Haroon Baqai – Keynote address at Quran Institute Graduation

			Make a welcome to Lucky.
		

			Brothers and sisters, we are here this morning
		

			celebrating a successful year learning the book of ALLAH SubhanA Modan. And what better time to
celebrate this than this beautiful month of Ramadan?
		

			This morning, I wanted to mention two points.
		

			Okay, two points, I want you to remember them. As you as you go home and you usually spend your
summer and plan your time for the next year. The two points may seem unrelated, but they are
related. One has to do with Google Maps, and other maps in with monkeys.
		

			And then it tells you something about Google Maps, and something about monkey. You're ready.
		

			So imagine you are
		

			in place that you're not so familiar with. And now you need to get directions. So you're driving. I
don't know if you drive, hopefully not. But if you're driving, and you need to find directions. So
what do you do you pull out your Google Maps, or Waze. And now you put the address, right? Then when
you put the address, where do you put the phone?
		

			Maybe in your lap, maybe you put it in, you know, on the dashboard, you'll hang it with some things,
you can look at the phone, right? And now you start driving, you're driving the car. And after a
little while the Waze or Google Maps goes 8.2 Miles turn, right. Yeah, or your Fincher left. And
let's say if you are, you know, you're somewhere that you were north, and you need to go south,
it'll say, in one mile, take i 95, south. And then at 85, south, if you need to go south, right.
Now, just imagine this person.
		

			Two people, imagine this one guy who says, Okay, I need to go, you know, from this place, he puts
his address on the Google Map. And when he puts the address, because what he does, he takes his
phone and puts it in the trunk.
		

			I don't want to fit what? Why would you do that? Why would you put the phone in the trunk? If you
want to follow the phone to get to your destination? You need to put it where?
		

			In front of you so you can look at it. Now what about this other person who says Fine, I'll put it
in front of me. And then he's trying to go south are supposed to go south, the Google map says 8.2
Miles take exit for i 95. South and the person says I don't want to go south. I want to go north.
		

			And oh crazy isn't? He says now go to the Google map says in 200 feet turn right? And he says, Oh
no, I don't feel like turning around turn left.
		

			Does that make sense? It doesn't make sense. So what do you do you put the phone in front of you?
And you follow with the phone says Yeah, well, I also love it he was suddenly taught us something
very similar about the Quran, he says that the Quran is one that intercedes for the person in front
of Allah and you will, you will, you will request Allah to call a person, you know, to to elevate
his status, put them in Jannah. And it is, you know, it is a linic and it is a litigant that really
tries his best to argue for you.
		

			Okay, and then he says here, here's the here's the point. He says whoever puts the Quran in front of
him, and of course follows it. The Quran will lead him to gender.
		

			But whoever puts the Quran behind their back, the little arm drags them into the hellfire. So what
does that mean? How is it like the Google Maps? Well, we as Muslims, we have put on as our Google
Maps. What do you think is our destination that map Jelena the Quran was put on the book? You know,
for us, we wanted to go to Jana, and the Quran is out. If we put it in front of us and we follow it,
it will not lead us to our destination.
		

			So what does that mean? How it is going to lead us to our destination? Well, the Quran leads us to
our destination because you see, when you're really mad
		

			when you really mad
		

			And somebody's bothered you and teased you and you want to you want to get mad at them?
		

			Well, before you start emptying out the four letter dictionary, we shouldn't do that anyways, but
before you do that, you remember that oh, the Quran says you should say good things.
		

			And then at that point they say up, although I have mad, I'm gonna listen to the Quran. It's telling
me to turn right. I'm gonna turn right because I want to get to Jana, I'm not gonna get get that and
people,
		

			your parents tell you to do a chore in the house, and you really don't feel like doing it. And in
that time, what do you want to say, when it's an ongoing one I want to do I thought, no, no.
		

			At that time, you think to yourself,
		

			the Quran is like my GPS is gonna get me to Jana the whole time, I have to be very kind to my
parents have to listen to that. So if I say I'm not going to go to Quran says,
		

			I'm not going to get to Jana, that somewhere else, where I don't want to go.
		

			I feel for example, you are not happy that somebody said something to you or did something to you or
with your friends, and you want to vent, you want to talk about your friend or your family. Because
you're so mad and what they do. At that point,
		

			you can either do that, or the Quran tells them look, you know, backfire anybody.
		

			You don't talk negatively about anybody behind their back, you don't do that. So I'm gonna at that
time, the Quran is telling you to go this way, if you have the salon in front of you. And if you do
what the client tells you to do, you will get the agenda. But if you say that and I'm so mad, I'm
still gonna lie, I'm just gonna vent. I'm gonna talk about the person. Well, that point if you do
that, then you're not, you're not following the Quran, and you may end up in the wrong place. Not at
your destination, which is genuine. So that's the first point
		

			that the Quran is saying to us in our Google Maps or ways in life. We have to make sure that you
follow it. Now the second point,
		

			well, in the second
		

			monkeys, you have monkeys
		

			you can make a monkey some sad some funny.
		

			Okay, so I want to share a story with you. They were these scientists. What they did was they were
doing an experiment. Yeah.
		

			They, what they did was they had three monkeys in a room. It locked three monkeys in a room and they
were watching them with a video camera. In the room, there was a high ceiling like this. Yeah, a
high ceiling. And what they did was
		

			at the ceiling, the ceiling was maybe 12 or 13 feet high. Close to the ceiling. There were a whole
bunch of ananas monkeys love annex. Yeah. So they were those bananas, and then they had this hole
that you could climb up to get to the bananas.
		

			Now
		

			this is assuming is 12 feet high. After about 10 feet on the pole, there was a little sensor.
		

			And if you go through the sensor, the sensor sees somebody's next to them what would happen, cold
water would fall on that person or whatever that will try to go cold water will be scored in that
person. Yeah, they have this thing set up a little water fountain kind of a thing that as soon as
you go through the sensor by at feet number 10. After 10 feet, you will get hit with cold water. But
if you kind of went through that, you know that that sensor, then you could get to the bananas.
Okay, so what happens to three monkeys in the room?
		

			They say Oh, when I get to the bananas. So monkey number one. He goes up goes up as soon as he gets
the sensor after 10 feet what happens?
		

			Because squirted with cold water. And he's like, man, and he comes back down.
		

			He's like, huh, then the monkey number two says I'm going to try next. Monkey number two good. Goes
up at feet number 10. When he reaches 10 feet, he hits the sensor. What happens?
		

			Cold water
		

			falls on him and he's like, he comes back down. Monkey number three tries to same thing. He gets it
with the cold water also