Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Art and Beauty in Islam
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hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala Murthy Ramadan
rely on Amin while early he or Sufi or Baraka was seldom at the
Sleeman Cathedral on laomi Deen, Amma buried
when you look back at the time of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa
sallam, and you reflect about the concept of art and beauty,
aesthetics,
you find that it's very rich. And
we have some restrictions.
Those restrictions that we have with regards to art, primarily
depicting inanimate objects, animate beings, we're not allowed
to depict animate beings. So that's animals or human beings in
terms of creating a form. There's some difference of opinion whether
it has to be whether the prohibition is related to a 3d
objects like a statue, or even a 2d drawing or inscription or some
other kind of manifestation of that nature. But that has never
actually stopped the Muslims from
expressing themselves in their art. And that's why if you look
around,
you will see that in many of the Muslim countries, including places
like India is a very good example, the Indian subcontinent some of
the best art in Indian, I've seen a lot of it is primarily Muslim,
though.
They've always been a minority in the Indian subcontinent. Muslims
have always been a minority. I mean,
they are millions. There's more. There's more Muslims in India,
just India right now, not even talking about Pakistan or
Bangladesh or Burma.
But in India, there's nearly 200 million Muslims are so probably
more than that, which is more than the Muslims in the Middle East.
Right? And they don't even speak Arabic. They read Arabic, and then
you take Pakistan and then Bangladesh and that's, that's
another
you know, that's, that's maybe like 500 million or something like
that. That's that's a huge amount of Muslims. We're talking about
the, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said in Allaha Jamila,
when were you able, Jamal? Allah subhanho wa Taala is elegant,
Allah is beautiful, and he loves beauty and elegance.
That's what the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said,
the Prophet salallahu Salam also said that Allah has written
prescribed, he is prescribed beauty in everything excellence.
The word Ehsaan is used there. So we've got Jamal. Jamal means
beauty and excellent and beauty and elegance. Then you've got
Hassan. Hassan is a transitive, a transitive form of the word
person, person means beauty. It means Beauty means something that
is nice, something that is great, something that is attractive, as a
means to make something good and attractive. So the Prophet
sallallahu sallam said, that God has Allah has written has
prescribed has instructed that things be done in an excellent
way. And when we're talking about excellence, we mean everything. It
doesn't have to be just the form as a purely a form of art, but
worship a person's character, a person's state, a person's self.
That's why, in the very famous narration from the Prophet
salallahu Alaihe Salam, we're Gibreel Ali Salam especially sent
for this occasion that he came in sat in front of the province of
the lives and most of you will have heard of that narration. It's
a very famous one. And he asked a series of questions, really simple
questions, really. And this happened in the final years
towards the end of the proximal awesomes life. And he came and
asked some very simple questions. First question he asked was, What
is Islam?
It's not like people didn't know they knew what Islam was. But he
asked that question What is Islam and the Prophet Solomon gave him a
simple answer.
What is Iman ya rasool Allah, what is faith so he differentiated
between distinguish between Islam and Iman. And while the words can
be used interchangeably, Islam EMA and min Muslim, the real
difference between them is that one is inner the other one is an
outer expression. So Eman generally refers to believe inside
the heart. It means the inner conviction the inner belief and
outside manifestation when you declare that you're you believe in
God and you believe that Muhammad is Allah's Messenger, sallallahu
alayhi wa sallam pray you fast and so on the five pillars. They're
basically an expression of Islam, but Iman is the core, the inner
conviction.
So those two are very simple questions, and you've got some of
the prominent companions sitting around when this exchange took
place. I think it was just to re gravitate, re acclimate people
just get back
into focus, because by now, so many smaller rulings had been
revealed as well, and had been explicated and spread within the
Muslim community. So this was just like, Okay, what is Islam? What is
Iman? And then the last question, the prophet Elijah was asked by
Gibreel
is what is so?
What is perfection of faith?
What is the Excellence in faith? How do you reach perfection in
Islam? And Iman, that's how I that's how I how I would interpret
it, that Islam and Iman we just talked about, how would you make
that excellent. And that's where the prophets Allah loves him gave
an answer, that you try to worship Allah that you do worship Allah as
though you're seeing him. So God needs to be in your mind and your
heart manifest. When you worship him, it needs to be a very
conscious form of worship, not just ritualistic. Ritual is
important for us to be unified. For us to go through a procedure
for us to be able to understand how to do things. If we were told,
you just need to be conscious of God, just just pray to God, just
be conscious of God, just remember, God doesn't think we
weren't told how to do it, then people will come up with some
really crazy ideas, and then shaytan would have misled a lot of
people to you would have just totally hijacked that whole idea.
So we are told how to pray. Some, some of those prayers are made
obligatory, some are made optional. So that we are, we have
an idea of how to at least enact the form of it. But what is really
important is to have the consciousness within, to really
understand that you're standing in front of God.
Not just in our prayer than that's just the prayers are just a form
of training. But at every point in our time, in our life, that
wherever we may be, whether we're sitting in class, whether we're
shopping,
we are worried about how we can be the perfect human being.
That's in our interaction to others. That's in our interaction
with our Lord. So we're remembering our Lord. And that
helps us to fulfill the rights of other people because that is
what's going to cut the selfishness, the arrogance, to
want to feel that you are closer to God. So even when you're in a
marketplace,
even when you go shopping, you just go step into Tesco or
Sainsbury's, or whatever to buy something.
The incentive that's been given to us in a hadith that's related in
the Sunon the Prophet sallallahu sallam said Whoever goes into a
market place or a sukkah bizarre shopping area, whatever it is, and
says, La ilaha illallah wa the hula sharika lah hula Milko Allah
Al hamdu
you're here where you need to hua hai Yun, Leia mo to be at the
hill, higher Wahoo or other coalition in Kadir. I mean a lot
of people know this already. If you read that you get this is one
of the highest rewarding
vicars that you can do in any place, you get a million rewards
for this.
Just being in a shop where you're obviously focused on shopping,
you're being dazzled by everything around you. But God is Allah The
Prophet said, Allah is me saying that if you remember God, then
then you get this many rewards. That's an incentive. But the
purpose is that we remember God wherever we are. So excellence
that's another narration that God has prescribed excellence in
everything. Yet another narration is when the Prophet sallallahu
sallam was approached by a particular particular person who
was very handsome.
He came to the Prophet sallallahu and they said, Look, ya'll Rasul
Allah, I'm gonna ask you a question. You've seen how handsome
I am. Right? Meaning, you've seen how much beauty that I've been
endowed with, right I've been bestowed with, right?
And I like everything about me to be excellent. To the straps of my
sandals. Right.
I want everything you know, I want my clothing my handbag. I mean, he
didn't have a handbag, but you know what I mean, right? So I want
all of these things to be just excellent. I can't stand for
anything less. I just don't want Louis Vuitton though. Because I
don't want to be promoting the company. They're the only major
they're the only designer brand that's actually hoodwink people to
3d promote them by literally coating their bags with their with
their logo, that you can't miss it. Everybody else is discreet,
you know, you get a you get A a Gucci top or something like that.
It's gonna have a little Gucci sign. I mean, because Adidas and
Nike and that they're the ones who are allowed and, you know, for the
inner city people, right? That they're the ones who, you know,
who are for people who don't have another identity. So they
Eat an identity, right? So they give them identity. But designer
brands are very subtle. They're more about elegance they're more
or less supposed to be, but Louis Vuitton has managed to, you know,
get you to pay three 400 pound for a bag and promote them. Right You
can't miss it. So he said not Louis Vuitton
who who was
I'm not talking about that companion but anyway, so he says I
want everything going back to the convenience store. He says I want
everything of mine to be beautiful is that arrogance?
So the prophesy lost him said no, that's not arrogance. Arrogance is
that you deny the truth when you see it, you know, you see the
truth and you're denied you're obstinate, you're stubborn, and
you look down upon people. So if you if you're good if you're great
features and handsomeness or whatever you have that you own,
makes you look down upon others, then that's a problem. But if you
do it just that I want to be nice, then that's fine. A person came
was sitting in front of the great Imam Abu Hanifa Rahim Allah, and
he was very scruffy looking. So Imam Abu Hanifa, after the class
had ended, after everybody had gone away, he told him to stay
back. And when he was with him in private, he spoke to me he pulled
out some money he says here Asli heard a gun sort yourself out. I
go, you know, go and buy some decent clothing. So you're not all
scruffy and the way you dress. And he said, I've got money. I don't
need this, I've got money.
So why are you dressing in a way that makes people feel sorry for
you.
In fact, there's a hadith another Hadith which says that Allah likes
to view Allah likes that His bounties that he is provided to
his servants, be manifest on them.
I mean, that in a moderate sense, you know what I mean by that?
He, if Allah has given us something, then don't be greedy.
Don't be miserly, because that's a problem as well. And dress well
enough dress elegant, but not pompously, not arrogantly. So
that's in terms of dress and so on, which is something that we
relate to everyday. I mean, everybody talks about this thing,
they may not talk about calligraphy, they may not talk
about architecture. But otherwise, if we now move on to more,
to other subjects, the Muslims have always been looking for
elegance. Now I know that if we look back for some of us from
certain cultures, our cultures will differ hugely. Some of us may
come from cultures that are not as clean as other cultures. I've been
to some cultures where even the lowest person on the social rung
right on the lowest rung of the social ladder, the person who is
selling just literally juice on the street is just peddling small
amounts of things from a little cut, as you see in many developing
and third world countries, they will be very clean. Even such a
person will wear an apron and they will be very clean, though he is
probably hardly getting by. But there's a concept of cleanliness.
Yet some of our cultures that I'm sure you know, many of us relate
to. It's very dirty. Right? The cleanliness is not the same.
That's a cultural thing. But otherwise, Islam is extremely,
extremely emphasizes huge amount of cleanliness and Navassa. The
Prophet sallallahu sallam said that the Hooroo chatroom Eman
purity is half of faith, half of faith. But again, we're not just
talking about physical purity, we're talking about the purity of
the heart. And if that's not half of the faith, then you know, it's
probably even more than half the faith in that sense. Because if
you've got pure if some person has purity of the heart, then
everything else follows. Purity of self purity of mind, purity of
focus, purity of state purity of o'clock and character and then of
course, physical purity, to stay away from filth and so on.
That's why we have the idea that the the toilets are the place for
the shaytaan and that's why when we go in we pray the DUA allah how
many out will be coming out hopefully we'll have birth of
Allah I seek your refuge from male and female devils that may dwell
there in in dirty places. Dirt is related to the devil in our in our
tradition.
Now, while we had prohibition for a number of things, we had a
prohibition for generally instrumental music beyond the drum
and beyond the tambourine in the shuffle. So there's those two
opinions. But beyond that, generally there's been a
discouragement to music. There's been a discouragement to any kind
of animate, form depiction. So once the Prophet Allah Islam came
into his house, and there there was a
there was something
hanging on the wall a piece of cloth hanging on the wall which
seem to have a some kind of embroidery it seemed of a bird or
something. And the Prophet sallallahu sallam, he, he was
quite upset with that. He says Gibreel, the angel will not come
in, if this is the case.
In fact, the Prophet sallallahu sallam said, let that hold by law,
that whole melodica beaten fee, he swore that the angels don't enter
a room or a house in which there's forms, there's animate forms. Now,
this didn't stop the Taj Mahal from being built. And I visited
Taj Mahal, at least, I think more than once. And unfortunately, I
haven't been able to actually admire it properly. I mean, the
bit that I have seen was amazing. But then I was told afterwards, I
went to one of the local, one of the local schools afterwards, and
I met one of the principals of that place. And he said, he was
once given a tour of that of the Taj Mahal, right, which is in Agra
in India.
And that was just something that this king who was in very
Ramallah, he was very romantic, he was in love with his wife. And he
built this for there as a mausoleum. So I mean, we're
talking about just the mausoleum here that he built, and it's quite
amazing. So essentially, everything in there has a is very
nuanced. Everything in there from the calligraphy, the wording, the
verses that have been picked in the calligraphy, to how the
placement is. So for example, there's an arch and the verse, I
can't remember which verse it is now. But the verse that's there is
speaking about height, the height of God, the God being elevated,
and that particular word comes right at the top. So it's very,
very properly designed, thought out, they had the best people to
do this. And that's just the Taj Mahal. There's numerous buildings
like this, if you look at the Jama mosque of Delhi itself, if I just
focus on India for a moment, and then when you go to Turkey, it's
an open air museum, right, you just go around and you see those
mosques that are in Turkey.
Then you go to places like I mean, I would say one of the, one of the
best
manifestations of Islamic architecture that I have seen is
in Andalusia, which is in Cordoba, actually, more in particular, I
think Alhambra palaces, amazing, absolutely amazing. Everything
down to the inscriptions on the wall, which have still lost it to
the gardens that outside. I mean, some of you may have been to those
huge gardens outside the Alhambra Palace, and the various different
palaces within that whole complex. It's absolutely amazing, even
after several 100 years, can you imagine what it was at the time?
So Islam has never
I mean, Muslims have never kept back just because of this. They
would then combine within that the calligraphy the art of
calligraphy.
Now it's of calligraphy
is, I mean that it's very difficult to speak about that.
It's something that you need to see the ability of words to be in
scripted and written in a particular way to just amaze
people. And, you know, you go to tech in places like that, and you
see that it's, I mean, you'll you'll see calligraphy everywhere,
but a lot of our art had to do with calligraphy. Unfortunately,
we just don't have enough people studying this anymore. We don't
have enough calligraphers. There are some wonderful, worldly
renowned ones, but otherwise, we don't have enough. So we need more
we need more calligraphers, then
we move on to
poetry was another wonderful
expression of art. And that starts right from the time the process
Laurie Salem.
Poetry may have been seen as a mundane aspects. Can you say
poetry is religious? Was the was a very important question. Can you
say poetry is a religious side, because poetry is a vehicle. It's
a medium, it's a it's the way of conveying information.
But the prophets Allah, some knew how powerful it was. Because in
his time, it was poetry, which was one of the most effective means
mediums of,
of communication. And
in when you had things like, battles raging, in the midst of a
battle, they would actually start poetry. And that would be to get
people going. Because people were riled up with poetry and you know,
people who appreciate poetry.
It's like, you get a whole hours, effective lecture, and you reduce
that to a few lines of really intense poetry. It's like read
All
right, instead of 10 cans of Coke, you take a Red Bull. It's just
like you're getting it all together at one go. It's very
effective, because poetry is really really abbreviated,
concise, lucid, very comprehensive
form of speech, using every strategy that you can every
technique within the language to deliver meaning. And if you look
at the Muslim poets, it's absolutely amazing. I'll just give
you one quick, one quick example of that as we as we go along.
Before I give you the example, let me let me just answer the question
that I raised. The prophets of Allah allowed that because that
was an effective mode of communication. So for example, we
had Hassan hypnotherapy through the Allah one, he was known to be
a poet par excellence. So he was actually set on to the member of
the Prophet sallallahu Sallam to defend Islam defend the Muslims,
because after one of the battles, then the non Muslims from Mecca,
right, they started saying, After the Battle of Earth, they started
saying some poetry to say that, you know, we have the gods of
Latin Erza, and so on, and you guys have no God and so on. So
Hassan immunotherapy and others they were they were responding to
that. And that was the best way to respond in those days. So the
prophets Allah allowed that to happen, because it was an
important aspect, not just was it or not, but it was a very
effective form of art. Numerous people have resorted to poetry,
there was one of the great scholars of one of the great
scholars of Damascus. You've heard of Salah Medina, UV, and nurudeen
sangee. So Salahuddin, a UBS mentor, the one who set things up
for him was noted in sangee. Right, may God bless them.
nurudeen sangee was the one who established one of the first
madrasahs universities develop dedicated to Hadith studies called
dato. Hadith and Maria in Damascus.
Right, I don't know if it still exists. I don't know. I didn't
know about this when I was studying in Damascus. So I didn't
go to look for it. But it's such an amazing place. The first one of
the first teachers there was ignore a circle and ignore a
circle at the Mashpee wrote a book that we've just received recently,
it's at volumes. And this is no joke. It's an 80 volume book on
the history of Damascus, all the way from discussing those prophets
who had come into Damascus actually go, it talks about the
Roman, you know, origins of Damascus, and so on, goes on, and
discusses pretty much any scholar or any person of refuge within the
city that lived until his time. And he died in 579, if I'm
correct, right, which is just after as early. So he's got
everybody that came into Damascus and discuss at volume that book is
and I can show you a picture of it, I've got it on my phone,
right.
Now, what's very interesting is that
if not a circuit, he would, he would, he would have lessons.
Salahuddin would attend his lessons, and know the ins and even
the ruler, they would attend the lessons. At the end of every
lesson he would he would have poetry.
He was a poet. And that's when he would deliver his poetry at the
end of each lesson.
Just an additional point. It's got nothing to do with our topic
today. But that is the same institution from which some of the
greatest of our scholars that most of you would have heard of have
come from. So the graduates of that place I'll start with Imam
Mizzi you may have not heard of him or Missy, but he's one of the
great Hadith scholars.
Imam nawawi he graduated there, most people have heard of him and
now we're the other side of him.
IGNOU Cathy cathedra, the great professor of the Quran, one of the
most famous of seers, he graduated there
is no Tamia graduate graduated from the liberal team, his his
students, if you look at him, he graduated from there. So you had
some of the top scholars graduating from this place. And
the reward is all being received by nodine Sangha because he set it
up. So anyway, that was a sight point. So whether you look at
poetry, whether you look at architecture, whether you look at
calligraphy, it's pretty much of the Muslim world is martial law in
all forms of art. Because we had a prohibition of music. So instead
of music, we've got that read of the Quran. And the wonderful thing
about the Gita is that it's a miracle. It's part of being a
miracle of the Quran, because the Quran is a miracle. And the tweet
is that I'm trying to I try to choose the most simplest name for
my children as well. My first child, his name is Lisa. So it's
got a ha and it's got a val mostly
People are gonna say who's Eva? So you're gonna say a small her and
as an Uzza instead of a val. So nobody's gonna say his name right?
Right? Second one are Isha. Again very difficult because you have to
say that I mean, who's gonna say you know, not everybody's an Arab
not everybody can say and if you're gonna say Asia, Asia, Asia,
right becomes a why eventually, right? So no thought then use of
you can't really mess up use of it's a very simple spelling's,
simple way of saying, and my last one is sad him. So I'm trying to
find names. I'm not going to get messed up, because language
changes over time. Right.
Let's start on surnames. What's your surname?
Sorry.
darauf DAR.
Now that
even the way you're saying it, right, that's part of Dar. That
sounds like a Persian it sounds it's Persian, right? Oh, to do
Persian.
Okay. All right.
What's your name?
LV what?
Right, so LV is actually messed up already. It's from either we write
it's a nyssma to Al. Now, can you spell et al v i, right? There's no
v in Arabic. There's no v in order either. Right? But somehow, when
you putting into English, it becomes a V. Right? So actually,
it's supposed to be either we, I in lamb Wow. Right. So that I
would spell that as a L wi. So it's actually become a V. Right?
So give it a few more generations, and we'll probably go through some
more evolution, right? Just like that. Everything that Now imagine
if the Quran was allowed to evolve that way, it would really corrupt
the meaning. But that's why it doesn't matter which country
you're from. Whether you speak Arabic or not, what whatever
slang, Arabic you you're used to. When you read the Quran.
You could be from any country, but the rules are universal. And you
could be Shia, Sunni, whatever you are, it doesn't make a difference.
You must read the Quran, you might say with a slight
Turkish accent, a Salam alikoum. Right.
Instead of a Salam or Aleikum, right, you might do that. But
other than that, you know that the tweet is right. It's just there,
how much you're supposed to stretch it? There's nothing else I
mean, if you look at English, it's not like that. There's so many
different words that you say differently. For example, we say
yogurt. In America, they say yogurt, tomato, right? Tomato,
tomato. Totally different. Even in England things change. Right? For
example, who's from anybody from Walsall?
Right? They'll actually sound from OSU.
Right? I'm not from Walsall. I'm from Warsaw, right?
Things change like that they differ. But when it comes to the
Quran, it's a miracle. The Quran and the way people read it, and
the way people listen to it. There's so many people around the
world who absolutely have no idea what the recital is saying, which
is unfortunate, but they will listen to them for endless hours.
And it's just voice there's no music, it's just pure acapella,
right? There's no music to it at all. So these are the various
different forms of expression, which are not prohibited. We've
got some prohibitions, but this never stopped anybody from
building wonderful buildings, depicting art that has ritually
remained for an timeless age. And people are, I mean, benefiting
from it, even until today. Right? Wherever you go around in the
Muslim world and other places, we ask Allah that Allah allow us to,
inshallah contribute to this as well. But to but to finish off,
and then to answer any specific questions that you have.
I would just say that the main thing that we need to worry about
when it comes to
universities and student life, just to briefly discuss that, is
that when you get engrossed in anything, you then take on the
climate, the environment, the culture of the of the people
you're sitting with. There's a certain climate in any university
that you go to.
I don't I don't know enough about Oxford to to, would you call it to
make any assessment here, but I've been to one university in London,
where I've gone to give a talk like this, and it's just a rowdy
bunch. Right? It's just
you find it difficult to speak to them, because any little thing
they start giggling, right, they start laughing and it just, it's
just kind of crazy. You go to there's another you
university they really like going to. And when you go there,
mashallah, they're all very serious. And they, they, there's a
certain culture in every university, I'm assuming that in
Oxford, it's quite serious. Now, while it's being serious
Alhamdulillah, you're not going to be wasting time, hopefully
otherwise, I mean, having gone through university myself, there's
so many people who can actually go through university and pretty much
just do a bit of work and get through and pass. Because at the
end of the day, that's really all that matters at the end of the
day, you pass your exam, and you could be wasting a huge amount of
time. So
in all of that, how do you remain close to your faith, because
there's a lot of pressure on people as well, because we live in
a very socially challenging time, the
the millennial generation that people are, you know, finding
themselves in this without any fault of our own, right. It's not
no fault of yours, or anybody else's that you came. And we came,
we happen to be here in this generation, where the mobile phone
was invented. And it just creates this massive addiction problem. So
I think one needs to just really be focused on what they want from
this life, and be goal oriented. There's a talk I just gave two
weeks ago, in Imperial College, something to do with vision, being
a visionary or whatever. So it just gives you, you know, I did a
survey of what the classical scholars thought about that. So to
give you an example, you had the great leader of the Muslims, Omar,
Abdullah Abdullah Aziz.
He was actually a * before, he would never wear a garment
twice, he would never like to be publicly seen in the same garment.
Once he's worn it once, he would never want to see it being one the
second time, but when he became he was then the governor of Madina,
Munawwara, the Khilafah, the head, the capital was Damascus. That's
where the Omega IDs were. He was a cousin of the ruling. The
Abdulmalik number one and those guys who were the Sultan. He was
the he was
the governor. And then when his cousin, the Sultan passed away,
his children were too young. So Omar Abdulaziz was called to
become the Khalif. He says afterwards, he says that, before I
became governor, I used to have a desire that I'm going to be the
governor of Madina, Munawwara
very ambitious person. And he says, Then I became the governor,
then my ambition was that I'm going to become the Khalifa of the
Muslims. I'm going to become the president. That was his ambition.
And he says, Then I became the Khalifa, the President, what do
you think is next ambition is going to be when you've done it,
when you've been there and done that? What's your next ambition?
Very career oriented, very ambition, huge vision. He says,
When I became the belief, then my next ambition became paradise.
That's when you get it right. So what is your ambition?
What is your ambition?
Ambition has to be the hero of the day is what distinguishes a
believer from anybody else. Why? What does it mean by a believer?
If you're believing in praying, you pray, that's that's not a big
deal. The belief is the belief as Allah says, In the beginning of
the Quran, and levena, you may know and I believe, those people
who believe in the unseen
that is how strong we are, and how strong our belief in the unseen
believe in the unseen doesn't mean that we just acknowledge, oh,
there's going to be a paradise there or something like that.
We'll deal with it when we get there. But it's about how strong
that idea is in our mind, and how that actually affects our life. So
the example that I generally give is this.
Those of you who are studying and have already figured out where you
want to be living and where you want to buy a house, because I
guess one of the big deals is that you finish you get married, and
then you get a house. I guess that's a big idea, right? Most
people have, how many of you know where you want to buy your house
and where you want to live and how much it costs and how you're going
to get it? How many of you already thought thought about that?
Anybody? Just one person? Two people? Okay? Three, four.
So you're going to
Okay?
When you figured it out, when you've planned way ahead of where
you want to be five to 10 years now from now, your studies are
going to be very different to those people who are just thinking
I need to spend these next three years. I need to finish this
place. That's not good enough. You're gonna have to spend the
next three or four years anyway. But why don't you have a goal that
is five years beyond that? That's not going to effect this except
positively. Remember that? Because they
And if you're only thinking about this time that and there's nothing
else that features in your future, then you could be wasting a huge
amount of time now. But if your future is something else where you
want to get somewhere, then your studies here are going to be
targeted at that. And your studies will improve.
Because if you really want that house and you really want to get
married, you really want this you really want, then this study needs
to be much better, you need to work hard. So that's the simple
idea, right? Same way.
There are those people who live through this world make a lot of
effort and do everything like everybody else does. But their
focus is Jannah. They focus the pleasure of Allah, this is just
the part in between this is just the means to get there. Just like
university is not the be and be all end all of everything is it,
it's just the tool that you're going through. But if you've made
University, you're great ambition and goal, when you come out of
here, you're going to be miserable.
This is just a medium of development, that it's just
something you have to go through. Right. So same thing, if you think
of the world as something like that, and our real abode is the
hereafter, then your work in this world, you'll still enjoy
yourself. But your work in this world will be totally different.
Because you're working for a purpose. Now, you're not working
just for the world, just like here, you're not living just for
now. But you're living for afterwards. You're spending your
time here. And that's a simple equation. So everybody just think,
Where do I want to be in 10 years? Where do I want to be not just in
Korea? But how close do I want to be to Allah? Because
there are
within the university, there are a lot of temptations. I mean, that's
not something that anybody needs to, you know,
try to, you know, convince anybody about it, there's a lot of
temptations. How do I get out of this place? How do I get married
the day that I get married for those who are not married, and I
can say to myself that I did not commit Zina ever, and this is a,
this has been pure, and I have excellence in this regard.
And then one day, I can meet with my Lord when I finish. And I can
say that humbly, at least I stayed away from X, Y and Zed. Otherwise,
it's so easy.
And I think the way to benefit from that insha Allah is that if
you just do a few things, then I can guarantee you this is
empirical. Right? That if you do a few things, your iman will stay
protected and your iman level will stay at a certain balance. And
that is you just do 100 Istighfar in the morning and evening. A
stockfeed Allah Hara beam equilibrium be one or two a day or
any other shorter, it's there for morning and evening. The benefit
of it is that whatever sin that we've happened to commit with said
something we saw something with, we heard something that we aren't
supposed to, then it gets forgiven. So we're constantly
cleaning ourselves. It's like we're constantly washing
ourselves. Right? So we're having two showers a day. So in the
morning, everything we've done since nighttime, it's purified, we
do 100 In the evening again, and then that's all of our day's
problems are sorted inshallah. So that now that we've gained
purification, we need to adorn ourselves. One of the best ways to
invoke blessings from Allah subhanho wa Taala is to send
blessings on Rasul allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So do
100 salawat and Rasool Allah in the morning 100 In the evening
Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala early say you
didn't have Mohammed robotic or Salah morning and evening, the
Prophet sallallahu sallam said, Whoever sends one blessing on me
God sends 10 blessings on him. So that's my sha Allah 100 is so far
100 Salawat morning and evening, then once a day, read some Quran.
Even if that's just one page of Quran a day, whatever you can
conveniently do every day. If that's two pages, if that's one
page, pick it up, read a page. The Quran is our lifeline. That is
what fills the heart with light. That is what keeps you connected
to Allah keeps you focused. So read the Quran, preferably with
meaning, even if just one page a day, that's three things. Number
four, is try to spend about five to 10 minutes a day, just five to
10 minutes, meditating, just with Allah, nobody else I know we pray,
but a lot of time our prayers are distracted. So find five to 10
minutes for yourself, whether that'd be the last thing you do at
night or first thing in the morning once you've done your
federal prayer, whatever. Just sit down and do a sort of meditation.
One of the ones that I found very effective is that you sit down
close your eyes. And you just imagine that Allah's Mercy is
descending on your heart. Right, Allah's Mercy is Rama is
descending on your heart. Just imagine a shaft of light coming
down in your heart and all of your darkness from your heart is being
eliminated.
And you do that for like a few moments and then the main thing is
for the rest of the minutes you
You just say Allah, Allah with your heart. Just think of Allah
with your heart. What does that mean? You can't think of Allah We
don't know what to think about because we don't know what he
looks like. He's beyond form and so on. So what Allah says in the
Quran is, well, goodness Moravec take the name of your Lord, that's
what we're supposed to do. So all you do is you imagine that there's
a board on your heart that says, hola.
And you just, you just close your eyes. And you're just imagining
that your heart is beaming that out, like, just pulsating with it.
Hola. Hola. Hola. Without saying anything with your tongue, it's
very powerful. And you will know, when you're doing it, or you're
not doing it, because there's a massive, you're gonna, you're
gonna have to learn focus, because distraction is what's the killer
of this. And we are in a distracted generation. So put your
phones off and everything, and then do it. Let's just do this for
30 seconds. And I will just show you how hard it is. But if you get
that right for five to seven minutes, you will see the benefit
of it. So lower your heads, close your eyes. And just think with
your heart that it's saying Allah, Allah and don't get distracted by
anything. I'll tell you when, actually, I'll give you 50
seconds.
How many of you managed to pass all 50 seconds with no distraction
at all?
You didn't even hear that clock, you finally found out that it
actually takes
anybody. No distraction.
Very difficult, isn't it. But if you can just focus on God, give
him that which he deserves from us, away from all the other
distractions of the world, the phone, the Facebook, everything,
believe me, you will gain focus in your prayer.
You read you will do better in exams to be honest, because you
will gain focus. Right? But the main thing is that we want it to
enliven our heart because our hearts become diseased by all the
corruption that we take in from around us. So anyway, quickly.
Number one was what is the phone number two, US Salawat Durood.
Sharif, number three, Quran number four, meditation. Number five is
when we first hear about this, then we get kind of like, okay, I
need to do this, you do it for two, three days. And then after
that, it starts dwindling, because we've got too much competition in
our life. There's too much other things that we need to happen, we
need to do so then I'll do it later. I'll do it later and
eventually gets lost. If you can, once a week, attend a gathering
that makes you feel closer to Allah. Now, if that's difficult,
and you can't find such I'm not talking about an Isaac meeting.
Those are good there for a different purpose, though, right?
That's management. I'm talking about something that just reminds
you of God.
If you can't do that, find the lectures that will do that for
you. At least once a week. Listen to those. And you will see Insha
Allah, that if you try this for for three weeks, and you don't
feel close to Allah, then
I don't know what to say. It's empirical. This is scientific. If
you do this for three weeks with Imani in your hearts, you will
feel closer to Allah subhanaw taala and it will be easier for
you to do things.
So anyway, and inshallah I hope I've answered all those other
questions as well, at least briefly. Of course, we've got I
mean, I've dealt with these subjects quite a few times, and
there's quite a few lectures on zamzam. academy.com for these if
I've not been able to fully answer your questions for you.
But I didn't want to get our brother upset because his focus
was the arts. Right? So I wanted to cover the arts anyway.
Yes, so that's the talk ended if anybody's got any questions about
anything, please I'm here for a few more moments.
You see that what helped me a lot with that is a Hadith in which the
Prophet said a lot is unsaid. Allatheena or young bitter NIFA
Phil kalbi comme une bit and that was our
music is what creates hypocrisy in the heart just as what
would you call it grows crops. So, music is a feeding in the hearts
through the idea is that you are becoming you are, the whole idea
that I see from there is that you are becoming too accustomed to an
artificial form of, of, of stimulation. Right? So music is
just is very powerful. In fact, according to studies, it shows
that music is one of the most powerful things that you can find
it's more powerful in terms of the effect it creates on a person you
know, the I forget what it's called, when you get excited, huge
amount of pleasure. There's something that happens in the back
of your neck so they gauge that and they've measured a number of
things. They say it ranks even higher than sexual *
fulfillment sexual fulfillment music
and rank even higher than sexual fulfillment, the excitement that
you get from it. So it's very powerful, it can make you sad, it
can make you excited, it can make you run, it can make you dance it
can make, it's very powerful. And I think that's the, that's the
thing that I see is the problem. That's the very thing, which I
think is the problem. Because then you you get accustomed to that,
then you need to have more of it, and more of it and different forms
of it. Right, and gets more intense and more intense, but it's
all artificial. And as you know, with everything else, the Dean
just hates artificial artificiality. It just wants real
substance. So get used to real substance in terms of words, and
the Quran, and so on. Otherwise, that's what you're going to be
excited by, then eventually, they start I mean, I heard somebody
sent me something about an event that was accompanied by music.
That is supposed to be a music of its own, right, without
instruments. But somebody have thought this is necessary, that
it's not good enough. So music is extremely contagious. In that
sense. That's what I personally see as the wisdom behind it.
That's why you have so much discouragement for it. Abdullah
Muhammad Ali Alana was with Sallie Mae think, and suddenly music
started playing. So he put his hand on his ear, and he told the
young boy, he said, When it finishes, let me know, right? And
he said, This is exactly what the person did with me when I was
young. So there's a lot of discouragement for it in that
sense. I know, I know, there's a lot of justifications out there,
because we've got Muslim nasheed artists that are, you know, using
it for.
So the example I gave of Omar Abdulaziz,
I was just saying that he was lucky.
He was lucky that he had a very, very worldly career oriented idea
first. So he wanted to be the governor, then he wanted to be the
Hadith. But when he became the Hadith, then he was lucky that
Allah had mercy on him and gave him the right goal to look for. Do
you see what I'm saying? So
the example that I gave, that if you're in university and you've
got a goal, Post University, then your university will be better.
Because you're probably then going to choose the right subject based
on that goal, you're then going to be working and maybe doing
extracurricular activities based on that goal. So now, if we make
the goal, satisfaction of God, getting his pleasure and Paradise
than anything we do in the world, we're going to try to make that
conducive to that plan and that vision.
So automatically, things will fall in place, but there are there's
ways you have to go about doing that. If we don't have enough
knowledge by ourselves as to which subject should I be getting into
in the first place? Right, which will be, for example, I've got a
friend, maybe I'll send it to, maybe we'll send you the link.
I've got a friend in University of Chicago.
Now he's, uh, he was doing medicine in the Pritzker school
there, right? Universities, you guys, one of the top universities
of America, right? He takes he took off about three or four years
to go and study in Pakistan, he became a scholar. Right? He came
back. And he carried on and then he had to choose a vocation. Now,
he, as a scholar, said that if I'm going to become a normal doctor,
I'm going to have to deal with interacting with a lot of
patients. And the problem with that, is that there's going to be
a lot of intergender related intergender interaction that I'm
gonna have to undertake, which he's not very happy and doing,
because it's, you know, there's temptation within that. So he
chose for his purpose, he chose pathology, right? Because it's
very lab oriented, right? He's just looking at tissue and stuff
like that. Right. So
that was a conscious choice he made. Now I know, we're not we
know, we don't want to fill up the labs with just Muslims. But you
know what I mean, right? This is a very personal choice that he had.
So when you have that kind of a goal in mind, you will make less
mistakes, your choices will be better. But to get those choices,
right? You need to ask the right people to consult the right
people, you need to make istikhara. So there's a process
involved. It's not as simple as Okay, Jen, that's my goal, but I
don't know how to get there. You know, you're gonna have to ask the
right people, others who've done it, find out what accidents
they're, you know, what, what are the pitfalls, what are the
obstacles, and so on, so forth. So it's kind of a more holistic
system. It's not just as simple as having a goal. There's things that
it will that you have to put into place with that.
So the journal has just done a feature on him. See, when he
studied in Pakistan, one of the molana, that the madrasa he was
studying that he would just come and he, the sheikh Hussein, he was
actually quite fascinated by how this particular old shake would
come and distill huge amount
have information in the simplest form and present it to the
students. So it would be very easy for them to understand. When he
came back to university, he saw that it was just too complex. And
they were just he, he, he was quite inspired by his Arabic
teacher. So he started thinking, how can I take all of this
instruction and simplify it? And that's exactly what he worked on
to do. Then he started teaching for Kaplan Do you know, Kaplan,
right, that training program now in America to get into medical
school, you have to do a medical entry exam, it is still big money
making. I was I went to to go into law schools, I had to do the LSAT,
and to do training for the LSAT I had to pay. I think it was 11 or
$1,300, just for the training, to train to pass an exam to get into
law school. It's just all money making to get a transcript in
America from university cost money to make an application to a
university cost between 70 and $150. That was 10 years ago.
Right? America is just crazy. It's all about money, right? Because I
lived there for eight years.
So anyway, he did, he discovered that, you know, he's very good at
this. So he is now started his own record pathoma.com website, in
which he gives this instruction to pathology students, and is the guy
who goes into university with a topi on, like a typical white hat.
And a lab coat is like a big beard, dopey, you know, the hat.
And that's how he works there. But they're raving about him. He's got
a whole fan club. And he's a very humble man I know is a very close
friend of mine is very humble, right? But they've got a whole fan
club that I'm making T shirts and everything on his name because
they love his course.
Right? He just simplified pathology, that instruction
pathology to such a degree that people have just passed the test
because of it
because of what he learned in the madrasa.
So what I'm saying is that when you've got a focus and a goal, God
will then also open up pathways for you. Because Allah says in the
Quran, those who make an effort in my way, I will open up the ways
for them requires it requires the workload and reliance. It's not
like you put money in a bank and you see the interest rates. That's
quite obvious. This is like when Allah says, Give one pound in the
path of Allah and I'll give you 70 back. How right how are you gonna
get some money back you don't see it coming your balance, but God
God does give it to you. That's why we need Iman believe a very
important. So thanks for that question. That was the important
question. So yes, there's a whole
it's not just the vision, but there's a whole you know, process
that has to be that has to go with it.
Alright, just like a long hair