Ismail Kamdar – Beyond the Surface- All about Intentions
AI: Summary ©
The IOU UAE student committee discusses the importance of sincerity in Islam, emphasizing personal development and the need for graduates to practice their religion. The speaker emphasizes the need for graduates to practice their religion and the importance of facing one's own intentions and not just highlighting them. The speaker gives five tips for maintaining Ikhlas, including avoiding seeking fame, building wealth, not wanting to be a money-generating person, and constantly evaluating one's intentions. The importance of fixing one's intentions to avoid future mistakes and fixing one's intentions to avoid future mistakes is emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
Welcome.
My dear brothers and sisters in Islam.
A warm welcome to each and every one
of you to the IOU
UAE student committee's live event
on beyond the surface, sincerity
in Islam.
I'm,
your host for a very interesting event today,
Hereby,
extending my heartfelt
thanks to all of you for taking your
precious time to join us.
May this gathering
be means of learning
and growth for all of us, Amit.
To proceed, I would like to encourage
you to share your inquiries
in the YouTube
screen chat.
Our respected chat moderator, sister Aisha and sister
Afroza, will do their best to address your
questions
throughout the session.
Let's begin by glorifying Allah
from Surah, Zumr,
ayah number 1 and 2, recitation from the
Quran.
So
the translation
goes like this.
This book is a divine revelation.
From Allah, the almighty,
the wise,
we revealed to you the book of truth.
Therefore,
worship Allah,
dedicating your religion
to him alone.
On this very note,
it's my pleasure.
Okay. We shall be,
edging forward, but we we let us watch
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So
finally
orienting our minds
towards the topic of the day.
Linguistically,
sincerity
means the
quality of the state of being very little
of honesty of mind that is free from
hypocrisy.
In Sahih al Hadid,
Abu Hurayna
reported that
the messenger of Allah
said,
verily, Allah does not look at your appearance
or wealth,
but rather he looks at your hearts and
actions.
On this very note,
it's my pleasure
to introduce
the speaker of the day,
Sheikh Ismail Kamdar. Sheikh Ismail
Kamdar
Sheikh Ismail
Kamdar is a graduate of a traditional
army program,
Tari Muuddin,
in 2006.
Also
earned a bachelor's in Islamic studies from IOU
in
2014.
He has studied Islam in both traditional
and modern settings
and has been a student of Islamic studies
for over 2 decades.
He began studying Islam full time at the
age of 13,
began preaching at the age of 16,
and wrote his first book at the age
of 23.
Over the years, he has taught multiple courses
and seminars around the world
and has worked with multiple leading
e e Islamic organizations
across the globe.
He served as faculty manager at the International
Open University for 10 years from
2010 to 2020.
He currently heads the publication
department at Yacaine Institute for Islamic Research.
Over the years, Sheikh Ismail has worked with
doctor Bilal Phillips, doctor Omar Suleiman,
doctor Yasser Qadi, and many other influential
Islamic scholars from around the world.
He recently
coauthored an ebook with doctor Umer Soleiman
and produced several online courses on Muslim Central.
His book
his books are currently available in 3 different
languages and sold across 5 continents in 25
different countries.
In 2011,
Sheikh Ismail discovered the importance of personal development
and noticed a lack of Islamic literature
dedicated to this field.
After consuming dozens of books and courses on
the topic, he started Islamic self help.
Sheikha Smargil is the author of having fun
the halal
way, entertainment in Islam,
getting the baroque in Islamic
guide to an Islamic guide to time management,
best of creation, an Islamic guide to self
confidence,
and homeschooling
101
among other titles.
So
here,
I would like
to
say. She will smile for,
being over here and ask you to take
over the mic.
Okay.
Just give me a second. I'm just putting
my PowerPoint up.
Hey. Want to welcome you all to this
brief reminder
and,
this webinar
on
one of the most important topics that determine
whether we go to Jannah or not, and
that is the topic of,
sincerity.
This is from the fundamentals of the religion.
This is something that
we cannot afford to compromise on. It's something
we cannot,
afford to take lightly.
This is one of those topics
where
we need
reminders every year. We need reminders throughout our
life.
And
I'm assuming that everybody attending here today is
either a student of IOU or plans on
studying with IOU or is involved,
as a teacher or a volunteer at IOU.
Basically, I'm assuming everyone here is involved in
tawah, in teaching or studying Islam, in some
kind of Islamic work. And especially in this
field,
Ikhlas is necessary. It is central. It is
the most important thing.
Getting getting into the field
of preaching
Allah's religion teaching Allah's religion
and doing it with the wrong intentions
will
waste your life and ruin your afterlife.
And so it's crucial
that we have
reminded as often as possible on this topic.
We begin, of course, with
the famous hadith that every single one of
us should be familiar with. In fact, we
should memorize it. We should internalize it. We
should live by it. This is the opening
hadith of Sahil Bukhari
narrated by Omar Ibn Khattab
Where the prophet
said, every action
is judged by its intention or actions are
judged by their intentions,
and every person will have what they intended.
So longer hadith,
it goes into detail specifically about hijra
and making hijra immigration with the right or
wrong intentions.
I highly recommend
looking up the Hadith and reading its commentary.
The scholars of
of, Hadith
have stated that this Hadith is like 1
third of knowledge.
One third of our religion is about intentions.
Whether we're talking about purification of the soul
or acts of worship, fiqh,
or even, our beliefs, our intentions are central
to every part of our religion.
And if we are involved in calling to
Allah to teaching Allah's religion,
Ikhlas
is the most important thing.
Without Ikhlas,
we
we will be sinning through teaching Islam.
If we have the wrong intention, the opposite
of Ikhlas is riya.
Riya means to show off, to call to
oneself,
to do Allah's work for the sake of
oneself or for faith.
To do this is a major sin. It
is a minor shirk, a minor type of
shirk, and it leads to the hellfire.
Remember the famous hadith
that the first three types of people to
be thrown into the hellfire
would be the generous man,
the mujahid,
and the one who teaches the Quran
if they did it for the sake of
fame,
meaning if somebody was generous so that people
would praise him, if somebody
fought
so that people would think he was brave,
and if somebody was teaching Quran so that
people would praise him,
these people
who have these intentions would be amongst the
first to be thrown into the hellfire.
So this is not a light matter.
Having the wrong intention
can lead to building one's home in the
in the in the hellfire.
Now some people, when they hear this, they
get scared off, and they say, oh, I'd
rather not do Islamic work. That that that's
not the right approach. Right?
The right approach
is to constantly remind yourself
of why we are here. Why do we
do what we do? Why
what is my intention by what behind what
what what I am doing? I understand that
one
session like this
is not enough
to keep your intentions on on track.
This is an ongoing jihad for life.
Throughout your life, especially as you get more
more successful,
as you get more famous, as you get
more popular, as you,
accomplish more,
this test gets harder.
It doesn't get easier. This test gets harder.
You need more reminders.
You need more assistance. You need to
be there to keep yourself in check.
So this is a jihad for life. It's
not something
where you just once off
you, you just once off you you you
study about it and then that's it. That's
enough.
And so I remind you
all that Ithlas is the single most important
thing for the believer.
Our life
is about Allah.
We love for Allah. We die for Allah.
Our good deeds are for Allah. Our dua
is to Allah for the sake of Allah.
Our entire existence revolves around Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala,
and this is the most important thing
in the life of the believer and in
the life of those who call towards Allah.
To give Ikhlas a definition, right, Ikhlas or
sincerity of intentions to define it,
Linguistically,
Ikhlas means sincerity.
It means
to the cons it it refers to the
concept of doing things for the sake of
Allah, for the pleasure of Allah. What this
means is that only
that the that the only the the primary
reason why you do any good deed is
for the pleasure of Allah
This should be our primary reason for anything
that that we do in life. It is
for the pleasure of Allah.
You are studying for the sake of Allah,
teaching for the sake of Allah, praying for
the sake of Allah. This must be our
primary motivation.
It doesn't mean they can't be secondary motivations.
So for example, if you are giving charity,
your primary motivation should be for the sake
of Allah, but you can't have a secondary
motivation to help somebody.
Right?
You can't have a secondary motivation to to
destroy the the mild illness in your own
soul.
These are still good intentions.
Right? But the primary
intention should be for the sake of Allah.
We should remember that if we are calling
to Allah, if we are involved in any
kind of Islamic work, and I'll be using
the word dawah throughout this presentation, I'm using
dawah in the generic sense, not the specific
sense. In the specific sense, dawah means to
invite a non Muslim to Islam. In a
generic sense, it means any
work of calling anyone to get closer to
Allah or
the teaching all of it is dua. This
is dua, what we are doing right now.
We need to understand that dua, calling to
Allah,
is not a hobby.
It's not a career.
It's not business.
It's not a personal pursuit.
It is Ibadat.
It is a means through which we worship
Allah,
and all Ibadat
are dependent on their intentions.
When you do an act of worship with
the wrong intentions,
it is a sin.
So we have to be clear. Why are
we doing what we do? From the very
beginning, we must
be clear about this. When you're doing any
act of Ibadah,
there's 2 conditions that apply. Number 1, it
must be
as per the instructions of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. And when it comes to this specific
work, Allah has left it quite open ended
that is a lot of different ways to
call to Allah and to do dawah.
And the second is that it must be
for the sake of Allah, that the intention
must be correct.
So like any other act of Ibadat, any
other good deed,
dawah
without Ikhlas
is devoid of reward. Right? Sorry. There's a
mistake in the slide that should be dawah
without Ikhlas
is devoid of reward, and it becomes sinful,
and it counts against the person on the
day of judgment.
Dua,
rather,
our struggle with our intentions
in the field of dua,
we need to realize that this is a
jihad. This is our biggest jihad, internal jihad.
Remember,
the word jihad has multiple meanings. Right? The
primary meaning is, of course,
defending,
the Darul Islam and fighting
for the sake of Allah in in those
kind of battles, but the other meaning is
the internal struggle against,
the evils of the soul,
right, the jihad of the nafs.
When it comes to the jihad of the
nafs, the the biggest challenge for people involved
in this work
is our intentions.
They they are always at every point in
our life
things that are trying to corrupt our intentions.
And if we get lazy, if we get
lax, if we get carried away, if we
become amazed at ourselves,
then it's very easy
for our intentions to slip and for us
to start doing things for the wrong reasons.
We look in a very unique time compared
to just 20 or 30 years ago.
If you go back to, like, the nineties,
dawah and Islamic work was often
unappreciated.
Getting involved in this work would mean,
that you'd have 5 or 10 students, and,
you know, you might just have to struggle
financially.
And it wasn't a, a very lucrative field
for most people.
Over the past 20 years, specifically
through the Internet and through the global revival
of Islam that's taking place everywhere in the
world,
Because of this,
the role of the dahi and the scholar
has changed a lot.
Today,
through YouTube and social media,
it's very easy
to become famous,
to get millions of followers,
to
become wealthy
through your dua.
And in of themselves, these are not bad
things.
In of itself, if Allah gives you a
1000000 followers, that is from Allah. If Allah
allows your message to reach millions of people,
that is from Allah. If Allah blesses you
with well, that is from Allah, but that
should not be your intention.
That should not be the intention of your
dua. That can be a result of the
dua if Allah wills it, but it should
never be the intention of the dua.
The intention of the dua should be that
we are calling to Allah for the sake
of Allah.
We are calling to Allah for the sake
of Allah.
If nobody
listens,
that is our test of Allah. We will
continue to call to Allah for the sake
of Allah. There were prophets in the past
who called to Allah, and they had very
few followers.
We are not better than a prophet, so
why do we expect more?
Having said that, if Allah had to make
you famous
or wealthy through this field, which is very
possible today,
understand that this fame and this wealth is
a gift and a test. It is a
gift from Allah.
It could be a sign that Allah has
accepted your deeds, that Allah has given you
status in this. Allah has put the love
of you in the hearts of others,
but it's also a test because now it's
easier to have wrong intentions. Now it's easier,
to seek fame. It's easier to become self
amazed. It's easier to go astray.
Understand that every good thing in our life
is both a gift and a test. We
must recognize the element of being tested in
every good thing that we have.
So the key
to being successful in the field of calling
to Allah
is that no matter how well we do
and no matter how
not well we do,
whether we are successful or not, whether we
have a 1000000 people listening to us or
only 1 person listening to us,
Whatever the case,
everything that we do
is for Allah.
Everything that we do is for Allah.
As long as everything we do is for
Allah, it is for the sake of Allah,
we'll be rewarded,
and there will be barakah in our efforts.
However,
a test of life that many people fail
is that when they achieve a certain level
of success,
when the doors to the dunya open up
to them, the doors of worldly
treasures
and pleasures open up to them,
the intentions become corrupted.
And when someone's intentions become corrupted,
this very work,
these skills, this knowledge
can all become a force of destruction and
a source of sin.
How many times have people fallen from greatness
because
they allowed the intentions
to be corrupted,
and they used the din for dunya
instead of using this world to elevate the
din.
The core of today's presentation I'm going to
do something slightly different
for the core of today's presentation.
There are
5
common struggles today
that people have with their niyat, with their
intentions.
Five common struggles that people have today with
their intentions. I want to focus the bulk
of my presentation today on these five things.
Because if you're not aware of them,
it's easy to slip and fall into one
of these five things. And slipping and falling
into any of these five wrong intentions
can completely
derail your Islamic work, your studies.
It can completely derail your Ibadat. It can
completely ruin your relationship Allah
and ruin your relationship with other members of
the.
It can ruin your reputation.
It's very important
that we understand these five struggles.
Now more than ever,
all 5 of these
are looking to tear apart Muslims all over
the world,
and these are all struggles of the soul.
This is all to do with intentions.
Number 1 is fame.
In the modern world, especially through the Internet,
it is very easy
to become famous
to to talking about Islam.
So many people who are unqualified
become famous for talking about Islam by
making clickbait titles and,
you know, these,
really cringe
thumbnails and attacking people and being angry all
the time or just putting out really
catchy content
that's lacking in spirituality, lacking in Baraka,
but it brings in the views.
It gets tens of thousands of people watching
and talking about you.
This is the law of fame.
I'm not saying everyone who does this work
is chasing fame, but I'm saying that chasing
fame can lead to doing it in that
way.
It is very easy to become famous today.
All you have to do
is publicly attack somebody who's more famous than
you. All you have to do is have
a YouTube channel with catchy titles and and
funny looking thumbnails, and you can become famous.
Fame
is the biggest destroyer of intentions.
People who seek fame,
they will
very quickly
derail not only their own dua, but the
dua of others as well.
They become
an obstacle to the ummah
because their ego
gets in the way of actually doing any
good deeds.
Right? Their ego
gets in the way of actually doing any
good deeds.
So it's very we must be careful
that we do not
allow fame
to misguide us.
Do not chase fame.
Never chase fame.
Do not get involved in anything for the
sake of becoming popular or famous.
We live in a time where anyone can
become famous.
All you have to do is act really,
really stupid on the Internet, and you go
viral.
Don't allow the temptation
of becoming famous to make you lose your
dignity.
Muslims
should never seek fame.
Muslims should seek only the pleasure of Allah.
Yes. If Allah makes you popular, that is
a gift from Allah or your testimony, but
it's not something you seek. It's not something
you actively want.
You focus on doing this work for Allah.
If you start doing this for fame, you
will destroy your afterlife and any barakah that
is in your work.
So be wary of fame.
Number 2 is wealth.
There is a lot of wealth that can
be gained
from becoming famous,
from becoming popular.
There's a lot of wealth that can be
gained in
going viral
and having lots of YouTube subscribers.
Wealth in of itself is not a bad
thing.
Muslims are encouraged to seek financial independence.
Muslims are encouraged
to be earning well enough that
people can't control what you think and what
you say, that you can be you can
maintain your and your integrity
through having wealth.
And so it's it's tricky
because as as a as a
or as a scholar, as a student of
knowledge, you want to have some wealth
so that you can be independent
and not under anybody's control.
At the same time,
wealth cannot be your primary intention. It has
to be a secondary intention.
It has to be that you are for
example, if you have a job teaching Islam,
that money, it halal sustenance you get from
your job should be your secondary intention, not
your primary intention. You shouldn't be just working
for a paycheck.
Your primary intention should always be for the
sake of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. That should
always be the primary intention.
So there's nothing wrong
with wanting
a good salary.
There's nothing wrong
with wanting
to have halal money.
But when this becomes
your obsession in obsession in the dawah,
you you end up doing a lot of
things wrong. I'll give you a practical example.
Many years ago,
famous Dao'i was supposed to come to my
community
to teach,
and he was visiting various cities,
And he only canceled one city because he
said that, you know, a relative of his
was sick, so he needs to go back
home. But he continued to do the rest
of the trip, and he only canceled that
one city.
So I contacted the organizers to ask them,
why didn't he really cancel that city only?
I mean, if somebody was sick, you could
have canceled the whole trip.
And they told me it's because
that part of the trip wasn't profitable.
They hadn't signed up enough students to make
a profit.
So the
canceled that part of the trip and lied
to the public
about why he did so. Because for him,
his profits
was more important than his dua.
May Allah forgive him and protect us.
That's the danger of seeking wealth. That's the
danger where money
becomes your primary objective.
We are not capitalists.
This is not a capitalist field. This is
work for the sake of Allah. If Allah
gives you prophets through this field,
if Allah doesn't,
but
to cancel one's dua
because it's not profitable enough,
it's a very dangerous part.
And I have many more stories like that.
I know many people,
unfortunately,
who
the money becomes a primary objective to the
dua.
The third one,
listed here as woman, but it applies the
other way around as well. I specifically mentioned
woman because I tend to see more men
slipping up in their intentions because of this.
What I mean by this is the prophet
warned us that the greatest
trial for men is woman
and vice versa. Right? The greatest trial is
the temptation of the opposite gender.
And these days, that's a trial in the
field of Islamic work.
It it may sound,
surprising if you haven't been in this field
long enough. Right?
But the reality is if if you are
calling to Allah
and
you become popular,
then
it is possible that members of the opposite
gender
may become attracted to you, and this could
lead to fitna. This could lead to trial.
This could lead to temptation.
And we've seen many, many times
people's Dawah get derailed. People's reputations get ruined
because they slipped up in this area.
They gave in to temptation.
We all should realize that none of us
are at the level of piety where
if something were to happen
if if some temptation like this had to
happen, then we can definitely
we can definitely
fall. We can definitely slip up
because
the trial of of of the opposite gender
is something,
that's very hard to resist if you don't
if you don't build yourself up, if you
don't
put levels of protection between you and temptation.
And I've seen people get involved in Islamic
work just to try and attract the opposite
gender.
I've seen people do this,
and all kinds of crazy things end up
happening.
So be wary of this trap from shaitan.
This is a trap from shaitan to make
people
basically
do things for the opposite gender rather than
for Allah, and it's interesting the Hadith we
mentioned in the beginning has a similar
story behind it. Right? That the Sahaba were
making a hijrah
from Makkah to Madinah for the sake of
Allah,
and one man
made Hijra from Makkah to Madinah because he
was in love with a woman in Madinah,
and he wanted to marry her.
And the the hadith states the second half
of the hadith states that whoever makes Hijra
for the sake of Allah, then his Hijra
is for the sake of Allah, And whoever
makes Hijra for a woman or something of
this world that he wants,
then he'll get what he intended. He'll get
what he intended. He shouldn't expect any reward
from Allah if all he was seeking,
was something of this world.
So be wary of this. The opposite gender
can be a real
test and temptation in this field, and it's
one of the things that Shaitan uses to
lead people astray.
Then there's power.
People of knowledge are the ones who hold
the real power, the soft power in the
Muslim world.
In general, people
respect and look up to and listen to
the ulama
and their students of knowledge more than they
do to kings and presidents.
Right? The people who really
have influence over the souls and the lives
and and
the ideas of people
are the people of knowledge.
It's a type of soft power that many
people don't realize.
And sometimes people, when they do realize that
they have power over others, they may abuse
it.
They may become power hungry.
They may become the kind of people who
are
driven by power.
So be very careful
of the temptation
of wanting more and more power.
As a general rule, a Muslim should not
seek power. As a general rule, you should
not seek leadership or power.
But if Allah tests you
with power, whether it's
physical
hard power like being a king and or
a president
or something like that, the Khalifa,
or with soft power, being an influential member
of society,
You must use it responsibly for the sake
of Allah,
but it should never be something we seek.
The final
struggle with intentions that I have seen so
many people be derailed by
is hasad,
jealousy.
Simply put, 2 people
2 young men would go off to study
Islam at the same time.
They would go through the same system, graduate
from the same university, put in the same
amount of work. 1 1 will become an
imam in 1 masjid, the other will become
an imam in a different masjid.
10 years later, one of them is famous
with 50,000 followers. The other one, nobody really
knows him. He has about 10 or 20
followers.
It's very easy in this situation for one
to become jealous of the other.
And it's times like that we have to
remind ourselves that this is for Allah.
This is for Allah. Dua is for Allah.
Allah decides
who gets popular.
It's very rare in a way that we
can't predict it.
Right? Like, you'll literally see a scholar who
nobody listens to, and he's really good, and
you can't say why nobody listens to him.
And you see somebody else who talks a
lot of deviancy and nonsense,
and they're world renowned, and you wonder how
do they get popular.
Allah test different people with different thing. He
test some people with with with,
fame, and he test other people with not
being famous. Either way, the intention is being
tested.
Either way, one's intentions are being tested.
Whether
you become famous or not, either way, your
intentions are being tested.
And so you should never look at what
Allah has given someone else. If Allah has
made somebody else more popular than you, that's
not your business. Allah has made somebody else
more wealthy than you, that's not your business.
Your focus must be on Allah and doing
the best work possible for the sake of
Allah. So these are the 5 main traps
in the field of intentions today.
We're gonna close off soon. I just want
to do one more
slide with you,
which is 5 tips
on how to
maintain Ikhlas.
So to recap, I said the most important
thing
in our Islamic work is sincerity, that we
do this for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. I
also said that this is the hardest thing
because throughout your life, you will struggle with
sincerity.
All of us do. Everybody struggles with sincerity.
And then I mentioned the things that will
try to pull you away from doing things
for the sake of Allah,
whether it's
temptations from the opposite gender
or the desire for money and power
or jealousy
or seeking fame, these are all trials that
affect one's near, one's intention.
So how do you stay on the straight
path? How do you keep your intention straight?
I just wanna mention 5 things, 5 simple
tips that we keep doing these 5 things
throughout our life.
Inshallah,
we can maintain our Iqlas.
Number 1,
always maintain
a close relationship
with your teachers and elders.
Understand that if you ever start getting famous
or start getting jealous or start
becoming self amazed or start,
developing an ego,
it is your teachers and your elders that
will keep you in check. They are the
ones who will remind you why you got
into this field. They are the ones who
will remind you who you are and where
you came from, and they are the ones
who have the,
the influence over you to help pull you
back
when you're starting to think too much of
yourself.
So always maintain a good relationship with your
teachers and your elders. Respect them. Take their
advice. Listen to them when they're warning you
about things like this.
Linked to that is your company.
Be very careful who you hang out with.
Everyone follows the religion of their closest friends.
Every man
follows the religion of his best friends, so
be careful whom you befriend as the prophet
said in the authentic Hadith.
This is even more important in terms of
who you marry.
Understand that
your friends and especially your spouse
will help you to stay in check. That
is the person who's going to keep you
in check when your ego is getting too
big.
It is your spouse who will remind you
that the work you do is supposed to
be for the sake of Allah. It's your
spouse that will remind you that you're getting
a bit too self amazed. You sound you
think too much about yourself.
Marry someone righteous so that they keep you
in check, and make sure that your friends
are righteous so that they keep you in
check.
So it's important to have a good relationship
with your teachers and elders.
Also important to marry someone
who is righteous and will keep you on
the straight path, and it's important that your
friends be righteous
and that you'll hold each other accountable when
you'll start to stray.
Number 3, ensure that you have a lot
of private good deeds.
Ensure that you have a lot of acts
of worship
that are just between you and Allah. Nobody
else knows about it besides you and Allah.
So even if you slip up in your
intentions with your public good deeds,
your private good deeds will make up for
them.
So just like we keep our sins a
secret, we keep our sins private,
we should also keep many of our good
deeds secret many of good deeds private. And
this could be anything. It could be reciting
Quran every day, praying the Hajjood,
fasting,
charity.
Just make sure you have regular, consistent
good deeds that nobody knows about besides you
and Allah so the Ikhlas of those deeds
at least remains intact, and that Ikhlas could
have a ripple effect on the other work
that you do as well.
Number 4,
if all else fails, if you feel your
ego building up, if you feel self amazement,
if you feel your intentions going astray,
remember your own faults.
Remember your own sins. Remember your own humble
beginnings.
Think about thoughts that will instantly humble you.
The world sees
a pious person.
Only you and Allah know your secret sins.
The world sees success,
but only you know the faulty
human being with imperfections behind it.
Remind yourself of your faults and your sins.
I think one of the wisdoms I believe
one of the wisdoms behind why Allah made
us
imperfect
sinners
is that we don't develop arrogance
because it's always something about ourselves that
if we think about it, it humbles us.
And finally,
du'a.
If you find yourself straying, if you find
yourself,
getting too caught up
in,
in the wrong intentions and doing things for
the wrong reasons, if you find this playing
up too often, make du'a.
Yeah. Many duas narrated in the books of
Hadith
or this issue specifically.
Make dua to Allah
to
forgive you,
to keep you on the straight path, to
keep you sincere,
to overlook your faults,
and
to help you to remain consistent.
I won't mention any specific duas here, but
if you look it up, you will find
many duas on this topic.
So that's it. That's my presentation today. I
didn't want to spend too much time on
it. I wanted to keep it
practical as possible.
Understand that this is a lifelong struggle for
every believer.
Even more so if you're involved in studying
or teaching Allah's deen and in and doing
dawah, it becomes even more of a struggle.
But every believer
struggles with intentions,
and these five things are key for keeping
your intentions in check.
If you have a good relationship with your
teachers,
if you have a good relationship with your
elders, if you have a righteous spouse, if
you have righteous friends, if you have secret
good deeds,
if you remind yourself about your own faults,
and if you're always asking Allah for sincerity,
then insha'Allah insha'Allah,
we can remain on the straight path. With
that, we come to the conclusion, and I'll
take q and a for about 10 to
20 minutes.
JazakAllah Khairan, I'll give you a few minutes
to type out your questions, and they will
get started with the q and a.
Just like a long way and, shake a
smile for the wonderful session
and, your elaborate insightful explanation on the topic
of, beyond the surface and sincerity in Islam,
and it was truly enriching. May Allah
help us in making our deeds pure and
filled with Ihlas,
Aami.
We are very grateful
here
and
hoping for Ajuran Hasana for you.
And for everyone who is, who has joined
here
and also in future if they are going
to be joining this program.
Now we shall
move on to our question answer session.
And if you have, any questions regarding the
topic, please drop them in the chat box
below. We have a few questions
here.
Let us get started.
Sheikh,
if you say yes.
So this is a question, Pam, from
their side.
When we pray, when we say,
like, we are praying salah, our mind thinks
of clear, well defined actions and postures in
a a class.
Like, is a class a task of the
mind?
How does a class look like? What to
do mentally to achieve a class?
K. It's a good question.
So the con the issue or the concept
of Iqalash, you have to remember in Islam,
there are different types of good deeds.
You have the 3 types of deeds in
Islam. Right? Physical deeds, like you mentioned, salah,
deeds of the tongue,
the reciting Quran,
and then deeds of the heart,
deeds that take place internally.
Is a internal matter.
It's not something
that has a
outward manifestation that's that's that you can necessarily
see.
Maybe if you are righteous, you can through
intuition,
you can sense the Ikhlas in others, right?
Allah has gifted people with the ability to
to sense Ikhlas in others and to sense
when somebody's being false, but it's it's an
internal matter. It's not something
that has,
a clear external component to it. So
the struggle for Ikhlas takes place within the
soul, within the heart,
and
the work you do
to fix your intentions is also done internally.
This is done, for example, through through the
concept of muhasabah.
Muhasabah means to hold yourself account accountable.
Right? Umrah bin Khattab
once said that hold yourself accountable
before Allah holds you accountable.
And there's no fixed way of doing muhasaba.
It's basically sitting by yourself and asking yourself
hard questions, you know, thinking to yourself,
am I really doing this for Allah?
You know, the
what what are my intentions?
Did I slip up in anything I did
today? Did I have wrong intentions in anything
I did today?
It's about having difficult conversations with yourself internally.
That's how you fix your intentions.
So
quick answer to your question, no. There's no
physical
part to Ikhlas.
This is the work of the soul. This
is an internal Ibadat.
This is fixing your internal state,
and the work takes place internally.
It takes place inside the soul, inside the
heart,
and it's not something you can necessarily
see in yourself or in others. In your
own life, you will notice that you have
Ikhlas if,
for example,
you have a close relationship with Allah
and there's barakah in what you do, and
you aren't falling into those 5 things that
I mentioned,
then take this as a good sign that
your your intentions are fine for now, but
it's something you have to constantly evaluate. It's
not something that has a permanent fix to
it. So, no, it's not physical. It is
internal.
Is that a okay?
Sure.
Next question is, how can be a god
against
subtle forms of insincerity
such as seeking internal
satisfaction
from praise even when we don't,
outwardly
show it?
Sorry. I didn't hear the question second half
of the question there.
Okay. How can we guard against subtle forms
of insincerity
such as, seeking internal satisfaction from place
even when we don't outwardly show it?
Alright. So
how do we guide into so firstly, understand
you can never be perfect with your intentions.
Perfection is not
perfection is not something to expect from ourselves.
This is something that's it's going to go
on
for years.
There are going to be days where your
intentions are better than others.
It's something that you have to keep
checking on
and reassessing and reanalyzing.
And, yes, sometimes it will not be perfect.
And also, I I I mentioned earlier, it's
very important. Some of us,
we
we think that Ikhlas means that it must
be only for the sake of Allah, and
there can't be any secondary intentions.
Now Ikhlas means that you're doing it primarily
for the sake of Allah, but there can
be secondary good intentions. You can,
for example,
do it to help people, to benefit people.
You can be doing it to improve your
own self.
You can for example, if you did some
good work, you look back and you say,
alhamdulillah, you did a good job. That's not
that's not a negative that won't have a
negative impact on your intentions because you're still
attributing
the success to Allah.
It becomes a problem
when
doing things for the sake of Allah is
like something you don't even think about anymore
or it's secondary to you,
and all you care about now is the
worldly results. Right? You see this, for example,
in dawah, some people today, that dawah is
all about getting high score. I got a
100 shahadas. I got 200 shahadas. He only
got 10 shahadas.
That's not dawah. Dawah is not about counting
high scores. Dawah is about the pleasure of
Allah. It's about doing this work for the
sake of Allah. It's not supposed to be
a competition.
So, yes, your intention can never be perfect.
You have to constantly work on it. It's
a lifelong struggle
right till we leave this world.
Even
if you live to the age of 90
and you are lying on your deathbed
at the age of 90, you still have
to be checking your intentions
because
shaitan is always trying to make us do
things for the wrong reasons.
So don't expect perfection from yourself,
but constantly check yourself. That's how we regulate
it. Can never be perfected, but it can
be regulated.
Next question,
goes like this. Like, how to distinguish
1 with the one is with the class
or not by just,
noticing their movements in salah,
like,
leaving the salah
or,
very being lazy in the salah? How can
we distinguish? Can we distinguish like this?
Talking about oneself or in others?
We are writing, like, my noticing and the
lack of physical movement, we can distinguish a
person playing solo from one not playing. Similarly,
how to distinguish one with the class or
not?
I'm not sure if I'm understanding the question
properly.
Is he talking about how do you recognize
a class in others or in in oneself?
I I didn't really catch up that part.
Maybe maybe maybe you can address,
on both sides.
Okay. So this hear both. Maybe answer both?
Yes. Because because it's it's our, sometimes we
it's our nature that we are we are
just judging some people having to That is
true. That is true. We That would be
really must judge other people's intentions very easily.
Okay. Okay. I'll I'll I'll just both since
I don't know which of the 2 questions
are last.
Firstly, how do you
recognize Ikhlas in yourself? I think I answered
that earlier.
You always check yourself
and you notice the barakah in your life,
your relationship, Allah
the quality of your good deeds, all of
this is your internal signs that inshallah,
your your your intentions are good. Right?
At the same time, you fight the bad
within you. Right? That that desire for fame
and that desire for power and that desire
for, you know, for dunya over the you
fight it internally.
That's how you check yourself and make sure
that your intentions stay on track.
But when it comes to others, when it
comes to other people,
the primary
the default position of dealing with other human
beings, especially other Muslims,
is one of hushnuzdhan,
assuming the best of others.
This is from the akhlaq of Islam.
Right? Hushnuzdhan,
that we assume the best of others. Allah
tells us in Surah Al Hujarah, chapter 49
verse number 11,
Allah says, oh you who believe,
do not assume bad things about others,
because very often your assumption is a sin.
It's a sin for you to be thinking
bad about others.
Allahu Han Tala says, Don't spy on others.
Don't look for faults in others.
We
We must live by this verse, we must
live by this verse, do not look at
others and say, oh, I don't think that
person's
sincere, or I think that person's seeking fame,
or that person's seeking money,
or that guy that guy, he he's just
doing dawah because he wants wants to be
famous. Right? We shouldn't be looking at people
like this. This is a reflection of our
own souls. This is a reflection of our
own corruption that we only see
bad in others.
Our
default position towards our Muslim brothers and sisters
should be they are sincere.
Right? Even if you see a fault in
them, even if you see that somebody,
you know, they're they're prioritizing
money over
Allah's pleasure or, you know, it looks like
they're getting a bit self amazed.
Don't assume the worst for the of them.
Rather, ask Allah to forgive them and ask
Allah to grant them sincerity
and and continue to work with them as
your brothers and sisters in Islam. Now if
somebody is truly, truly
calm, like, they monofics, they
they they they have really, really bad intent
If you are, inshallah,
a good Muslim,
then
may
gift you
with intuition,
the intuition to notice that hold on. Something's
not right here. Something I'm I'm getting bad
vibes from this person.
You know? I don't the the way he's
talking about the deen isn't making sense to
me. He's he's he's talking too much about
worldly metrics and not enough about Allah's pleasure.
So sometimes Allah will send you signs to
protect you from working with someone who has
bad intentions,
but that's
occasionally.
The default, the norm with any Muslim anywhere
in the world is to assume the best
of them and if you see a fault
in them to ask Allah to forgive them
and to guide them, not to seek out
negativity in others and you know sometimes you
get young people today who just sit on
the internet
judging the intentions of everybody else, like, oh,
that guy is self amazed, oh, that guy,
he's doing dawah for money, oh, that guy,
oh, he just wants more wives, you know,
they're just judging everybody's intentions as if they
are some,
you know, gods there's a say there's a
statement from
Isa alaihis salam, Jesus, peace be upon him,
narrated in the Muwata of Imam Malik,
that prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, said
do not judge the intentions of others as
if you are God's. Right? Do not judge
others as if you are God's.
That's how some people are, they sit back
and they're judging people as if they can
see inside their heart and see the condition
of their heart. No. Ikhlas is in the
heart.
You cannot see somebody else's heart, so you
should not be judging people's intentions, you should
be
you should be thinking good of them. If
some folks show up show up, you should
be asking Allah to forgive them. You should
have a,
you should be projecting goodness towards other Muslims,
not assuming the worst of others. If someone
is
if someone is generally going to be a
source of misguidance for you and you are
making dua to Allah and you do have
a close relationship with Allah, Allah will show
you signs not to trust that person, not
to work with that person, but
norm. The norm is think good and focus
on the positive.
This is the next question now.
Can praise for good deeds lead children to
perform them for the wrong reasons?
If so, how can this be mitigated?
Like, if they are praising them for the
good deeds, if,
is it, like, going to be, wrong? I
mean, are they going to develop some wrong,
reasons or think about the wrong reasons,
to be,
doing good?
So
when it comes to our good deeds, remember,
in intentions
firstly, even if a good deed has a
wrong intention, they could still have good results
in this world. Right?
But also intentions can always be rectified.
Intentions can also be always be fixed. So
for example,
you did a good deed. Maybe you gave
some charity,
and you realize a bit later, you know
what? I kind of gave charity for show.
My intention wasn't 100% for the sake of
Allah. You realize that later. You can now
fix your intention. You say, oh, Allah, forgive
me. That's for you. Whatever I gave is
for your sake. So you can fix your
intention, in the result, you fix the reward.
Right? So this is something that you can
always fix if you realize if you look
back and realize, hold on, a certain good
deed, I didn't do it with the right
intentions. You can always ask Allah for forgiveness
and ask Allah to accept it from you
later.
So again, this goes back to mahasabah. It
goes back to checking our intentions.
The other side is in this world that
sometimes you made somebody may do a good
deed with a wrong intention, but Allah may
still allow it to have a good effect
in the world. So somebody may be doing
dua,
for the sake of becoming famous, but their
dua may actually cause other people to convert
to Islam and and become good Muslims,
and Allah may accept that from them eventually
if they fix their intentions down the line.
Right? And even if Allah doesn't accept it
from them, he'll accept it from the people
who converted to Islam because their intentions are
separate from his. So
it's important
that we remember
to always
rectify our intentions.
Right? Sometimes you may slip up. You always
go back to the, oh, la,
I didn't have the right intentions at that
moment. Please forgive me, and please accept it
from me. And inshallah, his most merciful, Allah
will accept it from us inshallah.
Inshallah.
Sheikh, Yi, is this is,
this is the next question.
If sincerity
gets
mixed unknowingly with some duniya intentions,
how will Allah judge our deed? Like,
the things
passed Yeah. And we did for the wrong
reasons,
and now we are realizing
that for that date, what will be the
judgment
from Allah's side? Like, what will be the
ruling?
Okay. So, again,
remember to think I mentioned earlier
the importance of Khushnazan, of thinking good about
others.
So now I remind you the importance of
Khushnazan,
the the importance of thinking good about Allah.
In a hadith Qudsi it is stated that
Allah
said, I am as my servant thinks of
me. So we must think good about Allah.
We must assume we must
assume Allah is Allah is going to forgive
me because He's Most Forgiving. Allah is going
to have mercy on me because He's Most
Merciful.
I always say if you try your best,
Allah will forgive the rest. Right? If you
try your best, Allah will forgive the rest.
So, yes, sometimes
our good deeds will have mixed intentions.
You know, maybe you're doing
a a class
and you're doing it for Allah, but you
also want to make a profit because you
need the money to pay your bills. Right?
So there's mixed intentions there. You you you
you you want to make a profit,
but you're also doing it for the pleasure
of Allah.
How would Allah judge it? Allah looks at
the sincerity of the heart. Allah looks internally.
Allah looks at
what is dominant.
What is dominant? Is your life all about
money, or is your life all about Allah?
And
I I believe if we have a close
relationship with Allah,
if we
are trying our best to be sincere,
then Allah will forgive the secondary
lapses. Allah will forgive
the human the humanness of it. Right? Because
Allah created us weak. He created us
He understands that. He knows that, and
he is most merciful. He is most forgiving.
At the end of the day, the prophet
said
nobody will enter paradise because of their,
because of their deeds. We will only enter
God's mercy.
That's what he boils down to, Allah's mercy.
So focus on Allah's mercy.
Aim for Allah's mercy. Ask Allah to shower
you with his mercy. Ask Allah out of
his mercy to forgive you for your lapses
and mistakes in your intentions.
And inshallah, if we do this, then our
intention will be
right most of the time, and we'll catch
ourselves when it goes off as well. And
whatever is beyond our control, Allah will forgive
us inshallah.
And this is the last question for you.
How can a person overcome,
Nifaq? Like, what's the difference between Nifaq and
Ikhlas?
Like, if Okay. Are are we struggling with
the sincerity,
or are we struggling with the Nifaq?
K. So nifaq is a different topic. Right?
Ikhlas is
Ikhlas is where you believe in Islam, you
believe in Allah, but sometimes you do things
for for worldly reasons. You do things for
wrong reasons. That's what Ikhlas is. So it's
it's a matter of why you are doing
what you do. But the person who doesn't
have Iqbal is still a believer. He's still
a Muslim. He just messed up his intentions
or her intentions. Right?
Nifaaq is a matter of fate.
Nifaaq means that you don't really believe in
Islam,
that you have doubts about Islam, that you
don't think Islam is a true religion.
That's nifaq.
Right? So nifaq is a separate topic altogether.
Ithas is a true Muslim,
but sometimes the intentions get messed up. That's
that's the the struggle of between Ikhlas and
Riya.
Nifaq is a struggle with iman. Right? You
have iman, kufr, and nifaq, the 3 types
of faith.
We are supposed to have iman.
We're supposed to completely
believe in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and Islam
being the true religion and prophet Muhammad being
the final prophet. We're supposed to have conviction
in that, yaqeen in that, and that should
be the foundation of our faith.
If we don't really believe in Islam, if
we are just Muslim by name and internally
we think it's all fairy tales or something
like that, that's nifaq.
That's a much, much bigger problem.
Right? Nifaq is a much bigger problem than
wrong intentions
because wrong intentions is a minor shirk. It
is a shirk in your intentions that Allah
can forgive you.
Nifaq
means that you are not really a Muslim.
That's what nifaq means, that you're not really
a Muslim.
And if somebody dies in that state, they
will be in the lowest level of the
hellfire because there were non Muslims pretending to
be Muslims.
Right?
So how do you fix nifaq?
Number 1, you recognize it. Number 1, you
recognize that you don't really believe in Islam
and you want to truly believe in Islam,
then you figure out what's the problem.
Maybe you never studied the scripture.
Maybe you never got your doubts addressed.
Maybe you never researched the different religions of
the world to see which is the true
religion.
You know? Maybe somebody said something one day
that raised a doubt in you, and you
never answered that doubt, so it played in
your heart and it grew. So this is
a completely separate topic but a much more
important topic
that as Muslims,
we must make sure our iman is secure,
that we have conviction in Islam.
And if we do not have conviction in
Islam, we must seek out the resources
and the means of of of gaining conviction
in Islam by clarifying our doubts,
by studying the proofs of Islam, by learning
why the Quran is the word of Allah,
the proofs of prophet Muhammad, the true prophet,
and then once your conviction enters your heart,
inshallah,
then then that will protect you from nifaq.
Right? So nifaq is a matter of faith,
not a matter of intentions.
May Allah save us from,
from nifaq, and,
we'll be able to identify
everything bad which is within or outside.
And as we draw towards the end of
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Now we are going
to go for final duar.
Everyone,
and I hope today's session has been,
like of immense benefit for you for all
of you.
Glory is to you, oh, Allah,
and praises to you. I bear witness that
there is none worthy of worship but you.
I seek your forgiveness
and repent to you.
I close here.