Ismail Kamdar – New Book- 25 Keys to a Happy Life
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses their book 25 Keys to Happy Life from the Quran and Sunuston, which was released on Amazon a week prior. They emphasize the importance of creating books that serve as textbooks for people to learn and reference, as long as they are meant to be taught. They explain their journey to write the book and how they found it difficult to maintain a happy mindset during difficult times. They emphasize the importance of family and community in achieving happiness, citing the negative younger generation following the Quran and followed Islam, as well as their negative younger generation following the Quran and following Islam.
AI: Summary ©
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh Alhamdulillah wassalatu wassalamu
ala rasulillah Today I want to just share
with you my latest book 25 Keys to
a Happy Life from the Quran and Sunnah
Published by Cube Publishing This book has been
out in South Africa for a few months
now It released on Amazon about a week
ago And I thought that would be a
good time to share a bit of the
backstory Behind why I wrote this book Now,
one of the first things you will notice
is that This book is a lot shorter
than the books I usually write Compared to
my previous book on Omar bin Abdul Aziz
Which was over 300 pages This book is
only around 70 pages It's a very short
book, very easy to read, very simple And
that was deliberate, that was on purpose The
reason why I made this book shorter There's
actually several reasons Number one is, I wanted
this book to reach people who don't usually
read books So, one of my goals behind
becoming an author Is to revive the culture
of reading amongst Muslims And for many people
who have not read a book in many
years It's a bit overwhelming to jump straight
into a 300 or 400 page book So,
can we produce books that are beneficial but
also short?
And, I mean, if you just look at
our history The answer is yes There have
been many short books written throughout Islamic history
That are extremely beneficial That have gone on
to benefit people for hundreds of years So,
I challenged myself to keep this book short
On every chapter there was a lot more
that I wanted to say But I forced
myself to limit each chapter to 1,000
to 2,000 words To keep it as
short as possible, as simple as possible So
that even people who don't usually read books
Would be motivated to read it It's just
25 chapters, each chapter is like 3 or
4 pages It's something that anybody can read
and digest in small portions And that would
make it beneficial to more people The second
reason why I kept this book short Is
I wanted it to serve as a textbook
As something to be explained in more details
Islamically, when we write books Our books are
meant to be taught, not just read And
when teaching a book I think it's better
that the book is summarized It's simple, it's
to the point And that the teacher is
able to expand upon it And so I
hope that this book would be something that
people teach That people explore in more details
I myself plan to do a full series
Explaining every chapter of this book in more
details And I hope others would do so
as well Now as for why I wrote
this book And what the book is actually
about 25 Keys to a Happy Life from
the Quran and Sunnah There is a thematic
reason why I wrote it And there's a
personal reason why I wrote it I'll get
into the personal reason first Those of you
who know me Know that the past 6
years of my life have been very difficult
I've been through many trials, one after the
other Multiple of them at the same time
And last year in Ramadan When I was
writing this book I was going through two
of the most difficult trials in my life
Alhamdulillah they both ended just a week ago
Just one after the other But at that
time I was going through some really difficult
Things that I won't talk about publicly And
it was Ramadan And I said I'm not
going to write anything this Ramadan I'm going
to focus on my own soul And helping
myself think better Helping myself think correctly And
work through these difficult times So I started
writing some notes to myself On how to
maintain a happy mindset How to be more
content, how to have inner peace During difficult
times And by the 27th of Ramadan I
had written this book, Alhamdulillah It wasn't meant
to be written as a book It was
simply started off in the first week of
Ramadan As notes to myself On how to
think better And as I wrote everyday for
an hour I found it developing more and
more And I realized that this would make
a good book And so I shifted how
I wrote it And by the 27th of
Ramadan The first draft of this book was
ready, Alhamdulillah So I wrote this during the
month of Ramadan To myself To help me
get through some difficult times The dramatic reason
why I chose this topic 25 Keys to
a Happy Life Is that we are living
in a time of Unimaginable levels of sadness
and depression And suicide rates It's really a
time where A lot of people are not
happy And particularly in the West You know,
when I was growing up The West was
very optimistic It was a time of the
pursuit of happiness There was this idea that
modernity Is going to bring happiness And all
of that failed In our lifetime, we saw
all of that fail And now, in post
-modernity Nihilism has taken over The younger generation
Are very pessimistic about life They have this
doom and gloom mindset about the future People
don't see any motivation To live life, to
work hard Many people that I talk to
They just have a very negative Pessimistic understanding
of life Of the world, of why we
are here And they don't want to do
anything with their lives They don't want to
make anything of their lives And they're just
stuck in this negative mindset How do we
pull people out of this mindset?
Well, my idea Was to go back to
that Which made the early generations better The
early generations followed the Quran And followed Islam
And what we find is that Those civilizations
That were built upon Islam Were civilizations in
which People in general Were happier And this
happiness Comes from a very natural place They
are very natural sources of happiness That modernity
has cut us out from They have separated
us from the natural Sources of happiness And
tried to replace it With artificial happiness And
that did not work And you see this
in almost every Modern ideology For example Liberalism
Gives us this idea That the more free
you are The more happy you will be
Yet we see in these lands Where people
have unrestricted freedoms They also have the highest
suicide rates So This level of freedom By
the way Islam is not against freedom We
just have a different understanding of freedom From
the west but this type of freedom The
freedom to pursue any sin that you like
publicly Has not led to happiness Likewise in
capitalism There is this mindset That the more
money I have The happier I will be
And it has been psychologically proven That's only
up to a certain level Once you pass
a certain level of wealth More money does
not bring more happiness In fact it often
brings more problems So at what point do
you Become content?
At what point do you say this is
enough?
It's one of the topics I explore in
this book You know we talk about natural
sources of happiness Two things that I emphasize
a lot in this book Are family And
community And again living in the age of
Individualism Where everybody is all about themselves And
all they care about is themselves They think
to be happy they just need to focus
on themselves I want people to realize that
The natural path to happiness Is in large
families In traditional families In Islamic families That
is where you are going to find real
happiness And not just family but community To
be part of the ummah To be part
of society To play a role in the
community Life should not be just about work
and entertainment There is more to life than
this And you will find more happiness More
genuine inner peace and contentment If you work
towards being part of a Happy united loving
family And playing an important role in your
community Than if you only focus on yourself
You see the modern world has tricked us
into thinking That happiness comes through selfish pursuits
But the reality is True happiness comes from
being part of something bigger Being part of
the ummah Being part of a family Being
part of a community And having these loving
relationships So these are some of the themes
That I explore in this book And I
highly recommend you get yourself a copy It's
available on Amazon It's available in bookstores around
the world It's available on Kindle I'll place
the links below This book 25 Keys to
a Happy Life From the Quran and Sunnah
Is designed to help us think better To
think in a way That is pleasing to
Allah And it is through the pleasure of
Allah that we also Will find inner peace
And I hope that this book benefits you
I hope that it helps you To find
what you are looking for To improve your
life, to improve your mindset And to live
a life that is pleasing to Allah And
if you live a life that is pleasing
to Allah You also will find happiness This
is why Allah describes The state of a
person Who lives a life that is pleasing
to Allah When they are dying, Allah says
They return to their Lord Return to their
Lord in a state In which Allah is
happy and they are happy That's what we
are seeking A state in which Allah is
happy And we are happy And so our
happiness is linked to The pleasure of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala I hope that you
find the book beneficial Jazakallah khairan wa akhira
dawana And alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen Wassalamu alaikum wa
rahmatullahi wa barakatuh