Aqeel Mahmood – 5 Steps to Success
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AI: Transcript ©
The messenger of Allah
lived on the face of this earth for
a period of 63 years.
More than half of his life,
he wasn't even a prophet or a messenger.
He became a prophet and a messenger at
the age of 40,
and for 23 years he spread the message
of Islam.
And in those 23 years,
because of the goals that he had
and the objectives that he had set for
himself,
he managed to spread the word of Islam
and the word of Allah
And as a result of his effort, as
a result of his high aspirations,
as a result of these goals that he
had, and the intention that he had,
Muslims
are now to be seen everywhere across the
whole of the globe. Wherever you go you'll
find Muslims.
The messenger of Allah was
one man.
Just one man at the beginning.
And out of this one man came forth
a whole nation.
As Muslims,
we all have different
objectives and different goals in life.
Some of us we want to succeed
in our workplace.
We want to make sure we get that
promotion to become the boss, to become the
manager,
to get a pay rise.
We wanna make sure that we achieve these
goals.
We wanna make more money than we made
last year.
Others maybe want to get married, they want
to have a huge family, maybe others
want to have a nice big house, maybe
they've set their eyes on something that they
want, a house in a specific part of
the, you know, of the town.
And they're gathering money, they're collecting money for
this objective, for this goal.
Each and every one of us has different
goals in life, different things that we want
to achieve, different things that we want, different
objectives,
things that we're chasing after, things that we
want.
Yet every single Muslim,
every single Muslim
should have the same goals in mind. Ultimately
every single one of us, as Muslims,
as believers in Allah
we should all have the same objective
and the same ultimate goal.
And this
goal that every single Muslim, every single one
of us should share
is to seek the pleasure of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
And as a result of seeking the pleasure
of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala to attain his
reward, to get his reward,
to get Jannatul Firdos,
to be able to get the rewards of
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Paradise itself.
This should be the goal of every single
Muslim.
Every single Muslim in the back of his
mind
and deep down in his heart, he should
have this goal and he should be making
his way and trying to achieve his goal
in his daily life.
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, he talks about how
a person,
if he
makes the effort to please Allah Subhanahu wa
ta'ala,
and he gains the reward of Allah Subhanahu
wa ta'ala, and he seeks the reward and
the pleasure of Allah. Allah will make things
easy for him and give him the good
of this world. Allah says mankana yuridu thawwabat
dunya
whosoever
wants the reward of this world
then verily with Allah is the reward of
this world and the reward of the hereafter.
Any one of us who wants to succeed
in this life become successful
with regards to their family, with regards to
their wealth, with regards to their health, They
need to make sure that they are seeking
out the rewards of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
wanting good from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, doing
good deeds to please Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And if someone does this, he'll be successful
in this world and he'll also be successful
in the everlasting life in the hereafter.
Yet the question still remains brothers and sisters,
how can we attain this goal of achieving
the pleasure of Allah azzawajal?
What can we do to to attain this
high aspiration,
to get this high goal of pleasing Allah
and
gaining his reward,
gaining the reward of Jannah itself, of paradise
itself. And I want to mention 5 ways
in which a person can do this.
5 ways in which a person
can attain
this great reward and this goal that every
single Muslim should have in the back of
his mind, to attain the pleasure of Allah,
to gain paradise itself, the ultimate goal.
How can a person do this? One of
the ways
that a person can do this, the first
way in which a person can achieve this
high goal
is by attaching oneself to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala in every single aspect of his life.
Whatever he is doing, he always has Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in the back of his
mind. He's always thinking about Allah Azzawajal
and he feels the presence of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala whenever he does something, whenever he
says something,
every time he's about to do something he
thinks about what he's doing.
Is this action that I'm going to do
going to benefit me? Is there any reward
in this action? Will I be sinful if
I commit this act?
And so he thinks about what he does
before he does it. And the same with
regards to his speech. He thinks about what
he says before he says it. He's careful
about what he says,
and he thinks about what he what he's
saying. Is what I'm going to say going
to benefit me? Is there any reward in
what I'm going to say?
Is what I am going to say right
now to my friend or to my husband
or to my wife or to my children
or to my colleagues?
Is it something which is going to benefit
me? Is it going to cause harm? Is
it going to upset someone?
And so a person thinks twice before he
speaks and that's why the messenger of Allah
salallahu alaihi wasalam, he said, whosoever believes in
Allah and the last day
Whosoever believes in the last day then let
him speak good or remain silent. If a
person doesn't have anything good to say then
you shouldn't say anything at all. And a
person should have the presence of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala in every single thing that he
does, in every single thing that he says.
Allah Azzawajal
is ever watchful
and he has
the ability to be able to see everything
that is happening and everything that we do,
everything that we say Allah
knows what we are doing. Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala he says
Verily Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
knows everything that is happening.
Nothing is hidden from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
In the in the earth and neither in
the heavens.
Everything
that happens, everything that occurs, Allah
knows about. Wherever we are, whatever we're doing,
Allah
knows what we're doing. We could be in
the middle of the countryside, in the middle
of the night, in a cottage on our
own with nobody else around, in our rooms
with the lights off, under our blankets on
the bed, doing something on our mobile phones.
Yet out of all of these things,
being in this solitary environment,
Allah
knows exactly what we're doing. Even though we
may feel like we are alone and nobody
is watching. And this is why when someone
is fasting for example,
and he's at home and there's nobody at
home and he's in the kitchen
and he's fasting yet it's warm, it's hot
outside, he's thirsty, he's hungry, he's been fasting
for hours in the heat
and there's nobody else around
and there's water there for him to drink.
He opens the fridge and there's food inside
yet he refrains from eating and he refrains
from drinking. Why does he do this?
Because of the fear of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. Not because of any individual
but because he knows if he ate or
drank Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will know what
he's doing even though nobody else will know.
And so he refrains from eating and drinking.
He feels the presence of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. He knows that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is ever watchful.
So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is someone who
can see and hear everything and he knows
whatever we're doing and he knows whatever we're
thinking. And a person should be grateful to
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for the blessings that,
you know, we've been given.
Being able to see and being able to
speak.
One of the ways a person can remember
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, make sure that he
has Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
and he's thinking about Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
and he has Allah Azzawal in his heart
when he does something is by increasing in
his remembrance of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. As
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
remember me and I will remember you. A
person needs to keep his time moist with
the remembrance of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. A
person can't be in the Masjid all the
time. When a person is in the Masjid
his iman increases, yet when he leaves the
Masjid he doesn't have the same level of
iman.
Yet when a person remembers Allah Subhanahu wa
ta'ala,
when he is at home, when he is
traveling,
when he's about to eat, after he's eaten,
these adkar that the messenger of Allah has
told us about.
These things help us remember Allah
We thank Allah Azzawajal for the food. When
we travel we ask Allah Azzawajal to protect
us on this journey. So a person is
constantly remembering Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The messenger
of Allah Azzawati wasalam, he would seek forgiveness
in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. He would say
astaghfirullah
70 to a 100 times every single day.
And this is the messenger of Allah
the one whose past and future sins were
forgiven.
So what about our position brothers and sisters?
How many times do we seek istighfar? How
many times do we ask Allah's forgiveness for
all the sins that we have committed in
the day? Things that we know about and
things that we don't know about.
The second way
that a person can gain
the reward and the pleasure of Allah Subhanahu
wa ta'ala and attain this high and lofty
goal, this high aspiration that every single Muslim
should have to achieve paradise,
to gain paradise.
More important than anything else,
to be able to achieve Jannah itself.
The way that a person can achieve this
goal is by making sure he has a
relationship with the Quran and with the Sunnah
of the Messenger of Allah salallahu alayhi wasalam.
How many times have we sat down and
read the book of Allah
Just sat down on our own,
taken some time out of our schedules,
10 or 15 minutes, sat down with the
book of Allah and read the Quran.
This book in which a person if he
was to read just one letter, he would
get 10 good deeds.
Just by reading one letter.
If a person sat down and read the
Quran for 10 or 15 minutes, imagine how
much reward he will get. Imagine how much
of the Quran he'd be able to read.
And how many of us sit down with
the book of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and
contemplate what it says? Read the translation of
the Quran. Try to understand what Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala is telling us in the book
of Allah a. What
is it that he wants from us? What
should we be doing?
How are we supposed to act?
This book of Allah, which if a person
was to read, his iman would increase.
This very same book in which the messenger
of Allah alaihis salatu wasalam, he said that
no people gather,
no people gather in the house of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala
reciting the book of Allah, reading the Quran
and studying it except that tranquility descends upon
them because of this.
Tranquility descends upon them
and mercy overshadows them and the angels gather
around them because they're reading the book of
Allah. The angels gather around them and Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions those people with those
who are around him.
We like for people to praise us and
to mention us in our absence in a
good way. When a person talks about us
behind our back in a good way, you
know, we get happy.
Friends of ours, colleagues,
maybe our boss talks about us in a
good way. You know, family members, other people
that we know. We like for people to
talk about us in a good way, in
our absence,
telling people this brother is a very good
brother,
and this sister is a very righteous sister.
She's a good sister.
And we like for people to praise us
in our absence. Now imagine Allah
himself, our creator,
talking about us in our absence,
talking about us with those who are around
him, from the angels.
Imagine Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala talking about us
because of our obedience to him and a
person can only get the remembrance of Allah
or Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will only remember
him if we remember Allah Azzawajal.
If we take our time to
ponder over the Quran, to think about why
we're here,
to read the book of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
From the ways
that a person can attain
this high and lofty goal
of Jannah and the pleasure of Allah Subhanahu
wa ta'ala
is
for the believers to come together
and
cooperate with one another in attaining this goal.
For them to all come together and to
work together in attaining this high and lofty
goal of reaching Jannah and the pleasures of
Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. You know we all
get together sometimes for pleasure
or for business
or for money.
Yet how many of us get together to
remember Allah Azzawajal?
To go to a lecture, to go to
a class,
to remember Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala?
The messenger of Allah
he said in a weak hadith that the
wolf only eats the stray prey.
And
the meaning of this is true.
The fact that a person, if he was
on his own,
then he's an easier target for the Shaitan.
The Shaitan
is attracted to the one who is on
his own, the one who is isolated, the
one who doesn't mix,
and he's an easier pray for that for
the Shaitan. When a person is with other
people and they're talking about Allah Azzawajal
and they're reminding each other
of the sunnah of the messenger of Allah
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, then the iman will
increase. They will be stronger when they're together
and this is why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
tells us to unite, tells us to be
together.
Hold on to the rope hold on to
the rope of Allah and don't differ amongst
yourselves. When a person is with other people
and they're together and they remember Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala this makes them stronger. This gives
them more strength
to be able to worship Allah, increases their
iman.
So a person should cooperate with his fellow
Muslims, with her fellow sisters
so that they can attain this high and
lofty goal. These are all methods in which
a person can attain this high and lofty
goal of achieving the pleasures of Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala and gaining the rewards of Allah
Azzawajal.
From the ways
in which a person
can achieve this goal. The 4th way
is by using our intellect,
using these brains that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
has given us
to be able to worship Allah in a
better way, To be able to please Allah
azza wa jal. To be able to use
the intellect that we've been given
and doing those things which will please Allah
and being able to differentiate between those things
which are good for us and those things
which are bad for
us. Being able to use this intellect
in a positive way. To be able to
use this intellect
Islamically.
What is good for me and what is
bad for me?
Sometimes we take so much, you know, effort,
we use so much of our brains, so
much of our intellect, so much brainpower
to gather wealth, thinking of ways of how
we can make money. Maybe if I sell
this, maybe if I sell that I'll make
some money. And we think about different careers
that we can have, different jobs that we
can have. How can I make more money?
And we think about
different ways of having fun, different ways of
entertainment. How can I enjoy myself today? What
things can I do? Where can I go?
Yet how many of us spend that same
amount of brainpower
just thinking about seeking the pleasure of Allah
Subhanahu wa ta'ala? How can I please Allah
Azzawajal
today? What things can I do?
What acts of worship can I do to
please Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala?
How can I attain the pleasure of Allah
Subhanahu wa ta'ala?
This human who's been given this intellect
and he's been blessed by Allah Subhanahu wa
Ta'ala with this intellect,
how is he using this intellect? How is
he using his brainpower? How is he using
this gift from Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala? Is
he using it for good or is he
using it for evil and for bad?
The 5th way
brothers and sisters
of attaining this goal,
this high and lofty goal of Jannah itself,
the ultimate goal,
the akhira.
A life
which will never go away.
The hereafter,
a place where a person
won't ever die.
He'll be in paradise forever. There will be
no death in paradise.
And a person needs to start thinking about
how he can attain these goals or how
he can attain paradise.
Because
this world is something which is temporary.
A person, if he's been blessed by Allah,
he may live 50 years or 60 years
or 70 years.
That's if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala blesses him
with this, and a person needs to think
about the fact
that
he'll spend more time in his grave than
he will alive.
You'll spend more time in your grave than
you will alive.
So why is it that we don't make
more effort
for those provisions that are going to follow
us into the grave
as we do when it comes to other
acts that we do while we're alive? Things
which won't benefit us, worldly things. A person
needs to really ponder over this. We need
to think about this.
The 5th and final way of being able
to attain this goal, this goal of Jannah,
this goal of paradise
is by
cutting
off and staying away
from those things
which are preventing a person
from attaining this goal,
from attaining this objective
of paradise itself.
Cutting off and staying away from those things
which are preventing him from reaching this goal.
For example a person who mixes with people
who he knows that if he's with them,
if he associates with them with them, if
he socializes with them, they're not going to
help him attain this high and lofty goal.
They're going to pull him back. They're going
to prevent him from reaching this high aspiration
that he has.
People who you know have a negative influence
on him, they're having a bad influence on
him. The way they speak, the things that
they do.
Maybe they're smoking marijuana, maybe they're smoking spliff,
and a person he might think I'm not
smoking anything I'm just with them. But the
effects will rub off. The way they act,
the way they behave, the smell.
He'll be because he's with them, it'll have
an effect on him. The messenger of Allah
he
said,
that man is on the religion of his
friend.
So look at who you become friends with.
Be careful about who you socialize with because
consciously or subconsciously
you're going to be affected by who you
socialize with. You're going to be affected by
those people, by the things that they say,
by the things that they do.
Because you're with them all the time. They're
the ones who are influencing you.
And from the things that can cause a
person
to stay away from this high and lofty
goal, to prevent him from attaining this goal
is things such as watching bad television channels.
A person who spends his time
with
this box
and he watches things which he shouldn't be
watching.
Imagine
that you lived a 100 years ago or
a 1000 years ago
and
you try and travel you try your time
traveled to this day, and you went into
a house and you went into a room
and you saw
a man and a woman
and 3 children
all staring at this box
and they're not saying anything to anyone. They're
not talking to one another, they're just staring
at this box and they're looking at this
box and they laugh sometimes and sometimes they'll
cry
and they're looking at this box for hours
and hours not talking, not speaking.
You'd think that this box had put a
spell on these people.
You'd think that there had been some kind
of spell and that they were in some
kind of of a trance
with this with this box that has some
sort of control over them.
And we think about the state of the
people today
and this is the case with many of
us.
We spend so much time on this thing
and this thing influences us so much.
You know, a person watches something, watches a
television channel, watches a television program, and he
watches it so much that he starts to
speak like those people who are speaking in
that show. Maybe it's not something bad,
but it's just words and slogans and catch
phrases
that he might have heard so much that
he ends up repeating it. And we see
this in children sometimes,
how they pick up things.
So it's very important for a person to
make sure that he's careful about what he
sees,
to make sure that he knows
that whatever he sees and whatever he hears
is going to have an effect on him.
The messenger of Allah
he said
he said that the sight, the eyesight
is a poisonous arrow from the arrows of
Iblis.
Whoever
stays away and refrains
from looking at something that isn't halal for
him, he lowers his gaze, he avoids looking
at things which are forbidden for him. Then
Allah
will replace that with a sweetness in his
heart until the day of judgement.
He'll bring about a sense of sweetness in
his heart because of the fact that he
obeyed Allah, because he avoided looking at things
which are forbidden to him.
And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that
he cures us of any of these illnesses
that we may be having.
We were talking about how
a person
has many different goals in life
with regards to money and getting promotions and
maybe buying us a specific house in a
specific location
and he always has these goals in mind.
Yet every single Muslim should have
the same objective and the same goal, the
ultimate goal which is Jannah itself, attaining the
pleasure of Allah
and we mentioned 5 different ways in which
a person can attain this goal. How can
a person come closer to attain the pleasure
of Allah Azzawajal?
And the first was attaining
or making sure that
he has an attachment to Allah
in every single thing that he does, in
every single thing that he says. He's conscious
and he's wary of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala.
And the second way of achieving this goal
was making sure that we have a relationship
with the Quran and with the Sunnah of
the Messenger of Allah
And the third was for the believers to
come together, to work together, to cooperate
in making sure that we can all attain
this high and lofty goal. And the 4th
was using our intellect
for purposes of good. Using our intellect to
be able to get closer to this goal
of achieving the rewards of Allah A. W.
And the 5th was cutting off and staying
away from those things which are preventing us
from attaining this goal.
Now is there any action
that we can do
which encompasses all of these goals?
Is there one single act of worship that
a person can do which
encompasses
and combines all 5 of these things? One
thing that we can do which has all
of these things in them.
And we can say yes there is.
That one act of worship that we can
do which has all of these 5 goals
in and in inside of them
is the salah,
the prayer.
When a person prays doesn't he have an
attachment to Allah Azzawajal?
Doesn't he think about Allah Azzawajal when he's
praying? The messenger of Allah Azzawajal
he said that the salah is a conversation
with you and your Lord.
So you're conversing with Allah. You have this
link with Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. In the
prayer itself,
doesn't a person
read the book of Allah Azza wa Jal?
In every single rakah he reads Surah Fatihah,
he reads another surah,
He thinks about what he's reading. He contemplates
what he's reading.
And he he reads the book of Allah
and he increases his relationship with the Quran.
Doesn't the salah bring people together?
When a person prays in congregation and the
Muslims are together, he's with other Muslims and
he's praying with them
and he increases a person's iman.
It makes all the Muslims come together and
pray in one place at one time.
And also
a person uses his intellect,
he thinks about what he's doing, he thinks
about the salah, he thinks about the prayer,
what he's going to say, how he's going
to say it, the actions that he's doing,
what supplications he's going to make when he's
in sajda.
And so he's thinking about the salah and
also
when a person prays
he cuts off from everything else which is
preventing him from from attaining this goal.
When he starts the salah, he says Allahu
Akbar and he raises his hands.
Nothing else matters. It's like as if he's
saying nothing else is important,
nothing else matters. Now I'm in a conversation
with Allah
Nothing else matters. He cuts out from everything
else. Any worldly affairs, any worldly issues that
he might be having, any problems that he
might be having don't matter anymore.
Now he's focused on his conversation with Allah
for the next 2 or 3 minutes.
And so the salah brothers and sisters, as
the messenger of Allah said
that salah is mifdahuljannah.
The prayer is the key to paradise.
If a person wants to be able to
enter paradise peacefully
and easily then he should look at his
salawat, he should look at his prayers. If
there's anything wrong with his prayers he's gonna
have problems entering paradise.
If his prayers are correct,
if his prayers
are sound and they're good then everything else
after this will be easy for him and
it'll be easy for him to enter paradise.
And a person should cooperate with one another
to be able to attain this goal
of attaining paradise,
achieving paradise, the great reward of Allah Subhanahu
wa ta'ala. And one of those ways is
by attending lectures, by attending seminars, by attending
any events that happen in Masajid.
And we're grateful and
we're thankful to Allah Azzawajal that we're able
to have scholars coming here.
And as you may know we have this
event coming up, the Winter Conference.
The chosen lessons proposed from the lives of
the prophets.
And I encourage for people to come and
to benefit from the scholars, to learn about
the prophets of Allah
How much do we really know about the
prophets of Allah? What do we know about
them?
How much have we actually thought about the
lives of the prophets and lessons we can
take from their lives?
So we ask Allah
that we benefit from what we've heard today
and that Allah
helps us to be able to attain the
high and lofty goal of Jannah itself.