Productivity Principles #3 – Spirituality

Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato. Very low. So that was Salam ala rasulillah. So this is part three in our series on readings from the productivity principles of honor even Abdul Aziz, my latest book, and in the series, we are going to various chapters from this book, we are discussing some of the lessons that I have mentioned in the book. So this book is a biography of Omer, even Abdulaziz or him a whole lot decreed made Caliph, known to many as the fifth of the rightly guided However, he was the eighth of the Omega

lava. And

the book is written from a productivity perspective, or I analyze the life of Omar, Abdul Aziz, for around 15 productivity principles, right, there's 15 productivity principles discussed in details in this book. So what you're getting with this book is

two things. Number one, Islamic history, the first 100 years discussed, with a focus on the biography of Omar given Abdul Aziz, who wrote from 99 to one one Ah, and then after that, the discussion of 15 productivity principles extracted from his life, and with some advice on how to apply them very practically in our own lives. So this is what the book is about. And over the past few weeks, we've been going over some of the chapters in this book. Today, I want to go with chapter three, and some of the lessons that I've extracted from this chapter, and that is, Principle number two read fulfilling a spiritual purpose. Now, interestingly, when I first wrote this book, I did not

have this chapter, right, the initial first draft had the eight principles. And spirituality wasn't one of them. And

I felt something was missing, something was definitely missing. So I took some time to think about it. And I was going over some of the quotations from Omar, even Abdul Aziz. And he clipped that really the key factor in his life and the life of any righteous Muslim throughout history. But the main thing that made them productive, was spirituality. It was the link with Allah subhanho wa Taala. And it just clicked to me that this is the primary difference between secular self help and Islamic self help. secular self help comes from a

commercial materialistic perspective. It's all about how can I make the most money? How can I become famous? How can I, you know, contribute to the economy, it's all about money and fame. While Islamic self help is all about pleasing Allah subhanho wa Taala, using our life to generate the most good deeds. So on the Day of Judgment, we can meet a loss of a handler with a huge amount of deeds. And what's amazing about the life of Omar Ibn Abdul Aziz is that he passed away at the age of 37. Right, but he left behind such a legacy that multiple books about him having written hundreds of pages, people analyzing his life from a variety of perspectives. And this really got me thinking about the

important role piety and spirituality plays in productivity. So the main quotation I mentioned in this chapter is not from our but for his wife, Fatima, by the way, you know, a few weeks back on Facebook and Twitter, I had a poll asking people to name one of the wives of Omar Ibn Abdul Aziz. And nobody answered. My nobody knows the names of his wife, which is tragic. Omar, even Abdul Aziz had three wives. One of them was famous, the famous one was Fatima of India, Abdul Malik, but the daughter of the halifa right his first cousin, so Fatima, Allah, please read her. She says about

her husband over even Abdul Aziz. And this quotation can be found in bid Ione. However, even Cassia, she says By Allah, he did not pray of us more than anyone else. But by Allah I have never seen anyone when more taqwa of Allah in Oman.

When I first read this quotation around 10 years ago, it blew my mind. Because at that point in time in my early 20s, piety to me, meant praying, extra fasting extra fast, growing along beard, had a very limited understanding of what piety is. this quotation from father of India of the Malik, it really changed my understanding of Islam and understanding of piety. And I had to include it in this book, because her husband Omar, even Abdulaziz wasn't known for playing so that to her upgrade the 100 operating extra nutfield solar

He wasn't known for fasting every Mondays and Thursdays are fasting every second day. He wasn't known for these things. Yet she says she never met someone more pious than him. What was she talking about? She was talking about his, his justice. Night. Here's what she was talking about his truthfulness, just talking about the fact that every day he would think about Am I doing anything that is displeasing to Allah and can I eliminate that from my life?

So, what I learned from this quotation of automobili Abdulmalik is that there is more than one type of piety. There different types of piety is the piety of the person who preached 100 every night is the piety of a person who gives most of his wealth and saga is the piety of a person who spends his days worrying about his sins, asking Allah for forgiveness, is the piety of the person who makes sure income is halaal is the piety of the person who is just dealing with people.

And each of these could be with a different person, or each of these could be one person. Obviously, the basic part of piety is that everybody is going to fulfill the obligations, praying five times a day fasting, the month of Ramadan, extra, etc, we'll be talking about doing more than that. Each person is going to have their own part when it comes to doing more than that. And so Omar bin Abdul Aziz, his part was being a chest ruler.

being adjusted ruler, is perhaps the hardest type of piety. And this is why the Hadees about the seven types of people who will be under the shade of a lush throne on the Day of Judgment, number one is the just ruler, because it's really the hardest thing to do to be a just ruler, and only when Abdul Aziz is one of the best examples in our history of ajustable abode when he was the governor of Medina. And when he was the Holy Father, Muslim or in both of these positions, he proved to be amongst one of the most just rulers in all of history to such an extent that many historians call him the first of the rightly guided caliphs. So

I say in the book, continuing, after quoting Fatima, Rahim, Allah, I say, piety can manifest itself in many ways. For some people it is praying at night. For others, it's fasting or charity. For others, it is in the commitment to humanitarian work. Omar even Abdul Aziz, his piety manifested itself in his dedication to justice, social development, and simplicity is justice came from a sense of accountability to Allah for his actions. This deep piety made him one of the most just rulers in the history of the Muslim world. True piety has a spiritual impact on those around you. This can be seen in the life of Omar is piety not only impacted the hearts of Muslims, but non Muslims as well.

Many subjects converted to Islam during his reign. This is an interesting point. Many of the books I've read on the biography of Omar bin Abdulaziz, particularly a Celebes book, which has been translated into English. He states that 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s of them is converted to Islam during the two year reign of Omar bin Abdulaziz. And one of the reasons being his piety had this impact on society. Having a ruler of that level showed people the beauty of Islam and that, you know that that light spreads from person to person. And so there was that Baraka in the two year reign of Omar Abdulaziz, in that 1000s of people converted to Islam while he was the honeypot. And that's the

real productivity of Islam. It's not about dunya. It's about about what we do. It's about the impact we have on the hearts and souls of others. I

have a few quotations here from other people who love during that time about the piety of Omar bin Abdulaziz. So one of his contemporary said, I have never seen anybody would move upward in Omar bin Abdulaziz. Right. Zoho is where your heart is not attached this world. Only bin Abdulaziz was made. Calipari was the wealthiest man in the Muslim world at that time. He isn't one in your vision campaign yet. He's only focused with an afro. Like he was one of the best examples of jihad in Islamic history as was his wife right? His wife Fatima, is known as a mirror to Sasha the queen who had super vivid people who's hard to not attach to this work at all excellent role models for us. In

this regard.

Molly Cuban dinar said about Omar bin Abdulaziz the Druze that he will be Abdul Aziz who was given this world and everything in it, but this day in his luxuries and abandoned him right so Mali given dinar said there will be a pledge This is the real side if you want an example of jihad from Muslim history. This is the man whose biography you should be studying Omar bin Abdulaziz because he was given this to do all of it. And omega prince who became Khalifa he had access to anything in this dunya that he wanted. He abandoned all of it. He wanted nothing.

to do with Kenya, his focus was primarily on Africa. Now, we all don't have to reach that level. The reason why we've been able to let these is this remarkable. And this famous is because he was on another level of suicide, even the column of his time precisely. So we don't have to reach that level. We we abandon the dunya. But that's, I mean, that's amazing. If somebody does, what's acquired of us as the average Muslim, is not to happen, the dunya in our hearts, and for our primary focus to be the aphylla. So yes, we can work hard on money, live a comfortable life, living luxury, but our strollers should come first, pleasing luxury, should come first, having a purpose in our

life, building our sources of sadaqa jariya. All of this should be priorities, over dunya. All of this should be our priorities, and jr should come after all of that. So again, we're not saying we should, everybody should be on the level of being up to disease if somebody reaches that level, Mashallah Barack Obama, love even more in this world in the next year, really, except from them. But that spiritual absord has to be data. People must understand fluid to mean that you have to be poor, no, a wealthy man can you have to go there as well, as we know from the example of a smart Inaba project, and who end up not even on the low end with people who are millionaires, but they also had

so.

So in this chapter are going to discuss the purpose of life and importance of living with a purpose. And this is really one of the most beautiful things about Islam. And one of the things that makes me wonder how anyone could ever be happy as an atheist, because what's life without purpose? What's life without the afternoon, as Muslims, no matter what's going on, we have this sense of calmness, that what Africa don't know the afterlife is better than what has passed. Right? We have this

understanding that the most useful with difficulties is we have the understanding that

we are so for you decodable cataldo, soon your load is going to give you and make you happy. We have the understanding that there's something better in our future, maybe not in this world, but in the era. And our lives are driven by purpose, building our sources of charity or reward. So for example, writing books,

building machines, building orphanages,

training to odd sponsoring people to study Islam,

raising righteous children, because our focus is not on denier, our focus is on our hero. So these are just, you know, some of the things that we do and I go for five pages discussing the importance of having a purpose in one's life. And then I discussed the link between spirituality and productivity and how spiritually fueled productivity doesn't just give us good results, it gives us Baraka, the difference between Western productivity, which leads to things like maybe more money or more fame, and Islamic productivity is that standard productivity is going to give you gratefulness to Allah, it's going to give you contentment, and it's going to give you Baraka is going to give you

blessings in what you're happy. And so I have a long chapter on this I discuss.

So for example,

the verse in the Quran, Allah increases charity,

the Hadees with the Prophet Sam says Allah blesses the early hours, I talked about the concept of Baraka in both time and money, diverse in Quran. If you are grateful, I will give you more

the Hadith on contentment. All of this is discussed in this chapter. I'll just go through the summary at the chapter and again, to read the full book, click on the links below. It's available in PDF, paperback and Kindle format. So whichever way you prefer reading, you can buy it in that format intermediate

book summary. For the section summary on the section on spirituality or even Abdul Aziz was very spiritual, who worked to maintain a close relationship with the Creator. Based on his spirituality he aligned his goal to the divine purpose. This congruently of purpose and goals caused him to have Baraka and receive a lot of assistance. When we fulfill our purpose in life and Buddhist spirituality and dedicate our lives to noble purpose, we too will experience Baraka in our efforts and results. When one has true spirituality, he or she will experience Baraka contentment, gratitude, inner peace, and maximum impact. So that's chapter three of the book. Only when

abdulazeez productivity principles available on Amazon gumroad check out the links below. Just pay for your time, and inshallah next week, we will go through another chapter of the book, hopefully by then you

Have your coffee so you can follow along. Walker 111 ob Domingo Salam alaykum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh