and cultural dimensions and the use of "unsure" to avoid confusion and negative emotions. The importance of pride, hard work, and acceptance of Islam is emphasized, along with the use of practical advice and avoiding negative emotions. The transcript is not a call center or a marketplace, and a recorded and possibly telemarketing call is used to leave a message. The customer repeatedly says "yes" and says no, leaving no message for the operator to call back.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim at 100 line Robillard Amin while Salli wa salam ala Sado walima, Arkadin. Nabina Muhammad and while Ali he was happy he was adequate Salah our prayers are due to Allah, Lord of the worlds and peace and blessings be constantly showered upon our beloved Prophet Muhammad, the master of the first and the last, and his family as companions and all those who call to his way and establish a sunnah to the day of judgment as to what follows
my beloved brothers and sisters to our viewers As Salam aleikum, wa Rahmatullah
Alhamdulillah. This is another opportunity for us to come together in our new Muslim corner. And the intention is to
bring information about the foundations of Islam, to try to clear up misunderstandings, and to give those who have recently entered into Islam, or those who are rejuvenating their Islam, a chance to get a balanced look
at the phenomenon, the way of life of Al Islam. And because Muslims live in so many parts of the world, and Islam has been established for many centuries. Then, there are different outlooks, cultural outlooks, within the Islamic world. And sometimes when you meet a Muslim, and you go amongst a group of Muslims or a Muslim family, there's a culture.
The culture includes their clothing, their food, their entertainment, their worldview, all of these things are affected by the environment that they live in.
What Islam does is to purify or to correct the problems in their worldview, to give them direct connection with the Creator,
and to unite people. So that's somebody who lives in a mountainous area where people are really strong and rough and tough. And another person who may live by the seashore with white sands and blue water and mangoes you know around they have an easygoing personality because life has been really good to
these two people can actually see each other as brothers or sisters. That's not an easy thing to do. Because usually environment separates people but it is the the the core root values of Islam. It is the practical application
of Islam that can help us to overcome cultural barriers, racial, ethnic, linguistic economic,
where we can consider ourselves to be one, we can be in one prayer line, and look at another Muslim as my brother or my sister. But they don't look the same as me. They don't speak the same language, but the basis is the same.
So what we are presenting here in a relaxed way is to look at the Islamic way of life, and to bring you
as close as possible a balanced look. So that you can hear terminologies being used, you can see different Muslims, and you can alert you can learn to appreciate
the different types of Muslims, you know, and the different attitudes and things that they have. So, in order to do this, again, I want to review the information that we have put it in another way, again,
and that is that, you know, when we talk about the Islamic way of life, the word in Arabic is Dean or dean. And when we say Dean, and the Quran says,
in the deen and the law here, Islam, that surely the true way of life
with Allah is Allah Islam.
And so when we say Deen, what we mean is not a religion.
So sometimes people say Christian religion, Judea, Judas, religion,
Islamic religion, no, this is not a religion, because of religion in the West in the Western sense. It's only your beliefs,
that you have religious outlook. It's what you do on special religious occasions. But your life may be different,
may have a different lifestyle. But deen is something different, it touches the core values. But it also connects with the way that you live, the food that you eat,
even the friends that you have, the way you enjoy yourself, the way you conduct business is supposed to touch every aspect. Okay, so this is what we call, Dean, we have that sort of in the center.
So in order to understand the different dimensions of the dean,
and this is what was introduced to us, in the famous hadith of Gibreel, Allah Islam.
This is a very important Hadith. And this saying of the Prophet peace be upon Him you will be studying as you go on into Islam for years, and there are great scholars of the highest level, who study the same Hadith to try to understand what it actually means. Okay, so in a practical sense, we could say that the angel asked the Prophet about the three major dimensions of Islam.
I don't want to say levels, because levels means that one may be like higher than the other. And they're not necessarily higher than the other, they're interwoven.
They're like dimensions, that that can actually
interact with each other.
And to give a good example of this, I'm using the example that Islam and the first question that the angel asked the Prophet peace be upon him is telling me about Islam. What is Islam?
And then the Prophet SAW seldom
told him about the five pillars of Islam. And we'll go over this. And that you could say, is the body. It's like a body.
Because your body is involved in actions.
It's like the practical side of Islam is what you literally have to start doing right away.
Okay, and it's through these actions. Right, that makes you a Muslim.
You're a Muslim, so you can go to different parts of the world. And you can see somebody who's a Muslim, I had visited one time into Hong Kong, China.
And I met a Chinese Imam.
And he could speak Arabic, because he was trained in Islamic Studies. I could speak Arabic, but I don't speak Cantonese Chinese. And he doesn't speak English. So we had no way to communicate with each other in our native languages, but to Arabic. We could communicate and then when it was time to make prayers
So
we're the same.
Okay, so the so we communicate through practical actions, and we can relate to each other.
So this is a Chinese Muslim, this is an American Muslim, and we can relate to each other. Because we're about to make press and our prayers are fundamentally the same.
So that's sort of the practical application. The next level is we can give the example of body like the head of the body. It's your mind.
Right, and this is a man and the angel asked the Prophet tell me about Eman faith. Tell me about your faith. What are your beliefs? Okay, so that's the next level. Now, you got some practical things that you're doing. But what is it based on like, what are your beliefs like what motivates you to be doing these things, you see, and that is the Eman and the Prophet SAW Selim.
Then, you know, taught him about the pillars of iman the Six Pillars of Eman and that is what the term that is used today by some people is aqidah.
Like somebody you might hear someone say is, what is your Akita
and the appearance of Muslim? Is our beliefs.
Okay, so that's your beliefs that that motivates the body
and the third level or the third dimension is is SN
and that is your righteousness. It's your heart I'm using the example of the heart meaning your conscience right it means your spirituality.
So that spirituality is a driving force that drives your your body
it also affects your your Eman.
Okay, so these are all dimensions and these dimensions interact with each other. So these are these are three
stages where dimensions that the angel s, the Prophet peace be upon him. And what is common in all of these dimensions is test Skia and test Skia is an Arabic purification. Its purity. So the whole thing of the Islamic way of life, the essence of the Islamic way of life is pure to purify yourself. So we're living in a world that has a lot of problems, a lot of issues, we as human beings, we are challenged we have serious tests, because we have to eat
we need shelter, we have to procreate. So all of these things can can lead us to do some strange actions.
Okay, so purifying, purifying. So when you look at
purity,
like I said before that, you know, your your Islam is like a filter that is put onto the glass, and the liquids poured through it. It filters out the bad sides. Okay, so the essence of Islam, then, is these five foundations. Now, how does test Skia? How does purity
affect these five pillars of Islam?
The first is your Shahada. And that is your belief in one God.
Okay, and that is crucial
for your, the whole of your religion, that you're testifying to the oneness of God. So that's like your toe heat. Okay, that that's your your, your, your unity. And that's the essence of being a Muslim. If we could say, if the if there's any particular description that could be made of a Muslim,
probably the most important description should be is that person believes in one God.
It's not that they pray prostration because you'll see other ways of life, other individuals who do types of prostrations.
It's not the fact that you fast
because other people fast
stuff that you give in charity because other religions people give in charity.
It's not that you make pilgrimage, because Hindus make pilgrimage to the Ganges River. In India, Christians make pilgrimage to the different saints in Spain and France and in other parts of the world, Jerusalem. So it's not that but that oneness of God. That's serious shahada and the second part is accepting prayer.
Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him as the seal as the finality as the ultimate example of the implementation. You see, so we're constantly purifying our toe heat.
The second is the PErforM performance of the press. So how was test gear involved with this? Test gear is involved because even when you start the praise, you don't just pray, you have to first have ablution
you first clean yourself.
Right? So So you clean your body, you prepare your mind. Right? When you're saying Allahu Akbar, when you're making your tech beer to Iran, what it means is that everything is supposed to be you're putting everything in back of you. Okay, and you're now dedicating yourself to the Creator.
And so there's a lot is a purification.
Okay, there's that cat. The third pillar? What does that have to do with test? Yeah, it's interesting, because the word Zach cat is sub Zeca. Meaning to purify, or to cleanse, and test here is from Zakah.
So the cat literally means you are purifying your wealth.
So if you have a certain amount of wealth, accumulated wealth,
and that accumulated wealth is sitting there, for over a year, you have to pay a certain amount of money. And that's not just being kind to poor people. What you're literally doing is making that wealth Halal to you permissible. Otherwise, if you don't pay us the cat on that wealth, it's not clean.
So it's purification. fasting in Ramadan, it's clear what the fastest. The first number one, it is immediately purifying your body. Because you're not going to eat and drink all throughout the day. But we learned that the fast is more than just eating, avoiding eating and drinking. It's also avoiding bad thoughts, bad deeds, bad actions. So it's literally a purification of your life in Ramadan.
And Hajj. pilgrimage to Mecca, is also a purification because that involves your Shahada. It involves your prayer, it involves charity, it involves fasting, all of these things are within the pilgrimage.
And Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said that a person who makes the pilgrimage to Mecca and does it properly, that that person comes home, or that person is like a newborn child, all of their previous sins are forgiven. That's purification. That's the high highest purification, like a child and the child is pure. You see, so So purification is all the way through this. The next dimension
is your pillars of iman. And that is your belief in Allah and His angels in his books, and the last day and the divine destiny, all of these things actually purify our minds. Right? It puts us on a different stage of Islam as a Muslim is on one stage, min. Or believer is another stage. Okay. And so that's a higher level of purification.
The final stage
is
SN,
and SN. And the end when it changed slides didn't come out there. But you know, sn, you could say one of the possible definitions of Sn
is self purification. It's like a type of consciousness.
And it also is to purify. Because when you say Hassan, Hassan in Arabic means good. But if you say SN, that means to make something good.
Okay, it means excellence. It's self purification. So that's literally what it is, is how to clean yourself, how to raise your spiritual level. Okay, and obviously the more pure A person is spiritually is the higher they are.
And we came to the conclusion and again, this is to give a balanced approach though, because you're going to hear a lot of discussions about SN itself. But we came to the conclusion and you'll see on one
Syed and many other scholars, they define yourself as Teskey at enough's
and tasket enough's means to purify your lower self. We have a good side and a bad side. One is called a enough's allawah. That's your good side. Okay, you're not so low wham.
And that's the side that's constantly constantly helping you and talking to you. But you also have enough amount of assume you have the bad side that is constantly whispering evil things inside of your mind. So yes, then, many scholars defined as test gear to knifes novices like yourself, how to purify your lower self. Right? That's your said, another definition of what your son is, is TESOL worth. So the term is used to solve which many believe comes from the word suffer?
Right meaning a type of purity. So to solve, and we came to the conclusion that the balanced approach, if we're going to use the term to solve and everybody doesn't use that term, but if we're going to use the term to solve, which is validly used in Islam by scholars, then it is the sober, cautious to solve.
And that is the form of Sn, that stays within the limits of Islamic Sharia, or the Islamic way of life doesn't go outside. Because there are forms of self purification that came from other religions. You will see the Buddhists you see a Buddhist monk sitting on the side of the road, meditating, he has a can
and whatever people give him and that can for the day, that's his wealth. So he kills his desire for money.
He kills his lower self, he destroys it. Or you see, in some cases, Hindus were the god Yogi's, great, they go through these physical exercises, so that they don't need their body. They want to lift out higher out of their body. You will see people in Christianity, there's a group in Christianity that call themselves Opus die. And they were extreme group that when they commit a sin, if they look at something wrong, or if they set a swear, then they would go home and they will beat themselves. So they literally carry these chains. And they will go home and beat themselves 2030 times and feel pain, because they want to purify their body immediately.
You see, they want to purify their body of the since
that is considered extremism in Islam.
And Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said No monkey ism in Islam. There is no monkeys. Rabbani Yeah,
that's not permissible.
And so the sober, cautious form of Islam, because you see, the problem happened is when Muslims went to Buddhist lands, Hindus lands Christians land, they were mixed with the people. And sometimes their beliefs didn't get filtered out. And so their beliefs actually came into their Islamic practice. It literally came into their practice. And so
the sole but cautious form of Sn, that is what we're looking for.
And that is what we are studying.
Without going into the controversies. We don't all the groups, you might hear a lot of names. But what I'm giving you here is a bottom line a baseline. So with this baseline, you're going to approach this area of Sn
in a balanced way, and you will find the people who use the word to solve and the people who use the word Teskey at enough's and I'm talking about the sober cautious to solve they basically are saying the same thing.
If you read the textbooks, it's basically the same.
The only difference is the title.
So one is using a title and saying I'm Sufi
I am this another might use a title and might say hum Salafi.
Right so but when you actually get into task yet enough on both sides, it's the same.
So what we are looking for then
is, you know that way to be able to look at all sides in a positive way to go back to the original sources to go back to the original teachings, and so therefore,
it helps us to have good practical exam.
So, I wanted to give you a practical example of this. In a great teacher who appeared in a place called Hausa land, which is in northern Nigeria, it's West Africa. It's Cameroon's it's the Sahara Desert. That region they are the people called the Fulani and the Hausa to Fulani were nomadic type people. And they moved from city to city with cows, they were nomads. And they also were great scholars. They were carrying Islam all the way across West Africa, Central Africa, all the way to the Sudan. The House of people were agricultural people.
And so the Fulani and the House came together through the leadership of a great scholar, whose name was shirtless man, dan Fodio. And within their language called Fuller, before learning your full or full day, then means Ibn son
Fodio means a scholar, a scholar Wilden. So his his his name literally means was man, the son of a scholar. That's what his name is.
And he was born in 1754. But the first part of his life, where we get a lot of these teachings from that we want to study was from 1774 to 1804. So that's not long time ago.
And in West Africa, today, even up in this part of the world, two people are still studying his teachings. And what they like about his teaching is balanced. So he's not going to from one extreme or another extreme, he like gives you that balanced. There are other great scholars like this. Imam, Abu Hamid Al Ghazali, Imam Al Ghazali, you may have heard that name. He is another ballot scholar, CD, Muhammad Zodac, who was from Morocco, and he was the chief of the Maliki scholars, Maliki FIP. And he was also one of the leading Sufis as well as both. And he used to correct both sides. So that's the kind of scholarship we're looking for, that's going to unite you with other Muslims,
instead of dividing you right? In sectarian lines. So this is practical guessing.
Because we want to we want to know how to do this. And check us man, I touched on this last week, I'll just go through this quickly. So you have an idea of who he is, at 20 years old, he went into the field. And He began teaching how salon is a huge area 400 500,000 square kilometers, like Africa is huge continent. You can take India and China and put them into Africa. And you still have space.
He wouldn't notice that on the map, right? Because you study you look at America to a map. The America thought map was made by the Europeans. So that Europe looks like really big.
And Greenland looks big America looks big. In Africa, they made small, right? But when you look at the Peters projection, when you actually look at the map of Africa, it's huge.
It's the whole of India and all of China can fit inside of Africa. And you still have space for Europe to
that that's how large the continent is. And so he used to go from city to city.
He was nomadic, his days to travel with with the cows and whatever. But his family was scholars. His mother was a scholar. His father was a scholar, his uncle's were scholars. His whole life was involved in scholarship. So by 20 years old, of course, he had memorized the Quran by six or seven years old. He became a master of Maliki Fick. And by 20, he was called for Qi, which means he's a master of Islamic jurisprudence, okay. And he used to travel throughout the land teaching people going from city to village speaking different languages. He wrote all his books in Arabic. So he wrote 150 books in Arabic, and a lot of poetry and you know, whatnot. And he addressed the common
people in their languages. So and how's the language and the follow language, also the robotics, you know, the people in the desert the men cover their face. You seen them in the in the pitches, right? Those called Telerik. So chakras man's main teacher Gibreel Gibbon Oma. He was to Warwick.
Okay, and he had gone to Medina. And he had met it's interesting because Gibreel went to Medina. And he met a great scholar Hayato Cindy,
and he was the teacher in Medina of many famous scholars. One scholar who's very famous. His name was Shah Wali, Allah Dalloway. He's an Indian scholar. sha Allah Allah. Look up Indian here.
St. One of the most famous Islamic scholars in Indian history. He studied under the same teacher, Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Abdul Wahab, of Saudi Arabia Arabia. He studied under the same teacher
disability clan in Yemen.
They studied under the same teacher.
Okay, and Yemen is a serious people. You see them today.
They fight and back, right? They don't talk.
Right? Yemen is a serious people. I love Yemenis, right? Yemen is a serious people make dua for them. So there's, he addressed the people in different languages. Okay. In 1802, he continued, he was travelling around from village to village. He had 1000 people following with him. Imagine looking in the desert and seeing 1000 people moving along. And wherever he stopped, that was his,
his university.
And the rich kings got jealous of him.
And they tried to assassinate him.
100 Allah, the assassination failed to shake realize he was under attack. And he made hijra. Just like he follows sunnah. Right?
So he made a migration. His followers came and they took a pledge to him as a mirror, meaning as he is the leader of the faithful.
And
the Kings got jealous, and they attacked him. And in 1804, there was a great battle. It's almost like the Battle of better this is when the Prophet Muhammad peace upon him was outnumbered his first great battle, they defeated their enemies. This is a review from last week, they defeated the enemies. And that was 1804.
So that's the middle part of his life, as a scholar, then they started to conquer different lands, his students are from all over household. And so we gave them flags, and they went to their people. And they started spreading Islam, and calling to the good and forbidding evil. And within a short period of time, they had conquered 250,000 square kilometers, that big territory, and they govern the whole area by Islamic law. That's not a long time ago,
completely governed by Islamic law. All of their leaders, their scribes spoke Arabic. So they wrote letters to each other in Arabic.
And
he sent out letters to the kings like Prophet Muhammad sent letters to the kings. He sent letters all around different parts of Africa and, and he let people know that his main reason for this Jihad was to secure the truth and to put down false foot and to revive the Sunnah. See a balanced scholar, his main reason was to revive the Sunnah and to suppress better
to put down innovations. Okay, that was his main reason.
And so he wrote this letters to the king.
And so within the teachings of chakras man, dan Fodio.
He it was a new era in the in that part of the world. Now look at him now he controls all this area. Most people the power go to your head, right. He now said, former Shura Council, choose your leader, I'm no longer I don't want this. And he spent the rest of his life teaching
is teaching them. Okay, that's for the last part of his life.
And they chose an Emir. And that lasted for 100 years until the British came and had divide and conquer rule, but the people are still there now. Okay, so this was you know, his life. And this is what he was able to accomplish. He died at 63 Just like Prophet Muhammad SAW Salam Sana, everything sunnah. Okay, that's how seriously he was now getting back to our subjects. So this is where his to Salaf
remember, he is Maliki scholar. And he's also
a Sufi I use that term
although upset some people right to hear the term right to Salaf right. But it's balanced to so what was to So off to share with men and for you? What is your said? He said that, too. So what is equals SN?
That's what it equals. And for him to so off was character building.
He was the reformation of your character.
How
to affect your social relations enter relations. And by this way, you reform your whole society. See the revolution he was making you first build your character, you don't just fight the powerful people and take over? No, you spread this character building amongst the masses of the people. And you reform, his whole thing was to reform and to rejuvenate the society. So that's what the Salaf was to him. That's what I call sober, cautious to solve. Okay, it was not
that the type where a person wants to raise spiritually high, because when you start to do that, you can go into a dangerous area.
And that's where Buddhism and Hinduism can affect you. Okay, so this is an example of his
Yes, sir.
This is an example.
What are some of the areas of purification?
One of the areas is urgent.
And our job. And this, of course, is talking about purifying your heart, right? Because remember that we said, the heart is sort of like your air said,
it's your conscience. So how do you clean your heart? You can clean your hands with water, right? But how do you clean your heart? How do you clean your conscience? How do you clean the inside of yourself?
Profit more Muhammad peace be upon him. He said in the in the body, there is a lump of flesh. If this lump of flesh is correct and good, the whole rest of your body is good. But if it is corrupted, your whole body is corrupt.
Everything's gonna go wrong. And then the Prophet said, it's your heart.
So now the chakras saying what are some of the key areas of purification of the heart?
Okay, I'm bringing you five areas, there's a lot of areas. These are five chief areas. This is practical ESL.
Her job? First he said, like in order to deal with these different areas, you have to look at what it actually is our job is conceit.
Now, why is the person conceded? They're conceited? Because they think maybe they have a digger degree. Or maybe they learn to speak a language. So they become conceded. And they might get a title. And so they think only my way is the only way, my way or the highway.
Right there. That's conceit. And then he said, look at it in a practical sense. Why are you conceded?
Because your knowledge is not going to stay with you, right? The older you get, the less knowledge you have, your mind gets weak, right? So why you can see that about yourself. There was one point in your life where you were a little baby, right? You didn't know anything. So how can you be conceited about yourself?
Okay, so this is what he cautioned people. The second area, because we looked at the first three it briefly last week. But the second area, which is a big area is pride. And that is Kippur.
And pride leads to what is called a cabal. The cabal is like arrogance, when you're pushing people out the way and thinking you're better and whatnot. But Keba is pride where a person is proud of their family are proud of their color, are proud of the height. Proud of their language. It's usually just physical things, right? That makes a person proud. So first question is why are we proud, proud.
You're proud of beauty. You can be what they call here, Miss Universe.
But when you die, nobody's going down in the grave with you.
You can be the richest person on earth.
But at some point, everybody's going to leave you. So why are you proud?
You have to think about the reasons why your pride and then he said, be practical about this. Try to do something to practically fight pride. Humble yourself. And you look at the life of the prophet saw Salem. He actually in the Battle of the trenches was digging the ditch. He was simple, close.
He had a simple life. And you'll see the great scholars of Islam, you'll see that balance in their life.
Okay, so that's a practical way, you know, of dealing with your pride. It's a practical way. And it's really important. And, again, I made the example last week I'll make it again, for those who might not been here last week that some of my friends they went to India to visit
At a great Hadith scholar, and in India, there are many scholars of Hadith sayings of the Prophet Salam, they have preserved a lot of this in India. So they have some really high scholars. So they traveled to India, how to meet the scholar, and they sat in his apartment and an elderly man came out
and brought water and they wash their hands and whatnot, and then they were ready. And then you know, they ate, and the man served them, right? Serve them food.
And then after, when they were finished, then the brothers say, Okay, where's the chef? We want the knowledge. And they turned around the same elderly man came back into the room with a turban.
Right? He said, I'm the scholar. And they shock because he was their slave first, right? He was their servant. If you have some pride, and you that's gone, right? You're serving people. Now. You're not an arrogant person on the throne. So he did that intentionally. Right? He's really checking himself. And then he came out, and he gave them a high level of Hadith.
Which anybody who had that level could become very arrogant, right?
But you see, that's a practical way of purifying your heart and chakras man and folio, he actually gave these practical teachings to his followers.
We have to clean ourselves, right? So we can reform our whole society. Another one is rather
that is anger. And hardab is emotions. When when when your emotions, you know, take over you. And
some people have too much emotion. Some people don't have enough emotions.
Right? They hear things going on. And they just say, Well, so what? You have to feel something right. But the real bad one is too much. When people start arguing, and then they hate each other, and they can't control their energy. And the Prophet SAW salem said, If you are angry,
then you should sit down.
If you're sitting down, lay down.
And if you're laying down and still angry,
make wood because like a flame, right? It's like a demon inside of you like rush up. Make whether
that's practical steps or chakras man coming from the Sunnah in his book, that's how he's teaching his followers. He's showing them how to avoid anger.
Right, control their emotions. That's extremely important. Because a lot of our problems in society is comes from this angle. Now, another two big ones.
One is called How sad
and how sad is envy or jealousy, envy or jealousy. Can hazard is when the person is jealous of something that another person has.
Okay, now, maybe with male men, many men, you may be jealous. Like I say ally comes driving up in a new Lamborghini to it and he parks in the front. Okay, and everybody's looking at him and saying, Whoa. Now some people might say, I would like one like him. That's okay. riptides called, but another one. You know, this feeling. They hate to see him in this. They say look at the ugly color.
Look at the tires. You know, that devil that comes up and people. That's an asset. And it actually is like a corrosive type of thing in women. Many times it can happen in men too. But in women, it will really come up with a new baby.
So the new baby comes and they you see the baby? How do you feel when you see that child? Beautiful child, right? You should feel happy. Some people they get jealous. Because they want one like this. Or they hate the fact that that person has that child. So the Bedouins I live with the Bedouins in Medina, and the Bedouins
they used to when the baby was born, they would wrap the child up you know like almost like a mummy like and they put the whole disorder in the eyes
you know and wrap the child up.
You know and when you see that child, you you have to say Masha Allah Tibet, a cola. You have to say that if you don't say Masha Allah meaning this is what Allah wants. May Allah bless the child, if you don't say that they start looking at you funny.
You know the evil eye. That's in everybody's culture, right?
The evil eye to be afraid of this. People are
are afraid of this and they will do strange things with us. But you know what the Prophet said the Prophet said, yah Conwell has said, he said beware of jealousy for in nonhazardous, yet called Hassan Atacama Takodana. He said, jealousy will eat up your good deeds, like a fire eats up firewood. So in other words, you give all this wealth in the path of Allah. And now you're jealous burns up all your blessings. You make pilgrimage you fast in Ramadan, and you're jealous of people, it starts burning up all your good deeds. So usually what happens is the person who's jealous, is more affected than the person they're jealous off.
Because it makes you feel bad, right? I didn't have a car like this, I don't have a child like this. And it makes you feel depressed and bad. Do the shaytaan will destroy you.
So this is Hassan. And we have to struggle Hassan is a big thing in our community. It's a major thing. It even comes when Masjid against another masjid or this or whatever hazard can come on all levels of society.
And it's something we have to guard against. First thing, the chakras saying, Why are you jealous?
If somebody gets a lot of money
in the in the Gulf region. Now I said the Saudis Saudi Arabia has the highest
GDP, like their income and their, their level of expenditure that society it's number one in the world.
Two, and Three is like Qatar. And these countries, because the smart size of the population, the amount of wealth still coming in, that wealth is not necessarily a blessing.
In many cases, that wealth is a curse. And you will see people once they get wealth destroyed. They change their personality changes. Even many Arabs that I knew. They said, this wealth is a curse. If you know us before. We feared Allah, our children, we even come to the masjid. But now this world has made us arrogant. It is it has changed us. So why are we jealous of things? Material things come in material things go. See. So this is the way to practically deal with, you know, this, this feeling of acid. It's very important. We all have this Gupta. You see somebody would make progress. Mashallah. That's good. Everybody should want this, right? There's nothing wrong with that. But when
you start feeling that negative feeling inside yourself, right? Everybody has it, you got to fight it down, right?
And say, Alhamdulillah for that person, that's the test.
Right? They have children, they have wealth, that's their test.
Okay, my test is different. Nobody's the same.
The last one, in this area, the shirtless men, you know, identified is react, and React is showing off in worship. In other words, it's doing a bad it's doing acts of worship to be seen by people.
Because RIA is from raw, which an Arabic means to see.
And the exact the prophets of salaam gave the example that the person will stand up, and he will beautify his prayer in order to be seen by people. That's a good example.
And I have seen, you know, you will see cases, the classical case that I've seen in the masjid, I was in Cape Town, Cape Town has beautiful mustards. After Juma, right. And people then this, this group came in, and they were watching this brother pray.
And now he's praying, right?
And they're on the side. And they say, Oh, wow, look at him pray. And he can hear it. Now, you know what reality is? He starts making his prayer long, right? He's crying a little bit, you know, and whatever. So then they can want him more. Now you see what we are is he's praying to Allah, and to them, you get it.
And then this is the case in Cape Town. He finishes his prayer, and he looks at the group and he says, and I'm fasting to
you understand is yesterday did? He said, I'm fasting too, right? So he was gone. His reaction was off the charts.
He's completely doing things for people. You know what the promises on them said? He called RIA a shark on us.
He said this is the minor form of shark
because you are literally doing things. Shark remember is polytheism
Worship, besides Allah partners, Ria, is the minor form of shirk.
It's the minor form.
Okay? And it's a serious thing.
And so we need to purify ourself from this reality from doing things
to show off to be seen by people.
Okay, so this is very serious case.
This is the Ria. Now these are five key areas of purification of the heart. This is practical SN. So this is SN, he's not willing in circles, right?
This is sub sober, cautious to solve. Or you could call what some people call Teskey. At enough's, same thing.
Okay, that's what we're looking for the practical fun. I want to open up the floor for any questions anybody has. Now concerning these areas of spirit, spiritual purification of that floor is open for any questions.
Online, go ahead.
How do you distinguish between a facade? And Wes was just one causes the other? Yeah, so the West was we so the question is, how do you distinguish between West Wiesel, which is like whispering, right? So what we saw is something different, that's the whispering, like, you know, the whispering of the jinn, or the evil prompting of your lower self. Remember, you have a lower self NAFSA Amara Bisou. And you hear a voice Some people even say, they can hear a voice in their head, saying wrong things.
Right. Some of it is just a feeling. That's the worst result, right?
Okay, now that can lead you to many can lead you to hurt sad. But it's not actually the hazard itself. The hazard is the outcome. Sometimes or worse, with worse we so can lead to it. Okay, and how the hazard or the envious of the jealousy? Is the product.
Floors open for any other questions? Anybody may have?
Yeah.
Seems like reaching a size comparable to a Zen state, despite deriving from Buddhism, Are there similarities or differences? Yeah. Okay. So now Zen, you're talking Buddhism right? Now, this is the thing you have to watch out for.
Because
part of Buddhism is practical. But there was a part of the Buddhism is where they are lifting themselves up because they want to reach the Universal Spirit. That's what Buddhist monks are doing. Right? You're going to a high level, that was the danger where Muslims started to do this. And so they started to spiritual exercises, in order to lift themselves up, and their soul would go into Allah's
body, or Allah's not body, but at the essence of ALLAH, they would be mocked to Allah.
Okay. And this is out of control.
Okay, so it's Zen in it, using Zen in a in a practical exam is a practical thing. It's to purify your heart to clear yourself of bad thoughts, and bad in, in your understandings and whatnot, in terms of going up to that high stage. You know, some people may, in their life go up to high stages, but dangerous.
I met a brother one time, was a real tough brother from New York, and, you know, whatever security and all that and then he joined one of these extreme groups. And then I saw him
and his eyes were red.
So I said, like, what happened to you?
And he said that he was told to put this picture on the wall, it had Allah in a hot, and they said, You must say, hola, hola, hola. 10,000 times looking at this at three in the morning.
And he did it. And he said, after a while it stopped beating at him.
He's like, he's like, you're hypnotizing yourself, right?
And then he said, Excuse me, brother. I have to be mapped to the third heaven because we have a HDMI we have a gathering. In the third heavens, I got a beam up. I said, Oh, what was that? Right? It's like he's smoking some drunk drugs or something. No, this is not right. That's not soon. Like Islam is on the ground and balanced. There may be some spiritual experiences we have in life. That can happen. But you don't turn it on and turn it off. You see, when you start turning it on and turning it off? You're in another religion now.
Okay, questions.
One real
simple example ensures you have some people who like made film and record the charity that they are performing
And how do you create the boundary where it's from showing off, that I'm doing the good work? To awareness? Like, I'm just showing you what I'm doing? Or this is where the funds are going to, like, how do you build that barrier? To make sure you're not? Right, good? Good? That's a good question. And here, the question is that, you know, how do you distinguish between doing good deeds, you know, with, with the right intentions, you know, the do's and nn, show on off. Now,
it is based on the intention.
Because sometimes a person for instance, we might have a fundraising Gather and Gather, now you'll see people will give, and they don't want their name mentioned
that they don't want react, right. But sometimes the person will stand up and say, I'll give $1,000. And they do that, in order to encourage other people to give. That's okay.
And you'll see some of the great companions, you know, you know, when they had warfare and whatever they needed weaponry, or they needed, you know, supplies, they would stand up and say, I will give my garden for this. Like, you're encouraging other people, but you're not doing it to show off to the other people. See, the person who gives, and he says, I will give this under one condition, you put my name on the doorway.
This masjids was donated by fallen flat, that's Reott. Why do you have to have your name on the doorway?
Because all the people can see your name. In other words, that you did it so that people can see your name. But if you did it in order to encourage people to give, that's good. There's nothing wrong with that. So it goes back to your intentions. And this is where we have to like, question ourselves question our intentions.
There's a certain amount of React that everybody has.
React can be like,
when you go, for instance,
there's a job down so you say sports that you're going to go to to play football, or you're going to play still track and field, whatever, you will dress in sports clothes, you don't come with a three piece suit or an evening gown, you know, on the playing field. So in other words, you dressed according to your occasion.
Okay, that's okay. Riyadh is doing acts of worship, it's a bad.
So giving in the path of Allah is a form of worship, your prayers, your fasting, their forms of worship. This is why fasting is considered to be you know, and Allah subhanaw taala has even told us in Hadith, Quincey that, you know, my slave, this is your the closest to me when you're fasting.
Because a person if they're doing it for people, if you're really fasting for Allah,
everybody can't know what you do. If you go into the washroom, you can drink water.
So if you're really fasting for Allah, right, that's something between the person and the creator. Of course, the person could use fasting for Ria.
They could show off to people and say, See, I'm fasting today, like my brother did in the masjid, after he finished the salah.
See, so
we have to question this. You have, we have to watch out
that we don't do acts of worship, just to be seen by the people who are around us. And really, you know, some of the best forms of prayer are the ones you do by yourself
in the middle of the night, because that's between you and Allah. You see. And sometimes the best form of giving is the one where nobody sees that you gave, like the Hadith says, Your right hand doesn't know. Your left hand doesn't know what the right hand
Republic but we know that we all pray like we do recommend us like, like trying to find their private area rather than like, in the public where everyone legs. Yes. Yeah, I mean, I mean, in Joomla, and things like Joomla and whatnot. It's a group prep. So so you're praying out there, but you know, there may be an example of say after Joomla, right? So after a lot of Joomla
it's so now you can make two workouts, or you can make four rockets. These are units of press. And sometimes the price of solemn would make two workouts in the masjid and then he would go into his house
or sometimes he goes straight into his house.
Okay, so, for instance, the person is about to make two extra cards, and he notices all these people watching them.
Right? So he doesn't, you don't have to do it there. So maybe he chooses. I'm going to hold
that, and I'll do that later.
Because I don't want to follow react, right?
Every as easy thing to fall into.
And this society is it's encouraging react.
selfies, right? What's a selfie? Think about what a selfie is right?
yourself is gotta be in the picture, right?
Like, we were traveling once we were in Spain, and we had this youth group, and everybody had the cell phones. And they're doing selfies at the mountain selfie, or the tree selfie of the animal, you know, whatever. And so then we said, Okay, after a while,
stop. Everybody put away your cell phones.
Okay, then they talk and they talk too much.
So we said no talking, and no cell phone. That'd be tough for some Canadian news, right? No talking and no cell phone. So we walked now another, you know, 20 yards or so. And then we stopped made a circle. So he said, What did you notice? They said, SubhanAllah. I could hear the birds.
Like I could, I could see things for the first time.
They actually interface with nature.
And they appreciated the mountain. The beauty of the landscape, not their face, in front of the mountain, right? Because you want your face see Riyadh, right? It's sort of like showing off. So people now have their
Facebook page or Instagram or whatever they do it just me like, What did I do today? Some people make millions of dollars out of foolishness, right? Just what did they do today? Right now, that isn't necessarily Ria, that we're talking about, but can lead you to that. Because the Rio we're talking about is in your worship.
Right. And worship can extend to a lot of things that we do in life, many things in life.
Okay,
floor is open for any other general questions that anybody has.
More than in regards
to Papa like, you take a picture, and you post it online, and even though like your intention is just to like this year that you're there, like,
you know, I'm not against selfies, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying selfies Harada or anything? No. Because sometimes the person wants to be, you know, to show people that they were there and encourage people and whatever, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Right? But the one that likes to be doing it to show off, right? If their intention is to show off to people. So if I do this, I'm gonna get 500 likes per minute. Because I My face is here, right? It's because they want likes.
Right? They want subscriptions.
Right? That's now the Riyadh type of thing, especially when it goes into form of worship, is the reality.
So so so we need to, it's a balance, right? Because there's nothing wrong with humility, right? Being humble and being like an average person. There's nothing wrong with that. That's actually a strength.
A lot of people don't realize that. It is said that when Prophet Muhammad SAW seldom when people came to Medina, to visit him, and they looked at the circle.
And they looked, if nobody was talking than they would say which one of you is Mohammed?
Like, he wasn't on a throne. He wasn't in any special clothes.
But when he started talking, everybody knew who he was.
But otherwise, you're not going to look at him. And think that he's he's not in some special rope. Other people's actually dressed better than him
to react, right.
Very important quality, to be a balanced person in their life.
Any other general questions online.
So floor is open for any general questions. We'll go on a little bit more until till the design goes off. floor is open. any general questions? Tell us more about your trip to Hong Kong? Oh, okay. That was a long time ago. Excellent. That was a long time ago.
But
I was teaching in the Jami mosque at the time, you know, downtown, it was two main masters and a lot of people in our congregation were from Hong Kong. They were Chinese Muslims because we had everybody in the city in the same mosque. And so they said, they asked me can you come to teach in Hong Kong? As I did know that there were Muslims in Hong Kong? They said yes. So I went there. And Hong Kong city is in Hong Kong is an island
And the British
took over that area and developed the island and then the mainland right near it. And in order to, to dig the marshes and security, they brought from Pakistan batons, the baton people were strong like, Afghan Bhutan, right? They served as a military for the British. Okay? And they wanted the masjid because they, they, they're strict in their faith. So they built masjids and little communities were there. And then in Hong Kong, because it was a base of trade. So merchants came from Indonesia, from the Arab world. And some of them settled in Hong Kong. So community developed in Hong Kong. It was the first time I ever saw somebody who is half Pakistani and half Chinese.
Never saw that my life before or half Arab and half Chinese never seen that in my life before. But you will see that in the community, they're in Hong Kong. Very nice community, their Masjid you know, because they don't have much space when it goes up.
The big challenge for us was to find halal food
because everything is bad pork in it.
This one is Buddhist, you are Buddhist, you know the only veggies but there was one Halal restaurants started or you gotta go to Buddhists or you don't go to risk every everybody's got pork
floors open for any other general questions that anybody have. This is these are general questions now. floor is open for
what was the the one you just sort of picture?
We'll come to that Masjid is in West Africa. So that is in Hausa land in northern Nigeria. There was a masjid there.
This one?
Yeah, so they have their own style of using the is like what we call Adobe. They call them this in Arizona, they call Adobe houses. It's made from the clay of the Earth, itself. So they have places like this, you'll find that all over West Africa, the biggest ones are actually in Mali. It's a country called Mali, Jenny and Timbuktu. But this is a style of mustard deer in West Africa that you find. And this is the actual writing of the check was abandoned folio. So this is how the writing looked. They use the Moroccan style called novel ruby script. So they use that slightly different than the other scripts, but it's a classical
form of Arabic writing.
So question online, yeah. Yeah, go ahead.
The harder angel wings logo which can be seen in some sunny homes, the hot and what is an
angel wings, an angel wings. Okay, I'm not exactly sure. But there's a lot of magic and secret societies and they have like the hand will be there and the eye.
They say the hand of Fatima and whatever.
A lot of these are based on secret societies. And some of these other traditions that came in so hot with wings on I don't know what that is. But it's nothing from Islamic
traditions, the original Islamic traditions, the Turks. They used to believe in you know, Tengri they call like the sky god. And thank God he was
represented by a blue eye.
So you'll see even they took it into Islam with them. It's like an amulet. They'll put it over there doors are everywhere. It's like turquoise, blue and dark blue. Thing The scholars are now standing up and telling people take these things down. Because remember what we said about amulets right.
The Prophet PC party was against people hanging amulets.
Right, so now the scholars, you know, in Turkey, you know, changing things and trying to get rid of these amulets because it's it's superstition.
People have these superstitions. And so there's many ways we can fall into these superstitions.
Now, and the other general questions are floor is open.
So my question is like a reflection. Yeah, when I hear shaper,
yeah, I'm thinking like, such a grand movement that was happening in West Africa during this time.
At the same time, on the other side of the world, that was a like, such an isolating of those people. And being forced to religion that was mine, organically others. It's just sort of like like when you're telling this I was like, yeah, the back
that this was going on. And here was completely different. That's true. And you know, it's interesting that his teachings because when he stood up against the kings, and he said fight evil things, he wrote a text. And so this were thicker they called it were thicker urban foodie, Allah, Allah Sudan. And so it is his declaration of independence. And in Jamaica, I studied this. And I found, you know, in the history, that around 1817, there were a group of Muslims living in Kingston, Jamaica. And because 1/3 of the slaves are enslaved people were were Muslims, we now recognize this. So they were living in in Kingston, Jamaica, and they were writing to each other in Arabic. And
there was a document called Watseka. And so this document
was circulating in a parish called Manchester parish or province of Jamaica. And it was a big slave revolt.
So and many scholars believe it could be that same document from the chef.
So many of the people who led the slave revolts in the Americas were actually Muslims coming out of this teachings.
Because the deed the slave trade is these people generally. So some of them were on the people on the coastline that were caught. But if you were more on the interior, you wouldn't get caught necessarily by the slave trading that was going on in the coastline. But many of the Muslims did fall into slavery. And they were leading slave revolts throughout
the Americas. If you want more on that,
I have a book called deeper roots. And you can go to my, my website is Hakeem quick.com HJKIM, qu IC k.com.
And you can order it, I can send it to you, it's called deeper roots and will give you the history of Muslims in the Caribbean and the Americas,
before Columbus.
Any other general questions or anybody has floors open.
So inshallah next week, we will be continuing and check us man had a very practical way. He had a really interesting section of what it was books and I want to bring this to you next week, because it is one of the most
clear examples of how the scholarship can be used by us today. Okay, so we want to continue with our teachings of SN and bring you these teachings next week inshallah. So, we'll see you next week. Have a safe journey home. I gotta get one Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salam Wa alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh