Ismail Kamdar – Code of Conduct #11 Righteous Company

Ismail Kamdar
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The importance of balancing socializing and creating a clear culture of duty is emphasized in the Dawa process. It is crucial to find a partner and avoid harming one's personality. The speaker emphasizes the need to maintain healthy relationships and find a connection with the natural world. The importance of finding a connection with others is also emphasized.

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			Salam alaykum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh Alhamdulillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah. As we come
towards the tail end of this course, I want to thank you all for going along with me on this
journey, and for giving me your time and your attention. The last three qualities that we are going
to cover over the remaining videos in the series are the qualities of your qualities related to how
you deal with other people.
		
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			So, the bulk of this program focused on internal qualities. The rest of this program focuses on
qualities of how you deal with other people. And that is so proud, spending time in the company of
the righteous Naseeha being open to sincere counsel and feedback and the outcome, being willing to
work with others for the sake of Allah. So today, we are going to look at the concept of SAPA
righteous companionship, the importance of spending time in the company of the righteous. And
generally, when the scholars speak about Sahaba, they tend to speak about either your teachers or
your friends. I'm actually going to cover this from three different angles, three types of righteous
		
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			companionship that you need, if you want to be successful
		
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			in the AF era, and in your Dawa three types of righteous companionship, your teachers, your friends,
and your spouse. That's the one a lot of people neglect or forget or don't really think about the
importance of
		
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			if you are going to dedicate your life to Dawa,
		
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			you need the support of a righteous spouse, an unrighteous spouse could derail your entire mission.
So we're going to talk a bit about that today as well.
		
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			So, understand that as as human beings, we are social animals, we have the need to socialize, to
spend time in the company of other people. But at the same time, we are influenced by those whom we
spend time in the company we have the most right we are influenced by the company. And when you are
doing the hour, you are spending time in the company of people who have wrong beliefs you have
		
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			wrong worldviews wrong understandings. Now you are spending time with your company to call them
towards a better understanding.
		
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			You have to ensure that when you are doing Dawa, you are the one who is influencing others and not
being influenced by them. Meaning the people you're doing Dawa to are not your close companions and
not your close friends. They are people who you are calling to a better way. If you take them as
your close friends, then that switches the dynamic dynamics. And they become the ones who are
calling you to wherever they are.
		
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			So you have to be very careful, you're on one hand you have to be you have to meet with people who
you disagree with in order to do Dawa, because that's what Dawa is. But you need to balance this
out. With spending time with socializing word with learning from an in being influenced by righteous
people. So that the time you spend in the company of the righteous, that is what shapes you. That's
what shaped your beliefs, your worldview, your personality, your character, your manners, your
commitment to the deen, it is shaped by spending time in the company of the righteous. And that
powers you to do Dawa to others.
		
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			And it's important that you understand this balance and you find this balance in your life. So for
example, if you are going out for a week of Dawa in another country and you spend that week for
example, in a non Muslim country, meeting with atheists and Christians and liberals every day to
call them towards Islam. You need to balance that out with going to the masjid, spending time with
the Oklahoma spending time with the righteous so that you do not become influenced by the people you
are trying to call. Because if you're only spending time with those people and not spending time
with the righteous, then there is a fear that some of their beliefs could bleed into your
		
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			understanding of the world.
		
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			So righteous companionship is crucial for success in dealing with dunya and for success in Dawa and
it's going to go through some of the evidences for this from the Quran and Sunnah. Before explaining
why I've divided this chapter into three sections, right? So in the Quran, in two different places
in the Quran, including Surah Alkaff, Allah subhanaw taala tells the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa
salam and by extension
		
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			All of the believers be content with spending time in the company of those who worship Allah morning
and evening, desiring his face or desiring His pleasure, his or his pleasure. And do not turn your
eyes away from them designing the glitter of this world and do not obey those or do not obey the
person whose heart has become heedless of Allah's remembrance, because he follows his desires and
his priorities are confused. So this verse is different versions, different. Similar wordings are
mentioned in different places in the Quran. was big enough, circa Alladhina, yet honorable whom you
remember, spend your time patiently or be content or be consistently in the company of those who
		
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			remember Allah morning and evening. And the reason for revelation is some of the new Zulu of this
verse is that during the modern era, the chiefs of Makkah who are not Muslim, word, Mark Rasulullah,
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam for spending time in the company of the poor, and the weak, so
Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam out of his humility, and his love for all of the believers
and treating all the believers equally. He
		
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			he showed us and lead by example, by spending quality time with those whom the leaders of the
community looked down upon. So in his in his gatherings, you will find him spending time closely
with Bilal Rajala. And chewy volumi radula Wahoo. And Yasser, even Amar Rajala, who, and these
people, righteous and great people in our eyes, were looked down upon by the leaders of Makkah as
being poor, of being from other races as being from lowly tribes. And so they began to mock the
Prophet vodice. And say that as long as you're hanging out with these people, you're not going to
listen to what you're saying. You need to distance yourself from them if you want us to listen to
		
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			what you are saying. Right, some of them going as far to say that I'm not going to follow the same
way of life as these people. If you're really serious about preaching to us, you need to create some
distance here, that Allah revealed his work versus saying that you must spend time in the company of
the righteous and don't listen to those who are calling you to other ways. So these verses of the
Quran emphasize the importance of spending time in a company of the righteous that even the prophets
Allah ism was told to remain in the company of the righteous even though he was the most righteous
human to ever live on this planet. And we know that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
		
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			in many Hadees he called us to choose our friends carefully. He said our Raju Allah, Dini,
hollyball, Ian's or Alia, that every person follows a religion of their closest friends, so be very
careful whom you take as a close friend. And he gave the example that your friend, righteous friend
is like a perfect perfumes salesman, that
		
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			even if you don't buy something from them, you come home from the shop smelling nice. And a bad
friend is like a blacksmith. Even if you don't buy something from them, you come home from the shop
with dirt on your clothes, meaning that your friends have an effect on you without you even
realizing it. Just like walking into a perfect perfume shop has an effect on you without you
realizing it, and walking into a dirty shop who has an effect on you without you realizing it, your
friends are the same. So there are many evidences from the Quran and Sunnah to call us towards
spending time in the company of the righteous. And as a student of knowledge as a Dao II, this
		
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			begins with your teachers, it is important to seek out righteous teachers and to spend time in their
company and to observe them and to learn not just from their knowledge, but from their manners,
their character, their spirituality, their relationship with Allah, all of this. And this is why
seeking knowledge is better done in person than online. Because when you spend time with someone in
person, you get to know who they really are. And you get to learn from their character you get to
learn from them manage to get to learn from their habits, you get to emulate them on a deeper level.
So as students of knowledge, we must seek out righteous teachers and spend time in their company and
		
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			observe them and try to be like them. Now, one of the traps I mentioned in this chapter,
		
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			is that often on the part of seeking righteous teachers,
		
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			one of two things ends up happening that derail a person's journey of knowledge. The first is
discovering that your teacher is not righteous, that your teacher is a hypocrite that your teacher
is preaching one thing and practicing something else. And this can be very dishonest.
		
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			atoning for the dark IE or the student of knowledge. The other is discovering that your teacher is
trying to be righteous, but he may have some private sins, they may have some secret sins that you
somehow stumbled upon, because you spent a lot of time with him.
		
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			So we need to address these two things. Right? Let's start with the secret since first, what happens
if you discover that your teacher has some secrets and so your teacher is righteous, they try their
best to be righteous, they pray five times a day to do everything. But when they are alone, there
may be something haram that they do. And you only discovered it by mistake, because you spend a lot
of time in a company and traveled with them or something like that. Well, in this case, as long as
their sin is private, and between them and Allah and it's not harming anyone besides them, it's not.
		
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			It's not something that's going to cause injustice to other believers. You should conceal their sin
and make dua to Allah to forgive them. Because the reality is, nobody alive today that I know of, is
sinless, right? We all have our weaknesses, we all have our flaws. We all have our secret weaknesses
that only Allah knows about. And the default is if you discover somebody secret mistakes, you advise
them privately, you seek Allah's forgiveness for them, and you conceal their sense. Those are the
three things that you do, advise them privately, make dua to Allah to forgive them and conceal their
sins. That's the default. That's the norm.
		
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			The only time I would ever advise making decisions known to the public is if it is affecting other
people's lives, if it is affecting other people's lives. So for example, if they are stealing from
people, if they are conning people, if they are abusing people, if they are sexually abusing people.
In all of these cases, you're not dealing with someone's private sense. You are dealing with someone
who is causing harm to the Muslim community, while pretending to be one of its leaders. This case,
yes, they need to be exposed, obviously, first, you try advising them privately. You're trying to
get them to repent, but it becomes known that they don't care. They don't want to repent, they don't
		
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			want to change. They're using the deen in this way, then yes, you should expose them in that case
only. But the default when you find out about someone's secret or private sins, is that you conceal
their sins and you ask Allah to forgive them. And if you have to advise them do so privately.
Because the reality is there is no such thing. As a perfect person. Everyone has their flaws and
their struggles and the parts of their life that they are trying to overcome. Now going to the other
side.
		
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			The sad reality is that today, you will find many so called Teachers of Islam, and do art and
scholars who may be deviants, or hypocrites or sellouts. Right, you may be people who preach a wrong
understanding of Islam, or call towards themselves, right? People who put themselves on a pedestal.
		
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			Very often people who do that, at some point in their life or another, they end up claiming to be
the money or starting their own religion or claiming to be a prophet. It's a very dangerous path to
go down.
		
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			So it may be that you discover something like this about your teachers. And the reality is that in
the field of Dawa, you will meet every type of people, you will meet the righteous, you will meet
the hypocrites, you will meet the sellouts, you will meet every type of people. My advice. If you
discover that one of your teachers is genuinely misguided, the understanding of Islam is corrupt or
their intentions are corrupt. They are egotistical or hedonistic or using this Deen for the sake of
dunya. If you are discovered, if you discover that one of your teachers is a flat out hypocrite,
then you should leave with that teacher and seek out a better teacher.
		
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			Because this knowledge is a light, this knowledge is spiritual nourishment. You cannot get spiritual
nourishment through an impure source. So yes, while most teachers have the secret sins that they are
ashamed of and that they are trying to overcome. That's different from someone who is a flat out
hypocrite a hypocrite is someone who does not care. They preach something and they practice the
opposite. And they don't care about it. It doesn't. It doesn't weigh on the conscious, because they
don't see this knowledge as something that they should be benefiting from. They see this knowledge
simply as a means to what some worldly goal
		
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			in the time of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam one of the Sahaba in his interesting journey
to Islam had to deal with this. The famous Sahabi Salman al Farsi, right so Salman was
		
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			Born in Persia, into a Zoroastrian family, and he met a Christian priest and converted to
Christianity. And he travelled to study with different priests and to learn the religion from them.
		
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			And he discovered after spending a few years with one of his teachers, that the teacher was a con
man who were using the religion to take people's money and didn't practice what he preached. And he
eventually left that teacher and found a more righteous teacher, who taught him the correct and
proper understanding of the message of Jesus of the time. Eventually, when that teacher passed away,
he redirected him to seek out the land of palm trees, because that's where the next prophet will
come. So he made his way to Medina, where he met the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
took his shahada became one of the sahaba.
		
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			The lesson I want us to extract from your is when he discovered that one of his teachers was a con
artist, and someone who was using the religion for personal gain. He didn't leave the religion, he
left that teacher and sought out a better teacher. That's an important point, because nowadays, you
will find that some people, they use this as an excuse to abandon the religion. I have been many
people who stopped practicing Islam. And you ask them, Why do you say something like, Oh, my teacher
was a hypocrite. You know, they preach wanting, but they practice something else. Somebody else's
hypocrisy does not give you justification to abandon the entire religion, abandoned that individual.
		
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			That's fine, abandoned that individual if you feel he's a hypocrite. But why abandoned the religion.
That's not a flow of the religion, that's a flow of the person.
		
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			So we should follow in someone else's footsteps when he discovered that his teacher was a fake a
liar, a hypocrite, a con artist, he abandoned the teacher, and sought out a another righteous
teacher within the same tradition. And we should do the same if we had to discover this about our
teachers. At the end of the day, we seek out righteous teachers, not perfect teachers, because
nobody's perfect. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Every son of Adam makes
mistakes. And the best of those who make mistakes are those who regularly repent. So what you
shouldn't be looking for is a teacher who is sincere, a teacher who has good knowledge, a teacher
		
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			who tries their best to worship Allah and live a life of righteousness, who conceals their sins, who
is ashamed of their sins and who's who is humble, and has Islamic character. This is the kind of
person you should you should seek out to study under, if they have some personal private flaws, that
is between them and Allah and simply ask Allah to forgive them for that, because nobody is perfect.
		
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			Moving on to the second category of sofa of righteous companionship, the one we don't speak about
enough is your spouse, the person you barely understand that the person you marry. If they are not
supportive of your Dawa, they can completely derail your dollar efforts. If you as a da e, marry
someone who only wants dunya and their goals are related to dunya and you just want the fancy house
and the fancy car and the fancy vacations. This will completely derail your Dawa. You will not be
able to dedicate your life to serving Allah as dean, if you are married to someone whose life is all
about the dunya and we have precedent for this in the Quran and the Sunnah. We know that when
		
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			Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam started to receive a lot of wealth, after conquer, conquering
Haber. And Hussein welt began to flow into the Ummah, some of the wives of Rasulullah sallallahu
sallam, they began to ask for higher quality life, because he could afford it now. And the Prophet
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he received revelation from Allah, telling his wives that you are not
like other woman, if you want this dunya you will be divorced. And you will give you the dunya and
there'll be no grudge against you. But if you want to be married to the Prophet, then you need to
accept a simple lifestyle. Because the Prophet needs and his family need to set the precedent they
		
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			need to be the example they need to be the role model. There's nothing wrong with the average person
living a fancy life according to their means. But the prophet and his wife and his children, they
need to be role models of humanity and simple living and righteousness. So they were given a choice
to stay married to the prophets, Allah, Islam and live a simple life or to be divorced in good
faith, and to be given the luxuries of this dunya all of them being the righteous woman that they
were, all of them chose the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and a simple life. Another example
of this is the story of Ibrahim alayhi salam and his son is now on the Salah. So, Prophet Ibrahim
		
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			alayhi salam he lived his his wife Harjo
		
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			And the baby is smart eel in the desert.
		
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			And he didn't see them for many years, is my email or Instagram grows up in the desert of Makkah. He
gets married to one of the local woman.
		
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			And Ibrahim Ali Salam comes to visit him. And when Ibrahim alayhi salam comes to visit him, he is
not at home, just his wife is there. So she invites him into the home not knowing who he is, is an
elderly man. So of course treating him with respect and honor that he gets should be treated with.
She invites him into the home. And he asked her about her life and her condition. And she begins to
complain. She complains, we live a poor life. We live a simple life, we have so much of a house of
hardship, and she complains about everything.
		
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			And so Prophet Ibrahim alayhi salam tells us when your husband comes home, give him salam from me
and tell him to change his doorstep. So he leaves prefer the smart eel Elisa Lam comes home. He
notices some things about off the Aussies wife and someone visited you. She describes the old man
and what she said and what he said and the conversation. And then he said, Did he give you any
advice? She said yes, he advised me to change my doorstep. Prophet is my Isa. I'm saying that was my
father. And your doorstep is my wife. He's ordering me to divorce you so go back to your family. To
Prophet Ismail Islam divorced her. He married somebody else. Why later, Ibrahim alayhi salam comes
		
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			to visit again. And his mind is not at home. So his new wife invites him in Rahimi to the house he
asked her how she's doing. And she begins to be grateful to Allah. She expressed her gratitude.
She's at Hamdulillah. We have everything we need. And she shows contentment. She shows piety, she
shows dedication to a husband and his cause. So O'Brien, well, Islam says, What kind of food do you
eat? She says meat? What do you drink, she says water instead of hamdulillah for meat and water. May
Allah bless your meat and your water. And then he advises her and says, When your husband comes
home, give him salam from me, and tell him to keep his doorstep. So again, the same thing happens
		
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			and smile comes home, he asked his wife, did anyone visit you? And she said, Yes, a very good
looking old man came to see me. And he asked about you. And I told him about you. And he asked about
what our livelihood and I told him have a good life. Didn't he asked her? What advice did that he
gave. He said he advised you to keep your doorstep.
		
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			He said that was my father and you are the doorstep, he has ordered me to stay married to you.
		
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			Now, some points about this integration. Some people may take generations like this out of context
and abuse them.
		
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			It's not normal for a father, to be able to tell his son to divorce his wife or to stay married to
his wife. In general, this isn't the norm in general man chooses his own wife, and it's entirely up
to him. No father should take this Hadees to mean that you have the right to just bully your son
into marriage or divorce. You don't have that right? Rather,
		
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			this is a very specific case. And it's specific because it's my eel Ali salaam, with a prophet of
Allah. As a prophet of Allah, he needed to be married to a righteous woman who would support his
Dawa and his father already had experience with another family member of what happens when a prophet
is not married to a righteous person. And how that derails that Allah? Because Prophet Ibrahim
alayhi salam had a nephew, Prophet, lute Elisa,
		
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			and Prophet lute, Allah Islam was one of the first people to believe in Ibrahim Al Islam and follow
him. And he was sent to another city to do the our, the city of the homosexuals, right Sodom and
Gomorrah as it's called in the Bible.
		
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			And his wife was not supportive of his Dawa, his wife was unrighteous. And that caused a lot of
problems for him. And eventually, his wife was destroyed and punished with the people. So Ibrahim
Ali Islam had already seen in his lifetime, how having a unrighteous wife could damage the Dawa of
the Prophet.
		
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			So he wanted to make sure that his son has a wife that is supportive of his Dawa and not a wife
that's going to derail his Dawa. And so, he advised or rather he commanded his son to divorce the
wife who was all about the dunya and he told him to keep the wife who was all about the deal.
		
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			And in this is a lesson for everyone involved in that one.
		
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			Make sure you are married to someone who is supportive of the work that you do.
		
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			Because if you are married to someone who
		
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			only cares about this dunya
		
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			they will not let you do that.
		
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			Or they will at least turn into a money making scheme or they will find some way to corrupt what you
are doing.
		
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			Understand the Dawa is hard work. It is mentally draining. It is emotionally draining, it is
spiritually draining. You want to come home to someone loving? Who is going to be supportive, who is
going to be there for you, who is going to push you to do your best. You don't want to come home to
someone who's complaining and saying, Oh, you're out there doing Dawa. Where's the money? Why are we
not going for vacation, why we don't have a fancy car. You don't want to come home to someone like
that. If for the average person, it's fine. For the average person to have a spouse who's who wants
a fancy house or fancy vacation, it's not a bad thing. But if your life is all about the data, then
		
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			your spouse's life also needs to be all about the data. You have to have this in common. Otherwise,
they are going to get in your way, and you will need to change your doorstep.
		
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			So remember this saying of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he said everything in this
world is has some kind of value. But the most valuable thing in this world is a righteous spouse. So
make sure that you marry right. Because that can make or break your Dawa.
		
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			The third and final part of having righteous companionship is to ensure that you have friends who
are righteous and who are supportive of your Dawa and even better involved in the Dawa themselves.
So that when you need to relax when you need to hang out when you need some guy time. You are
hanging out with people who are do art. You're hanging out with people who are righteous you're
hanging out with people will not make you do anything haram will not try to pressurize you in
anything haram will not try to get you away from the Dawa. No, they are your support circle. Your
friends are very important.
		
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			You need friend time. You need to hang out with people. You need to socialize with people. But you
need to make sure that they are the kind of people who support your Dawa.
		
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			And now as for how many friends you should have, this is really a matter of personality and personal
preference. For some people, their spouse is enough. That's their best friend. They don't want to
anyone else. Some people need two or three friends, some need 20 Friends, it really depends on the
nature of what's created, you would the point isn't how many friends you should have. That's
entirely up to you. The point is the people who have influence over you, the people you are hanging
out with the people who are closest to you should be people who are righteous, and who call to
righteousness and who are supportive of your Dawa and not people who are distracting you from the
		
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			Dawa.
		
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			And yes, this may mean that sometimes you need to cut out people from your life who have become a
distraction. Who don't want you involved in Islamic work. Who think that you wasting time time that
could be spent making money wasting it and doing this Islamic work? No you need to do sometimes you
may have to cut people off. If you want to take the path of righteousness. cutting them off doesn't
mean that you don't speak to them anymore, but that you don't get so close to them, or you don't
allow them to be so close to you, that they influence you. So you keep a bit of distance from them
if you feel they are influencing you negatively.
		
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			It's also important to note the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said whoever is patient with the
people and mixes with them, and bears the harm is better than the one who does not mix with the
people. Understand that when you're mixing with people, harm can come from that. Some people choose
not to have friends because they are afraid of being betrayed.
		
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			And the reality is in the Dawa, you can be betrayed happens to everyone. People may get jealous of
you, you may become more successful in them or more famous than them. And they may become jealous of
that they may resent it. It may be misunderstandings, differences of opinion. Shakedowns, always
looking for a way to break up righteous friends. You need to be careful of this and work on
maintaining your friendships. And if you feel a certain person is causing more harm than good, then
it may be time to distance yourself from them.
		
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			So to conclude, your teachers, your mentors, your friends, your spouses, these are all people who
shape your personality who make you into the best or worse version of yourself.
		
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			And you need them to be righteous because if they are righteous, they will notice when you are
slipping and they will correct they will advise you. You will offer Yunus
		
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			See how you need to be humble and open to correction so that you don't ever go astray. So you
actually get the benefit of having righteous friends.
		
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			These are the people who will share with your ideas, they will share with you resources in context,
they will motivate you to be your best they will lift you up during difficult times, they will
remind you that this is all for the sake of Allah and that life is a test. And you need to find
righteous friends and ensure that you spend time with them regularly. Because this is one of the
most important ways to keep yourself going on the part of the hour. I'll end with a personal story.
It happened to me earlier this year.
		
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			So anyone who knows my life knows that 2023 has been a very difficult year for me. I've been through
lots of trials over the past one and a half years. Honestly, since 2020. Right now, it's been trial
after trial. And this year specifically took its toll on me. And I live in a part of the world where
I don't really have, unfortunately, I don't really have much friends, right? I'm kind of alone.
Yeah.
		
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			So I was really burned out with the trials of life. And I didn't have any close friends to talk to
about it. So earlier this year, I took a trip to Istanbul, we a lot of my friends live and we a lot
of my other friends were in town to attend the conference. And I spent a week there hanging out with
some of my friends
		
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			hoping to benefit from the righteous company.
		
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			And Alhamdulillah I did.
		
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			And one conversation especially really helped me to get to rebuild my strength and rebuild my
determination. And get me back into the Dawa. And I was hanging out one of my friends who also had a
lot of trials in his life, a very difficult life. And we both were talking about everything we've
been through over the years, we actually hadn't seen each other for six years. He was the first time
we're meeting in six years, but it's like we've never been away from each other. And we were talking
about the child's in our lives.
		
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			And I told him, that's life. It's a test. Right? And he told me something that really changed my
perspective. He said, Yes, life's a test. But it's an even bigger test for those who have chosen the
path of Dawa.
		
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			That hit me. Because I wasn't thinking in that manner. That yes, life is a test. But if you've
chosen the part of our life is an even bigger test, because you've chosen to do the work of the
prophets. And the Prophets had the hardest test and then those closers didn't have the hardest test,
right? The Prophet sallallahu sallam said the most severely tested people are the prophets and then
those closest to them, and then those closest to them. Need the more righteous you are, the more you
involved in serving the dean, the harder the test of life are going to be. And sometimes we forget,
sometimes we feel like ways the ease, when will they ease come when things go our way. That's how I
		
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			was feeling hamdulillah spending a day in the company of that brother really helped me to reorient
ate my mind, get my product priorities straight, realize what's important and to remain focused on
the Dawa, regardless of what goes wrong in my own life.
		
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			And that was the benefit of righteous company 100 that week, I spent time in the company of many
righteous people who put my trials into perspective, I spoke to them about what's going on in my
life. Each of them gave me different advice. And whatever advice they gave me, it benefited me. And
one of the brothers who I spend time with this year to talk about my issues. He asked me why I'm not
involved in the public dour, as much as I should be. Meaning Why am I not giving lectures in public?
You're putting up videos on YouTube. I'm working more behind the scenes, right, which is basically
what I've done over the past few years. When I was in my 20s, I will give a lot of public lectures.
		
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			Now in my late 30s, I tend to focus more on behind the scenes work in the data field.
		
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			And I kind of purposely moved away from giving public lectures because I was afraid for my
intentions and more importantly, I was afraid of failure. I'm afraid that fame would be too much of
a test for me. So I kind of purposely sabotage my own Dawa. Like when I started getting too popular
on any social media channels. I stopped using them because I was afraid of my off the power that
comes with fame. So I told him this. And this brother was speaking to very righteous and active
person in the dollar probably one of the best values in the world today. May Allah bless him. He
gave me some very important advice. He told me that's the wrong way of thinking. He said you should
		
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			do everything you can for the Dawa. And if Allah gives you Fein, you should use it for the sake of
the data and you should use it for spreading the data.
		
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			Because the more people that are listening to you, the more further the data will reach. So don't
		
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			hold yourself back. Don't stop yourself. Don't be an obstacle to your own success because you are
afraid of what trials will come with success, but rather do everything you can.
		
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			And I took his advice to heart and that's why I've gotten back to making these videos. So
hamdulillah I'm still doing my behind the scenes work at working in management and advisory
positions for many Islamic organizations around the world. I'm still doing that. But I'm also making
videos I'm also giving public lectures I'm also trying to get back into doing public Dawa. And I
mentioned these personal stories to just make you realize how important it is to have righteous
companions.
		
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			Because at hamdulillah for these friends, if it wasn't for them, I may have I may have really lost
my readers here. I may have just given up and just focused on dunya.
		
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			Because the trials I'm dealing with, you know,
		
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			sometimes the solution to those trials are entirely dunya away. And then you get so caught up in
trying to fix your problems you forget about what's more important which is serving Allah's Deen.
		
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			So Hamdulillah I think Allah did have righteous friends who tell me honestly and openly rely on
wrong and who correct me and they'll show me how to be better. And I highly recommend that every
single one of you involved in the Dawa, that you find similar friends, and you befriend people like
that, so that you have people in your life, who keep you going to keep you focused, who play an
important role in ensuring that your life is for the sake of Allah and that you do not go astray
from that. So ensure that your teachers and your mentors are righteous, your friends are righteous,
your spouse are righteous. choose very carefully. The people you allow to have a position of
		
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			influence over you because they can really make or break you. Hope you found this beneficial.
JazakAllah Iran will offer the Awana on your hamdulillahi rabbil aalameen