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Hey,

what I want to discuss is that we are people who are in this world.

And we are the product of what's going on around us.

So whatever is happening and has happened around us, for the last, you could say, you know, lifetime that we've had right from the time that we've actually been born,

then Allah azza wa jal has made this human being in such a way that he gets affected by those who are around. And this simply means that the habits and the norms and things that we see of people,

we will then eventually start to behave like them act like them. If you actually look at people who are in a particular country, or even a particular part of the country, like for example,

you guys in Glasgow, and that's how you pronounce it, we say, Glasgow, how we pronounce it.

But nobody here who living in this part of the of Glasgow is going to pronounce it either. Even when you go to Aberdeen or you go to another Park, you'll find that there's a slight difference in the accent, go to Manchester, and you'll find a different accent. So if you go to Manchester, you find a different accent. If you go to London, you find defects in Birmingham, you have a different accent. I'm sure you guys know, as you travel through the different cities, you find a different accent. How is it that all these people start because the bone up in those places they have naturally that accent. And second thing is there are people who have been accustomed to one accent, when they spend

five or 10 years in another place, they get accustomed to a different accent. And that's natural in people. So what I'm trying to say to you is brothers and sisters, is that the people around us have a great effect on us. Even the mode of their speaking, we hear them speak, we naturally copy them without even making the intention to even speak like them.

We naturally copy.

And this is only in speech. Can you imagine in behaviorism people have, they get affected by behaviorism. So if you find a teenager, who suddenly goes, if there's a teenager who's you know, having his private tuition, and he's going to school and he's doing his work properly, you'll find that he will behave in a certain way. Because he sent to a private school, he will behave a certain way because he's sent to a good educational system, he'll behave in a certain way. When he gets sent to some, you know, downtown school that is not really doing that, well, his behavior is going to change. So if his friends are all dressed in a certain way, he will dress in that way. If he's got

his you know, own

if he's got his friends that are always sticking a chewing gum in their mouth and

Mr. Sandman

he'll he want to do the same thing.

If they start asking certain questions, he'll want to try and ask similar questions. If they are into certain sports, he'll start going to certain sports you know if for the girls, if they're you know, if they're in a certain norm of anything, or what girls get up to, they'll get into that, if they're into like always putting makeup on the suffering, make fun if they're into jobs or jobs or it's the culture and the environment around us. Now, the culture doesn't affect you so much as the environment, the environment is immediately was around you. And what I want to say to all of us here is we all need to think of my behaviors. My way of speaking my mannerism, that is only the product

of what I have gone through in life. And if I want to change, I need to hang around with the people who I see as my role models. That's that's where it gets to. Because if you carry on staying with the people who you've been with throughout your whole of your life, and you still stay with them, but you aspire a role model, like let's say for example, we're all we all admire. We all admire Rasulullah sallallahu we all admire the Sahaba, the Alon again, we all admire the Alia and the people who are close to Allah. We admire the true scholars of the deen and so on. We admire all these great personalities.

We also admire people with good characteristics. They might not be scholars, but we admire people who have a good heart We admire people who do not lie, who do not cheat, who do not gamble, who do not waste their time and lives you know into future things. We admire those people who have

their morals they have the principle they stick to what they, they know they've got certain ambitions in life and then moving towards those good ambitions in life. You know, the man goes out and works hard, come back home feeds his family, he's not into the gossip of the community. It does that day in day out. And if you meet him in the masjid, or if you meet him, the community's a gentle person. And if you heard him, you'll probably just do seven and walk away. We admire those people. We talk about those people. He's not a scholar. He's not an alum. He's not a, you know, person has a heart.

But he's got good qualities and we admire those people, yes or no, tell me. Yes, right. Now, if I want to be like them, if I want to be like someone who I admire, I need to make them my environment. That's the key. I need to get into a position where those people are around me. Or if they're not around me, I need to go in search of them to go and be in the company. Because whoever's company you stay in my friend, that's who you're going to become.

And these are not my words. These are the words of Allah and His Messenger sallallahu Allah.

So Allah azza wa jal says,

Yeah,

man Taku law, all you who believe.

Fear Allah or be aware of Allah. boku no Mara saw the the and stay in the company or stay with those who are truthful. If you stay with people who always speak the truth, you will always speak the truth. If you stay with people who twist the truth, who if you stay with people who start to make mockery of the truth, or sometimes say the truth, and sometimes they lie, then you will also do the same thing. If you stay with people who start doing scams, then you will also at some point want to do a scam or pull a scam because you've just seen another human being. And it's so easy for that human beings, attitude and behavior to transfer to you. If you carry on staying in the company

without you even realizing just like the accident I said, there are people who move to a different city. They don't even realize how the accent is changing over time. But it changes they don't make a conscious effort. Many times to change it. It just naturally starts changing. They start picking up certain words and the certain things the way they say it they pick it in fact you think about it. Yeah. A Pakistani person will come to you and do Salaam to you. He's got a culture that has been accustomed to and will say to Salaam in a certain way.

Okay Allah g t Gucci. Oh bear Xiao Jie. You know that that attitude the way he said it will be different from another person from another part of the world speaking, although, maybe from India tvg cfhc? Much abeja? You're right, sit down at the same people said the same thing. But a Punjabi person will say it in a more sort of, you know, in a way that is that it's got that sort of accent to it. And you know, you're wondering, oh, god, oh, god, oh, God.

You know, the way he'll say, he's got that extra emphasis in his speech. And his mannerism. And people pick this up people pick even the hands and the movement of the of the face and making that exactly mimicking exactly to what the person is saying. And it's so subtle. All of this is so subtle, but people do. And we're not talking about kids with parents. We're talking about adults who adults, when they stay in different companies, they start changing. The whole point of this, my friend is whose company are you in?

Where are you? Who's, who are you with? Who are you who among whom do you stay? So you've got two types of companies. One One is and the main one is real human beings, who are the real human beings, you spend your day and night with? One second, who are the virtual human beings you spend your time with, because my brothers, my sisters, those of them that we watch on our screens, they also have an effect in the way we think and the way we act.

The way they dressed on some of these screens, we too like to see them and we want to dress just like them. They show us an advert. We want to God they want to just buy it. Don't tell me you haven't been affected by what you've seen on a virtual screen, a virtual world,

a screen or a virtual world because you see it and you like it, you want it. The human being has been created so that he copies others.

The stronger your genes are, the less you will copy others.

But every person has got an element of, of this wanting to copy. Even if you've got the strongest of genes, you still want to copy somebody you might not copy all the people around you, but you will want to copy someone or you want to be like someone you

This is the human being. So now,

if my brothers and sisters will you listen to this, if you're with good friends, I'm sure you've got good habits right now in Juma, I don't need to say anything because you've got wonderful habits because your friends are good.

And you've got good habits. But if you find yourself with bad habits, that is because you're in the wrong company, you might not need to be in that company. 24 seven. But even if you're there for short intervals of time, and again, and again, you spend time there, then you will eventually start to change. People sometimes have multiple companies, they have one company of friends at work one company or friends in the masjid one company and friends, in a social club somewhere one company and friends for the gym, one company of friends, generally one company of people, it doesn't have to be friends. It can be people apart from relatives, they've got a company of people there, they've got a

company and people in the extended relatives, all these different groups of people you're waiting to spending time with including the virtual, you know, the the world, the screen, the smartphone, whatever you're looking at, whatever you're watching the videos, you're watching the photos, you're you're seeing the images that are going through your head and the things that you listen to, they all will make you the person you are. So what did our Prophet sallallahu simply say?

What did he say?

The prophets Allah Allah has told us that the example of a good friend

is like a perfume seller. And an example of a bad friend is like the one who is a blacksmith. Now, again, we're not saying being a blacksmith is bad, but it's just an example. Now let's let's look at the examples. He told us sallallahu Sallam that when a person has a good friend, his friend is like a perfume seller. And if you stay with the perfume seller throughout the day, one of three things will happen.

He said in MMA

and Europe the aka either either the person who's a perfume seller you staying with imagine you sort of perfume sell and you start walking with Him you just walking, you're not you're not doing anything else, but just walking, talking with him staying with him throughout the day.

Either he will give you some perfume.

If you actually go to a perfume cellar normal and you stay around with him for a little while just for a while even when people take up perfumes they they want to give you some as well as good. If it doesn't give it to you, he said he might sell it to you.

So he didn't get for free. But you exchange something with him, but you got it.

And the third one, he said that if you don't

to get the first to the third thing he said is that by the end of the day, if you haven't actually taken some perfume off him, you will be smelling of perfume because you stayed with him all day. And what a beautiful example. Now what this means is, is that when you stay with a company of friends or people, those people will actually without you having to ask for it just like the perfume cellar without you having to ask for it will offer you some perfume, those people will offer you their behavior to go straight into your life.

Do you want to become like me, they don't say to you, but it's like, as you're with them, you're going to see certain things that you will start offloading onto yourself for free. Now, if you don't offload the character onto yourself, then it's like, okay, you will do something as a result of them doing something which will make mutual exchange with one another. So just like the perfume seller, will actually will say to you, you know, I'll sell you this, give me some money. So you give the money he gives you the perfume. So what happens in a in a company of friends or people is that they say, if you do this, I'll do this. It's like, yeah, if you behave like this, I'll be hella you

scratch my back, I'll scratch your back. So they're mutually making exchanges with one another's behaviors. And if by the end of it, you haven't actually exchanged any behavior, it's like you haven't taken anything from this guy in terms of behavior. And you haven't given anything back. What happens is by the end of the day, Rasulullah sallallahu decimos told us that you will smell nice What that means is that you didn't take any good habit of this person.

But by the end of the day you came home and

you haven't got inside you the habits but it's rubbed off on you on the outer part of you. When other people around you now they smell they spend weed all day you smell quite nice. We know that you know people who work in a in a perfume shop, they don't need to put any perfume on by the time they've come home. They're smelling of perfume are totally the opposite of that. A good one I can give you is that if you if you go to your kitchen and your kitchen, you know, your wife starts to cook

and she hasn't got a canopy where she's extracting with

fan, she hasn't opened any windows where the wind is coming in, you know, taking the smell away, what happens to your clothes,

your clothes smell of the of the food, yes or no? Yes, the smell of the food so you can stay out of that. So here is where we come to the second example.

The second example is of the bad character.

And I said the blacksmith, if you if you sit next to him, either he will burn your clothes, because the blacksmith is always hammering and using fire to to heat up the metal, he needs to heat up the metal. And after he heats up and gets read, he starts smashing the metal to put it into into shape. So when he's doing that, either your clothes will get burned, man, the professionalism set, or by the end of the day, when you come back, you will be smelling of a bad foul smell. So what this means is that if you stay in a company of good friends, then either they will literally make you feel or make you start inhibiting those good habits, or you will barter with them by saying, Okay, I'll do

this new, these are a good, good, good. So you're actually making progress with one another. He's done a good act, you do a good act and so on. Or by the end of it, you're affected by the good behavior, you haven't changed your behavior, but you're affected your mind is affected by the good behavior, you felt good as a good start. So Professor Lawson gave us these three things. And then he moves on to the other one, which is if you've stayed with a bad friend, then you're going to get hurt, as in your clothes that were just their normal clothes next to him. His fire that he's working with starts to burn your clothes. What wrong did you do, you didn't do any wrong. So what that means

is that when you stay in the company of bad friends, you know, it happens. You know, if you stay around with somebody who's swearing, swearing, swearing and talking bad about people, if you stay with them, what will happen is that either you're going to end up swearing or by the you know, sometimes you become the victim of what they're saying, if you stay with the bully all day where he's bullying other people one day, you got to think that he could bully you.

That happens, but by the least by the by the least of it, you walked away from that company, by the end of the day, your habits ago or your mindset has been affected by the person that you stayed with. Now, what does this all mean? My brothers for us?

And my sisters, this means please question Where are you? parents who are sitting here should question themselves, what kind of company are you in. So if you're an adult, I'm not just giving this hope for the children, I'm giving it for the adults. So think about what company or friends are you with, whether it's real company or friends with the virtual world that we have in front of our screens. But also think about your children, if your children are with a certain set of children, then their habits and behaviors are going to change, I will tell you almost 100%, they're going to change. Now, for example, I'll give you an example.

My child is 10 years old at the moment and he says he wants to go to his friend's house. What are what we normally do say call all your friends to our house. Why? Because we want to see what kind of friends he's got. I don't have the life God good friends, we allow them to come again. And again, we make food for them, let them come to my house and spend time there so that we know that only good friends in the company of my child, when that happens to three times. And we know that these friends are good. And we've monitored them. That's when we allow our child to go and spend time in another another boy's house because we know that boys got good o'clock a good good mannerism. And he can

only rub off good characters to one another.

We noticed one, you know, kind of a bad character. Not completely bad, but you know, got some behaviors that we didn't like. So we stopped him coming. And we didn't allow our child to go to his house. But I'm telling you parents think about your children. Second is, please don't you know, please don't suddenly wake up at the age of 16 when you allow your child to stay with another group of children out there for five years. And now you're suddenly questioning Gee, you know, why is he got a hair color? Why is he suddenly cutting his eyebrows? Why is he suddenly behaving otherwise he's talking to him rather for why is he putting his head up? Well, my friend, if you had noticed

his company of friends five years ago, you could have predicted today this was going to happen. And the same thing goes with good friends. If you've suddenly at 1617 Your son is now talking about you know going for good grades good university. He wants to he's behaving good. He's talking to you nicely Well, good investment five years ago, because you put him in those group of friends. Are you allowed to stay with those group of friends but more important than that this is you young kids that are sitting here.

You young kids sitting here you might have a good you know habit right now good habits right now. Your habits are going to be molded by the people you stay with and what's the ultimate price that you pay the ultimate price.

price that you pay is that your love is going to increase for the people that you make friends with this is given. So if you stay for five years, or few years, even two, three years, what are you stay with the people you like them, and you'd like to stay in their in their company, what will happen is

you will be in a company of friends, and your your, you know your likeliness for those people, your love for their habits and the behaviors and the and the, you know, whatever ambitions they have in life will increase your love for them will increase and what happens in the end is that you will become like them and then what Rasulullah sallallahu has not said will come true, which is what

Mr. O'Mara man,

a man will do with who he ever loves. So if whoever you have your good love for, of the company of those people, you'll be resurrected on the Day of Judgment with those people.

So if there are a bad nature, you'll be resurrected with them. If they're of a good nature, you'll be resurrected with them. That's the ultimate price that you pay. And once you get to the Day of Judgment, of course, good friends, good people with good behaviors, good habits, they will be they'll be joyful on that day, thanking one another for the good data to one another. But bad friends will start to blame one another. The Quran has spoken about that and several occasions and said, bad friends will say to their friends say Oh Allah, it was his fault. He led me to this. And the leader will say no Allah, it's his fault. He followed me. And the follow say, Allah, if it

wasn't for him, and his other few friends that were in our company, and they they started to influence us with their behavior, and started to put some kind of force on us or try to make us feel that we know we people who are who've got no legs to stand up unless we follow them. If it wasn't for that kind of behavior, then we wouldn't have been like them. And Allah will say to both of them,

you're equal, as in the followers and the leaders. The follows on the leaders Yes, the leaders by gets bit more punishment fine, but the both going towards punishment. You can't stand on the Day of Judgment, say my only fault was that I ended up in a bad group of friends who influenced my speaking who influence my behavior, my way of thinking my mode of you know, acting, and I just start suddenly big became like that. That's no excuse. And I give good news in this pre you know, football, talk to all of you, who've got good good friends. And I want to give you last thing before I finish,

which is the first thing that I said, my friends, there are people out there who we admire. There are people who read in books we admire in history we admire, and there are people today in our lives all around us we admire, please, continue to search for people with wonderful hearts, and wonderful behaviors, wonderful way of being with you the way they speak or the way they simply don't harm others, they don't talk bad about others, look for their company, spend time with them. They might be boring people. They might be boring people. They might not be people who you know are you're talking to people who can talk about this and that and that and that but you know, what if they've

got good o'clock good character, to spend some time with them. Because inshallah subconsciously even if it's not consciously, you will mold yourself to their good pattern of behavior and Good thinking. And sometimes they'll tell you a word, or a phrase, at a time, in a moment in a place. And I haven't been speaking much, but that one phrase, one word, a few words will be worth more than those other friends of God that tell you a lot of things, but have got no weight to it.

Sometimes that one phrase will be enough for you to kind of remembering I you know what? the uncle of mine, that brother of mine, that elderly person of mine, that good friend of mine said this once and you will remember that and according to that inshallah Bismillah you will carry on moving towards good milazzo they'll give me give you the ability to make this shift in life and be in the company of good friends All the time.

Hey,