Abu Taymiyyah – EP1 How To Soften Your Heart Series
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AI: Transcript ©
My dear respective brothers and sisters,
one of the most common questions that
brothers and sisters tend to ask from time
to time, and even the Masha'ikh and the
Haramain, both in Makkah and Madinah, are frequently
asked,
is:
How can one soften up his heart?
I'm trying to study, I'm trying to read
the Book of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
but it just doesn't seem to be entering
into my heart.
I just don't feel
the sweetness
of Ibadah,
of worship.
What am I doing wrong?
And this is exactly what we want to
be discussing
In these
videos, in these settings,
perhaps bi idhnillahi Ta'ala,
one can walk away with a formula
and how to really brighten up his heart,
how to soften it, so that he is
able to worship Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la accordingly.
My brothers and my sisters, every single one
of us, I'm sure is aware that
we have been created for one sole purpose.
As Allah told us in the Quran:
I did not create
the jinnkind
and the mankind
except to worship me alone.
That is our sole
reason of existence.
We have not been created
to work.
We have not been created
to go to university,
and we have not been created
to go to school.
Not that I'm saying one should not be
engaging in any of these things. I'm not
saying that at all.
However,
our sole reason of existence is that we
worship Allah
That's the primary reason as to why we
have been created.
Anything else that one engages in,
there is no harm in that
as long as that's not affecting
his
sole reason of existence
and that is to worship Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
Messenger Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he told us in
Hadith
The dunya has been cursed and everything in
it has been cursed except the remembrance of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
the one who studies his religion and also
the one who teaches it. Why am I
mentioning all of this my brothers and my
sisters?
Can one really fulfill
his sole reason of existence
without studying the Deen of Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala?
Without
learning
that which is going to allow him to
fulfill the basics of his religion?
The answer is no. Otherwise we would become
like the
Christians, right? Who Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala told
us about in the Quran.
Waayril Magdubi Alayhim, What did he say after
that?
Those who are misguided,
they worshipped Allah
upon misguidance,
without knowledge, and this is what made them
whatever they became,
worshiping Allah Azzawajal without knowledge. And we do
not want to fall into that. We want
to worship Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala with insight.
And there are times when we see that
seeking knowledge or learning about what is mandatory
upon us becomes extremely, extremely difficult.
Our hearts feel so heavy. Why is that
happening my beloved brothers and sisters?
It may well be that we are engaging
in certain things that is preventing
us from being able
to learn that which is going to allow
us
to fulfil
our sole reason of existence.
And that now brings me to what Ibn
Utim
mentions.
He says,
He says,
when an individual's heart is soft and tender,
You will find that the knowledge entering into
his heart
will be extremely easy.
The knowledge will not have difficulty entering into
your heart.
Sahalaniasyra.
Wa rasakhlaal Mufi and you find that the
knowledge
becomes solid inside of his heart.
Wa Athar and also it affects it,
it has an influence on your heart. But
then look what he goes on to say:
Wa'amal Qalbu idhaqana
Ghaliiran
Qasiyyah,
if his heart is rigid and hard,
the knowledge will find it extremely difficult
entering into this individual's heart.
So we can clearly now see
the relevance between
why Allah
has placed us on the face of this
Earth and how it's extremely important
for one to at least learn the basics,
to learn the basics and that which is
going to allow him to fulfil his sole
reason of existence, and you will not be
able to do that if you have a
rigid,
hard heart.
If your heart has become so Qasi,
as we mentioned, right? Waib Nuteym Rahmatullahia
Reh mentioned,
it will find it extremely difficult
entering into that heart that has become so
hard. And may Allah protect
us from a heart that has become so
hard. Also, Ibn
Taymiyyah said,
The realities of faith, the sweetness of Iliman,
will not enter into an individual's
heart
if there is in his heart that which
impurifies it.
There are traits such
as hasad,
envy and also arrogance.
And that's why my brothers and my sisters,
I felt the need to really
shed light on that which softens an individual's
heart. Because
the topic of Al Raqq,
the things that really soften an individual's heart,
is something that every single Muslim needs.
If you are studying Al Fiqh and you
want to become
a specialist in that, you are still in
need of Al Raqq.
If you want to become a specialist in
Usul Fiqh, you are in need of Al
Raqqaiq.
If you are trying to become a specialist
in inheritance
or any other science, Hadith, the terminology of
Hadith, Hadith grading,
right? Understanding the Hadith,
and so on and so forth, whatever field
it might be, Al Aqeedah, Tawhid,
you are still in need of that which
is going to soften
your heart. And that's why the scholars, they
have authored books
where one can take that knowledge from, that
knowledge of softening the heart.
Something that always really touches me is
what Ibn al Josi mentioned,
he said,
He says,
I have come to know that studying Fiqh
and also listening
to the Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam
are just not enough
for one to really soften up his heart,
but rather he needs to mix that with,
or combine that with,
or bind that with,
going through that which softens the Heart,
and also reading the lives of those who
came before us.
What I also think is worth mentioning
is how I came about
all of these different benefits
that I'm going to be sharing
in this series.
One time a brother called Abu Zakaria,
he
posed a question
in one of our WhatsApp groups that is
run by our Sheikh
Mohammed bin Abdul Karim Hassan Haush.
His father is from the leading
Mashaikh and Scholars
in
Somalia,
and his son, may Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
reward him and bless him
and shower his mercy upon him, was our
teacher
in Al Medina.
So he put this WhatsApp group together
so that the students can maybe pose questions,
can have knowledge based discussions.
So this brother one day
decided to ask the Shaykh this question: How
can one
soften up his heart?
And remember how Shaykh MiAllahu is the way
to reward him and bless him.
He said: 'I am not suitable to be
asked this kind of question.
I am not suitable to be asked this
kind of question. I do not believe
that my heart is soft.
I do not believe that my heart is
soft.
And then the Sheikh just answered the next
question.
Perhaps the Sheikh was saying this out of
humility,
being humble,
because every individual, my beloved brothers and sisters,
is in need of softening up his heart,
right?
And when you see somebody that has so
much knowledge like our Sheikh Mohammed,
you think InshaAllah Ta'ala, it is hoped and
expected that he has a soft heart because
of how much
he has accumulated in such a short space
of time. Cause as we mentioned,
the Ilm
will struggle to find its way into, into
your heart
if
you have a heart that is filled with
all types of diseases, whether it may be
kibr, arrogance,
whether it is
envy
and also
Abdullah ibn Abbas mentioned:
1, he memorises
in accordance to his intention and in the
amount of memorisation that he takes in, it
is in accordance to his intention.
And may Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala give us
the ability to do so. So going back
to what I was saying, when he was
asked this question, he said, I am not
Ahlam,
I am not suitable to be asked this
kind of question because I don't believe that
my heart
is of that kind.
And I remember also when I ran into
his father,
his father was from the leading great scholars
in Somalia at this moment in time. I
always wanted to meet him, but every single
year I would miss him.
So one day, SubhanAllah, we happened to be
in a hotel,
in Hajj,
and as me and my father came down,
we found the Sheikh sitting there.
It's like Allah
answered my Dua, I found him sitting there
in the lobby,
And there was an opportunity to ask the
Sheikh some questions, and his son was with
him as well, and we went and we
started walking, and as we were walking I
was asking the Sheikh a couple of questions.
When we reached to
his hotel,
one of the questions that I asked the
Sheikh was,
How can one soften up his heart?
How can one soften up his heart?
And the Sheikh, he answered the exact same
way.
He said: 'I don't say this out of
humility, but rather I say this
just being real,
speaking the honest truth.
I do not believe that my heart is
soft.
So it was something that
really played on my mind
for a very, very long time
when I heard his father saying this, as
that was the first of the 2 incidents
when I met him in Mecca.
Then the question was posed
to his son,
who is
a professor now,
graduated with a PhD,
and when he answered that, I made it
a mission for myself to find out
and to search
for how an individual can go and do
that.
So I went back to my notes on
my phone because on my phone,
I utilize the notes app.
Every time I come across a FIDA, I
might note it down there, and I have
pages for,
maybe 5 years ago and then 4 years
ago, and I would name it benefits for
this particular
year,
2019, 2020, 2021, 2022.
That's maybe something that
we can utilise
when we have some of these phones and
gadgets,
you see, using it for,
the purpose of taking down notes that are
beneficial, and perhaps it can be a Sadaqtun
Jari after you pass away.
So I went through all of these notes
that night,
hoping to find the speech of the scholars
like Ibn Al Qayim,
who is known as the Doctor of the
Heart, doctor of the heart as in someone
who really went out his way
to research how one can cure his heart,
by way of, of course, studying
extensively
and likewise the sayings and the statements
of Ibn Taymiyyah Rahmatullahi
can go a very, very long way in
one curing his heart, also, Ibn Rajib and
Ibn Jozi Rahmatullah Alaihi, and I will mainly
be sharing
their statements
when going through a lot of these points
in how one can
soften up his heart. And to conclude
this introduction,
once an individual does that,
he cures his heart, he takes the advices
of the great scholars of the past on
board,
what will happen to this individual?
The Qutash Sheikh Ibn Usaymeen Rahmatullahi
Alaihi
said:
Whoever purifies his heart from sins, this individual
will have more understanding of the Quran
than anyone else.
And then he mentioned the opposite as all.
And whoever's heart now
has become
dirty and stained,
we have sins.
Can Aba Ada
Fahman Al Quran? He will be the furthest
away from
the
or from understanding the Book of Allah SubhanaHu
Wa Ta'la.
May Allah
make us
from those who He first mentioned,
and keep us away and protect us from
those
He mentioned right at the end. Amin Inna
huwali yudalika
wal Qadiralehi.
Assalamu
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