The Core of Islam – Part 1 & Part 2” by Dr Bilal Philips, hosted by the Malaysian Chinese Muslim Association (MACMA) Sabah, Malaysia. Held on the 24th and 27th December 2014, 8PM at MACMA Centre, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.
Bilal Philips – Muslim Youth Reborn
AI: Summary ©
The importance of building a solid foundation for one's life is emphasized, along with the need for faith in one's life and giving time to change. It is crucial for personal growth and the natural process of increasing and decreasing one's faith. It is also important to be patient and give time to change. It is crucial for studying Islam and learning from its lessons to strengthen one's faith.
AI: Transcript ©
Salam Alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh in Alhamdulillah
Salam aleikum. I'm Dr. Bill Phillips. And I would like to share some words of advice to our newly reborn Muslims,
especially the youth, amongst you.
My advice, I will give you in basically six main points.
The first point has to do with the challenges that you're going to face.
Once you've chosen Islam,
deliberately, you are Muslim before you're almost like a new Muslim, you can say,
though, technically speaking, before, you are reborn into Islam,
you are called a Muslim by name, but in the fact of the matter, you're really not a Muslim, you know, in terms of your actual consciousness in your practice. So, having chosen Islam,
deliberately, making that choice, you've come in
and you want to practice, you will find challenges. Because at the time, when you first join Islam, when you first become a Muslim, again, a rebirth. And when you're first reborn in Islam,
the satanic forces will be very strong in trying to divert you because you're at your weakest. And one hand, you are strong, because you've made that decision. But in terms of the foundation that you have, because it's weak, then it is easy to get confused, for things to become unclear.
And for you to have doubts, all of these factors the satanic forces will play with and use to try to divert you
get you to think you made the wrong decision, you're not really ready for this, all kinds of thoughts will come to your mind. So know that this is natural.
You know, and
it is from a law Alize permitting it to happen for you to strengthen yourself, to become more certain about your foundation. So where you have doubts, then you should seek guidance from those around you who have knowledge who are practicing Islam or firmly etc. Get their help. Don't be shy, don't be ashamed.
For any doubts you may have,
get them cleared. Because once you clear them, then in fact, you'll become stronger.
But a basic principle that you should keep in mind as a general concept, as a Muslim, is that you should always be thankful to Allah.
whatever circumstance you find yourself in, you know that Allah wants the best for you.
Even though it might seem like a bad, painful, hurtful, harmful circumstance, know that Allah has only permitted it because there is something good in it for you, for you to find the good
you always rather than looking at the negative which is most obvious, clear to you. You can complain about it,
which will only weaken you will not make you any stronger. Instead, try to find the good that is in it the benefit that you can take from it. Try to have that as a general outlook on life.
That there is good information.
Virtually everything that happens around you.
It may not be what you want, what you desire, what you wish. But know that as Allah said Allah and Takahashi and Lacan, perhaps you will like something,
or you might dislike something, and it's actually good for you. Or you might like something that is actually bad for you. And the Lord knows, you really don't know.
You're only estimating, guessing, thinking.
But a lot knows. So
the first point is that
don't be surprised if you find yourself with challenges, whether it's challenges from your family, your friends, your school, whatever,
there will be
challenges, and know that the challenge is ultimately, every one of them that you pass, you become a better person, you become a stronger Muslim,
your mind has been strengthened than increased.
The second point to keep in mind
is that you have to move in a step by step fashion,
you don't try to change everything all at once.
Because when you try to do everything, everything that is required of Islam, or recommended in Islam together,
it may become too great a burden for you to keep up with. And then you end up dropping everything. So better for you to do the basic things which are obligatory,
establish those, and then you build gradually with them.
So the step by step approach is the best approach for building
having clear building blocks, which would
having clear building blocks, which you can build on top of you have a solid foundation. And that's the idea of the step by step approach is that you build for yourself a solid foundation, rather than trying to do everything at once.
And then your foundation is weak. So your whole structure crumbles.
This is a common mistake that people who newly come into Islam, or who are reborn,
with a lot of enthusiasm, they tried to do too much.
So take it easy. I'm not saying Take it easy, meaning you don't do what is obligatory, or what is obligatory, you're gonna try to do but
do it
in a step by step approach, and you also have to remember
that those around you who haven't made the decision that you have
to accept Islam completely and try to practice it.
Don't expect that they're going to change overnight.
You didn't change overnight, it took us some time to get to that point.
Sorry, there were steps that you had to go through before you could actually arrive at that point. So you also have to give them time to change.
And as a newly reborn person.
You might feel because of your enthusiasm, but you want everybody around you to make the same change you made.
And you forget that it took you time. You want them to change right now today.
You have explained to them. You can't understand why they can't accept it right now.
But that's not how most people learn. It's a gradual process. So you have to be patient. Wait with them. Help them Yes, it's your duty to give them Dawa. Personally, when I accepted Islam I gave down to my parents for 21 years before they accepted Islam 21 years. Maybe you're not even 21.
But no, we don't as long as people will listen you keep on giving the Dawa because in the end, our responsibility is to convey the message not necessarily to convert people
because that's left to the law and what their own intentions are. If Prophet Mohammed Salah Salaam couldn't convert his own
My uncle Abu Talib, who was one of the closest people to him.
And the dunya, among the closest people to him was I will tell him, yet he couldn't convert him to Islam. So if Prophet Muhammad wa salam had difficulty, then who are we to think that simply because we have accepted Islam, we have explained Islam, everybody should now accept it.
So, we have to be patient and take things step by step.
The third point that I think we should be conscious of, is the issue of friends.
You know, the prophet SAW Selim, I said, choose your friends, well, because you will be raised on the Day of Judgment with your friends.
So if you have friends, who are from your period, previous period,
who are still doing the things you were doing, you stop them, they're still doing them, for you to hang around with them, they will only weaken you.
You didn't want to die in their state.
So
if you end up raised with them, it means you died in their state. So the prophet SAW Selim is saying, choose your friends, well, because you will be like your friends. This is the pressure, what they call peer pressure, pressure of friends, those around you surround you,
they want you to be like them, they feel more comfortable, if you are just like them.
If you're not like them, then they feel uncomfortable.
And they will put pressure on you until you can be like them.
And if you stay around with them all the time, you hang out with them all the time you're with them all the time. Eventually, whatever decisions you've made, you start to go back on them gradually, till you end up just like they are. Again,
that is the normal process. So you have to choose your friends, well,
you may have to change your friends altogether.
Because those that you are with are so far gone,
that you're trying to talk to them has no impact on them, or apparently has no impact. People like that you have to get away from not to say you cut your ties altogether, you can still go back and see them from time to time, but don't spend all your time around them. You need to choose people who will remind you of Allah remind you of good things
amahl, solid,
righteous deeds. These are the people who you need to be around, they will help you to be stronger, to be more firm in your deal.
The fourth point to keep in mind is that
a man increases and it decreases. It's not a matter of your faith. It's not a matter of you made a choice. So you now will be at that level of faith. From the time you actually made the choice, you will remain at that level.
No.
It's natural for us to sometimes be stronger in our faith or weaker at other times, the companions of the Prophet SAW salam, the Sahaba they complained to the prophet SAW Selim of this they said, you know, all messenger of Allah,
when we are with you are reminded is so high, our faith is so high. But when we go back to our family, our children and so on, so we find our faith going down. You know, are we hypocrites? Is this a sign of hypocrisy,
prophesied Salam said, No.
You know, your life, that's how life will be.
Sometimes you'll be up, sometimes you'll be down. It's all a part of life.
So don't worry about the fact that your faith may not be high at the high all the time, or that is constantly increasing, apparently increasing to you know, know that faith goes through cycles. And what you need to do is of course, because you want it to the cycle to be moving upwards, you know, as it goes through the cycle, each time you're getting higher and higher, not one where you're going and spiraling downwards. Of course, you don't want that. So, you should be aware of this natural process of increase and decrease under normal circumstances.
Now, the fifth point
related to this
What causes a man to increase?
and decrease?
The answer is very simple. It's not a complicated,
you know, philosophical concept not very simple. It's simply that Eman increases with good deeds
and decreases with bad deeds. So if you want a man to grow, if you want your faith to be on the increase in general, then you have to increase your good deeds,
and reduce or decrease your bad deeds. It's very simple.
Not very complicated at all. So what you try to do is try to do as many good deeds as you can.
If you find yourself going down, no, that it's because you're not doing sufficient good deeds on one hand, and you're also doing too many bad deeds on the other hand, so you want to try to decrease your bad deeds, and increase your good deeds. And the end result is your faith will be on the increase in general. So this is a general principle to keep in mind, and ever you feel yourself going down, then look around for some good deeds to do. And you will always be able to find them. There will always be many good deeds around you that you can possibly do.
When you do them, it will start to increase your faith again. And all the time when we look around, they're bad deeds that we're doing. Maybe very small, minor, whatever, but they're all around us. And we're all committing them, as well. So Solomon said, all of the descendants of Adam constantly make errors. So we've got errors going on all around us. But the best of those who make errors constantly, are those who repent constantly. So on one hand, you try to decrease your bad deeds. When you do them, make sure that you repent, to seek Allah's forgiveness, to remove the sin of your evil deed from yourself. Now, the last point I would like to mention for you, is that you need to
study Islam. Formerly,
it's not enough to think that Okay, I will go to this lecture here, this mosque, or in that center, or that Institute, I'll go on YouTube.
I'll Facebook. You know, you pick up things from here, there and everywhere.
It's not to say you won't learn anything and won't be beneficial, of course, you will learn and will be beneficial. But when you study in a haphazard way, in an unstructured way, you It takes a long time for you to learn and even when you learn, you can pass it on to others. You may know for yourself. But if we asked you to teach, can you teach this class on how heda nakida Botha law? He said, Oh, no, sorry, you know, I don't have that. But you've been attending and reading and watching and all these years, like one brother pointed out to me said, you know, when I joined your university, my university Islamic online university.
In one semester,
I learned more than I learned in that previous five years
of my Islam, five years, five years of my Islam, taking information from here, their YouTube, on the phone, Skype in all the different channels, I was getting information. What I learned in one semester was more than I learned in five years previous.
I'm not saying that's the same for everybody. But it's just giving us an idea that when you study in a structured learning environment, you're going to you're building your knowledge again, step by step, building solid building blocks. And if we asked you at any point, can you teach this you say I can teach it,
you will be able to teach it because you have learned it in a structured way. So structured learning of knowledge is superior to unstructured
haphazard
whenever it's convenient type of learning. So,
in summary,
I advise you in this guide that you must seek the knowledge because if you are to grow islamically to know what's right and wrong, reduce the wrong increase the good the right, then you must have more and more knowledge of Islam. Your knowledge should always be growing
Till the time you are put in the grave, there is no time you can say I know everything. I know everything I need to know No, you there's always more that you can learn and you can improve. So always be seeking knowledge. And then you have a duty to share that knowledge when the Lord blesses you with knowledge, then he puts on you the obligation of sharing that knowledge with others.
That's why the last element said hydrocal Manta allemaal. Khurana Allah, the best of you are those who learn the Quran and teach it to others. That's what makes them the best, because they're teaching it to others. And if they didn't learn the Quran in a structured fashion, then they wouldn't be able to teach it to others. So
remember, the challenges. We're all going to face them You can't escape them. Secondly, you need to
build your Islam step by step.
Your Tao dour, be patient. Thirdly, you may have to change your friends.
Make sure you have good friends around you are going to help you to improve. Fourthly, know that your faith will be up sometimes and down sometimes
fifthly know that it will go up with good deeds and go down with bad deeds. And then 60 You must study Islam and do so in a structured program in order to maximize the benefit from the knowledge you're seeking.
So I hope these points are clear. And they represent a path for you to follow. This is like a man hedge or a system of study or systematic way to approach your Islam in order for you to become a stronger Muslim as time passes, I hope that it has been beneficial. And I ask Allah to guide you all. Keep you firmly on the path
and for you to share what you have with others
said I want a como Rahmatullahi wa barakaatuh