Love For Allah E-Reminders

Brothers and Sisters Salam aleikum. Today we're going to be talking about love.

The most important lovable,

which is the love for Allah subhanaw taala. Do you know that the word love is mentioned more than 90 times at the end, but it's very interesting that

as I was preparing for today's talk, I did a little Google search. And I think the first two articles that came up in my Google Search anyway, were unfortunately, Christian websites where they were attacking

the concept of love for God in Islam and talking about how the Quranic concept can't possibly compare with the biblical one, the Christian narrative. Yeah, it's true. It can't compare. Because what Islam teaches is beautiful, is pure.

It makes sense. It's balanced.

Whereas the Christian one is highly problematical. Anyway, I don't want to get into a polemic about Christianity, not tonight, I want to talk about the love of Allah 90 times in the Quran, the word love is mentioned, but in many different ways in in many, many different contexts. And I guess we need to start by saying that in terms of characteristics, in terms of self development, in terms of the type of character that you brothers and sisters want to develop, want to develop

for yourselves, that the love for Allah in a sense, perhaps is something that crowns it all. It's it's in a sense, yeah, it's like the crown jewel, really, of all characteristics. And it's very interesting that the things that we've been talking about in the previous,

you know, in my previous discussions that we've been talking about, what do we talk about, we talked about, my mind's gone blank.

Can you remember what we talked about last week now? Sorry, it's a bit weird, because I was just fell asleep after my anyway, let's just stick to our topic. We're talking about Love of Allah. Right.

And it is certainly one of the most important things that we need to have as a Muslim. So I want to talk a little bit about how, because this is going to probably take a couple of episodes or a couple of talks to go through this in sha Allah, and I'm not like, I'm not going in these things in Super depth, but I'm going a little bit deep.

And I want to talk about today. How do you develop the love of Allah, it is something very, very important. It is a key characteristic. Because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that none of you truly have faith, you don't really believe, until Allah and His messenger are more beloved to you than anything else.

Yeah, you see, and you will never taste the sweetness of faith. Until you love for Allah. And you hate for Allah and you give for Allah and you withhold for Allah. Doesn't matter how much you've asked, how much you pray,

until you have this quality, until you have this character. You will never taste how beautiful faith is, you see.

So this is really the beat the beauty of faith, the real sweetness of faith.

Yeah, that's the term in Arabic. It's sweetness.

Cara remember.

I'm a bit dazed right now, but the sweetness of faith, right?

So this is Subhanallah what you taste when you really appreciate how beautiful it is, to be Muslim. How beautiful it is. To have guidance from Allah. How beautiful it is to be his slave, to be his worshiper, to be his servant, to be his PhD. You see, but you're never really you

Not gonna achieve that sweetness of faith, you're never going to taste it, you're never gonna really appreciate how amazing it is. Until you got to that stage where, you know you love Allah, the minimum you have to love Allah and the messenger. And that's like part of EMA. And that's part of faith is to love Allah into love the Prophet, that's part of it. But you're never going to really taste the sweetness of faith until Allah and His messenger are more beloved to you than anything else. And more than that is that you love and this is very hard, it is not easy to achieve, except for whom Allah makes it easy. Of course, if Allah makes it easy for you, it's easy.

But I'm talking about the reality of how most of us have to struggle because changing your character developing your character, right? Developing your character is generally hard. It is generally difficult. It takes real energy, it takes effort, it takes willpower, it takes commitment. And it's hard because you you have you're never going to achieve it unless you're following this path that we've been on. Since the Ramadan. This path which is the most hard path. Yeah. The greatest or the the,

you know,

the the most difficult jihad, right? The most difficult struggle is the struggle against your knifes your cell for the sake of Allah.

So all of it in a sentence leading to this, in a sense is leading to this. And also by the way, if you really have this quality, if you really have this quality, then everything else also becomes easy. If you think about it, right? If you really have that quality, that you love Allah subhanaw taala if you really love your Lord, you love your creator, you love Allah subhanaw taala really, then all the other stuff that I'm talking about actually becomes easy because your your self becomes annihilated.

Right? You achieve nirvana.

Now I'm not preaching Buddhism, brothers and sisters, don't worry, change my religion. But you know, you know what, Buddhism, right? I'm not gonna I'm not preaching Buddhism, I'm just telling you what the word Nirvana means. The word Nirvana does not mean enlightenment, people think it means enlightenment. No, it doesn't. The word Nirvana means annihilation. And what does it mean within the context of Buddhist philosophy? Buddha is teaching that the enemy is that like the ego, right? That's what it's teaching, the all suffering, you know that life is suffering and suffering comes from the ego. So with you annihilate, you destroy the ego.

If you eliminate it, his idea is that, then you will escape suffering.

Now, there's some reasons why I have some problems with that. And you know, I've talked about it before, maybe today is not the time to talk about it. I'm not going into attacking Christianity and buzzes, I want to talk about loving or lost whatever. But in the sense is that when you love Allah, you love God, when you love your Lord and your Creator.

What is who are you? What is your ego? What is your what is you mean?

What, what is what does, what is your ego become when you are confronted with the reality of truly loving Allah, what happens is, then you are in the real true state of Islam. You are truly Muslim, in the sense that you have truly surrendered your will, to Allah's will. That's really ultimately what you're going to achieve. You are going to surrender your will to the will of Allah and the between what you want and what Allah subhanaw taala wants, there's no difference. You want what Allah wants, and whatever Allah loves you love it. And whatever Allah hates you hate it. This is, this is what you This is when you achieve it. This is when you achieve the sweetness of faith,

right? You see, so true love for Allah subhanaw taala will annihilate all of that. That's it, you've incense you've reached the goal. You've you've

maybe you could say reach your destination, you're going to get a little taste. If you achieve that brothers and sisters. You'll get a little taste in this life of what paradise is going to be like a little taste and not say you're in paradise. I'm saying you're going to taste what Jenna is like. Right? You're going to get an idea. Because don't think that I mean yes of course in Jana. There are rivers of milk and rivers of wine and rivers of honey, beautiful trees.

He's in soil of musk, and pebbles of precious stones, and beautiful husbands and wives and lovely garments and palaces. And, you know, yet there's all of that there are all those physical things. But really, when you think about paradise, you also have to remember that all of this stuff is meaningless. Like the physical, the physical pleasures are meaningless without peace, and happiness, and tranquility, and joy and bliss, right, the inner state of being of not ever having to worry, not ever having to be upset, having all the anger, and you know, the hatred and the frustration, is not there in your heart anymore, no more jealousy, you won't be jealous, you won't be angry, you won't

be upset with anybody. And most of all,

are the Allah, Allah subhanaw taala will be pleased with you.

And you will be pleased with Allah. And you will not be able to do anything in Jannah that will displace Allah anymore. You see, that's really this is the spiritual, mental, psychological state of paradise. This is SubhanAllah. So you can get a little glimpse of that. In this life. You really can you can, I guess, there, I'm sure there have been some people,

some people who, maybe their state is like that the whole time, almost the whole time. Maybe the prophets, maybe some very righteous people. I think for most of us, you know, it's only going to be something that we achieve occasionally, momentarily. Maybe most of us will not even achieve it. To be honest, maybe even it's just some elite people will achieve it momentarily. Most of us. We don't even get that far, you know,

but we need to aspire to it. But it's, you know, we need to aspire to it. We really, really do. So, okay, I'm going on a bit now, but I want to go back to how.

So there's just three steps I'm going to talk about today, and we'll talk about more about this subject. Next time in Charlotte. If Allah gives us life in Charlotte, we'll talk about it more next time. So we're gonna talk about three steps. Now the first step is how do you get to love alone? Right, step number one,

you need to love yourself.

Fine. What are you saying? Abdur Rahim? First you've been talking about nirvana? Now you're talking about being a narcissist? No, I'm not talking about being a narcissist. I don't mean loving yourself in the sense that a narcissist love themselves. That's, that is a sort of sick, psychological,

you know, illness, it's an illness.

I suppose everybody has some degree of narcissism, as they say being narcissistic is a spectrum. From the point of view of psychology. Everyone has some degree of it, right? And, you know, some, so but there's a type of level where you're just obsessed with yourself. This is not all we're talking about. Right? However,

you know, within narcissism, there is something very important. Within that whole idea of loving yourself is something very important. There's something we actually need.

Right, just as, by the way, guys, brothers and sisters, you know, just as the feeling of hunger, if you didn't feel hungry,

you wouldn't be motivated to eat. And if you weren't motivated to eat, right, you would die.

You need to eat to live, you have to that's just the laws of the universe that in which we live. Obviously, if you take this need this feeling of hunger, you take it too far. You'll become obese, and you'll kill yourself from over eating your stress out your heart, you'll stress out your body is one of the biggest killers in the world today, heart disease, and most of these diseases, actually, nearly all of our diseases come from overeating. Yeah. So

But within that, you know, you have to understand the fundamental drive for us to eat is not a bad thing. So also, it's the same thing. The fundamental drive what is the drive here, the drive to love yourself, the need for you to love yourself is to have

self respect, it's good. When within that is the desire for you to perfect yourself to become the best that you can be, to become the best human being that you can be.

To love yourself means to love good for yourself to one good for yourself.

Everything has a beautiful side and an ugly side show, if you strive to be the perfect person, you could misinterpret that, and spend all the time in the gym and trying to look yourself so beautiful and make yourself look so handsome was so pretty, or you know, working out and you know, even maybe getting plastic surgery because maybe you think that perfection is limited to some physical, you know, state, right? Or maybe you realize that actually what's really important is good character. Right?

You see, because also surely part of perfection in the human being you must recognize as part of your character is having good character is developing those good and noble characteristics. But that drive, you see, now this is very, this is very, it's a bit subtle, it's a bit, you have to get the connections here.

When you you see if you're really sincere, in this drive to be the best that you can be, to have good for yourself. Any person who really truly does this will ultimately understand. But they can only ever achieve this

by knowing

their Creator Allah.

Because you could never reach that state of self of perfecting yourself. You can never to be honest, you you're always going to get very lost very quickly, even trying to understand

what is perfection? What Why am I here? What what you have? How about those basic existential questions? Why am I here? What's the purpose of life? For what reason? Do I even exist? If you can't answer those questions? How can you protect yourself? Because you don't even know what you are for? It's what we've been talking about from the very beginning. Do you remember brothers and sisters, you've been following me through this whole journey? You would remember this is what we talked about, right? In the beginning, way back, when we began this series, this is what we talked about, what's the purpose of life? Why are we here? What is the true nature of the human being and so we

know as Muslims, we're Mahalik Telegin. Now in certainly in earlier Abbadon, the Allah did not create the human beings in the jinn except to worship Him to be His servants his worshipers to know Allah, as even Abdullah been a bass mentioned, yeah, it means to know Allah. Right? And you know, Allah through worshiping Him, you see, so you can never perfect yourself. You can never reach real goodness, you can never really be good to yourself. And it's very interesting brothers and sisters. Do you see how when Allah talks about sin? How he says, You're not harming me by setting it's not me. You're harming Allah is not You're not going to harm Allah by sending you are oppressing your

self. When you sin, you oppress yourself, yourself. That's the harm that you're doing when you disobey Allah. The only the one that is getting harmed is you. You personally by the way, in us, all of us collectively.

Yes, because we are we are human beings. We live together we work together. Right? When we sin, it harms everybody.

Yeah.

That's a whole different topic, but it does. When when the sins become so many, then even the good people become affected by the consequences of those sins.

Yes, for example, when fornication becomes widespread, then Allah will bring upon the people new diseases that they never heard of before. This is a consequence of a particular evil.

Practice becoming widespread. So brothers and sisters, you see, this is very important. We've got to have that self love that self love meaning you've got to love good for yourself. The Prophet said, None of you truly believes until he loves for others, what he loves for himself. That means in the hadith is implicit that you should love good things for yourself. You have to

Who?

Because if you don't, and the thing is, if you don't love good for yourself, how can you recognize good? How can you therefore even do good to others? If you can't even treat yourself? Well, how are you going to treat others? Well, if you if you don't even know what's good for you, how are you going to be able to do what's good for others? Do you see brothers and sisters, you're beginning to get the connection now, between, it's got to start there. This drive this love for yourself means that you love yourself to be the best that you can be. And ultimately, is that you love to be in paradise. You love to be in a state of bliss and happiness. You don't want to be in a state of

misery. And the only path ultimately, to true peace and happiness is by knowing Allah and worshiping Allah subhanaw taala.

So the love for Allah

starts with love yourself, which sort of brings us full circle brothers and sisters, doesn't it? It comes back to where we began.

Right? That famous saying, you know, if you want to know if you to know God, you need to know yourself.

You say, to know, God, you need to know yourself, not because you're a God, stuff for Allah. Like some people might claim not at all the opposite.

Right? When you understand your limitations, when you understand your weaknesses, when you understand how needy and Reliant and dependent you are, the more you understand that.

Right? The more you'll understand the reality of who is your Lord and your Creator, and how completely and utterly and totally you depend upon him, and you need him for your guidance and for your reformation. And for Him to forgive your sins and for Him, to envelop you in His mercy, and his forgiveness and His love.

Yes.

You see, that's what you will. That's what you'll realize brothers and sisters,

a brother wrote to me

randomly out of the blue on my Instagram. Very interesting. He says to me, basically, the long and the short of it. He's saying, you know, abdur-rahim, you should, I'm just reminding you to be humble, because

people get famous, and they can get arrogant.

And, and you know, you're just a human being and this, which, which is, I guess I'd be lying if I said I appreciate it.

Maybe I am arrogant? I don't know. I hope not. I don't. The reason I don't think I'm arrogant is because I've just got too many sins to be Eric, when I look at myself, and I think of my sins. I've got nothing to be arrogant about. And I didn't, you know, it's not like I achieved any of what I've achieved by myself. I haven't is from a lot. Like, you know, mashallah, this Facebook page, where, you know, I mean, I know, there's not many people on my YouTube at the moment.

But you know, my Facebook page is what has one point I didn't even 1.2 million 1.3 million, you know, I didn't even start that myself. It was, it was a brother.

One of the, you know, the brother who co founded it. I mean, I had my own personal Facebook page, but he started an official Facebook page for me. He did it. It wasn't me.

You know, and so many good things have come from this Facebook page. I didn't even do it. Like, I have Subhanallah It wasn't even me. What can I say? What am I got to feel proud about or arrogant about Syria. And seriously, that's for all of us, brothers and sisters. It's just the Mercy of Allah subhanaw taala We, of course, we do need to remind ourselves about that. Right? That's very, very important brothers and sisters. So the point being is that you know, when you know how weak you are, and you want to achieve that perfection, I mean, when I say perfection, I mean as a human being, and of course you will, you know, you will never, but what I'm saying is, you want to try and be the

best that you can be. Always strive to improve yourself, always strive to better yourself. There are so many things that you can do to improve your self mentally, physically, spiritually, it is just non stop there's just honestly brothers and sisters there's not enough time in our life to do all the amazing things that we can accomplish right

you know, there's just not enough time. There's just too many things.

Wow. So brothers and sisters all we can just we just hope and pray and you know, and need Allah subhanaw taala is guidance. And so and the other thing is you see you realize is

that

when you are looking for that perfection, this is why from that comes the love of Allah and the love of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.

Because the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he is this living example. I mean he was living, and he's living in the sense that his life and his actions and his teachings have been so beautifully preserved in the Quran and the Hadith, the Quran and the Sunnah. So we have this example of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, who was the best human being that ever was. He, as the Prophet said, himself, I fear Allah, the Most of you are the most mindful of Allah of all of you. The best you can ever be is, if you could just be like the Prophet, that's the best you could ever be. But you can't be that we have this. You know, we we have this example that we can aspire to. And

this is a whole nother topic, brothers and sisters, I've been thinking about this a lot, because

we need people to inspire us, we really do. That's so important. We need people and this is Allah's great wisdom. And this is why religions like Christianity are so lost for it.

You know, like, how are you going to, you know, it's such it's your soul, the soul lost? Because the moment you started saying, Jesus is God or the son of God, right? You presented a semi divine, quasi divine, whatever it's supposed to be, but he's not human anymore really is if he's God, or the Son of God, he's definitely not really human in any sense that we know. And then how psychologically you're going to try and live your life like Jesus is ridiculous, because in your mind, you're going to be saying, well, you know, he was the Son of God, I'm not the Son of God, or he was God. It's easy for him to be like that. Right? No, I mean, this is why God has always sent human beings. Moses

was a human being Abraham was a human being David was a human being saw a man that was a human being. Elijah was a human being. Luke's was a human being, right?

All the prophets were humans. And the reason they were human beings. They were born and they died, and they ate food, and they walked in the market. And Jesus Alayhis Salam was a human being, he was born, he will die, he ate food.

He walked in the marketplace,

just like everybody else. He was human.

And because they're human, they are examples, it means that look, we can aspire to try to follow them. We can aspire, we can think, well, if they did it, I can try. I can do it as well, as an example of one human being did it, I can do it. This is how we get inspiration. We get motivated, we see that, look, someone's done it, I can do it too. This is really Subhanallah that the story of humanity. This is how do we improve improve? It's really fascinating. Like, for example, I follow, you know, like I follow some sort of extreme sports, you know, like mostly mountain biking, a bit of skiing, snowboarding, surfing, I love watching that stuff. And you know, like, if you've been

following it, you see that there are certain tricks, for example, you know, like 20 years ago, there were guys on bikes, throwing themselves off, you know, like 20 3040 foot cliffs on their bikes, and like landing, you know, landing it. Today. People do that and do two somersaults.

They twist their bite this way, in that way. Right? They do tricks, they do the same thing, but they do these incredible tricks. And how does that happen? Because some point person saw that guy jumping off a cliff. So Wow. Like, he can do it. I can do that. And he goes and does it. And then he thinks your way he thinks no, no, I can do something more. I'm going to add to that. Let me see what else I can do. And he'll, you know, he'll add a you know, he'll add a twist, you'll add something he'll, you know, do a no hander or no foot. And like before you know it, you know, 30 years later, they're doing tricks that you just can't even imagine. This is human beings. This is how we take inspiration

from others. Right when we do we have to take that inspiration of brothers and sisters, right? So this will this is the first thing right? The first thing the first step into loving Allah is to love yourself and love to love goodness for yourself. And that means that you're seeking this state of you know of perfection. This is the first thing this is the first step.

Right. And from that comes the knowledge that you know, you need Allah's guidance, you need a real example. You need another human being, to show you how it can be done. And that is of course, what I saw a lot all the prophets, of course, all of the Gambia and the Quran is full of their stories, right? Okay, so that is the first step. That's the first thing you have to do brothers and sisters. Yes, you have to love yourself, love goodness for yourself. Try to improve yourself in every way that you can, especially spiritually, to achieve that state. That you can be the best that you can be. And that is by following the Prophet as Allah says, Call In Kuntum to headworn Allah for Toby

uni active km Allah, if it is true that you love Allah. And Allah says to the Prophet couldn't say to the people if it's true that you love Allah, fatale uni, yeah, Camilla follow me. And then a last one are taller will love you. Right? So the proof is the proof

that you love Allah. Like anyone can say, I love God. And that's what happened in the time of the Prophet. There were people, Jews, Christians, even the mushriks they would say, Oh, we love God, we love Allah. But Allah said, No, you know, it's like Allah saying, Look, if it's true, your claim that you love Allah, then follow the Prophet, follow his sunnah. follow His guidance, follow his way, follow his path. And then Allah will love you and He will forgive your sins for Allah subhanaw taala is the forgiving, and he is the Merciful. Brothers and sisters. I think that's it for today. That's just step one. Step one of loving a loss mattala on how to love Allah is to love yourself,

love, good for yourself. Think about it. That's what I want you to do this week. Think about that. What does it mean to be the best that you can be?

What does it mean to have that aspiration to be the best human being that you can be? I want you to think about that. I want you to aspire, I want you to dream, I want you to make dua, I want you to understand your weaknesses and your deficiencies and how desperately you need Allah's guidance in order to achieve that, that goal and that objective. And let's see, by next week, you know,

what's happened to you? has it taken you closer to that realization of what it means to love a lot, right. And then the next thing is really developing that gratitude. We talked about that actually already. Gratitude. That's what we talked about previously. And that's essential. That's essential for loving Allah subhanaw taala. In order to love Allah, you've got to develop deeply that gratitude. Because when you realize the extent of the bounties and the blessings of Allah, especially, this is what happens when you start to follow Islam. When you start to follow Islam, when you start to implement it, when you start to practice it in your life, when you start to pray,

not just praying, just making the movements but you start you have hotshot in your Salah. Right? When you start to you fast and you make vicar and you what I'm saying brothers and sisters, when you implement Islam, you will see how Islam changes your life, you will see its effect on you. That's the greatest blessing of all there than all the nice food and nice house, a nice car and all the lovely things and all brother it helped me get another wife and whatever all of these things, you know people dream about all these worldly things, but Subhanallah not following Islam and seeing how when you really follow Islam, how it changes your life, how it brings peace and happiness into your

life. What does this develop gratitude and from that gratitude comes love. When you think about the endless bounties and blessings of Allah, that is what you are going to have what's going to come from that business Sisters is love. But you know, we've already asked you to do that. Remember, we asked you to think about gratitude, deeply ponder on the issue of gratitude. You see brothers and sisters. Yes. So this is our first step on this journey of exploring and understanding this very important characteristic that we need to develop within ourselves, which is love for our loss model. I'll be talking about it more next week in sha Allah if Allah gives us life. May Allah bless you for

joining me brothers and sisters I hope this is helped bring a little bit of you know unfun to your into your week into your day. Whatever something inshallah hopefully for all of us to not just think about but you know, turn it into actions brothers and sisters all about actions as well not just don't just listen. act on it. Alright brothers and sisters until next time, don't forget to share this

If you've enjoyed it and you benefit, who knows who you may share it with, and it may change their life, allow him to learn and Allah and because of that you will get so many awards and you know even though sharing is caring as we say, May Allah bless you brothers and sisters, may Allah increase your Eman and Taqwa May Allah subhanaw taala cause you to be of those who love Him and may Allah subhanaw taala may you be of those people whom Allah loves, may Allah subhanaw taala make you of those who are loved by the people who love him. And may Allah make you have the people who love those people who love Allah, and may Allah make you love the deeds that will cause Allah to love you

Allahumma Salli ala Muhammad in well earlier Samuel Salam was salam aleikum wa rahmatullah.