Husain Sattar – Fundamentals of Tasawwuf #1 Sacred Learning
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When a teacher desires to communicate a message,
there are different mediums by which that message
can be communicated.
And in my book,
there's a distinction between those methods.
For example,
sometimes a person can give can present something
verbally and we call that a talk.
Another time a person presents something verbally, we
call that a speech.
Another time someone presents something verbally, we call
that a lecture.
And maybe I don't define these properly. Maybe
I've just made up this division in my
mind, but I feel that these are 3
very distinct means of communicating.
So for example,
in a talk,
what I would say is the, what is
the, you know, the dominant
feature of a talk is that the speaker
have the ability
or somehow
bring every individual in the gathering
into that
gathering?
That to me is a talk. Like, for
example, your father, you know, he wants to
sit you down and tell you something. He
sits you down 1 on 1 and you
have a talk.
Right? And he he he's directly addressing you,
and you feel like whatever he's saying directly
applies to you because, indeed, whatever he's saying
applies to you because you're just sitting there
1 on 1.
Now there are some people that have the
very unique ability
to sit with
100 of people,
but to talk
to each individual within those 100.
One one example and, I mean, I wouldn't
be able to show you an example,
but I can tell you that,
my teacher, one of my teachers who actually
became Shahid while I was studying
in Pakistan,
his name was Maulana Abdullah.
And I can tell you that one of
the most unique characteristics that I saw in
this man that I had never seen in
anyone else was that he would sit and
talk to we were a 1000 students. We
were about 800 students in the at that
time. He would sit down in on the
minbar and talk. And when he would talk,
you would feel like he was hugging you
individually.
You would feel like he was embracing you
when his words of love came out and
you would feel like he was scolding you
when words of when words of rebuke came
out.
And I thought that was I had never
seen that. Rarely, I had seen that, but
almost never had I seen that.
That, you know, every person in a gathering
feels like I am the one being spoken
to, that the whole talk is actually for
me. It's very, very unique,
barakah in a person's words that you can
sit in a gathering that one person can
be speaking and hundreds of people can be
listening, and every person in the gathering says,
subhanallah, that was for me. That talk was
just me,
as if everyone else disappears. And this was
actually a special characteristic of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam.
You know, every companion of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam felt that they were the most important
of the companions.
Most important of the companions. You've heard me
say on many occasions that,
you know, there was a famous companion who
once actually had the audacity, interestingly enough, just
to show you the extent that would
would emanate this, that he had the audacity
to come to Rasulullah salallahu alaihi wasallam and
say, yeah, Rasulullah, am I better or is
Abu Bakr alaihi wasallam better?
And he asked the question because Rasulullah salallahu
alaihi wasallam treated him better than but in
his view, he treated him with so much
attention that he would see that I'm getting
more attention than Abu Bakr radiallahu
anhu, so therefore I must be better because
the attention of the masha'a and of the
prophets and of Allah is always based on
righteousness. Right? The
that a person gets is always based on
righteousness.
So, he had that question in his mind
that I must be better than,
So, when he asked the question, then of
course, rasulullah
said no,
is better. Can't compare there. So, then he
said, okay. Well, let's go for number 2.
Is it me or is it
And then he had the prophet made it
very clear that and
it's actually better than you. You know, you
have to keep things straight. So then he
said that then I felt very embarrassed about
asking that question, but it became obvious to
him that the the issue behind it was
that treated every individual with love. Every person
in the gathering
felt that they were the most special person
in the gathering. Very unique characteristic. It's actually
a portion of in a way. You know?
It is a it's a portion of, of
righteousness,
and it's hard to explain in any words
beyond that. But so that I consider a
talk. So that's one type of address. What
if the address as might be the best
way to state it? The second type of
address is a,
speech.
What is a speech? A speech is that
someone gets up there
and he moves the entire audience based on
what is within him.
So, like, you know, in presidential elections, politicians
do this. You don't care about half the
things they're talking about, but they'll raise you
up. You know? They'll take you through the
history of America and say that our forefathers
were like this. So you should also care
about this issue when it didn't bother you
at all to begin with. Which way it
goes, you don't lose any sleep, but they
somehow make it your issue. You know, you
feel very excited and very moved by these
words. Now they're not addressing you individually.
They're not taking you as an individual and
making you feel important.
They're taking what's in their heart and soul
and then raising up the audience and bringing
them on that level.
So I I see that, you know, in
my maybe I'm defining these in my own,
field. Okay. That's possible, but I see that
as a speech. So that's a and that's
also important. I mean, sometimes it's required that
you'd be able to pick up the whole
audience and move them where you want. And
I'll tell you that also this is a
unique characteristic,
very unique characteristic.
And it is like sometimes
like moving mountains. I can tell you. I
mean, sometimes you give a talk.
An individual gives a talk, and it is
the hardest thing in the world to move
the entire gathering along.
It's like it's harder than moving a mountain.
Harder harder than moving a mountain. Sometimes you
look at how how much disparity there is
in a in an audience, you know. There's
a one person, he never comes to the
Masjid, and then there's another person, he prays
5 times a day. Right? And then there's
another person, he is the pinnacle of righteousness.
And what happens? The speaker wants to move
all of them and so has to basically
lift the whole gathering up on his shoulders
and then move the whole gathering into the
exact same,
you know, destination to to the exact same
point.
It's very difficult.
Very difficult.
Very rare are the people that can do
that. I'll give you an example.
Gosh. I'm really diverting actually from the topic,
but anyway. So I'll give you an example.
One time, this was like in Baltimore, Maryland,
maybe 1996,
1997.
I was invited to come and visit Sheikh
Zulfikar in Maryland.
And,
I arrived in, at the airport.
I went to go see Sheikh Zulfiqar. It
was very, very early. I had just become
a student, and I was still learning the
adab and the etiquettes and what all this
was about.
Anyway, so I got picked up by the
airport at the airport by someone named,
Mushtaq,
brother Mushtaq. Now he's Sheikh Mushtaq. There's a
big difference in time, I guess. But, anyway,
he's Sheikh Mushtaq now. At that point, he
was brother Mushtaq, and he takes me to
a house.
And he takes me to a house, and
he says that, you know, Sheikh Zofekar is
going to give an address in this house.
He's going to give a this is I
guess, we should call this a speech. He's
gonna give a speech in this house.
So he,
I begin to see that Sheikh Zofekar hasn't
yet arrived, But all of these guys start
pouring in and all of them are taxicab
drivers.
And you could tell that there was one
driver
who had just rounded up all of his
friends. None of them wanted to be there.
It was very obvious because Sheikh Zofkar hadn't
come yet, and I was sitting in the
gathering. And I'm hearing all this, like, you
know, how yeah. How much more time do
we have to sit here for? And, why
don't you just give the talk to sheikh
and then talk to you later on? You
know, I mean, he was just in a
they were all in a rush to get
out of there, you know? You think are
we gonna eat first or not? What are
you gonna feed us chicken? Are you gonna
feed us gush? You know? You're gonna feed
us chicken or meat? They were totally not
concerned about being there at all.
Not concerned about being there at all. And
there were about, I would say, 20 to
30 of them sitting there. So one guy
gathered all these guys together, and the one
wanted to be there, and you would say
that the 2030 could care less. The sooner
it was done, the better it would be
for them. They just sort of came out
of just respect for the guy who brought
them.
Now Sheikh Zulfikar walks, and I am thinking,
no way. You know, I'm sitting there. And
I have, by that time, just I mean,
I was just a very, very,
immature I'm still immature, but I was very
immature at that time. And I but I
had given some talks, you know, in the
past,
especially at, like, MSA and stuff like that.
I said, no way. There's no way that
this this this talk is not this talk
is a failure from the beginning.
Sheikh Zulfikar comes in.
He sits down,
and, you know, people are not respectful. No
other no etiquette.
People are
taking from food from the side that he's
eating from, and, you know, it's just a
mess.
Anyway
so after they're all done, he, you know,
he basically gets ready to give his talk.
He puts his head down. He does whatever
he has to do. He's making dua, making
on the gathering, which the always do. I
learned that much later.
And,
ajeev and amazing
that he gives a 1 hour talk.
And I will tell you that at the
end of that 1 hour, so basically 45
minute talk and 15 minute duh. At the
end of that 1 hour,
every one of those taxi cab taxi cab
drivers were crying like babies.
Crying like babies. I was shocked.
You know, these, you would never expect that
to ever happen,
especially in that kind of setup. And every
one of them was crying like babies, and
that was because he gave a speech and
he was able to pick up each of
them and move them to what was what
was the the the concern and the fiqh
and the love for Allah and the fear
of jahannam that was present within him. He
was able to shower it upon every single
person in the gathering. So
that's another type of address. In my mind,
I call that a speech, and that also
is an important type of address.
The third type of address is a lecture.
Lecture is more academic.
And what happens there, some professor comes in,
and the professor begins to teach you basic
principles
and points concerning physics or chemistry or literature
or whatever it might be, economics. So that
is like a lecture, you know, it's a
chalkboard type it's a chalkboard based discussion,
and it fulfills a need. It's a human
need. You know, interestingly, Rasool Allah sallallahu alaihi
wasallam also taught in this manner.
For example, you'll see in Hadith that there
were some occasions when Rasool Allah sallallahu alaihi
wasallam would be highlighting the length of this
life compared to the length of their hair
after, and he would draw in the sand.
He would draw something. He would draw pathways
or draw lines to show how long things
would be. So in a way, this was
the type of, you can say a type
of lecture. It was more of a, quote,
unquote, academic type gathering, but it highlighted teaches
important points, it leaves certain things behind.
So, anyway, the whole reason I went into
this background is because,
you know, in this type of gathering, we
have a lot of
talks and we have a lot of speeches
and we rarely have lectures. And, anyway, today,
I was just in the mood. I said,
okay. I'm gonna do a lecture. So I
asked for this chalkboard
because, you know, you can always need a
a chalkboard for lectures. So if I bore
you, just get up and go in the
back and do whatever you have to do.
And just this is just my little the
professor within me put it that way.
So the lecture
is going to be about and, actually, you
know, on this day and age, I'll tell
you that lectures are very important
because,
one thing that we have to be cognizant
of is that we are a very academic
community,
irrespective of how we see ourselves. I mean,
we tend to we would like to be
spiritually developed, but there is a definite academic
thirst within the vast majority of us sitting
in this room here. Why? Because
we grew up this way.
We grew up this way. So, you know,
we grew up in 1st grade and 2nd
grade and 3rd grade, and then we go
to high school and we go to college,
and we're totally used to this method of
learning anything. We're used to the blackboard, and
we're used to a lecture be and this
is we're very comforted by it. And sometimes
it's necessary within the dean as well. And
because of who we are, it's the one
of the methods by which we learn. And
so you'll see that whereas in the past,
in our, they've even highlighted this, and Sheikh
Zulfikar is very particular about this in in
the lessons that I've learned from him. In
the past, you could simply just tell the
community, you have to do this. This is
fadul, or you just have to do this.
This is sunnah, or you can't do this.
This is haram. But nowadays, what's happening is
you can't merely make those statements. You actually
have to provide some degree of proof.
Now not that we have to prove the
whole dean, but once you can convince a
person that you are based on proof, then
they begin to accept the rest of what
you have to say. So there is some
fundamental
demand for that. And this is actually what's
driving the whole movement where you see, you
know, there's a whole new movement of a
group of people that basically decide that they
don't need to follow Ahmad Hab. They don't
need to follow tradition. They don't need to
follow the classical scholars. Instead, they're going to
pick up the Quran and pick up the
Hadith and begin to derive rules from them
for themselves.
Now the reason why this type of movement
takes hold in this day and age, and
we should be very understanding of this, is
not because there's a lack of scholarship, but
because
though because there is a
soil for it. You know, when you have
academic you know, people who do who are
like this tend to be the engineers, tend
to be the doctors, tend to be and
whenever you look in, like, for example, Egypt
or Pakistan or wherever you might be, it
tends to be that group of people that
is drawn towards this because they actually grew
up this way.
They were raised this way. Their soil is
designed this way, and we have yet you
we can say the classical scholars are now
making this transition, but we have yet to
become among those who present in this way.
But now as the younger generation has come
and the older generation has also begun to
change the address a bit, they've begun to
provide a little bit of proof. And when
you provide a little bit of proof, you
quickly content the academic within the person. And
then they begin to see that actually all
of the dean is this is actually
what what this Alem is saying is actually
all found under foundation because he's clearly shown
me that, for example, when he taught me
puhara, it was from foundation, it was from
Quran, from hadith, so I don't need to
now question him on every single ruling in
salah or zakah or som or Hajj, cause
it's clear to me that he derived his
rulings in this way. And it's interesting, our
scholars have always done this.
I'll tell you that, you know, I sat
in
I sat. I didn't,
you know, I'm not a a scholar in
that sense. I just had the opportunity to
listen, put it that way. As a listener,
I sat in Dora Hadith.
And what was the most interesting thing for
me when we sat in Dora Hadith? Dora
Hadith is the final year of the madrasa
where the students who's worked hard for 7,
8 years, 9 years sometimes,
you know, it's sort of their final
final year and they get to reap the
benefits of all of their struggle. And what
happens is they study the 6 major books
of hadith and then some additional books, and
they receive the sunnah in each of these
books. And this is what Mufti Saab was
referring to earlier when he was talking about
the for the person who recites and the
for the people who listen. So he was,
you know, in a way referring to this
as well.
So
I had the opportunity to sit in Hadith.
And when I sat in hadith, what blew
me away was that
the first 5 to 6 months of hadith,
what they did was they took every hadith
and used it to build up aspects of,
for example, the Hanafi mad hub. So what
they would do is you would read a
hadith,
and then after you'd read the hadith, they
would then say, this based on this hadith,
Imam Abu Hanifa said this, Imam Shafi'i said
this, Imam Malik said this, etcetera, etcetera. And
then it would even give you the rare
statements of the various, you know, the, let's
say, the less,
prominent.
And then they we would go back and
they would say, and we go back and
refute Imam Shafi because of this. We go
back and refute Imam Malik because of this.
And therefore, the,
the,
they established this. Now they did this with
every single hadith in Bukhari, I mean, in
the first portion of Bukhari. Every single hadith
in the first portion of, every single port
hadith in the 4th first portion of Abu
Dawood and etcetera, etcetera. And I'll tell you,
it was the most eye opening thing. Now
we didn't do it for everything. Maybe we
only did up to tahara in some books.
Maybe we did up we did salah in
another book and soma in another book. But
for me, it was sufficient because once I
saw that the foundation of the deen, what
what the, for example, the Hanafi madhab was
stating about the was totally based on hadith
and made absolute sense, Quran and hadith, and
then made absolute sense, then I didn't need
to say, okay. Now I need to prove
salah and prove zakah and prove and prove
Hajj. Because once I saw that there is
an usul, this is what this is called,
usul. That there's an usul to the fiqh,
that there you study the Quran, you study
the hadith, and then you derive it based
on putting all these principles together, it made
10000%.
It was I was absolutely contented even after
having coming from such a rigorous academic background.
Right? Because I did my college, you know,
half 3 fourths of medical school and then
went abroad.
So that was, I would say, the one
of the key lessons I learned. You know,
you I I didn't learn, like, all the
rulings and etcetera, etcetera. I mean, I studied
them, but, you know, these are the big,
big lessons that I will carry with me
for the rest of my life that, you
know, the I was totally
anybody can come here and tell me anything
about, well, brother, you shouldn't follow Madhub. We
follow Rasool Allah sallahu alaihi wa sallam. He
won't be able to knock me because I'm
just so firmly grounded because I had gone
through that that I know that this guy
doesn't know what he's talking about because this
is clearly from Quran and Hadith. And I
can highlight even some, you know, in the
vast majority of it. And, you know, if
you've listened to pearls of purity, which we
did here 5 years ago,
part of that occurred when we were discussing
wiping over socks, for example, or other aspects
of of that, you know, maybe I some
of those arguments, they remained in my mind
at that time when when when we taught
that session.
So
lectures sometimes are important.
Now
it's interesting that in the path of
the is a is the study of the
science of the soul. And I'll tell you
that in the the
the last method of understanding is lecture.
Because the salawulf is the one science of
this deen that
does not is not academic, but actually it
requires
experience.
The key feature of the salawulf is that
it's experiential.
And it's funny because you go into Islamic
libraries and you say, okay, brother, show me
the section on Quran. It'll be huge.
Show me the section on tafsir. It'll be
huge. Show me the section on hadith. It'll
be enormous.
Show me the section on the There's just
a handful of books. Just a handful of
books. Because the
and
is not learned from a book, it's learned
from a person.
And is
not an academic exercise, it is a spiritual
exercise.
Point in, just to to prove this point.
Imam Ghazali,
now you've all heard about the famous Imam
Ghazali, but when you go through his life
story, you learn some very interesting principles concerning
Saluk. Now what he had done and what
was
his background, he was an academically
rigorous Islamic scholar.
This was who he was.
Now in his academic rigor, what he decided
was that he was going to study the
various aspects of the dean
at that day and in that day and
age to see what was truly truthful and
what was coming from the outside. So for
example, he studied philosophy, then he studied religion,
then he studied politics. He studied the,
the the Shias. Okay? Etcetera, etcetera.
And what he would do is he would
academically study these. He would come up with
academic arguments. He would refute and accept what
he should he would refute and remove what
he shouldn't take, and then he would prove
and accept what he should take. Now when
he came to the conclusion eventually was that
the the the essence of the deen was
lacking in this academic pursuit.
The essence of the deen was lacking this
academic pursuit, and that he actually needed to
go and to learn the soul of to
see whether he could find
the science of the soul.
You know, whether he could develop himself into
the Muslim that he had read about, whether
he could develop himself into the Muslims that
the companions were, and the and the and
the righteous after them.
So he actually, in his mind, he had
decided that the only way I'm now going
to come to the end of my pursuit
is to study the,
to study the science of developing the soul
and to practice it. But he says that
I was the top lecturer in
the area where he lived, you know, the
Iraq, Baghdad type area. He was the top
lecturer, and there was no way he could
resign. I mean, you think about it. He
was sort of like the provost, you know,
of a university.
You don't just resign and walk off and
say, I'm gonna go live in a minaret,
you know, for 2 years. People wouldn't accept
that, and also it wasn't necessarily acceptable to
him.
He says, I knew I had to study
the sawwolf. I knew I had to study,
so, the science of spirituality to develop myself
to see whether I could truly experience this
being because it wasn't happening academically.
So he says that every day I made
the when I woke up in the morning,
I made the intention I'm gonna go today,
and I couldn't get myself to go. And
for 6 months, this happened. Every day he
woke up. Every day he made the intention,
and he couldn't go. Just couldn't get himself
to do it Until one day, 6 months
after continuously
trying to go, he actually lost his voice.
Now, obviously, if you're a lecturer
and you have to get a lecture and
you don't have a voice, you're worthless,
essentially. I mean, you can write still, but
you're really you're very limited.
So he says that that was my sign
that I had to go.
So what does he do? He leaves his
position. He resigns from his position, and he
goes and he isolates himself in Damascus
in a minaret
in the Umoui Westjib.
And you can still go and visit that
place today. And it's very funny because when
I first met Sheikh Zulfikar,
my Sheikh, my teacher of the cell wolf,
they I I was just a
college student, a 3rd year. I just finished
graduated from college. Through finished in 3 years
and graduated. So I had a a some
extra time off because I finished early. So
I had some extra time off, and I
asked him what I should do. I had
a summer and a few a few more
days. And he's I said, I wanna go
study Arabic in Damascus. He said, yeah. You
should go. And I said, I also wanna
sit in the minaret where Imam Ghazali used
to sit and I wanna do my there.
He said, even better. I wanna, you know,
I wanna practice the at that same spot
because I had read about it. So he
said, even better. So, actually, I got the
opportunity to go there. I studied a little
bit of Arabic and I got to sit
right there in that same masjid, right next
to that minaret. And, you know, I used
to do some liquor over there. And, so
anyway, I'm just remember remembering this. It's just
a tangent. But the point the point I'm
trying to make is that in order to
study at the cell wolf, you know, there's
very rare that you're gonna find books. It's
very rare that you're gonna find lectures.
So, Imam Ghazali, he made the sacrifice. What
happened? He studied the science. He found a
shaykh. He studied the science of Tawaf. He
spent many years doing so. At the end,
he became Imam Ghazali.
The Imam Ghazali that we remembered in this
day and age, the one who wrote,
the one who just, you know, had a
tremendous effect on the deen, we call him
the Ujja of Islam, we call him a
reviver of the deen, All of that occurred
after his study of the,
after he retired as lecturer. And then he
went and studied,
then he he says, in,
I found the reality of the dean. Despite
being the most academically,
you can say the most academically developed and
qualified individual under deen, it was when I
came to that I found the reality of
this deen, that I actually found Allah, that
I actually found the book of Allah, that
I actually found the messenger of Allah. And
then he wrote,
and now you see how accepted that book
is that, you know, even in this day
and age, you always see college students carrying
it around, even the non Muslims study it,
and they take benefit from it. That all
happened afterwards. That wasn't his academic, you know,
exercise before the science of the salwar. All
of this came after
all of his established works.
So what I was trying to highlight is
that the salwar for the most part is
a
experiential
exercise.
But on very rare occasion, Sheikh Zulfikar has
actually sat me down and given me some
lectures on tesawur.
And this happened actually when I was studying
in Pakistan.
He used to have a yearly gathering. And
at the yearly gathering, he would have 3
days of the general public. And in the
general public, you always give speeches and you
always give, like, you give talks.
Sometimes you give talks and you hug a
little bit. You scold a little bit. Sometimes
you give a speech. You move them from
here to here. Then what happens is everybody
leaves after that 3 days. And then he
has a special 7 day gathering for the
scholars,
only the scholars, the scholars and foreign guests
and
some physicians and engineers, and mostly, you can
say the people with some higher education, some
secondary tertiary type education.
And then in that gathering,
it was lecture.
And when he gave us those series of
lectures,
those for me opened up a door to
to sell off that I felt was essential
for me because in this day and age,
to sell off gets so knocked, you know.
You come into a environment of academics and
people will argue with you, and they'll try
trying to say, well, where did you get
this from, brother? You're just making up all
this stuff. You know, how I I've never
seen this written anywhere. This is all new.
This is, etcetera, etcetera.
So in to some degree, because we are
academically
challenged in our need to develop spiritually, you
actually have to have a little taste. Just
like in Fick, you actually have to have
a little taste of how you prove that
how we prove things so that you then
become acceptable of the methods of the traditional
scholars. In the same way, you do need
a little bit of under of the science
of the soul wolf. That's what I call
this. You need a little bit of the
science of the soul wolf so that you
can see that actually this all makes sense.
So that's what I wanna do right now,
and I wasted half an hour actually, unfortunately.
No. We have very limited time because I
don't wanna drag this thing on. So maybe
it'll be part 1 today and part 2
on another even night.
So,
and, anyway, there's there's a series of 7
lectures that he gave us, and every one
of them was important, but one of them
always remains very firm in my mind, and
that's the one that I wanna share with
you right now. So the essence of this
lecture that gives
is very important for every
okay. We're good? Alright.
Okay. So, anyway, what I was saying is
that there's 2 spheres of creation. 1 sphere
of creation is created by Allah's command,
clearly stated in the Quran. The other sphere
of creation is created by
the region
over time, and that is clearly elucidated, for
example, by the in
6 days. So now these are 2 distinct
manners of creation,
and these then form the 2 separate worlds.
Now the scholars of Tassawuf in their academic
mode, they basically highlight that,
what is everything above the Arash of Allah
is created
and everything beneath the Arshof Allah
is actually Alamal Khalk it's created over time.
So for example, what's above the Arshof Allah
Jannah,
okay,
The angels, etcetera. I mean, they predominantly reside
above the of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Of
course, they come down into the earth as
well. So that all of these things are
created
with with just Allah saying
and everything beneath
the so you come down the the skies.
Okay. And beneath the also is the,
the ground and the earth and the leaves
and the trees, etcetera.
Those are all created over over time.
Okay. Now why is this important? Well, it's
important because it's it's it's essential to understand.
Otherwise, you would get confused in your mind
and say, well, which one is it? Is
it is it
or is it, you know,
But also, it's important because
this
discussion
really takes a you can say it takes
it reaches its pinnacle in understanding human beings,
understanding us. We have to understand ourselves, right,
in understanding us. Why?
Because we are the unique
creation
that is actually a composite
of both worlds.
Part of us is from Alem Al Khalk,
and the other part of us is from
Alem Al Amr.
So how how so?
The soul
that a human being has, our soul that
rotates around us and brings life to this
body,
this soul is actually from Alhamal Amr,
comes in the Quran.
They ask you, O Messenger of Allah,
The Sahaba asks you, O Messenger of Allah
about the
Then what do we say? What's the what's
the response?
Is from the command of my Lord.
Okay? So the saying, say that the ruh
is from the Alamal Amr. This is one
interpretation of that verse.
So the ruh is from Alamal Amr, it's
from the commanded,
It's arises from I
mean, the does not start as a little
clot and then become an embryo and then
become a fetus and then become a baby.
No. And then grow up to be an
adult. No. It's just there. It just is.
Okay. Now the second component of a human
being is what? The body. We're 2 p
we're just, you know, we're we're only made
up of 2 parts, a soul and a
body and a soul. We always talk about
the body and the soul. The body is
clearly created.
It's not from.
For example,
right? So
the it's is created and then we know
from Quran that clearly
we're told beautifully in the Quran, you know,
just is verified now by modern science that
first man starts out as a little clot,
then they become the embryo, etcetera, etcetera, until
they're born as a baby. And even when
the body is born as a baby, the
body, the jissim of the human being, right,
the jissim then keeps growing and growing and
growing until a person becomes about 30, maybe
27, 30 years old, and then the body
reaches its full mature potential.
So you can even see that the region
over time, the body grows.
So the soul of a human being is
from and
the body of a human being is from
where?
Adam Al Khalk.
Am I losing you, or is this straightforward?
Right? It's not so hard.
Okay. So that's the key principle you have
to keep in mind. Now I said to
you, and I'm rushing through this, and I
could actually talk a lot more on this
topic, but we don't have time. Now I
said to you that this understanding is important
for you to be able to understand 90%
of problems that arise in life.
So this is now
where the discussion really takes hold and why
it's essential for a group of individuals who
have an who have the ability to understand
to take these simple concepts home and then
be able to turn on them a little
bit. So let me walk you through some
very, very basic principles.
Print so now
derivatives from these what I just taught.
Number 1,
that
is sustained by
and is sustained by
So let's take it from backwards.
Now Alem Al Khaleq means things so what
I'm trying to say is that whatever is
derived from the created world will only be
sustained by those things from the created world.
So, for example, your body, is it created,
or is it commanded?
Created. Created. Right? So now do you think
about all the things that support the body?
Are they created or commanded? Think about it.
They're all derived from the earth. For example,
you wear clothes. Where do your clothes come
from? They come from cotton, which comes from
the earth, or they come from wool, which
come from sheep. Right? From animals, which are
also from the earth, they're also created from
mud. Right?
So you can see that the clothing that
the body requires comes
from comes from the created world. The food
we eat comes from where?
Comes from either the ground, crops, or from
animals, which eat crops and grow, but all
of that comes from the created world. The
houses we live in, what are they made
of? Wood, brick,
mud. Right? Cement.
So where are all these things derived from?
They're all derived from the ground or from
trees, which are also derived from the ground.
So what does it highlight to you? That
the key essential things that your body requires
all come from the same dimension in which
the body was created. Is that clear?
Okay.
Now just in the same way,
your soul,
the sustenance
of the soul
will come from the things from that same
dimension.
So what's from that dimension?
You know, the angels are from that dimension.
Goodness is from that dimension.
Jenna, you know, these types of things are
all from that dimension. They're not tangible things.
They're spiritual things, meaning the soul will be
maintained by spiritual things.
Now you might say, well, that's very simple,
but I'll tell you that this is the
problem with 95%,
99.9%
of people alive today have misunderstood this concept.
And we also have gotten caught up in
the misunderstanding of this concept.
Why? Because we have somehow mistakenly
deemed
that the our happiness
in this life is based on what we
possess.
So when we feel that our soul is
down, and we feel that our soul is
not elevated,
we begin to think that in order to
elevate the soul, we need to have a
nice house.
If you have a nice house, then you'll
be at peace and you'll be happy.
That we have to eat good food because
only if you eat very, very fine food,
whole foods, right, will you be happy. I
mean, these guys are
making people buy you know, people get convinced
to buy such such expensive organic type foods
thinking what? That it's going to make their
soul happy. But they say food for the
soul.
It's their advertisement. Food for the soul. It's
deceptive. That's deceptive advertising
because they don't understand these principles.
Alright? And you see that I mean, you
see this. You see a woman. She gets
depressed. She goes shopping.
Well, what is she gonna find in the
mall? There's nothing in the mall that's going
to serve her spirit. Nothing in the mall
that's going to quench her thirst. She thinks
that if she buys another pair of shoes,
that somehow she's gonna feel better about herself,
or that if she buys a new shade
of lipstick, somehow she's gonna feel better about
about herself. And it's so sad because this
is the deception that we have that we
have been
that has been sent upon us by the
corporate world.
We've been deceived to think that somehow the
shape of the body, you know, makes you
feel better.
You know? And this is all advert this
is all advertising is based on this principle,
because the demand of a human being is
not the body. The demand of the human
being is to elevate the soul. People have
souls, and that soul cries out to be
elevated.
It's a it's a it's a nature of
a human being. And what happens is that
the advertisers and the corporate world and the
world around us recognizes this, and they feed
it, but they feed it with things of
the dunya, things of hulk,
and deceiving us to think that somehow we'll
be happy in this way.
You know, if we if we look like
this model, then we'll be happy, or if
we can't look like her, at least we
can dress the way she dresses because then
we'll feel like her. She's smiling on the
magazine, so then I'll be smiling as well.
You know, if I wear a certain type
of gym shoe, then I'm gonna be really
the coolest kid on the block.
Right? When I if I comb my hair
down this way, I'm gonna look I'm gonna
feel much better about myself. I'm gonna feel
cool and good. Right? And so what happens?
We get caught up in fashion. We get
caught up in material things. We get caught
up in consuming. And as we consume
and then deceive ourselves, we get depressed.
And that's why the you see that you
go into met any medical clinic, and you
see that one of the most common drugs
prescribed are antidepressants.
Because what's happening is we've become so depressed,
and we just keep it's a cycle. We
just keep feeding materialism,
materialism, materialism,
and we never quench the thirst of the
soul.
It's so scientifically obvious, but people don't see
it because they're so bombarded with this world.
That's why TV is so deadly. That's why
advertising
advertising is so deadly because this is what
we're taught to believe,
and it's very unfortunate. You know? And this
is what Islam does. Islam removes the shackle
of the dunya.
It teaches you that all this stuff doesn't
matter,
that, actually,
the best you'll ever feel in your life
is when you're away from food.
Look. You think about if I ask any
Muslim, any normal Muslim, just that has an
iota of iman in their heart, and I
say to them, tell me, when did you
best experience your deen?
When did you best experience your deen? Is
he gonna say, I went to Paris, and
I ate at this restaurant, and I stayed
in this hotel. Brother, I was just on
fire that night.
It's funny. Right? But, no, nobody's gonna say
that. What are they gonna say? They're gonna
say, I happened to walk into Ithaca. I
didn't know what was going on. All these
people were wearing white. There was all this
new and all over the place. These guys
didn't eat all day. They prayed all night.
They were just, you know, they were sweating.
They weren't comfortable. Their knees hurt, and I
never experienced anything better.
That's what you're gonna say. You're gonna say
the pinnacle of my of my feeling good
about myself was actually in Ramallah.
And I'll tell you, you know, you walk
around this Masjid, and you see all these
people that you feel like I just give
up my whole life if this would just
continue until the day I die. There's nothing
out there. There's nothing out there for us.
I mean, it's so obvious. You have to
but it it only unfortunately, you don't see
it until you come into the into an
enlightened environment. That's why I say this hectic
office is essential.
It's essential because it wakes us up. Now
look. What's happening in Ramadan? In Ramadan,
we don't have our luxurious,
you know, what is a double setting bed
where your wife can set her dial and
your husband can set his dial and everybody's
now at peace. We're all sleeping on this
ground over here. People step on you while
you sleep over here. Right? And and we
enjoy it. You remember it. You know, I
was just telling one of the brothers, you
know, I don't know who was it, Saad.
Did you step on Fatima? That 5 5
years ago, someone stepped on my daughter, you
know, and dislocated her shoulder 5 years ago.
She was 5 years old. I don't know
if
it
was
Sadhna.
But, anyway, this is the first day at
the cup. 1st ICC at the cup. There's
many memories of the first ICC at the
cup. It started with 10 brothers, but that
was the seed that germinated into what goes
on in this day, and and that was
the best hit the cup, by the way.
I mean, it's always like that. You know?
Whoever's here first, they always tend to get
get the I mean, maybe the uncles remember,
but there were just a few of us
in those days.
So my daughter was sleeping, and someone stepped
on her and dislocated her shoulder on the
last day of it to come. You know?
It's a long story what happened after that.
But the point is that,
you know, and she didn't cry. She was
just walking around like this. You know? She
couldn't move. But but the the point was
it wasn't comfortable, and it never is comfortable.
And the masjid was not even there, not
even this half. I mean, what over here
was some room. The wall ended right here.
You know? We were just we would go
in that room, and we'd all fit. Just
this little square, we would all fit. The
final dua was actually in that room. And
it was so crowd so not crowded that
I remember one day my wife wanted to
come have iftar with me. So I said,
just come into the masjid. My wife and
I had the whole room to ourselves, and
we just ate iftar comfortably over there. It
was one of one of the days. I
mean, you just think about it. That's not
gonna happen. There's no space here now. So,
I
mean, what I'm trying to highlight to you
is that it's actually when you leave this
consuming and this materialism and all this stuff
that you actually feel the best about yourself.
And it's actually when you get caught up
in all of this. What you know, the
house I live in, the bed I sleep
on, the sheets, and how many count cotton
thread there is, you know, and the food
that I eat, and you get caught up
caught up in all of this that actually
you will be the most depressed.
Ajib, that the most wealthy
country in the world and the most wealthy
community in the world is also the most
depressed community in the world. And that as
they begin to export their McDonald's and Gap,
etcetera, they depress the rest of the world
as well. And with them also travels, you
know, all of the antidepressants.
So
we should recognize
this simple principle
that and that's why I'm saying that this
is so important why I feel that even
a lecture, you know, in the middle of
a tech off, you would think that's the
last place to have a lecture. But actually,
in my mind, if you're a little bit
you know, given our academic background, you have
to understand this one simple principle. That if
you desire to be happy I'm just being
honest with you. This is not even we're
not even talking about some high pinnacle in
the deen. I just want you to be
happy. Okay? And I want your families to
be happy and your kids to be happy
and your wives and your parents to be
happy. If you desire happiness, you cannot make
your goal Anam al Khalk.
Because happiness is a characteristic of the soul.
It's a characteristic of the soul and will
only arise when you feed the soul. But
if you keep the soul hungry and you
feed the body, you will never be happy.
You will always be upset. You'll be angry.
You'll be angry with the world because you'll
blame everyone as to why you don't feel
good.
You know, this is what we do. We
get angry with our wives. We say, you
didn't let me go to the Masjid. She's
not stopping you from going to the Masjid,
but you have to always get angry at
someone because this is the result. You know?
You're not happy. You start boiling up. You
start getting upset at people. You start blasting.
You know? You just let out fire every
time you speak
when you can, not at work because you
have to respect everybody there. When you go
home, then the real animal comes out.
So the point is that
simple principle
that
what
what feeds the hulk is hulk.
So the body, yes, you need to sustain
it. The Sharia establishes that. You need to
eat halal food. You need to have a
house. You need to wear clothes. And all
of those things, the Sharia and the Sunnah,
establish the extent to which you should do
so so that you can balance the growth
of your soul.
Okay? So I think that is very, very
simple and very, very, just any human being
should be able to understand this principle. And
it's funny because I could give this lecture
to a bunch of, you know, non Muslims,
and you can make a $1,000,000 book out
of it because that's what they read. They
read these books. You know? But these are
very simple principles. This is what the is
all about. What do we teach people? We
teach people to disconnect from the dunya and
to reconnect with the.
And that if you do so, when you
begin to recite Quran, when you begin to
give salakah, when you begin to sacrifice your
own conveniences for the sake of others, there's
an there are and and
that
begin to come into the soul. And they
power the soul and they cause the soul
to become elevated and this is what I
was speaking about last night when I talked
about you know I know it was very
very probably very difficult for some people in
the audience to understand because it was a
little bit heavy towards the end But when
I was talking about the journey of the
soul, that's what I was referring to, that
this soul has the ability to receive the
the the,
the,
and warat of Allah
and those always arise from deeds.
When you do good, then Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala is the the comes towards you. So
it's the sacrificing of this rather than amassing
wealth, which is just a bunch of pieces
of paper or gold coins, which is all
from Khalq, you actually have to spend that
wealth. And when you spend it, then the
begins to come into your life. Rather than
eating food, you have to limit the food
and feed others, and it's when you feed
others that the begins to come into your
life. Rather than worrying about your own housing,
you should worry about the housing of the
orphans and the needy. And when you do
so, the begin to come into your life,
and that feeds the soul, elevates the soul,
and makes you a very happy person,
very happy person. And you've heard me say
this as well. I've been everywhere.
Alright?
I have a very funny background. I've seen
it all. I've done it all. I've been
everywhere.
Now I had the opportunity, and you've heard
me say this before, to study at University
of Chicago Medical School, and they've got this,
you know, 1,000,000 of dollars of medical school
equipment building, you know, just the state of
the art systems.
And I also had the opportunity to study
in the, and I ended up in a
that was a very, very tough place to
be. This was not a foreigner's.
I was the only foreigner there. I was
the only foreigner there, and we were in
the jungle.
You know? Scorpions, monkeys, wild animals, everything. Snakes,
the big, big black snakes, not snake. You
guys think snakes, you think this. This, thick
black snakes, you know,
just crawling around.
And I'll tell you that we slept on
the floor, we sat in a 120 degree
heat, and the walls were made of clay.
It was like an oven,
Barely had any water to drink because every
time you drink, you get diarrhea.
You just you know, and I'll tell you
that the ecstasy,
ecstasy, I call it, that I experienced in
that in that environment over that 2 years,
I have never experienced anywhere else in my
life.
And I will also tell you that I
spent the vast majority of my life, and
I still do to this day, wondering when
I'll hit the next phase and when will
this part of my life be over. When
I was in 7th grade, I couldn't wait
to get out of it junior high. I
can't wait till I'm out of junior high.
I'll be in high school. When I was
in high school, I couldn't wait to be
out of high school. I'll be in college.
When I was in college, I couldn't wait
to be out of college. Finally, I'll get
to medical school. When I was in medical
school, I said when I get out of
medical school, I'll be happy. I'll be an
attending. Now I'm an attending. I'm saying, okay.
I'm a junior attending. When I'm an assistant
professor, then I'll be an associate professor, Finally,
I'll be a full professor, and then I'll
be happy. Then what's gonna be happen? I'm
gonna be a full professor, and then I'll
have to retire. Then I'm supposed to be
happy. It never ends. You're never happy, and
you go on your grave, and you lost
your whole life.
But that period of life when I studied
abroad, whatever the 2 to 3 years, and,
you know, Mufti Saab can sit down and
tell you, it's funny because anytime you sit
with anybody who sat in a mother's house,
they always say the same thing. Those days
were the best.
I used to sit with Mufti Abdul Rahman
Mangera. You probably know him. He's a very
famous Mufti, and he's a very knowledgeable Mufti.
And we used to sit together, and we
used to talk, and we both agreed. I
mean, we it would be just a common
theme whenever we would get together that we
would talk about stories, and we would say
those were the best times. Those were the
best times when we and despite the difficulties
of those times. And I'll tell you that
it was the only time in my life
where I would look the other way. Whenever
I used to drive to the airport, I
would drive down to have this road called
Airport Road. I would drive down that road,
and every time I drive down that road,
there would be tears down my eyes because
I would be thinking that one day I'm
gonna drive and I'm not gonna drive back.
I would go and pick up people. But
then in the back of my mind, there
was always this fear that one day I'm
going to drive and I'm not going to
drive back. And I remember that Moana Kamal
was,
my very close friend from college was with
me that last day. I was just rapidly
packing things up and and I and I
drove down that. And I I told him,
I said and he had he was coming
to start. I was leaving. Said you have
no idea. You have no idea. We'll talk
when you're done. And he went through the
exact same experience, although he his continues because
he's still making those sacrifices.
So, anyway, the point again is that, you
know, over there, we had nothing.
And, and University of Chicago Medical School, we
had every facility available, air conditioning,
multiple drinks of your choice. You want a
Coke for for in the morning and you
want a coffee in the afternoon and you
want this and you want that, it's all
available to you in everyone's
computers, etcetera,
you know, multiple light bulbs and LCDs and
and 6, 7 different Mac or IBM, or
which one do you want? It's all there.
But that ecstasy was not there. That ecstasy
was not there.
So, okay, this is one very simple point.
Now derivative number 2 from this discussion,
and that is is that
in order to grow hulk, the body, you
have to provide balance.
Okay? In order to and the Sharia teaches
us this. So what am I trying to
say? You can't just eat McDonald's French fries
every day. Right? Or you wouldn't eat McDonald's
French fries anyway, but whatever. Let's say you
can't eat French fries every day
and expect that your body's gonna grow to
be healthy.
Every mother knows that you have to teach
your child to eat vegetables.
Right?
That you have to teach your child to
drink milk, that you have to teach your
child to eat grains. So much so that
we have the RDA recommending all of these
different pair food pyramids, and that how what
how many calories should come from this? How
many calories should come from that, etcetera, etcetera.
Okay? So everybody knows that if you want
to grow the body, you must provide it
balance of nutrients.
K. Now let me tell you that what
we don't understand is that if you want
to grow the, you must also, number 1,
provide it nutrients,
and number 2, you must provide it a
balanced set of nutrients.
So first point, in which often we have
don't understand, is that you have to provide
it nutrients.
You cannot not do dhikr
and leave Quran and leave the masjid and
leave the company of the righteous and leave
giving sadaqa and then expect that you're going
to feel good. Your your your soul will
constrict
and
die and die.
Okay? Now, when we talk when you read
the hadith, let's say, for example, a man
who misses 3 jumas,
it's sealed.
Right? You've heard these hadith. A person who
misses 3 jumas in a row, what happens?
His heart gets sealed. Or a person sins
and sins and sins until eventually his heart
becomes sealed. What is the sealing of the
heart? The sealing of the heart is spiritual
death.
Just like if you don't give the baby
milk for 5 days, the baby will die,
and then you can scream and cry as
much as you want, but you will not
be able to bring it back to life.
If a person neglects the soul, such that
they don't even go to Jummah prayer,
boom, the soul dies.
And no matter how much you scream and
cry and want it to come back to
life, it will be dead. You will be
walking around with a dead plant in your
heart.
You can water it then. You can do
anything you want. It won't come back.
Now the ajeeb thing is that once the
body dies, there's no hope.
Nobody would ever say that the month of
Ramadan is coming. This dead baby is gonna
come back to life. But the ajeeb thing
about the month of Ramadan is that a
a person can come dead into the month
of Ramadan, and Allah can bring the soul
back to life.
It's that's the miracle of Ramadan. You should
think about it that way. See, if you
don't understand the science, then you don't understand
the miracle of Ramadan.
This is the miracle of Ramadan
that a person could kill the soul
could kill the soul, but it will come
back to life. It is as if a
baby came out of the grave and began
to speak. That's how I see it.
And again, that's why the gathering of it
took off is so important because some people
come in here with dead souls. I'm one
of them. I know. We
when we come in here with either we
come here with souls that are dead
or they're on the respirator
or they're on the respirator.
There's some rare individual
that was growing their soul, growing their soul,
and they come here to get fertilizer.
They're very, very rare people like that. And
those who recall the and
our,
they elevated themselves. They came in, and they
had new fruits growing from their soul in
the month of Ramadan.
But people like us, we come here to
survive.
It's a question of life and death.
It's not a question of apples and oranges
being produced from this tree.
Life and death.
So for us, these gatherings are essential. We
don't miss them.
Fine. You can't be here for 10 days,
but you have to come for at least
1. You gotta come for 2. You have
to come for 5, and you have to
then
fulfill the schedule of the gathering because that's
what brings us back to life.
Very simple. I mean, we're all we all
have minds. We've developed them. We've studied in
college. Tell me if I'm telling you something
that makes no sense. Stand up and tell
me this makes no sense. And if it
does, I'll stop.
But this is just very, very simple principles,
and this is what it means when we
say that the that, you know, Allah has
sealed their hearts. So when you study in
the Quran or you study in hadith that
their hearts are sealed, this is what that
means, that their soul died. And, subhanAllah,
that this is the power of the kanima,
that a kafir
kafir who fought the prophet alayhis salam on
the battlefield
could come back and say and
boom, he gets a new soul.
It's
amazing. It's amazing. It's the power of words
that the tongue from Khalk
can utter such words that can revive
the soul completely.
So, you know, and
it's a very another detailed discussion. This is
part of what the is all about. When
a person makes,
it's kind of like becoming a new Muslim
in a sense that they make tawba from
their past sins, and they, again, may take
the kalima, and then that rejuvenates their soul.
Alright. So my point here was that you
need, number 1, that you have to feed
the soul for it to grow. And if
you don't feed it, it will die.
Okay? Number 1. Number 2, you must feed
it a balanced diet.
So, you can't just say, I'm only going
to do this
and then expect that your soul will grow
proportionately.
You must do some Quran.
You must do some
salawat.
You must do some istighfar.
You must do some making sure you're in
the company of the righteous. You must do
some coming into the masjid. And when you
add the components
together, this is the RDA
recommended
dietary allowance for the soul, and this is
what the moshayik have given us.
So when you see these prescriptions, what they're
doing is they're picking out from Quran and
Hadith
those prescriptions that are necessary to balance a
human being. These aren't. If I mean, if
you have a problem with that, then start
with the RDA. That's like saying brother, Rolfesullah,
so I said, I never said that you
need 2 glasses of milk a day.
I mean, we're not these things, they some
things, they make sense. You're not breaking the
rules and principles of hadith. You're selecting out
the hadith. The hadith say do salawat. The
hadith say say, say, la ilaha illallah. The
hadith say, you should recite the Quran. The
hadith say, etcetera, etcetera. We put these things
together,
create a package, and present it to the
salic. That's what saluk is.
That is what the is all about.
It is the method by which we feed
the soul the recommended daily allowance.
And in that mechanism,
right, we then provide a ready made meal
so that you don't have to go seeking
these things. And if you went and sought
sought them out in hadith, you would find
them.
And what are the things that grow the
soul? Reflection grows the soul. If a person
sits and thinks about his cell phone all
day, the soul dies. If a person sits
and thinks about
the sky,
the soul grows.
If a person sits and thinks about stocks
all day, the soul dies.
If a person sits and thinks about Allah's
creation of the honeybee, the soul grows.
So, again, reflection
can grow or kill the soul. Right?
The dhikr of the tongue can grow or
kill the soul.
Salah grows or kills the soul. Alright? So
if you leave salah, you kill the soul.
If you pray salah, you grow the soul
very simply.
So when we prescribe
various acts, what we are doing is prescribing
for you the necessary
requirements to grow your soul. And you'll see
that this gathering is a balance of those
as well.
For example, we still we has established this
recitation of the Quran and completing the Quran,
and so that's a portion of growing our
soul. Then there's prayer. That's part of growing
the soul. Then there's academic learning. So, for
example, we have the Hadith sessions in the
morning. That's part of growing the soul.
Alright? And then you've got these we have
the after. You know? When we sit down
and do that silent,
it's part of growing the soul. It contains
the salawat that you need. It contains some
ayat of the Quran. It contains some reflection
about the greatness of Allah. It's very, very
carefully
calculated.
It's hand it's ready made
designer
designer for you to be able to simply
just take.
So this is what we call.
Is the science of growing the soul based
on the understanding of our scholars and their
and taking derivatives from Quran and Hadith.
Alright. So that was the second point I
wanted to make.
3rd point. 3rd point is that the
and the
the body and the soul, they compete for
one space.
The body
and the soul
compete for 1 space.
So basically, the human being is a box.
And within that box, they have the ability
to either grow their body or grow their
soul. And if the body overgrows, the soul
becomes constricted.
And if the soul overgrows,
the body could potentially even die.
Alright? So you have to maintain
you have to understand that relationship because you
always want to grow the soul and constrict
the body.
And the best mechanism to do that is
the sunnah of Rasool Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
And that's why, for example, Sheikh Zulfkar used
to say to me that if you want
to know what is the best method for
a salic to to to,
progress on the path of the salawaf, it's
always through the sunnah
of The sunnah teaches you how much you
should how much attention you should give to
the body
and how much attention you should give to
the soul, and it balances it completely. And
you find the extreme, both extremes in hadith.
For example, there were some companions that came
to Rasool Allah SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, and they
said, we're gonna fast every day,
and we're not going to go to our
wives anymore. And what did Rasool Allah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam say to them? No. I
fast, and I break my fast.
I spend time in prayer, and I spend
time with my family.
Highlighting that you cannot try to grow the
soul so much that you kill the body
because you'll actually it's detrimental to the human
being.
But at the same time, we're told that
when you eat, for example, eat 1 third,
1 third, 1 third should eat 1 third
portion food, 1 third portion drink, 1 third
1 third portion air. And what is that?
This is the sunnah of eating so that
when a human being consumes
this much, the body will be sustained and
will grow, but will be
not overtaking of the soul.
So you see people who overeat or people
who put so much emphasis on food, their
soul dies very quickly, because they're just caught
up in what they're eating all the time.
A person who sleeps too much, right, their
soul dies very quickly because they're just feeding
the body. The body requires sleep. The soul
doesn't require sleep. By the way, that's another
derivative, which I didn't even write down. You
know, the vast majority of people complain about
their sleep schedules today, and you can write
books and you can find books and books
and books in Barnes and Noble about sleep.
I will tell you the everything that the
all of sleep boils down to my talk.
Why? Because the soul requires no sleep, and
the body could sleep for 10 years straight.
The soul requires no sleep, but the body
could sleep for 10 years straight. So the
individual who feeds their body and never feeds
their soul,
they need 12 hours of sleep a day,
and they wake up and they still feel
groggy.
It's amazing. You think about outside of Ramadan,
some of us, we go to sleep, we
sleep through Isha, we sleep through Fajr, we
sleep through Duhar, we wake up at Asr,
and we're we're still tired.
Why? Because the soul is dead,
and the body is turned into an animal.
It can hibernate for a week if you
let it sleep, just that the parents keep
knocking at the door. Right?
So, again, the problem here is what? Is
that the body was way too emphasized and
soul was let to die.
Now if you want to be some now
then people say that, well, the solution is
my alarm clock.
I wanna get up and pray the Hajjid,
brother, and the way I'm gonna do that,
I'm gonna set my alarm clock, and I'm
not gonna set any alarm clock. You've heard
my example as well. I'm gonna set Adan
of Mecca in one alarm clock, and Adan
of Medina on the other alarm clock on
the other side of the room. And, brother,
you're gonna see what's gonna happen tonight. What
happens tonight? He shuts off both and goes
back to sleep.
That's what happened. Not here, outside of.
Why?
Because the body that doesn't wake the body
up. The soul is dead anyway. You can
play it around the Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.
It's not gonna change anything.
The soul is almost dead. It's on the
ICU. When somebody's on the ICU, they can't
get up and play ball. They're laying in
bed. Of course, they're not gonna be able
to do anything.
So what has to happen is that if
you desire
for sleep to come under control, the simple
solution is
to limit the growth of the body based
on the sunnah.
Fast on Mondays Thursdays,
fast on 13th, 14th, 15th of the month,
give charity,
simplify your possessions,
disconnect yourself from the dunya, stop feeding the
mind. The mind is part of the body,
by the way, when you feed it with
all this news and stock quotes,
and what does Obama have to say about
health care and all this? That kills you.
I know it's it's funny, but it kills
you. It's very dangerous, the the amount that
we feed the mind. So we have to
be very careful about what we do, you
know, with these senses.
Music music music is death. Music is poison.
Music is poisoned.
Clearly, it's already elucidated in hadith as well.
You know, it grows nifak the way that
water grows crops.
And here we are.
We got, you know, iPhone. I I not
iPhone. What do you call that thing? IPad
that not only music, but you can change
the songs every 10 seconds.
You know? And you can have the 10,000
songs in 1 iPad. Who? I mean, 10,000
poisons, which person wants to buy, and there's
a line when the new one comes out.
We should tell the truth. It's 10,000 poisons.
This one holds 5,000 poisons. Brother mine holds
10,000 poisons. What are you talking about?
And then we my brother, you know, Zayd,
look what I brought you for Eid.
10,000 poison.
It's a a jib. Human beings are a
jib. Yeah. Because we don't understand what we
we shoot ourselves in the foot, then we
cry.
Anyway, the point is very, very simple. What
I'm trying to highlight to you is that,
that basically, what you have to remember is
that you have to balance the body and
the soul. And what was what how did
I get on that tangent? I was I
had something very important, not sleep. That if
you wanna control your sleep,
then what you have to do is you
have to limit the body and grow the
soul.
And if you do so, I will tell
you that you will actually become one of
the most efficient human beings on earth
because everybody has to sleep 10 hours. And
if you only have to sleep 5, now
you're living a double life.
So some people, you know, erroneously think that
if I become righteous, I'm going to do
bad in school.
Okay? Actually, it's the other way around. If
you become righteous, you're going to you're gonna
actually be able to defeat your competition
because they all have to sleep all the
time. They're always tired. They're drinking coffee, coffee,
coffee, coffee.
Why do these guys gulp in coffee all
the time? Coffee is like a drug. People
are constantly taking coffee. They can't stand up
without coffee anymore
because it's the only thing they can get
that gets them up in the morning. They
have to chemically induce, you know, a state
of wakefulness.
But,
you know, where which coffee worth of drinking?
They they didn't need it.
They would sleep for 2 hours. That's the
body
there was no body to even feed with
sleep. It was, you know, they almost killed
their bodies.
They had become true men. True men.
Men. You know?
Right? That that wouldn't even distract them from
the zikr of Allah. Allah says that these
were men.
Allah created them and then they became men.
Like
says,
it's easy to create cars.
It's easy to make planes.
It's easy to build,
it's easy to build computers. It's easy to
build cell phones. It's hard to make men.
The Soul Wolf makes men, makes people, makes
human beings. That's what the science of the
Soul Wolf is about.
So, again, what I was trying to highlight
to you is that if you really wanna
control your sleep, what you have to do
is
cut down the body and you ask yourself,
which period of time in your life did
you sleep the least?
Ramadan.
Especially the last 10 days of Ramadan.
Why? Because you're doing that. What is Ramadan
all about? Ramadan is all about killing the
body
and raising the soul. And, And, again, this
was all from this principle, which I was
trying to highlight, which is that the soul
and the body live in one constricted space.
So that's why you are able to if
you decrease the body, the soul will automatically
fill in that space.
The soul will automatically it's like a balloon.
It'll just fill in that space.
So when you come into the month of
Ramadan, you automatically
grow. What and now you think, what is
Ramadan?
Ramadan is no food,
no drink,
no relations.
These are all things that the body desires.
Food is part of the body. It's from.
Relations with your wife is part of the
body. It's interacting with.
Okay? These are things that animals do, eat,
drink, and sleep. Right? So all of these
things,
are all part of.
So Ramadan
naturally
decreases our interaction with, allowing Amr to grow.
And now this is the scientific view of
Ramadan. Right? I'm looking at it theoretically. And
then we all begin to experience a new
state in our iman.
We all begin to experience a new state
in our iman.
So
that's an important point. Okay. Now I've made
that point. Okay.
Should we stop there?
No. Then I'll have nothing to talk about
tomorrow. I'll you all emptied out me. Okay.
Anyway, we'll just finish this 2 more 2,
3 more points.
Okay. Next point is that if you want
to gauge the state of your rule,
then you the method by which you do
that is to shut down the body. Now,
okay. Medhat is sitting in the back. Okay?
Medhat, he does a lot of machine testing
and machine development, and he'll tell you that
when you want to fix one part of
the machine and you want to test it,
you have to shut down the rest of
the machine and then do testing on that
part only. Okay? So in the same way,
when you have a body and when you
have a human being and the human being
is made up of the body and the
soul, right, what happens is if you want
to test the soul, the best method of
testing the soul is to shut the body
down.
And when you shut the body down, if
you put the soul in an environment of
good and the soul reacts negatively,
okay, it means that the body is pulling
it away. Well, let's put it this way.
If you restrict the body
and you feed the soul and then the
body starts fighting back, it means that the
body has too much power. Does that make
sense? So you have a body and a
soul. Now you put yourself in a situation
where the body gets constricted. You just squeeze
on it a little bit. And when you
squeeze on it, the body says,
I don't like this, and tries to push
away.
That that tells you that the body has
been too developed and that it's gonna be
tough for you to feed the salt. Do
you understand the example? Now, let me give
you a much more tangible example.
Okay.
It comes in Quran.
Seek assistance with what?
And prayer.
Okay.
And this is really difficult. Why? Because when
you go into prayer,
prayer is the time when you constrict the
body.
And by constricting the body, you try to
feed the soul. Okay. Now how do you
constrict the body? You say, what are you
talking about constricting the body? This is just
salah. K. Think about salah. Salah starts with
what act?
What is the called? The full name of
the takbir?
What does tahrim mean?
Haram are you harimu to make haram? Tahrim
made haram.
So, this is called the making Haram Takbir.
Now you think, what am I not making
Haram brother? I'm in prayer. What happens when
you pray? You do Allahu Akbar and you
make the world Haram to the body.
Why? Because when you say
and you make this haram takbir,
you have now made the world haram for
the for the body. Why? The body can't
eat. If you eat in salah, your prayer
breaks.
The body can't talk. If you talk in
salah, the prayer breaks.
The body can't move. If you turn your
chest away from the qibla, your prayer breaks.
Right?
So what happened is it's called because
you made the world, the everyday things that
were halal, you made them haram on you.
Now, if you go into salah
and you are so fidgety that you have
to rush up and down like a chicken
pecking at seed,
okay, because you just can't take it. The
faster you get out of salah, the more
comfortable you are, then you know that your
body is way too powerful. You understand the
example?
Alright. So if every time you go into
salah, you have to get out of salah
as fast as possible because you just can't
take it. You're in a rush. You wanna
get out. You wanna do salah because you
wanna remove that state of hormah on you.
You know that your body is an animal
that has your soul under its finger.
Do you get it? Very simple.
So sala is the daily gauge. You know,
like you could, it's a litmus test for
what's going on with the body.
And same thing with Quran. I mean, look,
Ajib, and I've made this example a 1000
times. You put on Star Wars, you can
watch just 3 episodes and be up all
night. And the same guy you you tell
the same group of people, brother, we're gonna
shut the TV off and we're gonna pray.
You pray and he's falling asleep in the
prayer.
Right? Because the body loves to watch Star
Wars. It's free. It's chilling. Its legs are
up. It's watching all these lights and all
these things that make no sense. Right? There's
no reality to them. This guy's walking around
with a piece of light, and he's doing
this. You know? Think about it. It doesn't
make any sense, but we all enjoy it.
Right? So
it's funny. A little little green guy giving
advice. You know?
We're supposed to take advice from our moshay,
and here we are, you know, listening to
this little green guy. And we're very interested,
and we quote him.
Even in the masjid, we quote him.
Anyway,
funny, we laugh about our own lives when
it becomes clear when it becomes clear. Sad.
So, anyway, the point is that if you
find that when you put your body in
areas of rights, you come into it, it
can't stand it. Right? For the first few
moments, for the first few days, a little
bit tough. I wanna go outside and see
what's going on, but eventually, what happens is
the body gets subdued.
Now, when the body gets subdued and the
soul begins to grow, then the soul takes
over.
And when the soul takes over,
you would love to stay here. And what
happens on the last day? Everyone's crying.
Hajib, the same guy who had to fight
his soul to fight his body to come
into Ithaca is crying like a baby not
wanting to go outside at the end of
Ithaca.
We're crying that Ramadan never end.
That would would it be that I could
fast every day, you Allah? And the ajeev
thing is that our last day of Ramadan
is like the days it's it doesn't even
compare. It is still far beneath the non
Ramadan days of the companions, just the regular
days of the companions,
Ajib.
And so imagine what they were experiencing.
Imagine what they were experiencing.
So again, what's the simple point? That if
you want to test the body and you
want to see, is my body too powerful?
The best way is just salah. Just pray
salah, and if you're comfortable and happy and
enjoying the salah, then you know that the
body's in check. And if you can't stand
the salah and need to get out as
quickly as possible, you know that the body's
a little too wild. So what do you
have to do? Knock it down with a
fast. Do a Monday Thursday combo.
Right? They do that right left combo. You
do the Monday Thursday combo, knock it down
a little bit. You do a 15, 13,
14, 15 combo, give it a little hit.
Right? You
take a little bit of silica and give
it away. Give it a little bit of
a hit. Alright? You say, okay. I'm not
gonna eat lunch today. Let's see how you
like that. Give it a little hit. But
this is the battle. This is the battle.
And I'm telling you, the the funny thing
is you will succeed in if you follow
this advice. Why? Because once you learn to
contain the body and you allow the soul
to elevate, then the soul actually is the
one that will interact with knowledge
and flourish.
Now you look at our scholars, they did
more than any of the so called scholars
of this world. I'm telling you, okay. Look.
In medicals, like in in medicine,
if I wrote one chapter
in a medical textbook as an assistant professor
at the University of Chicago, that would probably
be sufficient enough to get a promotion.
One chapter.
Okay? And nobody writes a whole textbook. You
pick up any med textbook of medicine, famous
textbooks of medicine, Harrison's.
The whole every chapter is written by 3
people, not 1. Tiny little chapters, then 3,
4, 5 guys write that chapter,
and it's considered something noble and honorable. And
then you look at our, imma, Hafiz ibn
Hajar, for example,
volumes and volumes and volumes on commentary of
hadith, and he wrote them all himself.
Now you think, the guy writing the chapter
in the medicine textbook has what? He's got
electricity.
He's got microwave instant food. He's got air
conditioning. He's got washer and dryer to clean
his clothes. He's got a car to go
to work. He's got every convenience in the
world. He doesn't have to think about his
clothes. They come pressed.
Okay? And he can't write more than a
chapter, and if he writes a chapter, we
praise him. And you look at Hafiz ibn
Hajr, no electricity.
Okay? No, conveniences, no refrigeration of food, has
to go and find food every day, etcetera,
etcetera, and he's writing volumes upon volumes upon
volumes such that we wouldn't even be able
to read them if the whole gathering started
the whole gathering started today and tried for
the next 10 years. We wouldn't even get
what he was saying.
Very few people can understand what he's saying.
I mean, we have some scholars in our
presence, but besides that, we wouldn't get it.
So what's the difference between them and us?
The difference is that they had grown their
souls and
and suppressed the body to the level of
a. And by doing so, they became productive
in
and productive in their
aspects of I wouldn't call that but they
wrote books, etcetera,
and they, you know, interacted with other human
beings, and so that's sort of their interaction
with other people.
So if you want to become a good
medical student, for example,
it's not hard. Listen. Being
the top of your class is not hard.
It's not. Because you're competing against a bunch
of zombies
for the most part.
You know, there's some people that are smart,
and they teach their children not to watch
TV, and they restrict their child's diet, and
they make them exercise, and they balance them.
And and then those children, they do very
well. But the vast majority of people, they're
not disciplined. You can kill competition in college.
Most people go to college, and they're not
disciplined. They're sleeping through class. They don't study.
They don't study daily. They cram for their
exams. You can waste them. You can waste
them.
How? Just by being just following the sunnah,
It's so easy to to waste your competition.
And not only that, but you can do
2 things. You know, sometimes people come and
they say, how did you take time off
and go study the deen? And you go
give these lectures. And you're you're an academic
you're assistant professor at the University of Chicago.
How are you doing all of this? Well,
one, you have a patient family. I mean,
that's the most important. But 2, you know,
you live on a totally different you're living
on a different plane.
Now, I mean, slowly over time, you lose
it. But what I gained from you know,
I mean, when I came back from Pakistan
and then I entered into,
back into medical school, it was no problem.
No problem because I was on such a,
you know, high I mean, you think about
okay. Residents. When people go into residency, ask
any resident.
They can't even spend time with their wife
or their child.
And I'll tell you, my first 4 years
of residency, I was riding the wave. I
was sitting in at the gulf running around
the world, giving talks,
writing books.
I don't even know how I did it.
I mean, those days are gone. You know?
Slowly, it dissipates. The effects dissipate. But it
all had to do with the simple fact
that the my body had gotten crushed when
I was abroad in Pakistan. And then my
sheikh on top of that gave me a
couple couple more hits to my body
and gave me a couple prescriptions to grow
my soul.
So
when you proceed down the path of saluk
and to, which is really just the gist
of Islam, basically, as Mufti Saab said earlier,
you know, in in an earlier lecture.
This is just really what is a Hassan.
It's just the gist of Islam. It's getting
the pinnacle of Islam. You will be successful
in this life and the hereafter.
All your issues will be resolved. The whole
issue of not doing well in school, the
whole issue of trying to carry 2 loads
on your back, all of this will be
resolved, and you'll be happy people. That's the
most important thing. I would love to just
see you be happy people. I mean, your
families will be happy. You'll be happy because
you understand
what makes a human being.
Alright. Now the last point
actually, there's a couple more.
Oh, actually, there's 4 or 5 more. We
there's no way we can do all this.
So let me just just quickly list them
then.
Gosh. This would be really difficult to do.
Okay. So let me this is the most
important one, I should say. Maybe there's 2
most important ones.
The second to last point,
that if you understand this paradigm,
and only if you understand this paradigm will
you have a happy marriage, and this is
very important.
And it's very important because the vast majority
of us are failing in our marriages.
I'll tell you that if I have to
tell you what are the most common issues
that people come to me with, and I
get all day and night these things. I
get emails and calls and people and, you
know, this is just what I do.
I can tell you that there's 2 major
issues. Number 1, Internet and cell phone and
the consequences of it.
And number 2, difficulties in marriage. These are
the 2 big, big topics that come up.
Now
why do we have difficulties in our marriages?
Because
when we get married,
we base the marriage on the body.
We say this brother looks nice standing next
to this sister.
Okay? These 2 make a nice couple,
and this sister looks pretty, and this brother
looks handsome, and this brother has a nice
house, and this sister wears nice clothes, and
this sister has nice jewelry,
and etcetera, etcetera. It's always based on the
body.
So what happens? Now these 2 bodies come
together.
Right? Now when these 2 bodies come together,
actually, really, what what what were they we
were describing animals,
right, because they haven't grown the soul. So
when these two bodies come together, now it's
like 2 animals living in a cage. They'll
kill each other.
They'll tear each other's eyes out, and that's
what happens. 60, 70% of marriages end up
in this same situation,
and it whether they be Muslim or non
Muslim,
it's the same thing,
and then they can't stand one another. They're
fighting. They're arguing. They're throwing pots across the
wall. They would never have thought that they
could throw a pot so far, and they're
whipping it across the room. And it's funny
because people come and tell me these things,
and I I I could not imagine the
man throwing a a a plate at someone.
He says, I don't know what happened to
me. I threw a plate at her, and
she ducked and grabbed it and threw it
back at me.
Ajeev, and she she she didn't even know
how to throw a football,
but she managed to whip this plate across
the room.
And there's arguments and fighting and bickering, and
no one's happy. Why? Because
2 animals are together in a marriage.
Now what is a success
to marriage is to recognize that, actually, this
is a union of 2 souls,
and that when these souls come together, then
they come together with this with the purpose
of attaining Jannah.
And when the marriage is of 2 souls
who have repressed their bodies and are now
married based on that those that nur,
that creates such a union that results in
coolness of the eyes in this life
and permanence in Jannah in the hereafter.
So that's why when we select our spouses,
we start with what?
Deen.
Now not not that you don't look at
other aspects. You do. That's part of this.
It's natural. It's human nature. The sharia does
not negate that, but the basis of marriage
will always be deen.
When 2 individuals
strive and struggle to give up everything in
the name of Allah, they will have the
happiest marriage. Tell me among the companions, which
which marriage do people often quote as being
the happiest marriage?
Which which marriage?
Exactly.
Hazrat Ali and
Hazrat Fatima
Now you tell me what was their marriage
based on? Was it based on wealth? No.
Was it based on the body? No. It
was a union of 2 souls.
A union of 2 souls. These people did
not even have food to break their fast
with.
They did not even have food to break
their fast with. And Fatima radiAllahu anha and
Hazrat Ali radiAllahu anha, they maintained sabr, and
they sacrificed
despite their not having food. They were fasting.
A faster comes knocking at the door. It
says, please feed. Somebody comes knocking door. Please
feed me. Please feed me.
They're iftar.
We would never give up our iftar. We
would say, I'm fasting, brother. That's mine.
Right? They gave up their iftar
to the salah, to the questioner who was
asking for food,
And it's from that type of circumstance that
you produce children like Hassan and Hussain.
And you produce a marriage that 1400
years later, people are making dua, oh, Allah,
unite their hearts the way that you united
the heart of Hazrat Ali and Hazrat Fatima
And you look at the marriage of, Hazrat
Khalija
and the prophet
what was that marriage based on? Marriage was
totally based obviously on deen.
Right? I mean, look at the sacrifices they
made. When the prophet married
Hazrat Khadija
she was the Bill Gates of her time.
In Arabia, she was the Bill Gates of
her time. And when they got married, when
he came to her house, he moved into
her house, she took all her wealth on
the 1st day of the marriage and gave
it to Rasool Allah sallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And what did they do then as a
couple? They spent their whole marriage, the portion
of time that they were married, giving away
every aspect of that wealth such that when
she died, she was penniless.
To think about giving away that much wealth
that you start out as Bill Gates and
you die penniless.
Just living on whatever Allah provides at that
moment. And I mean, this is one of
the companions who Allah gives his salaam to.
Comes in Hadid, Sahih Hadid that Fatima hadith
hadith
hadith was bringing a bowl of milk to
Rasulullah and the angel came and gave salaam
to her, told her
that Allah is giving his salam.
SubhanAllah.
I mean, what more happiness could you have?
I don't care how big your house is.
It doesn't compare. I don't care how big
your bank account is. It doesn't compare. I
don't care what car you drive. It doesn't
compare. That was ecstasy.
That was attaining the purpose of creation.
So what we have to recognize is that
if you want your marriage to succeed, then
what you must do is grow your soul
and suppress your body.
And I'll tell you,
otherwise, what happens is, the body, it becomes
an animal and it begins to sin, and
sin is the name of the fire that
sits sin is the name of the log
that sits in the fireplace of the marriage.
What happens? You what happens is, okay, the
body's out of control. When the body's out
of control, it eats out of control. It's
an animal. So what happens? You walk down
the hallway, you look at every woman with
2 legs.
Now you look at her. You look at
her. You look at her. You look at
her. Every one of those things is a
sin.
That's zenav, the eyes. Now what happens is
these are little twigs, then you come home
and you deposit the twigs underneath your marriage.
And what happens?
Boom. Some one little thing goes wrong, and
it turns into a huge argument.
Brother comes to me and says, I don't
know what happened.
She wanted the dishes put in the dishwasher
this way. I put one dish this way.
Boom. We're fighting all night. I can't even
sleep. My wife is yelling at me.
Yeah. Because that little spark,
which is part of life, these, you know,
these little ups and downs occur, that little
spark ignited all the twigs underneath your marriage.
And the twigs, you brought the twigs.
You're the one who was sitting and sitting
all day on the Internet looking at this
and wondering what this article is about this
girl, and why is she breaking up with
this guy and all this stuff. And then
you bring all those twigs, and this is
a this is a whole lengthy discussion, by
the way. You bring all those twigs. You
put them underneath your marriage, and, of course,
the spark is going to ignite that.
Sparks always occur. But the question is, are
you are you sparking,
you know,
lighter fluid, flamed,
lighter fluid soaked wood? Are you sparking an
empty fireplace? You spark an empty fireplace. You
do some some she does something wrong. There's
no wood to catch fire. Everyone laughs, and
you move on.
Now you do something wrong. There's all this
wood to catch fire. Boom. It turns into
a week long fight.
And once you figure out how to resolve
that one, the next fight starts.
So we have to be very cognizant of
the fact that marriage actually is a union
of 2 souls, and if you want those
souls to be happy, both people have to
learn to forget about the dunya,
not negate the dunya. I'm not saying negate
the dunya, but put the dunya in its
place
and focus on the hereafter. And when you
select your spouses, don't ever make the mistake
of selecting based on dunya. Always select on
din. First look at din, then look at
dunya, and you will be very happy. But
the vast majority of people don't understand this.
That's very sad. You know, people call me
for nikka all the time,
all the time. And I go perform these
nikkas, and I I feel very bad because
I see that these people were so foolish.
They spent 100 of 1,000 of dollars, sometimes,
you know, half a $1,000,000 trying to make
everything perfect.
They want the girl to look perfect, the
guy to look perfect, the hall to look
perfect, the music to be perfect, the photographer
to be perfect, they want the table cloth
to be perfect, they want the cups to
be perfect, They want everything to be perfect,
and what they don't realize is that they're
marrying 2 imperfect people.
The whole foundation of the marriage was imperfect
to begin with, so they wasted all their
money.
If they would have taken that money and
donated it, both of their body all of
the bodies would have been constricted enough to
put Barakah into that marriage for many, many
years to come. And what happens? Half a
$1,000,000 and divorce 2 months later.
It's not common. It's not it's not rare.
Put it that way.
I see it commonly.
And it's funny. Not only do I see
it, the common sense person who's non Muslim
sees it as well. I'm walking down the
hallway. 1 of the radiologists at the University
of Chicago, he just stops me and starts
talking, and he says, I don't know how
he got on the topic, but he says,
you know, I don't understand these people, how
they can spend half a $1,000,000.
The he was talking about someone, I guess,
how people do, you know, get the get
these he was talking about marriages in New
York and how he came from this culture
in New York where people would spend vast
amounts of monies on this marriage. And he's
like, you know, the average marriage those marriages
last about a week and a half. And
he himself is telling me, I'm looking at
him, you know, where did he get this
wisdom from? It's obvious. It's become obvious to
the whole world.
So again, that's a very simple principle that
I wanted to highlight, and I could do
a whole separate discussion on that if you,
one day we should talk about marriage.
Then the last thing
is that
and maybe even the most important is that
when you have your body
okay. I'm gonna do 5:5:10
minutes and then we'll close. When you have
your body,
the sign of the health of the body
is that the body is able to perform
certain tasks.
So for example, if your body is healthy,
then you know you should be able to
walk up a flight of stairs. You should
be able to run-in in the park with
your child. You should be able to pick
up a heavy box, and you and you
shouldn't feel any discomfort.
But if you start feeling problems, like, I
can't walk without getting short of breath, or
I can't go up the flight of stairs
without getting chest pain, that's how you know
that there's a problem with the body.
In the same way, the way by which
you recognize that there's a problem with the
soul is when you can't do the things
that the soul should do. For example, the
soul should be able to enjoy prayer. If
you don't enjoy it, there's a problem with
the soul, or at least the body's balanced
with the soul. The soul should be able
to enjoy recitation of the Quran. If you
say, I can't touch the Quran, I can
look at it, I don't know what's wrong,
I can't touch it, there's a problem with
the soul, or perhaps I should say a
bal a balance between the body and the
soul. If you can't if you you can't
stand sitting in the Masjid that drives you
crazy, there's a problem with the soul.
If you can't stand the sunnah of Rasulullah
Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, you just it just
So in the same way,
when you see and notice problems with your
soul, you should approach the doctors of the
soul. And the doctors of the soul are
the.
I mean, I am giving you a lecture.
Right? This lecture is a medical lecture. It's
a it's a I should say this. It's
a spiritual
lecture of how to treat the heart.
This is what our masha'ev taught us.
And and, I mean, I was taught this
is my diagnostic course. You know? This is
what we were taught. This is how you
make diagnoses when you deal with human beings.
I mean, it's a much more intricate lecture,
and it there's 15 years of experience behind
it and, obviously, the 40, 50 years of
the experience of my sheikh behind it as
well. And then whatever he learned from his
sheikh, I mean, this goes back to Rasool
Allah sallallahu alaihi sallam, but this is really
what it's about.
So when you see that there's a problem
with your soul, you should have to seek
out the doctors of the soul because they
will be able to help you and advise
you and provide you with cure. Now I
just gave you the
common
I gave you over the counter.
This is all over the counter, but there's
prescription as well. Put it that way. Right?
The doctor gives over the counter a prescription.
I gave you over the counter. This is
what anybody can figure out. This is just
obvious stuff, but there's prescription behind this as
well. Sometimes you need a little bit of
a heavier dose. Yeah. You have a small
cold. You go take over the counter. You
got a heavy infection, you need antibiotics, you
gotta get a prescription.
So what I'm telling you is very, very
this is one aisle of our over the
carnal farms over the counter pharmacy. But sometimes
you need prescriptions, and so that's where the
can help you. You try to diagnose yourself,
you're in trouble. No doctor diagnosis their own
disease. There is no doctor I know that
diagnosis themselves. They always go to a a
a colleague.
So in the same way, we should seek
out the and if Allah blesses you to
ever come in the company of the doctors
of the soul, don't waste it because they
are so few and far between in this
day and age. It's such a major blessing
to have a doctor of the soul if
you if you could get access to 1.
It is such a major blessing, such a
major blessing that you can't put this in
words.
You know, it's because Rasulullah for the Sahaba
was basically a doctor of the soul.
Basically, he was a doctor of their soul.
He taught them to disconnect from dunya, and
he taught them to connect to akhirah, and
he grew them spiritually in such a way
that the result was.
The result was.
I mean, this is the characteristic at which
they this is the the pinnacle of faith
that they had achieved.
So anyway,
I have a lot more points that I
actually wanted to make, but I don't have
time and it's gotten way too late, way
too late. So,
so we'll stop there.
But,
so basically, the idea was, although this will
be the only lecture in,
in this at the cuff, I didn't wanna,
you know, do this academic stuff too much,
but I just wanted you to high I
wanted to highlight 2 important principles. Number 1
is that the science of the self belief
makes sense.
I mean, what have I said to you
that makes no sense? What am I saying
to you that's a?
This is it's a part of the deen.
It's a component of the deen, and it
needs to be sought after, and it will
benefit you. It will make you happy. It
will make your families happy. It will allow
you to attain success in this life and
the hereafter. It's basically the peak of Islam,
and we're all seeking the peak of whatever
we do, we always wanna seek the peak
of it. Nobody goes into Harvard seeking to
get d minuses. You go to Harvard and
you wanna get an a, or you're not
happy until you get an a. It doesn't
matter if you're in Harvard. So in the
same way, even though we're in Antigua, we
still wanna get an a. We wanna max
out on this on this on this gathering,
and we want definitely to carry the results
out of the gathering. And maybe I should
have made this point as part of this
discussion, but, you know, it's very hard to
reset the balance. Once the body becomes a
lion, it's hard to tame it. It's very
hard to tame it. But Ramadan is the
one time of the year when everything gets
reset.
You know, like, sometimes the computer gets so
screwed up that you just have to just
what do you call that? Format the whole
drive because there's so many viruses and all
the programs are running backwards and nothing runs
at the proper speed and just things don't
work right, so you just say forget it,
reformat everything.
You have to start all over again.
Ramadan is the reformatting of the of the
body and the soul relationship,
and it only comes once a year. And
outside of Ramadan, it's very difficult to do
this, very difficult. It requires that you would
go and lock yourself in a cave somewhere
for days on end, and still you wouldn't
achieve in maybe even months what you would
achieve in just a few days in Etikaf.
So that's why I yesterday, I mean, what
did I tell you? My whole message to
you was that don't waste this opportunity.
You have all the rest of the year
to check your email,
all the rest of the year to chat
with your friends,
all the rest of the year to go
on the Internet, all the rest of the
year to find out whether the beer is
won or lost or whatever your team might
be, wherever you're from. These things always happen.
Like, the this is all gonna keep going
on. You're not gonna miss anything,
but you don't have a chance like this
any other time in the year. And I
could tell you maybe even in your life.
Because today, you're sitting in Antigua. There's no
guarantee you'll be here next year. Next year,
who knows? I mean,
I I I I don't think I'm gonna
be here next year. I mean, I every
year, I sit down and think, I mean,
you know, who knows? Just you don't know.
You don't know what other things come up.
I guarantee you this in 10 years from
now, this gathering won't be here. I highly
doubt it'll be here. Things don't last like
that.
Very rare to see anything proceed proceed more
than 10 to 13 years, and we're, what,
we're close to our 10th year now. To
me, it just I I don't know. That's
my little experience with the world. That very
rare that things go beyond a certain they
reach a certain point, they develop, and then
things spread out from there. So it may
be that, you know, 10 of you will
go and set up the takeoffs in your
own localities, and I'm not saying, you know,
that could happen just like the Sahaba. I
mean, the prophet was there. He was there
in Mecca for 13 years, there in Medina
for 10 years, and then he moved on.
And then the Sahaba went, and they established
an incredible empire. So not that the the
the dean will always be here, but these
gatherings, you know, where you can come back
and say, oh, yeah, I remember ittikaf at
ICC. And it's funny because I meet people
who knew my Sheikh's Sheikh,
and they say, oh, yeah, you know, Hazratullah,
I remember he used to come to our
village when I was little. Or even Sheikh
Zulfiqar. I mean, we all can say that,
well, maybe the the, the elders in this
gathering or those that have been regular in
this gathering, we can all say that, oh,
I remember I sat I remember when Sheikh
Zulfiqar used to come to New York, and
we used to sit in his gatherings. So
I remember when he used to come to
Chicago, and we used to sit in his
gatherings. No more.
He's not coming anymore. I mean, unless some
something really strange happens, he has no intention
to come anymore. You know, there was a
time and a place. There's an ethic off
that goes on in Zambia every year.
I would be shocked if it lasts more
than 3 to 4 years from now. You
know, it'll it'll it'll reach a certain pinnacle
and Sheikh Zulfikar will move on and perhaps
perform at the cuff in his locality and,
you know, things just move on. It's been
about 10 years for their at the cuff
as well. Things just this is the way
the world works. You know, things turn over.
50 years from now, everyone will be different.
A 100 years from now, no one will
even remember who our names.
That's the way life works.
It's the eye of the Quran.
You know, there's an up and a down.
So
we should take advantage of this because it's
all in our backyard.
You know, people are traveling
thousands of miles to go to to golf
sometimes. And here you got everything ready, set,
made.
So don't waste it. I I don't know
what more I can say. You know? And
now I gave you a little bit of
academics. You've had some speeches, some talks, and
some lectures. Now you had
everything. But, but and this should all make
sense to you as well.
So you should keep this framework in the
back of your mind because it'll help you
understand the importance of what you aim to
achieve and the method by which you achieve
it. And it'll help to solve your depression
in the future should you ever enter into
1, and it will help to solve the
problems in your marriage should you ever should
they exist when you get married. And it'll
help you to recognize why you sleep 12
hours a day when you only really really
need to sleep 4 to 5. Right? It'll
help you to recognize why you're not doing
well in school when you know you definitely
have the potential to do much better, etcetera,
etcetera, etcetera. I mean, that's why I say
we can charge $1,000,000 for this lecture
because it's life. It's about how to succeed
in life.
And as a result in the hereafter, which
is everything that we exist for. So may
Allah
give us a to be among those who
are able to grow our souls. May he
give us a to be among those who
submit our bodies to the sunnah and the
sharia, and may he make us among those
who grow their souls into such beautiful gardens
that there can be presented to Allah and
purchased in exchange for Jannah.