June 12, 2020

Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim in Alhamdulillah mahamadou Monastery no one is stop Pharaoh whenever we'll be learning in surely and fusina woman sejati amor Nina, man Yes de la Fernando banana woman Oberlin center Haryana. When I showed you in a long way at Cana when I showed you under Mohammed and agudo Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa seldom at the Sleeman kathira de la will see Come on FCB takoma he has come upon a loss of Hana what Allah bear the rules will be learned him in a shape on rajim Bismillahi Rahmani Raheem Yeah, you harness it took over the como la de Hanako meanness in wider wirkkala coming has an agenda. Well, that's them in humanity journal and

Catherine when he said what dakolo her lady Tessa Luna be he will or hum in the law, her care now at a coma fever. My brothers and sisters on this blessing, beautiful day,

the 12th of June. And as much as it is a day that many of us may still not be able to have access to the mustard for Salatu. Juma and we know that that's going to take some time. I look at the date in the top of the screen in front of me and I see it to be the 12th of June, reminding myself that the last time that we prayed in the masjid for Joomla was over a month it was over three months ago. When we think of it that way. The very first day that we cancelled or suspended the congregational prayer in the mustard it was March 13. And today is June 12. So and hamdulillah is a blessing from Allah subhanho wa Taala added to see that our masajid are reopening slowly. And no doubt today's

topic, we are going to discuss the reopening of massage the reopening of our mustard here in Milton descemet, community center of Milton. And we are also going to talk about some of the procedures that have been put in place because many people are questioning why so many more restrictions or why are we even opening or why haven't we opened long ago or why only 60 people? And so there's a lot of questions that the community has no doubt and we want to address all of these, you know questions and answer them in a lot of data. However, we'll do our best to try and be as concise and as

you know specific to the point as possible.

My brothers and sisters, first of all we have to remember and we have to keep in mind that it is a blessing from Allah subhanho wa Taala to have access to the masjid, when we think back to when the masajid were open freely. And we could walk in at any time of day or night and go into the masjid pray, play basketball, play some sports, you know sit down and relax with a fant with our family. Chill, do whatever we wanted in the masjid. We see now that after all this time has passed and after everything that's happened in you know, the last three months, it was such a blessing from Allah subhanho wa Taala to be able to go to the mustard whenever we wanted to. You have to look took that

blessing away from us. And at times we forget that when blessings are taken away from us, they're done so that we can remember the importance of those blessings that have been upon us and remind ourselves that a loss of Hanwha to Anna has not only given us the opportunity in the past, but when the opportunity comes back that we are able to thank along that we do shook up to a loss of handle with Anna We are thankful to Allah for allowing us to be in the mustard in the first place.

And so my brothers and sisters, many years have passed of us enjoying the surgeon and enjoying going to pray and we never really, you know cared about it. We never thanked a lot a lot just

you know, a lot of money in the escrow. Right? Don't say hello to Allah. Right we say sugar we do sugar to a lot a lot of money. So we thank you or Allah, we do sugar to you for what you have given to us as these massages in places for us to play and to pray and to enjoy and to socialize and to be in and to learn from and so on and so forth. Now,

today, marking the day that in our province in Ontario, the government has, you know, agreed to allow us to open massage it to a maximum of 30% of the building's capacity. That's the first thing. Secondly, my brothers and sisters we have to also keep in mind the physical distancing guidelines that have been put in place in Ontario. And so a lot of people are asking why is it that he at the Islamic community center welcome

In the numbers of congregants that can get together are only 16, when our mustard is much bigger than other massages that are opening, you know, their doors up to a lot more people. First of all, we didn't open for Juma right now, that was a decision and all the decisions are made by the board. And this is not just a one man show, there are many people that are sitting on the board and the Management Committee, they are discussing these things together, they throw ideas at one another, they bounce them off each other's, you know, thoughts and minds and so on. And then they decide on something. So they decided that it was best for us not to begin with so not to Jamal, as the very

first prayer because naturally, so many people rush and flock to the masjid for Juma. And this reopening of masajid, or places of worship was something that I wouldn't say caught everyone off guard, but caught most of us off guard. That doesn't mean that we were not planning and preparing in the last three months we were And trust me, I've sat through many, many hours of meetings with lots of different people, you know, professionals, healthcare professionals, politicians, officials, and so on and so forth. But my brothers and sisters, we did not expect that masajid were going to open or places of worship, we're going to open this fast. We were always told, and we've been saying this

from even before. And I'm Yvonne. And remember, we had a meeting over two months ago. And we were proposing to the to the provincial government, look, our places of worship are essential for our community members. But that just kept you know, being put aside because of everything that's going on. And also you know, so much focus being put on other things. So this caught many people off guard, we were planning for the days or the time that we would reopen but we did not expect it to be this soon disparity. Regardless, my brothers and sisters on hamdulillah you know, at 30% capacity respecting the social distancing, what we've done at the Asana community center of Milton is that we

are going to open up the prayer space in the gym. To begin with with 60 people as capacity our 30% capacity is much more than that. However, this is what we are focusing on because the prayer space within the gym will only allow us for that amount keeping in mind the social distancing of six feet or two meters apart from each person and so 60 people within the gym area to pray inshallah Tada.

And we are doing that so that we pray on a hard surface. So after every prayer the floor can be marked with disinfected and sanitized for the next congregation to come in for the next prayer. Now we're brothers and sisters, we have to keep a number of things in mind. We have to keep ventilation in mind, we have to keep sanitization in mind, we have to keep, you know, the the fact that many people are coming through the doors, touching the doorknob touching, you know, the walls, putting their hands on the side, you know, stuff like that. So there's a lot of things that need to be kept in mind and as much as many community members are, you know, saying what about this and what about

that and hamdulillah I think we have, you know, discussed many, many things and covered many aspects of this whole return to masajid and we are trying to start slow and wisely. So hamdulillah the masjid management decided that we will start with Salatin, Missouri tonight inshallah, that will be the first prayer that we begin in congregation in the masjid once again, they also decided that we are going to be praying in the gym area on the hard surface. So everyone has to bring their prayer mats, put it down and wear a mask and after the prayer, then you know people's shoes are kept with them. So they'll walk right in their shoes will stay with them. Right, they will obviously take them

off stand on their mats and pray their prayer. And when everyone is done, they will be let go one by one, right, the Imam whoever's leading the prayer will tell people to go one by one or row by row and everyone will lead from the front. So we'll come in from the side doors, you'll see the volunteers there. And we will be going out from the front doors where the garage doors are. That way, there's a clear you know, sense of flow for people coming and going.

Also, we are not going to be gathering or congregating at the shoe area. Because when people come in and take their shoes off, if we're done prayer and we have to leave now people may go back to the shoe area and then you know we have groups of 1015 2030 people standing there trying to put their shoes on, we can't do that. So everyone will come into the gym area they can keep their shoes with them, you know they will stand on their mats pray and then leave from the front doors. This will allow us to get into a float there are many volunteers there that Alhamdulillah Are you know going to be looking after certain things some of them will be taking our temperature so they have these

temperature

thermometers that you know use infrared basically, or whatever it is, you know, and they check the temperature on your forehead right so you will check the temperature they will check your temperature on your forehead as you come and if your temperature

is correct. And we've kept little things in mind. See, if we take your temperature outside in the heat during the summer, it affects the temperature of the reading of a person's temperature. So we have to, you know, take into consideration and keeping those temperature thermometers, you know, in a certain area. And so all of these things my brothers and sisters had been discussed. Why have they been discussed, because the safety and the well being of the entire community is, and I would say, for me personally, one of the top priorities on our list, no doubt, I put a loss of Henry to Anna and our a bedroom worship of a lot at the very top of the list. But part of our a band a part of our

mission is to look after our health, part of our email is to look after our Muslim brother and sister, part of our email is to look after other human beings, part of our belief in Allah subhanho wa Taala is to make sure that we are doing the right thing according to the laws of the land that we live in, as well. And so as Muslims, we have to take all of these things into consideration. We can't just self selfishly say, Well, I want this or I don't want to do that, forget it, I'm not going to wear a mask, my brothers and sisters, as Muslims, we should be looking after the well being of each other, the best that we can, if a person feels in their own space on their own time, they

prefer not to wear a mask of hungry love, that's that's your own choice. But when it comes to the mustard, we have to understand there are many other people around. And we also are not restricting elderly people from coming, we are advising the elderly don't come because they're more vulnerable, you know, due to their immune system and weakness of the body and so on. But that doesn't mean that we are, you know, in a position to stop them, they're still able to come if they want to. And of course, we advise them, we discourage them from, you know, coming to the mustard at this point in time, however some want to come, we can't stop them.

So there are certain things that we need to keep in mind, my brothers and sisters to make sure that the entire community is going to be, you know, following this procedure that will make it easier for us to move forward. Now, if you ask me, honestly, in my own personal opinion, I think 30% is too much, I think we should start with less than 30%. And that's why I have the law, I think I'm very happy with the decision that the management has made with 60 people, that doesn't mean that it will be 60 people for the next six months. That means that it may be 60 people for the next three, four or five days, maybe one week, and then in sha Allah to Allah when they see that the volunteers are

you know, running very well and doing things you know, in a very smooth, very efficient manner. When we see that we have enough sanitization, you know process put in place to look after the the mustard and the carpeted area and so on. And maybe we can open up a little bit more, but for now, this is the start, okay, this is the start that we are beginning with and inshallah to hand it over time, we will increase that number. And you know, for iccm our number at 30% is a lot more than 60. But we are doing this to make sure that we start small and gradually grow for the sake of doing what is right and not putting ourselves in a position where and my brothers and sisters The last thing that

we want the very last thing that we want is for our mustard to open and we have an out of control spread of this virus and then a loss of kind of a way to add you know, makes it such that we have to close up the doors once again that's one thing that we really don't want Okay, so

I know that there are a few questions that are coming in people are you know, thanking us for all the brainstorming and everything that's been considered someone here mentioned something about women and I saw that so it says the message from the bottom of my heart in good faith that at beginning please keep only men to allow come to mosque to pray. Women can join when more relaxing situation announced inshallah, as I believe praying in the mosque is mandatory for men and women can pray. Okay, someone is saying that, in my humble opinion, sr, is that we should open the mustard to everyone and hamdulillah I gave this feedback to our mustard management and they accepted it. And I

am happy that our mustard is open for both men, as well as for women, for our brothers and for our sisters. And I will tell you why my brothers and sisters First of all, our sisters have been feeling the absence of joining the congregational prayer or being in the mustard as well. The mustard is a place that we find Sakina we find tranquility in our hearts. And it's a place that I feel every single Muslim men or woman has the right to be and then we're prophets some along there I think he was sending a mentions to us that

as much as as much as the prayer in congregation is is highly encouraged and according to you know, the magnetic the four schools of major schools of fick is that you know this is something that is highly encouraged upon the men. However, the mustard is still a place that the prophets on the longer end of us send them said do not forbid women or do not forbid the female worshipers also from the masjid

Do not forbid them from coming to the masjid. So this is one reason why, you know we are opening the masjid to both men as well as to women and 100 Allah if anyone feels at this point in time that they are not comfortable coming, or they feel that you know what I'm not able to register in time is jumada compulsory for me and that's when we're talking about next week's joumana then no, until this pandemic is still ongoing until someone fears are no longer fears for their, for their health, then they do not need to or still fears for the health then they do not need to come for that Juma prayer because of the pandemic. That doesn't mean that someone says, Oh, you know what, I'm scared. I might

run through a stop sign and I can't go to the masjid. No, we should have trust in Allah. So can we know that he's going to protect us and look after us? And remember, my brothers and sisters, it's so important for us to work together as a community. And I know some people will say, Well, why are sisters allowed to go Why not only the brothers? Remember my brother's

the daughter of a mother, the daughter of a mother is powerful. And I always remember the example of the daughter of the mother of Imam and Makati. And you know, just the other day we were in the meeting and shift he had brought it up. He's like not only the mother of amendment, Bahati law,

you know, many of our scholars, in fact, almost every single one of our scholars, when you look at them, you see that at some point in time they studied from a woman, even ourselves, even yourself and myself, I had to shut up the man who narrated many Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to us, right, she learned of the life of the Prophet son love that he was sending them through a shadow, the love and have many, many Hadith are taken from her. And so my brothers and sisters, we have to understand that when it comes to returning to the masjid, we need to respect what is being told to us by the volunteers, we need to also respect the guidelines of what we've

been suggested by the Ministry or by the provincial government as well. You know, people are asking why, why is the masjid forcing us to wear a mask? Well, this has been the guidelines that have been shared with us with the Ontario government or from the Ontario government, right that everyone should be wearing a mascot. Also my brothers and sisters, keep in mind,

it may be a place that you come once every few days, or maybe once a week for the next little while. But it is still the regular workplace for many of us. And for myself for shift with Eva, you know, for others in the community, the management and the administration and so on, we go there for work. And when we have another business or another place where 10 people are coming in, they sit there for eight hours a day they work and they go home, that's very different than us in a Masjid where we are going to be having hundreds of people coming and going on a regular basis from the masjid. And so in order to protect the safety of chick fil a, for example, our email, it's important for us to make

sure that we try to keep the mustard as safe and as sanitary as possible. If something happens to anyone else, we would all feel guilty, every single one of us and it doesn't matter if it happens to our email, or it happens to you know, someone who comes to pray or someone who simply stopped in to ask a question, every single one of us would feel very, very bad and very sad that something happened to someone. So my brothers and sisters, let's try to respect the guidelines that have been put in place by the provincial government as well as those that our mustard is suggesting for us or whatever mustard you're planning on going to. And there's a simple way to register for the prayers

that you want to attend. There's an application called my mustard app. Oh, sorry, that mustard app. So simply go to the app, download the app, right? The mustard app. Th e ma S j id a pp.net. Okay, go to that, and register select Islamic community center of Milton.

In fact, I don't have it open in front of me, but

I think it's iccm dot mustard app dotnet. If you go to that, and you register to attend one of the prayers, you will you'll be listed there as the people that can attend that prayer and then when you come you simply just show that and you can come into the masjid and prayer prayer. Now are we advising people to pray there's some at home. Yes. So for any of the prayers before you pray your compulsory prayer in congregation if you want to pray a prayer then please do that at home because I can locate him in the team

for posting that up there.

Bring your son the prayers at home. And then when we come to the mustard we are going to pray the compulsory prayer together and afterwards wait for the instructions of the Imam to allow the rose to go forward and to leave through the other door.

Okay,

do not pray your son the prayers in the masjid try to minimize the time that we are going to stay there that will give a little bit of time a minute or two after the solid after the prayer for people to need to do their job, you know, to spend a little bit of time there in their own personal ariba worship with a loss of Henry to Anna, but there will be no, no most how for no court unavailable to you to touch into us. Because if we start letting people touch everything, then it's problematic. So all of these things will be controlled for now, inshallah hotellin. Slowly and gradually, as we reopen, things will go back to a condition in states where we can be thankful to a

loss of habitat. And that's our message for today that in Chicago, Tom lezzy, then you remember, I think it was the first or second jumada lecture that I did from home, when the pandemic started, we were quoting this, I believe it was the second lecture I did that in Chicago from z then have we been thankful to Allah subhanho wa Taala This is important for us now, we need to be thankful to Allah subhana wa tanunda. For what we have, that we are, you know, now being able to go back into the masjid and shut along to Allah, things will grow and things will proceed in a way where you know, it's safe for us to return and safe for us to continue doing the programs and whatnot,

whatever happens within the mustard

will iccm us and share the information it collects on us what we register with the application. Now that's something you can contact the management about, and also in collaboration with the mustard app. So go to the mustard app, and you can communicate with them there in sha Allah to add it.

Of course, no doubt to my brothers and sisters, whenever someone registers to use something information is collected and you have to consent.

You have to give consent to certain things. And so this is that's just the time in the place that we live in my brothers and sisters. Sadly, this is the step that that we are the situation that we're in and the steps that we have to take. And we asked our boss accountable without it to protect every single one of us and our information and data and so on.

Remember my brothers and sisters that a lot of us may disagree with certain decisions that are made, that's fine. Because no one is ever going to agree with everything else that someone else has to say or do. But if we don't have the online registration, then then we will end up with hundreds of cars believe me I just came from the mustard right now. And I was there and making sure that you know the volunteers are there's a few things I wanted to point out to them. They're preparing the masjid cleaning the mustard, setting it up marking off the area, you know, getting ready to start prayers from tonight inshallah Tada. And there were already people coming in pulling up like rows and rows

of people just coming and coming cars pulling up asking is drama happening is happening. Now if we allow a first come first serve, or First come first to enter procedure at the mustard, we will end up with so much traffic outside the masjid. And that's a blessing. It's not a problem. It's a blessing from Allah, our community here in Milton, we have so many Muslims here Alhamdulillah that, you know, there's so many of them that come to the mustard on a regular basis. And this is my own, you know, observation. When the mustard was opened before all of this closure happened on a regular basis for selecting a shell for the ratio of prayer, we get on average between 250 and 300 people

for a shell prayer on a regular basis for Salatu fudger at the Simon community center of Milton on a regular basis, usually, of course it varies between the summer and the winter because of the prayer timing. But usually we get anywhere between 150 and 200 people for Salatu fudger. And our mustard 100 a lot. On the Friday nights every show, we usually have about five to 600 people minimum minimum five to 600 people. So when it comes to Joomla Hmm, every single Friday, we usually have about 1200 to 1500 people attending the Juma prayer every single Friday. That's a lot of people. And that's for each one of the prayers that we have. So if we were to just open it up and say first come first

enter, we would have hundreds of people standing outside waiting to go in. And we would have to reject them. And so what this application does is it makes it easier for us to register and come to the mustard for the prayers that we are actually going to be able to enter for instead of going to the mustard and being rejected and coming back home. Now I know people will say but there's a reward in that Bismillah the reward was always there. But I never saw people making trips back and forth going to the mustard for the reward. Right? They go to the mustard because they know they're going to enter and if we don't enter then we feel sad. We feel like Oh, you know what? I couldn't go in

like I made all of this effort. And I made that, you know, please just let me do that. And it's very hard. It's very hard my brothers and sisters for us to turn back one person and not turn back another and so sometimes

times, you know, people will come in and say, oh, but you let that person in here but that person is actually someone who's going into vacuum the carpet or that person is the accountant or that person is one of the teachers who's going in to teach. And we might see them going in and people question that well, how come they're allowing their friends to go in? It's not that they're friends. We try to keep it very consistent, that only those that are allowed to go in will be allowed to go in. And now we are going to be even more strict with this process in sha Allah to add, that's all that I had to share for today. My brothers and sisters remember that Inca capital as he then nutcombe, Allah

Subhana which Allah says if you are thankful to him, right, if you are thankful, and you show gratitude, that z then the company will increase. So I encourage our entire community to be thankful to Allah Subhana Allah to Allah and encourage everyone to continue to be thankful to Allah for everything that we have, and everything that we don't have. An Allah subhanho wa Taala will put Baraka and bless us in that I mean,

a lot Musalia Allah Mohammed Ali Mohammed came out so later Allah Ibrahima where Allah, Allah he met Nick hamidah Majeed or Baraka, Allah Mohammed where Allah Allah Muhammad came about Okta, Allah Ibrahim Ibrahim Nikita Majeed a lot more Filipino or him there was looking over after a long month along a couple minutes mlns Ali hireable and I mean, a lot more How would you handle minima? masala Elena foot two foot massage it a walker Mr. Hill Elena a majority the massage massage Elena Sonia massage Oklahoma Sahil Elena Salatu Jana Hasina masajid will further work for her well, well as one must recall Aisha was Salatu was Salam ala either either either codility or bill alanine. We ask

Allah subhanho wa Taala to make it easy for us to return to the masjid We ask Allah Subhana Allah to grant us the ability to bet to be the best people that we can be. To show a good example to others. We ask Allah subhana wa attallah to allow us to return to the massage for Salatu forgiven for her and also the mother of Indonesia and for Juma health from next week onwards, Vasco ba Subhana which Allah to protect us from this pandemic, we ask Allah Subhana Allah Allah to grant us the strength that we need and the strength that is needed in order to tackle the problems that we face in our lives. We ask Allah subhanho wa Taala to grant us the ability to do what is best and to follow the

Sunnah of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, we ask Allah subhanho wa Taala to strengthen our Eamon to make us the best people who walk the face of this earth, who are an example to everyone else around us. We ask Allah subhanho wa Taala to grant strength to all of our family members who are sick, who are ill, who are elderly, who are going through hardships, we ask Allah Subhana Allah to grant them strength, and to grant them the ability to continue to function in their lives. We ask Allah Subhana Allah to put Baraka And Pharaoh and to accept from every single one of the volunteers at the Islamic community center of Milton, and all of the masajid across the globe. We ask Allah

Subhana Allah to Allah to accept all of their efforts to bless them and their families, all the volunteers, all the brothers and sisters, all the children, all the elderly, who donate and give their time or their energy or their wealth or whatever aspect of the blessings of Allah they give back to Allah. We ask Allah Subhana Allah to accept every single one of them. I mean, we ask Allah Subhana Allah to allow us to travel freely again. And I ask Allah Subhana Allah to bring that love of the community back into our hearts. Well, while he my brothers and sisters, I was just at the masjid and it felt so nice seeing brothers that I hadn't seen, you know, community members I hadn't

seen in months. In months, my brothers and sisters, some of them were traveling outside of the country when the pandemic started, so we hadn't seen them from even before that, and it was a blessing to see them We ask Allah Subhana Allah to open our hearts to one another, and to keep us strong upon amen Amina Bill alameen, which is a coma level hidden or some level or selama robotic and Anna VENA Mohammed's rather early he was talking to us a limb or sent him were Alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.

Before I forget, in fact, we will be live streaming tonight as well.

I figured that we will do our typical Friday live stream even though the mustard will be getting ready to accept people or receive people. So we'll begin our live streaming from eight o'clock and tonight I will be live streaming from inside of the mustard so you'll be seeing people slowly coming into the prayer area in the volunteer setting up so I'll set up the cameras and everything from there inshallah to Allah and we hope that will also pan with Adam makes it easy for every single one of us to attend. meme does not come along. And I'll see you tonight at eight o'clock in Charlottetown Anna was sent Mr. Li Kumar