This lecture took place on 3 July 2011 in Bangalore, India.
Shaykh Abu Muawiyah Ismail Kamdar discussed the different attitudes humans have towards God and explained which relationship is correct and which is the ideal that we should strive towards.
Ismail Kamdar – God and You – What is Your Relationship – Pt 2
AI: Summary ©
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The speakers discuss the importance of fulfilling God's obligations and helping others achieve their goals. They emphasize the need for acceptance and time management in relationships with God, as hardships and negative emotions can affect everyone. The speakers also touch on the holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy to the holy spirit.
The speakers discuss the importance of fulfilling God's obligations and helping others achieve their goals. They emphasize the need for acceptance and time management in relationships with God, as hardships and negative emotions can affect everyone. The speakers also touch on the holy holy holy holy holy holy holy holy to the holy spirit.
AI: Summary ©
be upon him. He said that when Allah is pleased with someone from monkey slaves, or male or female, a lot of times the angel Gabriel about it. And the angel Gabriel tells all the other angels about it. And then all of them love this person. Because God loves this person. And slowly this love the sense until the people on this world, the people on this earth also begin to love him. This is the effects if God loves you. If God loves you, over time, people will love you. And the angels will love you. And even as was mentioned earlier, even the fish and the birds will pray for you.
How do we earn the love of God? Then this takes us to our final question, how do we work our way towards the ideal relationship with God? Obviously the first step if you're not a Muslim, I asked you to study Islam. Or if you already have to become a Muslim, don't waste time about it. convert to Islam in sha Allah, submit to your Creator. That's the first step. If you have taken this step. You need you now need to earn the love of God. How do you do this? Allah tells us this in the Quran, he says, in a boon Allah,
Allah, see Omar Ahmed, say to the people, that if you truly love Allah, you know just claiming to love God you truly love your Creator, then follow me meaning follow the Prophet Muhammad, follow the Prophet Mohammed, your Allah, Allah will love you. If you want a love to love you, if you want God to love you, if you want your Creator to love you, you have to follow His prophets, you have to follow the way of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, the greatest human being to walk the face of this earth. And I say that with 100% conviction, having studied his life story multiple times, and study the life stories of many other people. He was the greatest human to walk the face of this
earth. He was the best of character, he was the best of husbands. He was the best of fathers, he was the most amazing person whose life I've ever read. He is a person what following you follow Him, God will love you. He will. And his lead generation with a prophet peace be upon him said that God says he says that nothing you do brings you closer to God than fulfilling your obligations. Many if you want to be close to God, the first thing you need to do is fulfill all your obligations towards him. After that, you want to get even closer, do you extra Do you know you're praying five times a day, start praying the extra players start playing the late night play the piano, or the tahajjud prayer,
do these extra things, you will get even closer to God until as the nation continues that everyday you do
it as if God is making you do it. He's telling you what to do. He showed you what to do, and then enjoying that stage. If you are that close to God, then whatever you say, whatever you need to God, He will answer it because he loves you. And if he loves you, he's gonna answer your prayer. Now I need to divert again a little bit because a lot of this it sounds, you know, very good, very nice. But it's also a condition here that we need to realize before we take this jump. That condition is that as I said, life is a test. So you've passed the test of knowing what is the right path, and you've passed the test of choosing the right path. Your next test after this is that God is going to
put hardships in the way of you going across the spot. Okay, he is going to put hardships in your life, to test you to see how sincere you really are. And there is an equation that says the people who had the hardest test were the prophets. We know the story of Jesus, the story of Abraham. Muslims are hopefully many of the non Muslim know the story of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. The hardships we go through when they were on the same level as them. They went through hardships even worse than we can ever imagine. That he said the people who had the hardest test were the prophets after them, those were the most pious. They are the next people who have the hardest
tests. So this world I am not going to beat around the bush about this amazing sound too rosy, this world is a test. If you choose the right path you are going to be tested. If you don't choose the right path. You already failed the test. But you will be tested. God says this in the beginning of Sudan Caboose, he says has he been natural? You
don't think that you just say we believe and that's it. You will be left alone. He says no. We tested those who came before you should we can expose the sincere ones from the liars. To expose the sincere ones from the liars. God already knows who's truthful and who's lying. But we'll ask ourselves to realize you know that we are
Straight Path or not, we have picture tests.
And one of the beautiful things about Islam, a true believer in Islam, even the test he got, he had the blessing.
The Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said that the fear of the believer is amazing. It's surprising in that whatever happens is good for him.
If something goes wrong in his life, and he's patient, and he passed the test that is good for him, he gets rewarded for that. If something goes wrong in your life, and your patient for that God forgives you for some of your sins, He raises your status, you become closer to him, isn't that a good thing? It's a good thing. And if things are going right in his life, and he's still grateful to God, he doesn't forget about God. This is also a good thing. So whether things are going right or things are going wrong, if you have extremely relationship with God, and you are doing the right thing, it's always a good thing. It's always a good thing, whatever happens to you is a good thing.
If something goes wrong in your life, if you try your best to pass this test, then something good will definitely come out of it, you will see the benefits of it. The best story about this which we Muslims are believing no off is a story of the proper use of peace be upon him. Those of you who do not know this story, including our non Muslim brothers and sisters, is in the Quran is an entire chapter called the chapter of use of the chapter of Joseph, the leader chapter in his life. His brothers tried to kill him. He just take it as a sleeve, he gets thrown in jail for not committing any crime.
In Jamie meet someone who becomes the friend of the ruler, and this person introduces him to the ruler, and he becomes the minister of the ruler. And finally he becomes the ruler himself. However, what happened is Bradley Steiger came in, he got taken away and became a slave, he got thrown in jail. Why did God allow this to happen? So he can become the ruler.
This is how God works. And this is what we Muslims believe. And this is the reason why Muslims have the lowest suicide rate in the world. Our relationship with God keeps us strong enough to what goes wrong in life, anything goes wrong, God will lead to some benefit behind it. anything goes wrong, God will be there must be somebody in it. And this is the relationship we all have to strive towards. We all need to work towards this, whether we are Muslim, or whatever we are, whatever religion we follow, don't think that my relationship with God is perfect. We are all humans, we all make mistakes, we all commit sins. You know, as long as we are trying our best to please God, as
long as we are trying our best to be good, then he will overlook our mistakes. And by the will of God, we might be counted amongst his friends. But if we say you know, I'm a sinful person, I'm not even gonna bother trying, well, then don't expect God to overlook your mistakes because you're not making an effort. If you make an effort, even if you still have sins and mistakes, God will look at your effort and for this reason, he might forgive you. So in conclusion, I would like to say that for each and every one of us, the main purpose of this topic is not just to listen to a lecture, but to introspect. Think about it, think about everything that was said, think about what role does your
creative play in your life, if you have not play a big role in your life, it's time to start changing the way you live your life, because 90% of the of the most of the world are using 95% of the world already existed our Creator agreed with our Creator exists is just a handful of people who are atheists. So majority of us agree that He exists, are we giving him his rights? Are we doing what we need to do? And when you fulfill the rights of God, you will fulfill the rights of humanity? Do you know why? Because to fulfill the rights of God, you have to be a practicing Muslim, being a practicing Muslim means to be good to everybody. That's part of preserving the rights of God. So it
It leads to that it leads to it that better feeling God's rights, you can only do that by fulfilling the rights of others as well. So don't think by getting involved in this, you have to start neglecting your father, or neglecting your mother or neglecting your wife know, fulfilling their rights is part of fulfilling God's rights as well.
So, in conclusion, I pray to our Creator, to God Almighty, that He guides each and every one of us, not just to submit to Him, but to reach a level where we become his friends who we become from those who as you mentioned the Quran when they die, she's in
the fringe of allowing the die. They don't have any fear more, they said, the angels will come to them, give them good news. And he says Moody's Olia, he says they are those who have correct belief, and they have piety, they have God consciousness. So we all want this
To actually die in a state that you are happy to die and still being scared to die. And the only way to do this is to improve our relationship with God as our Creator, to help each of us reach that level, and to put guidance in the hearts of each and every one of us. And to make this lecture, inshallah beneficial to each and every one of us in peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of God, and all of us who follow Israel with righteousness was salam wa Alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatu
de la culture that was really informative and commendable speech, and your insights really made us we're thinking cap and inshallah we'll be doing introspection zones. Now we move forward for a very interesting session of the event, the q&a session to drive more benefit for our present here today. In the limited time available, we would like the following guidelines, or news to be observed during the question and answer session.
questions asked should be on the topic only questions not relevant to the topic will not be entertained? kindly state your question briefly. And to the point, this is a question and answer time and not a lecture or debate time. Only one question at a time may be asked for your second question, you will have to go at the back of the line again and await your second chance for questioning. Two lines have been provided for the questions from the audience, one for the gems in the middle of the
ground. And second one for the ladies.
Please stand in the queue. At one of the mics if you wish to put a question to the speaker and speak into the mic only when the mic assistant had the mic to you. We will allow one question on each of the mics. Alternatively, within questions on the slips, which are available from our volunteers on the sides will be given seven preference. After the open questions on the mics are answered by the speaker.
In the interest of not having any time wasted on all relevant issues. And to ensure more educative, and an interesting q&a session, our decision to allow or disallow irrelevant questions will be final. We will prefer a non Muslim question over Muslim questioner. So it's 100 requests to all of our Muslim Brothers here to give chance to our non Muslim Brothers for asking questions. In the interest of getting a proper and clear answer from the speaker, kindly state your name and profession before putting forth your question. So may we have the first question from our other side? Brother, could you please mention your name and profession and ask your question? Somebody for
the law? Student? My name is Ahmed. Now I would like to ask how important is intention
while maintaining your relation with God? How important is intention? Just to repeat the question to make sure I understood it properly. He wants to know how important is the intention, your intention when it comes to maintaining your relationship with God? Is that the question is okay. Well,
essentially your relationship with God is primarily an internal thing. So it depends almost entirely on your intention. And in Islam. The primary condition for any deed to be acceptable is the intention led to be acceptable to God, the primary condition is that you have a sincere intention. You're not doing a good deed to show off, you're not doing a good good deed. So people think that you are a righteous and holy man, you are doing it for the sake of God. And that's the only way to create a relationship with God. if you for example, in human terms, if you are being good to your wife, just in front of your parents, your parents think you are good husband is not going to change
your relationship with your wife. So if you are doing your obligations towards God, just so people think you're a good Muslim, that's not gonna help you strengthen your relationship with God.
Okay, so the primary and the most important thing is to always be sincere. Always ask yourself, why am I doing this? Am I doing it? Because I want people to like me, or am I doing it because I want God to like me.
That is the most important thing. And some people are on the same point you bring up an issue that can wanting to go to Paradise. Is that the good intention or is that a bad intention? And the answer is it's a good intention was not a good intention God had mentioned in the Quran and he would not have mentioned it in the Bible and in many of the other scriptures and he would not have made it something that we desire the
Anybody do something we should be designing shows that wanting to go to Paradise is also a good intention. And it also will help you strengthen your relationship with God. Okay. Second question from sister side, please mention your name and profession.
Khadija, and I'm studying. My question is, when we lose something which we really love, we try to find it. But when I lose my Eman, why don't I try to find it?
How will I find it?
Generally, when people lose the man is to secure situations. The first is we didn't know. And the second is we don't know. Some people don't know, they are so caught up in their lives and what they are doing, they don't even realize that what they have doing has caused them to lose faith, or to build a relationship with the Creator. For such a person. Again, introspection is the only way to realize that you are wrong. Now there are many people who know that they are wrong. But there are certain things that are preventing them from coming, right? Firstly, the only way to get back your beliefs and to get back on the straight path is to make a sincere intention, and to pray to God and
to try and be a good Muslim. That's what you need to do. But, you know, for those prayers, many people are scared to do this. And maybe for variety of reasons. Somebody may be the whole lady not practicing Islam. And now they're scared, they start growing a beard, or they start doing a good job, the friends are gonna laugh at them, people are gonna point fingers at them, people are gonna call them extremists. And so this fear stops them, obviously shouldn't stop you. Because your relationship with God is more important in your relationship with people who laugh at you for worshipping Him. It's much more important. So those of us who are in a situation where we know
what's the right thing to do, we know that we are, you know, we have lost our relationship with our Creator. But we are scared because of what people will say. You need to think about it because no matter what you do, people won't be happy with you. No matter what you do, people won't be happy with you. There is an analogy in Islamic Society. Amongst Muslims is a very funny analogy that we always quote, that a father and son you're walking with a donkey.
And as he passed by a first group of people, the father was sitting on the donkey. So people look and see what the disrespectful what
that old man is. This is making his young son walk
off the donkey. Everybody is walking.
disrespectful child is making his father walk
the donkey in his writing. Then he said what kind of people are they think about the donkeys feedings? How can you tell it to people? So the boy decided to carry the donkey. The people say what is the donkey and
the rest of the story is simple. Whatever you do, don't expect everybody to be pleased with you. So focus on pleasing those who matter. And the person who matters the most is your Creator, on the Day of Judgment after we die. Nobody else matters. On that day, the God is and he would you your friends can help you, the friend who stopped you from growing your beard or stopped you from converting to Islam or giving you a job, he's not going to be able to save you on the Day of Judgment. So this is far more important that that individual, you become a practicing person. Obviously you remain kind and nice to others. And you try to bring them along with you. But if they don't come along with you,
God comes first. He always comes first before everybody else.
Next question from the other side. Salaam Alaikum. My name is Sonny I work in the IT sector. I have one question regarding certain types of people. There are the types of people who really want to improve their relationship with God. But it's just not possible because you know, urban lifestyle, you've always got deadlines, and lots of things to do. But for these type of people, whenever their relationship cannot improve, it hurts them. They really want to do something but they just can't because of the lifestyle, especially the urban lifestyle and the IT sector things are so tight. So how, how are these people going to tackle this issue? And what suggestions do you have for them to
improve their relationship, something that they really want to do but just can't
in a few words, where there's a will there's a way
but what you need to do is if you are serious about improving your relationship with God, you can make time for it. We have time management. Nowadays there are many websites, there are many courses, there are many books, the teacher time management, it's very important. I myself have a very busy day. I have a very busy schedule, but I make sure I make time for my wife, time for my kids time for work time for my Creator. You have to do this you have to learn time management. So people who are involved in
These fields that take a lot of time, you just need a bit of time management, you just need to set up a schedule. Okay? This is the prayer time, this is my work time. This is family time, and you stick to your schedule, you can make time you can find time it takes you to maybe sacrifice maybe some of your fun time, maybe my sacrifice some of your fun time. You know, sometimes people will say this, it really sometimes it's just an excuse. For example, I know some people who are give them a half an hour lecture CD to listen to, and you meet them one month later, I'm sorry, I just couldn't find time to listen to the lecture. But during the month, they watch the entire Lord of the Rings
trilogy, which is a nine and a half hour movie series three times. But he couldn't find time for half an hour. So many times is not that we can't find time is we don't make time. And it's up to us to sacrifice a bit of our fun time to sacrifice a bit of our spare time to focus on this because it is that if it is that important to you, you will find time you will make time just like you meet him to attend this. If you have such a busy lifestyle. You made time to attend a three hour lecture. Can't you make time to pray for half an hour in the entire day split up into five minutes, five minutes in the morning before sunrise, five minutes at lunchtime. Five minutes in the afternoon.
Five minutes in the evening and five minutes before going to bed.
It's just five minutes each you can make time is just a psychological barrier making you think that you can't.
Next question from Cisco side. I
am Fatima I'm a homemaker. Dotty I've been giving a dhaba to one of my friend. She accepts that she's doing wrong and she says like a fool Rahim Allah. Allah forgive me what we are the prophets are seldom anything they do Allah tala she quotes the hubby telling that a man who did Shahada will enter Jannah. So what's the point? How will I tackle
this, there's actually many ways to confirm this argument.
I want to first start off with
a bit of a
example of how this works. You see, you know somebody who's merciful? Or perhaps is your parents is a very loving Father, very merciful Father. He treats you nicely. He forgives you when you do wrong things.
Is it right for you to do wrong things? Because your father is nice? Does that give you the right to wrong things? Don't you feel guilty? I got such a good a nice father. How can I do things that displease him? Even if he's still not treating me badly? Don't you feel a guilt? So why when you come to our clinic, we don't feel guilty. We accept your Merciful Creator, who has given us so much in this world. Don't you feel guilty for not for doing sins? Don't you feel guilty for not doing the right thing? God is merciful. But there's a very fine line between mercy and being too soft. And so Allah has set guidelines where his mercy He is merciful to those who deserve His mercy. In one
verse, he says that God is his
most forgiving, Most Merciful.
But he's also more severe in his punishment.
The bottom line is, don't try to take advantage of God's mercy.
When you try to take advantage of God's mercy, you are literally playing with fire, the Hellfire, you're playing with it, you are trying to take advantage of God, what kind of a person tries to take advantage of God, legally as lowly to take advantage of another human being. And we are to make excuses and take advantage of God and see to make a joke. So this type of attitude, it is a very disgraceful attitude, and cheating are treated like a joke. And people who think they just really need to think to themselves for what they are doing. It is very, very wrong. It is insulting to the Creator, He is merciful to you and you decide to disobey Him because of that, shame on you. Shame on
you for thinking like that. Please, next question from brother side, smiley face am a student.
What does God ultimately gets when we pray five times it's true that we are saved from sins and ultimately, that's what God wants for us to go to heaven. But what does he ultimately get? When we pray five times and we first
as Muslims, we believe God doesn't need anything. And he doesn't benefit from us. If everybody in this world pray to God, he still be the perfect God. If nobody are, I pray to God used to be the perfect God. He wants us to pray for him. There's two levels to it. One is God side. One is our side. We as humans need to look at from our side. Okay, that God created us, he put us here we are here. We have
Given a mission, we need to do it for our sakes, for our own sake, we need to do it. from God's perspective. You know, people can ask questions, why bother creating in the first place? Why creed human beings? Why do you make me an alien? Why didn't he make my skin green? Why didn't he give me six hands? This is what God this is his business is not our business. We as Muslims need to we are Muslims, we have this belief. And we have this understanding that there are things about God, which he only understands why, because our minds are limited. Our knowledge is limited. Our intellect is limited. Every day we learning something new. Every day, we realize something we knew before was
wrong. But God is perfect. And so the limited can never grasp everything about the unlimited. The limit can never grasp everything about the infinite. If we did, we'd be God. If we understood God's every intention is every move everything he does, we had all his knowledge, we'd be God. But this relationship exists. And this is where the submission comes in. To accept that, okay, God has put me in the situation. God is most wise, he's most knowledgeable. He has created me he has put me here. It's now up to me to worship him. I don't have any say in the matter. If I don't worship him, I'll be in trouble. I am. It's not my right to tell him why. For example, in human terms, it's not the
school child's rights, because the principal, why is this the school uniform? Why can't that be the school uniform? No, we don't ask these questions to people of authority, because we assume you understand that they know better than us. So we assume people of authority know better than us in these situations.
God was all knowledgeable or wise, he knows better than us in all situations. So when you worship God, he doesn't benefit. We benefit. We get inner peace, we get fulfilled, we get this satisfaction, we get this relationship with him. Our hearts become happy, our lives become purposeful. We now begin to live life in such a way that even when things go wrong, we are still contained. We are still happy. It it helps us in every way. So this is for our good is not for God to God doesn't need it. We need the tested simple answer.
Next question from Cicero's side.
Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. This question is from regarding one of the systems present here and asking on behalf of her, she wants to know is that hardships come only in the way of a pious person from Allah subhanaw taala. Does hardship come only by to a pious person from Allah? And the answer is no. hardship affects every human being, every human being experiences some problem. But it varies if you are someone who is living an unrighteous life. And this hardship
doesn't make you a better person. There is a punishment from God.
If you are living an unrighteous life, and this hardship causes you to turn your life around and become a better person, and there was a blessing from God, if you are a righteous person, and hardship comes your way, and you remain righteous, it's a blessing from God. It's a test from God. So hardship affects everyone. But how it impacts you depends on your relationship with God. If you have a strong relationship with God, you take every hardship as a test. If you don't have a relationship with God, you take every hardship as a punishment, or as God doesn't love me, or you know, people think like this, they make statements like this, because they don't have that
relationship. So whatever we go through life, something might go wrong, somebody down our lives. But if you have a strong relationship with God, it pulls you through. It helps you pass the test. So yes, hardship affects everyone. It just for the believer, sometimes, if he's very righteous, it can be on a higher level. But for believer, he has the tools to make it through a hardship in a way that he comes out stronger and better person. Next question from brother side. Romanenko. My name is say Jassim, I'm doing my post graduation in pharmacy. I have a question for my non Muslim friend. Can you cite the intellectual and logical explanation of the Holy Quran for the idol worshipers? Can you
please repeat the question again? Can you cite the intellectual and logical explanation of the Holy Quran for the idol worshipers?
Is your question What is the intellectual arguments of the idol worshipers or against him?
against that against him? Well, there's multiple one is what I mentioned throughout this lecture, that God created you He gave you everything. He put you here for a purpose. It is taking away his rights to worship an idol. This is wrong, it's going against his rights. This is what the Quran says. And the Quran also goes on to say that these things can't benefit you. You worshipping an idol, it can't do ad to you. If God is angry with you, what is it going to do to
Stop him. That is what it is.
That is what the current argument is that if God is angry with you, nothing can help you live either you can't help the reader, an animal can't help you either. An angel won't try to help you if God is angry with you. So the rational is, if you want to please God, if you want to go to Paradise, then do what he wants, not what you want. The God gives you permission to worship idols, almost any of the revealed religions. If you go back to the Scriptures with the Jewish scripture, the Muslim scripture, the Christian scripture, it says that idol worship or worshiping anything besides God is wrong. This is what he has revealed, throughout time from the time of Adam, to Adam worship, worship
any ideas. Anybody believes it, Adam worship an idol. No, he was a Muslim, he believed and submitted to the will of the one God. So idol worship, it is wrong from a variety of angles, it is giving God's right to someone besides God, it is.
It is something which will not benefit you in any way whatsoever. And it is against the very purpose of our existence. So these are some ways to approach this issue. Another
argument that Allah brings forth in the Quran to those who believe in other gods not just the idea but other gods out there besides God, is that if other gods existed, this world would fall apart in the chaos one God wants you to die to the other God wants you to love what's gonna happen to you. Happy body will have half your body will die. If one God wants you to read one God wants you to be sunny, what's gonna happen? No one God wants something to happen otherwise, it doesn't work out the entire universe is working with a system that shows the unity that there's just one call and they just want God there is no reason ever to worship anyone besides that one God. Next question from
Cisco's side
and I'm married, my parents are totally against Islam. How do I call them towards Islam?
Mashallah Allah May Allah increase your EMA and make your means of guidance for them.
If they are primarily against Islam, your first step is to show them through your actions that Islam has made you a better person