Haifaa Younis – How Do I Know If I Love Allah
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the signs that they love Allah Subhan Ali, including seeing his longing for their actions, being with them, and sharing their thoughts. They emphasize the importance of knowing one's love by seeing how much she remembers him and dedicating time to him. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of listening to someone's words in building a relationship and being aware of one's love to see if it can achieve goals. They stress the importance of sacrificing time with Allah Subhan Ali kil behavior and finding a person who is worthless.
AI: Summary ©
1st and foremost, Ramadan Mubarak to all of
you. May Allah bless you and protect you
and give you the best of this world
and hereafter. May Allah make us better at
the end of this wonderful month,
than how we entered this wonderful month.
Today, we're gonna talk about
love. This beautiful,
warm feeling that we have and that we
feel towards usually are the members of our
family,
like our mothers and fathers and brothers and
sisters.
And,
to me, for example, a sign of love
or one of the representations
of love in this world is that that
connection between a mother and a child.
It's always special to see love
so wonderfully seen on a face
and so wonderfully seen on the sacrifices that
especially mother does for her child,
because of what she's feeling, because of that
instinct motherly instinct that Allah has given to
her.
Today, inshallah, we're gonna talk about
a different type of love.
And
the first thing I'm gonna ask first and
foremost myself, and I invite all of you
to ask yourselves as well,
is
do I love Allah
I'm assuming that the question
to
that this question is gonna be answered like
yes for most of us.
And,
then I would then follow-up this question by
saying,
what is your proof?
What is my proof first
that I truly love Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala?
How do I see that in my daily
life, in what I'm doing,
in what I'm saying,
in what I'm feeling, what I'm looking at,
what I'm not looking at, or what I'm
not doing or saying, etcetera.
So today, our session, Insha'Allah, is going to
be focused
on that. What are some of the signs
that I can see in my daily life
that tell me do I really love
Allah's.
Most of these points are derived from a
wonderful book by Nami ibn al Khayim, and
this is a recommendation for further reading.
The book is called and,
it's it talks about love, all of that
book. So it's beautiful, beautiful, and I really
recommend checking it out and InshaAllah taking a
lot of lessons and,
understandings of love in general for our daily
lives. So Imam Abu Luqaim,
among other things, says that one of the
signs that I love Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
is that I long
for Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Like imagine when I have, when we have
a good friend
or if we have our spouse spouse, our
husband or a wife, and he or she
has to go to travel,
for a business trip, let's say, for a
few days or a few weeks weeks or
a month or so.
And,
for all of that month or those weeks
when we're
apart from each other, there
is this sense of longing
and missing each other out. And we usually
share that with our spouses. I miss you
so much. I can't wait to see you.
I love you, etcetera.
That love,
is
the that's the way that love is visible
on us.
So in my life,
if I feel in my heart
that I'm longing to see Allah
that I'm longing to,
see Allah, to be with him,
to
just be in his company,
and to finally meet him
again
after our first,
our first gathering, so to say, in in,
in a distance distance time from this one
or from a long time ago.
To see my lord again, to feel that
longing in my heart, to meet him again,
and to tell him, you Allah,
I have
divided or I have,
given to you my whole life.
Isn't that something that
our hearts are longing for? So if our
hearts are longing for Allah and wanting to
see him, wanting to meet him, wanting to
be with him,
That's the sign. That's one of the signs
that we love Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. As
you can see, some of these signs are
gonna be a part of the heart or
what our feelings are. Some of them are
going to be
more in, towards,
our actions or, sayings, etcetera.
Second thing or said second way I can
see in my life that I truly love
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is by seeing how
much I remember Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala in
my daily life.
So when we love someone,
especially when we love our spouses,
we usually think about them very often.
When they go to work, we think about
how we're gonna see each other again and,
at dinner, let's say, and spend some time
together.
And we think about how much we love
them. We think about how we want to
help them or how we want,
things not bad things not to happen to
them. Then we just love speaking about those
people because speaking about those people gives us
pleasure and love and this, wonderful sensation and,
beautiful
feeling inside.
So the way I can see in my
life if I truly love Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala is by seeing how much I remember
him. 1st and foremost in my heart, how
much my heart remembers Allah. What is the
first thing that comes to my mind in
the morning? What is the last thing that
I remember before I go to sleep?
What are the what is the thing that
I remember the most during the day? What
I want to please the most, that I
want to talk about the most, that I
want my to dedicate my day to.
That's the subject of my love.
If Allah is the one I remember
every day,
that I wake up with his name, that
I go to sleep with his name, that
I during the day
that,
I love to mention his name
in my, in my,
in the way of when I'm speaking to
people.
If,
I love to do things for him,
if I want like to,
do,
as I said, if I like to do
salah, if I want to do more and
more of that, remember him more and more,
that is a sign that I love Allah
Another sign that I that we love Allah
is
if we are
obedient
to the orders
of the one who are who we love.
And not only that, that we give reference
to
what the
subject of our love is
over what we love.
So for example,
all of us love to sleep,
especially when we're when we're having a lack
of sleep and when when when we are
in the desperate need of it.
But then still, you can see that mother
that wakes up in the middle of the
night
to, let's say, cook a few dishes of
food
for her children so they can have something
to eat tomorrow when she goes to work.
We still see
that
mother or father
who buys
something that they or who doesn't buy something
for themselves,
but they do buy something for the children
even though they themselves
need something more.
That's when they give to those who they
love
something over,
or whether whether they prefer something that the
beloved of theirs needs or something that they
themselves need. So in my daily life, for
example, how do I see that I love
Allah
By doing what he loves me to do
or what he ordered me to do, what
he asked me to do.
Like,
if he asked me to pray every day,
if he asked me to to to fast,
if he asked me to put my hijab
on, if he asked me to take care
of how I look and into people, how
I speak,
how what I do what I do or
what I don't do in my daily life,
then because I love Allah,
I will give preference to what he loves
for me over what I love for me
for myself.
So if that means waking up in the,
in the morning
and,
praying fajr even though I love to sleep,
I will do that because I love Allah.
If that means that I will put my
hijab on, even though that I love the
way I look, I like to show my
beauty, I like to be the beautiful one
in the room.
I will still put my hijab on because
I love what Allah loves for me
more than I love what I love for
myself.
SubhanAllah.
If I'm in a gathering of people and
they start
speaking ill of someone,
and they start start chatting, they start gossiping
because I love Allah,
I will not speak ill of people because
that's something that my beloved
would not love me or like me to
do in my life, in that gathering, in
that place with that those people.
So
a sign that I love Allah is that
I'm obedient to him towards what he loves
me or asks me to do and that
I give reference to what he loves me
to do over what I love for myself
to do.
Also, for example, lowering our gaze
when we're
talking to him.
Remember, for example, when you were in awe
of someone, like someone whom you really respect,
and then you start speaking to that person,
like your teacher, like someone that you really,
really highly love and respect.
And you start talking to that person. And
then you suddenly feel yourself that you're getting
shy, and then you're you're, like, lowering your
gaze down. You put, like, your gay, your
eyes go naturally down because you're shy to
look even into the eyes of the person
that you're talking to. That's how shy you
are or that's how you much you love
them, that you can't even kind of hold
yourself
strong when you're in that in the in
the presence of that person. You just lose
yourself you know, lose your mind, so to
say, in a way.
So how does this
how is this visible in my connection to
Allah? How is this visible in my relationship
to Allah?
When I stand for salah, when I stand
for to pray,
that I put my gaze down and I
don't look around
when I'm praying and talking to my Allah,
my most beloved one in the salah.
When I'm making du'a to Allah,
when I'm asking Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala what
I need in my daily life or what
I need for my family, for my friends,
for my beloved ones in my life.
I'm putting down my gaze because I know
that my beloved
is listening.
I know that my beloved is hearing what
I'm saying,
and he will say yes to everything
that I ask him to do or that
I that I ask him to remove from
my life, from from my family, etcetera.
Because I know
that's my beloved. I know my beloved.
I know who he is, and I know
he will never let me down. So
that natural lowering of the gaze out of
respect,
out of love of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
is a sign that we love him. And
another way of lowering the gaze is to
not look at
what our beloved does not love me to
look at. So for example,
if
I love my husband
then I'm gonna take care or I'm not
gonna look at other men and spend time
watching them, seeing what they're doing, seeing how
they're looking, etcetera.
Because I know that my husband
would not like me to look at other
people in that way.
So
because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is my beloved
and I want him to be my beloved,
I'm not gonna look at other people,
or I'm not gonna spend my, eyes or
I'm not gonna waste my gaze on the
things that he does not love me to
look at or to see. This also includes
watching things, looking at,
at something,
watching something that is
in the gray zone at at least, not
to even say that it's maybe haram or
mikru, etcetera.
So,
looking at what Allah loves me to look
at, staying away from watching that what he
does not love me to watch is a
sign that I love Allah
SubhanAllah. When we speak to people that we
love and when they speak to us,
while they're speaking to us, what happened is
happening is that we're kind of
so much focused
on what they're saying
that we're carefully, carefully listening to their words.
And we're kind of sync the all of
their each of their words are sinking into
our hearts, into our minds,
into our souls basically. And there are like
these moments and we like, sometimes it can
pass 10 years, 20 years, 15 years. And
then you still remember when that one person
that you love, what did they told you?
Like, you sometimes you would remind them about
that and would say, do you remember when
you told me this and that, like, 15
or 10 20 years ago?
I can never forget that moment when you
told me that because that sticked into your
mind. Because those words
of that person,
meant for you something,
meant something for you. SubhanAllah.
So how should I look into this
to build my relationship of love towards Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is by listening
to what he has to tell me. And
the way he has spoken to me is
something that is already known. It is the
Quran.
So
in order for me
to love Allah,
to show Allah that I love him
is by listening to his words.
His words in the Quran, his messages,
and especially paying attention to those messages and
understanding those messages
so that they can stick to my heart
and I can never forget them. SubhanAllah.
It's like when someone who as I told
as I said, when someone whom you love
told you something,
imagine something, what is something that Allah is
telling you
is telling me
in the Quran that I need to listen
to, that is important for me. Because
when someone loves you, they will tell you
what you need to listen, what what you
need to know, what is important for you.
They will not
always tell you the the pleasant things because,
the person who loves you, they will they
want the best for you. They want that
you succeed in this world. They want us
to succeed in the next, world, etcetera.
So the the question is, my most beloved,
Allah, who loves me more than anyone else
that I have in my life,
what does he,
tell me? What is he telling me in
his book? What is he recommending me to
do? What is he telling me to pay
attention to, or telling me to avoid or
telling me to do or telling me to
think about? Like, let those words of Allah
as the most beloved one sink into your
heart.
Read the Quran
as if you're reading a love letter from
someone that loves you the most. And how
would you read that letter?
Imagine yourself in that moment. How would I
read the letter from someone
who loves me the most?
What what am I gonna pay attention to?
What I'm gonna how I'm gonna listen and
how how am I going to listen to
them?
How their words are going to affect me?
And how am I going to change
and
adjust based on what they ask me to
do.
So that's my beloved,
and that's how I see or listen to
his words.
A wonderful way
of showing love
is by sacrifice.
And mothers, I would say, would understand this
the best.
As I told you before,
the mothers will wake up in the middle
of the night
just to quick cook, cook something for their
children
because they love them. They sacrificed their
sleep, maybe even it affected their health.
It affected the time that they have for
themselves,
etcetera. But they were willing
to sacrifice all of that
because that would mean that they would please
you
as the person who they love so much.
The same we do for for our parents
whom we love. The same we do we
do for our spouses
whom we again love so much. And we
sacrifice
things in our daily life so that we
can please the one that we love. It's
just so because we feel so happy
when the one that we love is happy
with us or was happy with something that
we did. And we're willing so much to
to spend our, to sacrifice our time, our
energy, our money,
all of our resources just to please that
person because we want to see that person
happy with us. Us. We want them to
stay with us as long as possible.
So how do we see the sacrifice
in, our relationship with Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala?
Again, the same with looking to our resources
and we see and we say, you Allah,
what can I sacrifice for you
today?
Is it my time that I'm gonna spend
more time with you by praying,
by doing dikr, by thinking about your signs
that you have given to me around myself
and in myself. Is it gonna be the
time that I'm gonna spend on my Quran?
Is it gonna be the time that I'm
gonna spend,
on giving something giving charity to people or
doing Zakah or going to Hajj or for
Umrah?
Is it the money, or is it something
else that I'm gonna spend or sacrifice
for the sake of Allah
just for the reason because we love Allah.
And we will see that the more I'm
willing to sacrifice for Allah
in my time, in my money,
in my energy,
in,
everything that I possess basically
just to please Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, the
more that shows our love towards Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Again,
when we love someone, we are a little
bit jealous
when he or she is speaking to another
person.
We just want them for ourselves, basically.
And,
it though that's a type of a love
that is usually mostly visible
in the spouses, like, when they when they
want each other for themselves, and it's very
kind of,
sometimes very hard for them to
look into their spouses talking to someone else,
etcetera. So,
how do we see jealousy in our love
towards Allah
by looking into 2 things. I need to
in order for me to love Allah fully
or, if I want to look into how
much I love Allah, I need to look
into 2 things.
How jealous I am
in my own disobedience
to Allah
and how jealous I am in other people's
disobedience
to Allah
So what does this mean?
When I think about doing a sin, when
I think about sinning towards Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala, doing something that he doesn't love, disobeying
him in any way,
that my thought is,
how can I do this to my beloved?
How can I do this to someone who
loves me so much? Or how can I
do this to someone I love
so much?
I cannot do this to him. I cannot
do this because of him, because he would
not love me or like me to do.
Or when we, or
look into how that beloved is, Who is
Allah
So who is Allah?
Is he the most merciful? Is he the
most generous? Is he the most noble? Is
he the most high?
Does he deserve this
behavior
after everything that he has done for us
or after everything he's doing for us in
every single day, in every single moment. Like,
you look into you look into our bodies.
Our hearts are beating
with like, every day without any stop, and
we don't have to think about it. We
don't have to think about how hearts work.
We are breathing the air in. Our lungs
are working every day,
but we're not thinking about or telling our
lungs, please,
breathe this much air into into yourself today
or breathe out this much air out.
We're not telling our hands or our legs,
please move so I can take something from
the table or I can walk from a
place to a place.
It's just working. But there needs to be
someone, and there is someone
who is every day and every moment
taking care of that function of my body.
And that that is a law.
He
he
whom I love and I need so much
in my life
does not deserve
to be disobeyed.
He is above all of that.
But on the other hand, I need to
be aware that it's not affecting him.
It's only affecting me
and the way I can truly love the
one who deserves to be loved the most.
So being jealous,
of any type of disobedience
to Allah out of love towards Allah is
something that is a sign that we love
Allah
And there are 2 more signs that we
love Allah. One of them is wanting to
be alone with him, which is another beautiful,
beautiful, I would say,
sign.
Spanologist
as well, like, when we have that friend
whom we love so much
and we love to spend time with that
friend,
we use any time or any moment that
we had can to be alone with them
so that we just can spend that time
together. SubhanAllah.
The same goes with our relationship with Allah.
One, one of the signs that I love
Allah
is that I tend to spend my time
with Allah
alone without any people,
without anyone around me,
just to be with him, with my dhikr,
with my Quran,
with my salah,
with my dua,
with,
seeking Islamic knowledge, with anything
that is getting,
to please him. Like in my thoughts, in
my heart, that I feel, you Allah, I
am with you. I need you. You are
with me, and you you are constantly
with me.
And I can constantly
feel
your presence in the way that I'm seeing
your signs around me, inside of me, in
the Quran, in everything that
I have. So,
spending time alone with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is a way or a sign that we
love Allah. And we also, for on the
other hand, hate anything
that can become like a barrier between,
our time with
our our alone time with Allah
You can look into that, like, physically, like,
when someone wants to,
cross your path when you're praying, like, you
can physically remove that person,
so that he or she cannot,
stand, like, say in that way between you
and Allah. That's what Imam Ibn Luqaiin, for
example, says. And another way is that when
your heart
that I'm so focused
on Allah
that I don't let anything in my heart,
in my thoughts,
other than what pleases
So that is a sign that I'm staying
alone with him and that I love him.
And finally, and probably one of the most
most important one,
portions or signs
that I love Allah
or ways that I can improve my love
towards Allah
is that I
love no one like I love Allah
Allah does not like to share, as Sheikh
Hayfa says usually,
that I love no one in my life
the way that I love Allah. Why? Because
no one is worthy of love in my
life the way Allah is worthy of that
love. No one is the source of love
in my life the way that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala is the source of love in
my life.
No one is equal to giving love like
Allah
No one is
able or capable
of giving life like or or love in
my life like Allah is
So
he deserves that
place in my heart.
He deserves
to be number 1
and to be the only one
as the number 1 in my life.
And he deserves
to not share that place of number 1
in my heart with anyone else in my
life.
I pray that Allah
gives us
that we love him,
that we love him truly with our hearts
fully,
sharing
nothing
in our hearts with with him.
May may Allah
make us among those
who love him like they know love no
one else. May Allah make us so that
we love other
people for the sake of Allah and
for the sake of Allah
only.
I may Allah
make us among those
who
start to love other people or hate other
people because of what they do for Allah.
May Allah, for example,
make us among those
who,
in our hearts, in our words,
in our deeds,
show every single sign that we truly,
completely
love
Allah