Ismail Kamdar – Self Development The Sunnah Way
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of balancing personal development and financial independence in Islam, as a way to achieve the full potential of one's work. They stress the need to read and analyzeve the book's paradigm to determine if it is beneficial, and to find the best way to create one's own purpose and filter through development. The speakers emphasize the importance of investing in one's health and learning from others to achieve success, rather than trying to convince others.
AI: Summary ©
Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah
from Rila. Welcome everyone
in our first global webinar from it COVID Institute, were highly glad to have our respected and beloved Shy Smile come down in our as your guest speaker today. From the relaxed first I'm going to introduce shaky smile candor to all of you although shake is a very renowned and well known person in Bangladesh, but as this is a global webinar, I think it's better to have a short introduction as well. So Sheikh Ismail come
a began it started Islam at a very early age and is up 13 And he completed seven year Arlene course and he joined the Islamic University as a senior lecturer at UN as the faculty manager. And he worked there from February 2010 till October 2020. And currently he works as a research manager at yaqi Institute. And over the past decade cheeky smile had served as a school teacher and administrator in multiple schools in South Africa and India. He has also delivered lectures and workshops in many locations locally and globally, and appeared on many radio stations across the globe. He has also served as a radio presenter and radio announcer for several years, and in
November 2016. In 2011, Sheng smile, discovered the importance of personal development and noticed a lack of Islamic literature dedicated to this field. After
getting out further researches on this topic, he decided to start his own words and he still decided to work collaboratively on this topic, among the most famous books of Sheikh Smiley's having fun the halal way.
This book has been translated in Bengali and there is a very good response among Bengali speaking people regarding this book, also getting baraka and Islamic guide to time management. This has been also recently translated in Bengali and published some days back and best of creation and Islamic guide to self confidence homeschooling on your own and we all know that check Smiley is doing very good and making good resources on homes homeschooling. And he has written productivity principles of Omar to that is Omar bin Abdulaziz and some other books as well. So today, now I want to alter shake is my to take the slot and yesterday's valuable lecture on self development as
Salaam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh
hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala Nabil Karim, Allah Allah, he was heavy H mine. So inshallah I assume everybody can see my PowerPoint presentation. That's important because this
this presentation is going to be rather content heavy, right? I'm taking a very different approach to how I usually present this topic. So the topic of personal development, self development, self help.
In general, when I presented this topic in the past, I would only cover what is the Islamic perspective. And what I'm going to do today is slightly different. I'm first going to discuss what's wrong with this field. This is something I didn't discuss much in the past, what's wrong with the current approaches in the west towards personal development. And I've been doing a lot of research in this area over the past two years. So a lot of this may be new for many of our listeners here today. But I believe this is very vital and important for us to understand why an Islamic approach is necessary. If you don't understand what's wrong with the Western approach, we may not be able to
see the need for an Islamic approach. And I've had people approached me and they've told me things like, why do we need Islamic self help? You know, the, the information in the regular self help books is good enough? And the reality is no, it's not. It's not good enough. There are some things obvious and something subtle, that are an Islamic and that's really what I'm going to focus on in the first half of today's presentation. In the second half. I'm going to present to you my model and my methodology for deriving an Islam Islam besides a curriculum in personal development. So how do I develop my my paradigm for self confidence the Islamic way your time management the Islamic way of
personal productivity
Islamically I have a set system that I use. And I will present that in the second half of this presentation. So again, this presentation will be in two parts. Part one is what's wrong with personal development? And part two is how do we customize it and do it the right way. So to begin with a few definitions, what is personal development, and what is self development? Well, there are two commonly used terms in this area, which are, in some ways synonyms, and in some ways, slightly different to each other. Those two terms are personal development, and self help. So personal development is, you know, any activity that helps want to improve on capabilities or achieve one's
potential, or become a better version of oneself. So generally, anything that you do, to grow into a better version of yourself is categorized as personal development. So then what is self help, but self help basically means helping yourself to do this, right, where you get your own books, or you get articles or videos, whatever it is, but you find a way to help yourself achieve your life goals. So these two terms, they overlap, but they also are slightly different from each other. Personal development is not always self help. Sometimes it's through a life coach. Sometimes it's through a set a system of study under a teacher, sometimes it's with a mentor, sometimes it's an
apprenticeship of the variety of different ways to go after personal development. And self help is one of those ways, which is you are helping yourself to grow by
reading books, or working on yourself or self counseling, self therapy, something of this nature. So
on the surface, this looks like a very good thing. Obviously, I mean, we all want to grow, we all want to achieve our goal, we all want to achieve our dreams, we all want to grow into the best versions of ourselves. So what's wrong with the field? Why do I feel there's a need to Islam is this field? Well, many people may not realize this, but the current model of personal development stems from a variety of Western ideas, many of which are anti Islamic. And if you aren't aware of these ideas, you may not be aware of how they affect the field of personal development. So one of these ideas that is an Islamic and that affects our understanding of personal development is the concept
of
individualism and this is really the big one. I actually want to go further into this Inshallah, in the future, this is one of the areas I'm researching at the moment, individualism and its impact on the ummah. So what is individualism, individualism, as it has evolved over the past 20 to 30 years is this idea that it's all about me, life's about me, it's my goals, my dreams, my rights, my passions, my whatever, it's all about me. And this started off as something, okay, you know, when maybe parents were forcing their kids down career paths they didn't like, and they say, What about my goals? What about things I'm interested in? Okay, that's understandable. But now it's reached a
point where people say things like, oh, I don't need to respect my, my parents, you know, I didn't ask him to give birth to me, I didn't ask him to raise me. It's not what I want to do, you know. So it's become a kind of worship of the self. This is really what it's becoming in our times. And this is really problematic, that a lot of a lot of the concepts in the world today stemmed from individualism, a lot of the problems in the world today stemmed from individualism, the high divorce rates, or the amount of people who don't want to get married, the amount of people who don't want to have children, if you look at the reasoning behind it, for a lot of people, individualism is the
root cause. And it affects personal development as well. So if you look at personal development, the Western idea, it's all about me, it's all about my goals, my rights, my ideas, who I want to be what I want to accomplish, and anybody who gets in the way of debt is evil. Anybody who gets in the way of debt is bad. So it becomes a, a sense of worshiping yourself of conflict in your ego. And many people don't realize this, many people don't recognize this. They view this, you know, as just the way the world is always worse. Now, this is a lot more problematic in the west than it is in the East, in the east, particularly in Asia. For the most part, most cultures are still centered around
families and tribes and community which is the Islamic way. But as you move further towards the west, as you as you move towards Europe and the USA, individualism is becoming a major problem. And many of the books that reach you, on personal development are written from this perspective, and this is very, very dangerous.
For Iman, and even for the OMA because you lose that sense of humor, and you develop a sense of it's all about me. The second major problematic mindset that affects personal development is capitalism. So in capitalism, success is defined by wealth. If you open up a restaurant book on personal development, and you look at what is success is defined as being a millionaire or a billionaire,
there is a lot of focus on material success, and Islamically. There's nothing wrong with material success, or when it becomes the purpose of life when it overrides once a relationship with Allah subhanho wa taala. When it causes one to choose haram methods, when it becomes an obsession, all of this is problematic for the Muslim. So Muslims are not capitalist, nor are we communists, we are Muslims. And Islam is somewhere in between the two, where on one hand, we do believe in the free market, we do believe in earning Halal wealth, but we also believe in serving the community, we also believe in giving back. And we also believe in a sense of, of a sense of contribution to society. So
it has its own unique paradigm towards wealth. And many of these books that we read, they come from a capitalist perspective. Number three, linked to capitalism is materialism. So what is materialism? Materialism is the idea that, to enjoy life, to have fun, you need to
you need to have nice things. So if you don't have a nice car, you can't be happy. If you don't have a big house, you can't be happy. And so materialism is all about ownership of this world, owning lots and lots of dunya. And again, this is not the mindset of a Muslim, that a believer is supposed to be content. A believer is supposed to accept the color of Allah, a believer is supposed to be happy what ALLAH SubhanA wa Taala has given him or her. So we know this materialistic mindset is found throughout many of these western personal development books that they talk about owning the special cars and, and owning huge houses and owning your own private jet to very materialistic idea
of what is success. Number four is post modernism. Now, this is a new idea that many people are unaware of. But it finds its way into many of these personal development books. And post modernism is the idea that early is a very broad idea. But the part of it that affects personal development, is the idea that there is no such thing as throat, there is no such thing as purpose, or there is no way of finding the truth. Everything is just up to you. You define your own truth, you define your own purpose, you define your own life. And I think for anyone who's a Muslim, you can obviously see the problem with this mentality, right? Because we as Muslims, we know the truth is from Allah, we
know there is definitely a set truth and falsehood, we know that our lives have a purpose. So a lot of these books that we read nowadays come from a very pessimistic post modernists mindset, that nothing matters. You just decide for yourself what you want to matter, you just decide for yourself, you know what your purpose in life is going to be? Because there is no truth and there is no good and evil. And all of this nonsense, really to believe all of this is nonsense. It is found in many of these books. A final problem that we have with personal development today is pseudoscience, basically, a lot of these authors just make up their own things that have not been proven in any
way. And people read it, and they believe it. So it's not science, and it's not proven. It's just somebody writes something and everybody believes them. And this again, is problematic because Muslims are supposed to seek out through knowledge, authentic knowledge, not just believe anything that reaches us. So these are five ways in which the modern personal development field is problematic for Muslims and many of us will pick up a book on time management or self confidence or achieving your life goals. And we don't realize that these different mentalities are affecting the author of that book that automates be maybe a postmodernist, it may be a capitalist may be affected
by individualism, he may be making up his own ideas of how the world works, and we read it and we absorb it, and we think it will be the truth. And this is a problem. Let's look at some examples of that. Right. So there are some examples that I can
give you about how these things affect the believer. So number one, they inspire greed. So obviously, any personal development book that comes from a perspective of materialism and capitalism is going to make
You greedy, right? They will tell you that you are not successful in life unless you are a millionaire or a billionaire, whatever you decide to be artists got their own definition of success. And so someone who may have, up until that point, been living a happy life worshiping Allah contributing to society providing for the family, suddenly, they feel like they can't be happy unless they are millionaires. And this opens up the door to greed, which we know in Islam is something that is frowned upon, and something that opens up the doors to many different types of sin.
Another problem with this field, is that it causes us to feel inferior to other people. Right? So what does that mean? It means like many people who may have otherwise been content, or when they look at the field of personal development, and they read these books, they may begin to think like, Oh, I'm not good enough, I'm not doing enough with my life. You know, I'm not as good as this guy or that guy. Look how much he's done, look how much she's done. And you begin to feel like you are lesser than them. And this can really make a person depressed, it can make a person feel like, you know, they have to be doing something grand, otherwise they're not they're wasting their lives. And
in reality, not everybody's meant to do something granted, not everybody is meant to be on a big stage. Really, our lives are about Allah, it's about worshiping Allah, it's about doing things that's pleasing to Allah. So you know, we should be careful that we don't fall into this mindset of thinking that unless we're doing something grand, you know, we are wasting our lives. That's not true. You could be doing something very small that nobody in the world sees you doing. But Allah could put Baraka in it, and you could affect and benefit millions of people without you even knowing that's really where the believer works. It's not all about, you know, being on the grand stage, or
having a lot of followers or anything like that. It's more about doing things that are pleasing to Allah, and to have Baraka in it.
Another problem with the personal development field today, is that it distracts us from the true purpose of life. So when people have this idea that it's all about, you know, achieving my goals, achieving my vision, that so for example, may be somebody whose vision is to be a billionaire, well, that now becomes a purpose in life, that becomes the obsession. That's all they think about everything they do, is now geared towards becoming a billionaire. The problem then is you're not actually fulfilling the real purpose of life, to worship Allah to agenda. Right now you fall into the trap of Al Hakim with the gospel Hatter's Ottomans macabre, that this competition to pile up the
things of the world distract you until you die. That's what happens. So this is one of the problems that happens when you when you go too far into this field without an Islamic paradigm is that the purpose of life becomes mixed up, instead of the purpose of like being to worship Allah, it now becomes to get rich, or to set up this or to do that, or whatever it is that a person derived from that book.
And finally, it creates unrealistic expectations. Because if you read many of these books, they say things like, everybody can be rich, and everybody can be famous, and everybody, you know, can have millions of followers on Facebook. And that's never been the way the world was. And that's never, that will never be the way the world ever will be. Allah subhanaw taala even states in the Quran in many places, that he distributes his risk amongst the people as he works, he gives some more fame than others, he gives some people more honor than others, he gives some people more money than others, he gives some people more influence than others. And that's the way the world has always
been. And that's the way the world will always be the idea that anybody who picks up a book on how to get rich quickly, is going to get rich quickly, is absolute lie. That's what it is. It's a lie. It's not going to work. Everybody has the potential to get to gender. Everybody has the potential to please Allah, everybody has the potential to pass the test of life. As for getting wealthy, well, our money the amount we are going to earn from the time we die till we pass away. Allah subhanaw taala has already predetermined it, how hard we work, that really decides on whether the money has Baraka in it or not, whether it is blessed by Allah or not. But the idea that everybody can be
wealthy, that has never happened. That has literally never happened in the history of this world. There's always been various levels of society. And whichever level we are at, in order to live a life that's pleasing to Allah is what's most important not to be obsessed with wealth. So these are some of the problems that come with the field of personal development. Firstly, from the mindset of the artist, it may be individualistic, they may be caught up in
post modernism or modernism. They may be material, materialistic or capitalistic. Then there's the problems that
It has on us, it may make us greedy, it may distract us from the purpose of life, it may make us feel inferior to others. So what's the solution? And that's really the core of today's discussion is the actual solution from my side. And this is a paradigm that I put together for Islamic self help. This is what I use for writing my articles, preparing my lectures and writing my books on personal development, I use a paradigm and Islamic paradigm for personal development. So number one, we have to have to always remember that the purpose of life is to worship Allah. And anything that helps us to worship Allah is good for us. So this is why you will find in almost every book I have written, I
have a chapter or at least a sub chapter on the purpose of life. It can be a book on time management, or self confidence, or productivity, always try to include a chapter on the purpose of life. Why? Because this is the most important thing for a Muslim, we cannot be distracted from this by anything else. Everything else is secondary to this, again, whether we get wealthy or not, is secondary to whether we achieve the purpose of life. Whether we have a large following or not, is not even secondary. It's like not important at all. Right? What's important is that we worship Allah, and that we live a life that helps us to do that. Now, anything that helps us to do that is
good for us. So for example, financial independence, financial independence helps you to worship Allah, does it not? And so that's why we have a lot of Heidi's encouraging financial independence. There is a beautiful Hadith in which the Prophet sallallahu sallam said Whoever seeks to be financially independent, Allah will make him financially independent media ever seeks to earn enough that they are not dependent on others, Allah will open the door for him. Or there is another Hadith where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us a beautiful dua, which we are supposed to recite every morning and evening, out of the DUA is Allahumma, in near ODB, Camino gouffre one
fuckery Oh Allah, I seek Your protection from disbelief and poverty. Note, the worst thing of the akhira this belief, the worst thing of the dunya poverty we ask Allah is protection from boats. Why? Because financial independence helps us to worship Allah. When we are worried about money. It's very difficult to worship Allah, it's very difficult to focus on the purpose of life, because we want you to be going to get our next meal from we want it how are we going to pay our rent, and all that takes over. So anything that facilitates the worship of Allah is good for us, whether it's financial independence, or whether it's time management skills, whether it's self confidence, whether it's
personal productivity, all of these things are only good for us, when they help us to worship Allah, not when they take us away from that. Number two, excuse me for a second.
For the Jews, it's summer years, so it's really hot.
So
point number two, our desk ER or so of our purification of the soul should be our second priority after the worship of Allah. And of course, the worship of Allah is how we purify our souls. But worshiping Allah is the primary goal. And the benefit of that is the purification of our souls. And so as Muslims, if we are not, we are not focused on the worship of Allah, what's the secondary focus of our lives, purifying our souls and improving our character. So anything that helps us to do this is good for us. Anything that takes us away from this is bad for us. So if a personal development resource is inspiring greed, or jealousy, this is against the purification of the soul. This is
damaging to the soul. So we have to be careful of this. But if it is teaching us to be good to people, if it is teaching us to have good character, if he's teaching us integrity, this is good for our soul. This is good for our character, and we can incorporate this into an Islamic paradigm. Number three,
serving the Ummah is more important than chasing one's own goals. And this is where Islam goes against individualism, individualism, it's all about me, it's my goals, my life, my rights, my time I can do what I want. That's the individualistic mindset, the Islamic mindset. Allah has created me as part of the Ummah the Ummah has rights upon me, what can I do to benefit this Omar? And so you will see the big difference between someone who is attitude is I need to serve this Omar as compared to someone whose attitude is I need to achieve my goals. As a believer we should always be Omar focused, not knee focused, right. So, this again is a very different paradigm for how we will
approach personal development. So while investing book may
have, you know in setting your goals, a lot of things to do with yourself? What do you want to do? Or which countries do you want to travel to? Or what kind of house do you want to live in? Right? It's all about you. But within Islamic book, it will be more about how can I benefit this ummah? You know, can I do work that's constructive? Can I teach something? Is this something I can do for free? Is there something I can do to volunteer my time? Can I set up a work of can I set up a nonprofit? What can I do to benefit the Ummah, the Ummah is more important than me, this is one of the key parts of the Islamic paradigm when it comes to self development. And
number four, the Islamic paradigm of personal development is finding a balance between father and son, father, believing that Allah has already written out our destiny, son, working to the best of your abilities regardless of that. So we already know that Allah has written everything that will happen to the Day of Judgment, still, we will work for Jana will your son you will work for this dunya with your son, we will work on ourselves with your son, we will serve our families with our son, we will serve this ummah with sun, we will do everything to the best of our abilities. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Allah loves that whenever a servant does anything, he does
it with sun, right Sun means excellence or perfection, it means to do the absolute best job that you can do. So we have to find this balance, we, on one hand, have to accept that whatever happens to us is called the ruler. So if you write a book, that only 100 People buy that book, called the ruler, I served the Roomba through that book, that book is beneficial. That book helps people to achieve the purpose of life, I put in a sun in writing that book, how many books get sold is not God or Allah. So you do the absolute best you can, and what is beyond your capabilities, you leave it to Allah. So these four things make up any slamming paradigm, that when we focus on developing ourselves, it's
not developing ourselves for materialistically reasons or for the sake of our egos. It's to help us to worship Allah is to help us purify our souls, it's to help us to refine our character is to help us serve this ummah, and he's to help us live a life of your son, if we can do these five things, then we can become the absolute best versions of ourselves in a way that benefits us for dunya. What will occur in this world, and the next. So
in light of that, I put together a four step plan, write a four step plan to help us to,
to, to read anything written by non Muslims on this topic, and to analyze it through an Islamic filter. So obviously, I'm not going to tell you don't read the national books on this topic, there's a lot of benefit we can take from the books, right. So there are a lot of non Muslim books on this topic, or these topics are beneficial. But what I would say is, read them through an Islamic filter, read them critically, analyze anything you find in his books, the Islamic way, and I myself use for things to analyze any book on personal development, and I'm going to share all four of them with you today, so that inshallah you can start doing so as well. So again, I do not discourage you from
reading books, I simply encourage you to read them through an Islamic filter, what is the Islamic filter for things, our Aqeedah, our fake, our desk, ear, and our o'clock, our beliefs, our laws, our purification of the soul, and our character. These four things must be used to filter out the good from the bad, from books written by other people, so we can take what Islamic and leave what contradicts Islam, right. So number one is our Aqeedah. Whenever you read a book on personal development, make sure you first analyze it from an Akita perspective, because there are things in there that contradict our Aqeedah. Like what, like the idea that you are in charge of your own
destiny, you will find this in many books on self confidence. You will find this in many books on wild that you are the captain of your own ship, you are in charge of your own destiny, you decide what's going to happen with your life as Muslims, we do not believe this. We believe in God or Allah. Allah is the one who's in charge. He gives us all a area of free will. And what we do in that area of free will we will be rewarded for it or punished for it based on our choices. But we are not in charge of our destinies. We don't decide when we are born when we die when we die.
You know what kind of families are countries we are born into. We don't decide how much wealth we are going to have how much intelligence we are going to have
You know, what we're good at what we bad at all of this is God or Allah, or we get to decide, is what to do with whatever Allah has gifted us with. Right. And that's what we are either rewarded or punished for. So we have to use an Islamic paradigm here. And we have to use our Aveda to filter out these kinds of ideas, which contradict our beliefs in order our belief in Allah, or anything of that nature. Another example of something that contradicts the Islamic Aqeedah
that you find in books or personal development is the idea is, oh, if you just think that I am rich, you will become rich, if you just think I'm successful, you will become successful. This is a very problematic, and this goes back to what I mentioned earlier about pseudoscience, someone just made this up, and lots of people copy them, and people begin to think it's true. In reality, this cannot be proven, is
a true science. This cannot be proven through psychology. And this contradicts Islam as well. So Muslims should not have anything to do with such an idea. It is not an Islamic idea at all, right? Rather, we believe in God or Allah, and we believe in Houston is on Villa to think good about Allah, and to make dua to Allah, but also to accept the color of Allah. So our Aqeedah plays a very important role in separating what we can and can't take from these books. Number two is our fake.
So you have to analyze the advice given in these books from a perspective of halal and haram. The most obvious example, almost any personal development book, which has a chapter on finance, will tell you that the easiest way to get wealthy is through compound interest. Then if you just keep piling up interest in your bank account, you will get rich beyond your dreams. What's the problem? Yeah, It's haram. It is haram, maybe you will get rich, but there'll be no Baraka that money. And they have judgment you have to answer to Allah, for how did you earn it? And your answer is not going to be one that leads to paradise. So we have to be careful of these kinds of books that you
will find many of these books, because they are written by people who are from a capitalist mindset. They don't they don't have any idea of halal and haram. for them. It's all about what's the fastest way to get wealthy. And for us, it's how do I earn blessed wealth? How do I earn a risk that has Baraka in it? How do I ancestors has baraka and that is that is what we should be focused on. Not how do I get wealthy, but how do I get wealthy that is blessed by Allah and blessed to Allah and pleasing to Allah. So on the Day of Judgment, when Allah asks us, how did you earn it? And how did you spend it? We can answer both of those questions in a good way. So you have to be very careful
that when we reading these books, what they ask us to do, we have to check. Is it halal, or is it haram and we have to use our fic to filter out any advice that is haram, like the advice to accumulate compound interest. Number two is our dusky otter so Wolf, our purification of the soul. And this is very simple. Any advice you find in a resource on personal development?
Ask yourself, is this going to improve me spiritually? Or is it going to negatively impact my spirituality? This is a very important question. Is this going to improve me spiritually? Or is it going to negatively impact my spirituality? So for example, if a book on personal development is making you greedy, that is bad for the state of your heart. And you have to find a way to get rid of that. Right? If a personal development resource is making you jealous, jealousy is one of the worst things for our personal development in terms of Islamic spiritual development. So we have to be very careful with that as well. So we have to be continuously doing Maha Sabha. Right taking stock of
ourselves that this part that I'm going down, is it having a good or a bad impact on the condition of my soul? Because if we open the door for something that has a bad impact on the condition of our soul, then we are now slowly heading down the path that is displeasing to Allah. It begins with greed. It descends into jealousy, it ends in a major sin. Or sometimes it even ends in Cofer, because we know that the co founder of shaitan began with jealousy that he was jealous of other Malay Salah. So we have to be very careful here that the impact of these books on our souls the impact of these videos on our souls, and I'll give you an example, a lot of the personal development
YouTube channels, right they feature
A lot of them have this cliche feature of a guy in a huge mansion, who owns a jet and owns a private boat. And he's always boasting about all of this and showing off his art collection and showing off all these things. And if you're watching these videos every day, you may begin to get jealous of this person, you may begin to want what he has. And this is not good for our spirituality. So we have to take a step back and ask ourselves, hold on, is any of this even necessary? Do I actually need to own a speedboat, to actually need to own a private jet? Why am I
jealous, because this isn't the party channel. This isn't something that lead to Allah. So maybe it's better if I don't watch this person's videos and watch someone else's videos instead. So we have to be constantly looking at things through the filter of purification of the soul. And finally, our o'clock, our character, our manners, anything that causes us to go against the clock of Islam, we cannot follow it. Right. So for example, if a book comes from an individualistic mindset, we automate tell you like oh, what your parents think doesn't matter. Now rebel against your parents, prove them wrong, you know, chase your dreams, no matter what. And that may inspire a person to
break ties with his family to this his parents, or something of this nature. This is an Islamic, right, this is an Islamic, we have to if even when pursuing our own goals, we have to maintain Islamic HELOC. maintain good relationships with our parents maintain our family ties, take care of people be good to people. So if these books inspiring you to to mistreat someone inspiring you to cut corners, if it's inspiring to put somebody else out of business, so that you can do well in your business. All of this goes against the clock of Islam. And if it goes against the clock of Islam, then we as Muslims, we cannot accept it. So these are the four filters I use, whenever I analyze
anything from a, you know, putting together Islamic resources on personal development. Whatever it is, I'm analyzing, I look at it from the perspective of Aqeedah, fic, Tez, Kia and o'clock. And of course, you have to at least have basic knowledge of these four things to be able to do that. But the good news is, you don't really need advanced knowledge of these four fields, to be able to recognize the mistakes in personal development books, you just need basic knowledge. Inshallah, I hope all of us at least have the basic knowledge to be able to read these books, or with a critical mindset.
Have one more slide to present and then inshallah we will open the
lines for q&a. So
to conclude, let's look at things from an Islamic approach to Western approach to personal development comes from this idea that life has no purpose, and you have to invent your own purpose. And you have to,
you know, do your own things, and come up with your own ideas and make your own destiny. And it's all about you, and you only have one life to do whatever you want with it. Our approach is very different. Our approach is grounded in the Ye, it is grounded in the Quran and Sunnah. It is grounded in the purpose of life, that we have these filters that allow us to separate the good from the bad.
So the first thing that we have to do as muslims are when it comes to personal development, is that we have to filter it through these four lens, right, so the first step of the Islamic approach is that anything that we study in this field, and by the way, you can use the same thing for other fields as well, like business, psychology, or any of these modern fields, which are beneficial. The believer takes the good, but he also analyzes it through an Islamic filter. So all of these things, we can analyze them to Aqeedah, we can analyze them to fit, we can analyze them to a crop, we can analyze them to descale. And using these four LEDs, we can take what is good, and leave what is an
Islamic. And this is something we need to be doing all the time. And with every resource that we interact with, even if it comes from a Muslim altar, because unfortunately, unfortunately, I have read too many books and articles by Muslim authors where they have just taken ideas from from non Muslim books and dress them in an Islamic garb without actually thinking about whether this is something that's acceptable according to our Aqeedah or our fake. And so even when reading resources written by Muslims, we still have to use these filters because you
Maybe that the author did not do so. Right. So we can't always take it for granted that every author is taking a similar approach. Many of them simply just take things from the non Muslims and just jazz it up as Islamic without changing anything. And that is very problematic. So, number one, use these four things for filtering any knowledge that we take from other resources. Number two, focus on something on things that benefit you in both worlds. So if we go back to the definition of personal development, it's about being it's about growing into the best version of yourself. Now, the Western paradigm is the best version of yourself for the dunya. But as Muslims, what's the DUA
that the Quran teaches us to make? Robina Artina dunya Hasina, what will actually like the Hudson, oh, Allah give us the best of this world and the best of the next world and save us from the hellfire, the best of both worlds. That's what we make to offer. So the Islamic approach to personal development is grounded in the idea that anything I do must benefit me in both worlds, I cannot compromise if you have to compromise, I will choose the next world over this, I will never compromise the next world for this world. So ideally, we will look for things that benefit us in both worlds. So for example, give you ideas of this, if you start a business that's beneficial, and
helps people. So the business on one hand, you are benefiting people, you are helping people. On the other hand, you are earning Halla risk. And on top of that, on the Day of Judgment, or when you are asked about how did you earn your wealth, you actually have not just a halal answer, but a beneficial answer. So your business actually becomes a good deed on your scale of good deeds, because you were benefiting people with every transaction. And so this now benefits you in both worlds. Likewise, things like writing books, or, you know, teaching classes, these things benefit us in both worlds.
And in many other things like this, that the benefit us in both worlds that they are worldly rewards for it, and they are here rewards for it as well. So when we're looking at personal development from an Islamic perspective, they are level two it highest level, try to find something that benefits you in both worlds. If you can't find something that benefits you in both worlds, then focus on what benefits you in the akhira. And if you find something that benefits you third level is you find something that benefits you in dunya without affecting your Ophira. That's fine, too. But once you find something that benefits you in dunya, and it negatively impacts your accuracy. That's where we
draw the line. That's when we say no, I'm not going to take that even though there is some dunya benefit to it. Right? So that's where we draw the line. So our alpha is always number one in our minds, that whatever I take whatever I
whatever I tried to benefit from, it must not compromise my Acura in any way. So again, four levels. Number one benefits us in both worlds Alhamdulillah number two benefits us in the Archaea only Al Hamdulillah number three benefits us in the dunya only okay 500 That's good as well. Number four benefits us in dunya Hamza Siddharth Cara Astok Fetullah Norway's we're not going there.
So keep this order in mind when filtering things that you have to deal with industrial near.
Number three is to analyze things from a Maqasid perspective. Right? So what do we mean by a Maqasid? perspective? So the Mikaze the Sharia
the goals of the Sharia is this is a concept infec that everything has either benefits or harms or it has both actually most things have bought. And in democracies Australia, we call this the Messiah and the maps that are the benefits and the harms. And the purpose of Islamic law is the attainment of benefit and the reduction of harm. So when we want to decide on whether something is halal or haram, we look at what outweighs What if the benefits outweigh the harms. It's usually considered halal. If the harms outweigh the benefits, it's usually considered haram. Right for examples in Fick. Why does Islam allow Jihad because the benefits outweigh the harms? Right? In specific
contexts with specific rules, etc, etc. You guys know what I'm saying? Right? I mean, it in terms of all of that haram, that some people are doing these days where their homes are actually outweighing the benefits, but the actual legitimate one Danshui Khalifa two and Tomic system. Why did Islam allow it because the benefits outweigh the harms? What people are doing today in some countries, why is it haram because the harms outweigh the benefits, right? So we wait on the benefit and harm scale. We see this and other things as well.
Why is smoking prohibited? Because the harms outweigh the benefits. Someone will say, Oh, but smoking helps me relax. Yeah, but it's going to kill you. So the harms outweigh the benefits. Right? So this is a scale that we use infec.
for figuring out when something is appropriate, and when something is not appropriate, and helps us with is to decide what's halal and what's haram. And we can use the same scale for personal development, that if you want to pursue a goal, if you want to dedicate your life to a mission, if you have a dream, if you have something you want to work on, you're going to look at, does the benefits outweigh the harms, and of course, benefits we are talking about as Muslims benefits with dunya Welaka. Right. So sometimes something may have dunya benefits, but after harms, and we don't want to go there. Rather, ideally, we're looking at something that gives us the best of both worlds,
or at the very least, it benefits us in this world without affecting our akhira in any way. So always weightings on a scale of Mozilla and website the benefits and harms. And anything that is more harmful than beneficial. Stay away from it. Now, it's not always easy to figure out sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes only after we do something we realized that he was harmful to us. You know, so we ask Allah for forgiveness. And we try again, the beauty of our religion is that Allah subhana wa taala, He forgives us, and He
does not hold us accountable for what is beyond our capabilities as long as we tried our best. So weightings on a scale of benefits and harms number four,
if you are taking knowledge of this dunya now, this is very important not just for personal development, but even now, for example, with this COVID 19 crisis, a lot of people are just following conspiracy theories and you know, wacky things that people are saying on their blogs and, and unfolded WhatsApp messages. So as Muslims we supposed to go after knowledge that is grounded knowledge that is tested knowledge that is proven, when it comes to our religion, that we go for authentic hadith, and we go for the Quran, when it comes to our dunya as well. We go for science and psychology, we don't go for pseudoscience we don't go for for months, we don't go for conspiracy
theories.
Even when it comes to dunya, we have to make sure our knowledge is authentic and what is authentic dunya knowledge, it is proven science, it is proven psychology, these things that can be proven, not things that someone is just making up. So it's the same with personal development that don't just believe anything you find in a personal development book, rather, if it is not contradicting Islam, and if the author can prove it through a psychology test, or through science, or something in this method, that's even better. And that's something that we should consider following, right. So if someone's developed a system for growing a business into a successful business, and needed a proven
business model that works and is halal, and then you take it and you apply it to a business, or that is beneficial for this OMA, hey, Bismillah go ahead and do so. But if somebody else is hatching a scheme to get wealthy, and you get caught up in that scheme, because you didn't check whether it's grounded, you didn't check whether it's proven, didn't check how it works, then, you know, you become a victim of that scheme, your it is your own fault for just following anything without actually checking whether it is proven or not. So as Muslims, we should not be foolish, even when taking knowledge of this dunya we must take knowledge that is proven, and knowledge that is tested,
and not just things that people make up. Having said that,
I'm actually going to contradict myself a little bit here, and I'm gonna explain why. So on one hand, we have to take things that approval on the other hand, we should also leave room for experimentation in areas where it's allowed to experiment. So in general, something that's proven to work should take preference over someone's theory. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with experimenting with new ideas as long as they are halal. What do I mean by this? So I'll give you two areas in my life where I'm always experimenting with new ideas. Number one is time management. And number two is education. So I'm always trying to find ways to maximize my time and get the most out
of my day. Is there anything haram about that? No. Is this something that's proven by science? Well, that's what I'm doing. I'm trying to prove it by doing experiments. Right. So I'm basically, you know, experimenting until I find something that works and then I write about it and share it, share it with others. The other area where I do that is education. So I believe that the education system we have in place these days is terrible. It doesn't work, right. It causes people to memorize things for exams, they forget things off the exams. I believe it has, it doesn't have practical value. So I am always expected
lamenting with new methods of education. Now, does this go against Islam? No, Islam doesn't have a set method of education. It's left up to people to develop their own ways of teaching and studying and learning. And Muslims in the past have done this Muslims were the first ones to establish universities, and madrasahs and educational Medical Colleges, you know, so Muslims experimented and came up with a good model of study that worked. So why can't we do the same thing today? So yes, if something's proven to work, if I find an education model for a specific subject, that's proven to work, I will take it and I will follow it. But in another subject, we I feel that the way people are
teaching it today, it's not working, I will experiment and experiment until I discover a way that works, even if nobody else has ever done it before. So on one hand, we need to take knowledge that's grounded. On the other hand, weights have allowed to experiment. There's nothing wrong with doing so. Because,
you know, we want to be leaders, we don't want to just be followers. In the in the golden age of Islam, Muslims were the ones who came up with some of the absolute most amazing ideas has changed his world. And they did that through the experiments we did with even our haters discovering of optics, where you will have a reasonable advancement of algebra, whether it was
a good eight or bulkiest concept on depression and anxiety and how to deal with them. They had to they did their own experiments. And that's what led to these great and amazing discoveries. So we should do the same today. So we aren't just people who take from this field, but we are people who contribute to this field as well.
So the final point, which I will drive home again, and again, you may notice this point repeatedly, all of my books and all my lectures because this is the single most important thing to every Muslim, do not allow anything to distract you from the purpose of life. Whether it's a goal, whether it's a dream, whether it's a job, whether it's a money, whatever it is, our purpose in life is to worship Allah and that takes precedence over everything else. And that is the ultimate paradigm from which we approach this entire field and every other field. So with that, I come to the end of my presentation and inshallah we will now open the doors to q&a. Subhana Rahman is almost a full was
salam ala mousseline will Hamdulillah robola me
just like a level handshake, for your very beneficial and
beautiful nature.
Lashay has beautifully presented the problems of modern personal development theories and the Islamic paradigm on this theme as well as the Islamic features and Islamic approach. MashAllah from the villa.
We pray to Allah to give us delphic to act upon these valuable words, these Nilay Tala now we'll go for that question and secession. Okay, so I know it is being telecasted, both in zoom and Facebook Live. So we will take questions from both June and from our Facebook Live. Okay, shake. So there is a first question, Salam o alaikum. Sheikh, in case of, in case of doing in case of doing corporate jobs, oftentimes doing extra work is treated with praise, in this case, how it will apply the concept of a son from Islamic perspective.
Okay, I didn't hear the whole question. So he said, When doing a corporate job, the extra work is treated with with praise, that suppose the boss becomes pleased, pleased with someone who are more if people just do extra work, so that the boss will be pleased to them. So how does that fit in with your son? Yes. Easiest. I mean, that is isn't itself a sign means that wherever you do you the best, high desert sun is. So
I mean, if you're doing a job,
please, would you not doing your best? Right? So there's nothing wrong with that. I think, you know, one of the problems we have today with when it comes to our intentions, is that we don't understand what it means to have a classroom near right within a classroom near means that even when it comes to dunya, we only do things for Allah. So we think we only work for Allah. So we feel bad when we try to play ball, so trying to please our spouse or trying to please our parents. We actually shouldn't feel bad about this. This falls under a classroom near as long as our main goal is the pleasure of Allah, the pleasure of our boss, the pleasure of our parents, the pleasure of our
teachers, the pleasure of our spouse is included that because Allah is happy with us when we are fulfilling the rights of our employees are employers, right? So, remember, in Islam, a job is a trust. It's an Amana so if you're doing the best possible job, and your boss is pleased with you for that you are fulfilling your Amana
That's something that's pleasing to Allah. So there's nothing wrong with that.
And that actually is part of your son rather than is your son when it comes to working in corporate job.
Shake. Next question, what is the relation between self development and purification of soul?
Okay, so self development generally focuses on dunya right. So you normally focus on things like
managing your time building your self confidence, achieving your goals, becoming the best worker in your workplace, these kinds of things and purification of the soul does get out so well that's focused more on the pleasure of Allah. So cleaning your heart improving your Eman, improving your taqwa improving your Tawakkol improving your sugar, improving your sober all of that invocation of the soul. So there are two different fields. That's why in my website, I normally refer to that skill as spiritual development, not personal development, right? Because that's cleaning the inside and trying to get closer to Allah. Now, Islamic self help or Islamic personal development is a
merger between the two. So I believe there are many things that we can do that will benefit us in both worlds. So for example, time management, the Islamic way, includes praying all of your Salah on time. So that is on one hand is a it's a spiritual development, because you are paying all your Salah on time. On the other hand, it's personal development because you are getting better at time management, right? It's the same with self confidence that in Islam, self confidence comes from our relationship with Allah, that we trust Allah, Allah takes care of us. Allah has given us skills Allah will help us to accomplish our goals if they are good for us. So there is a spiritual
development angle to it. That we are improving our Taqwa we are improving our Tawakkol we are improving our relationship with Allah, we are making dua, all of this spiritual development. But also there is a personal development side to it in that all of this is making us more confident it's making us work harder is making us achieve more Indonesia, as well. So originally, they are separate personal development, achieving your worldly goals, the specification of the soul, the achievement of the pleasure of Allah and the love of Allah. But when you merge them together into Islamic self, how can actually accomplish both at the same time?
Just shake.
Next question, what should be the first book we should read for self development in Islamic way?
Okay, so the first book to read on self development the Islamic way
down? That's a difficult question because there's, firstly, this is a very new field. There isn't as much written in this field as I would like. Now, I know my main book that I would have recommended, I don't think it's available
in Bangladesh yet.
So maybe one day it will be. But that's my book on the productivity principles of Omar bin Abdulaziz. So that's, that's, that book is grounded in history. And it covers 15 productivity principles. And that's really those 15 principles give you a foundation upon which you can analyze any other book for now from what's available. locally. I think my books on time management and self confidence. Those are a good starting point, as well as I don't know if it's available there. The productive Muslim is it available in your country? Book, radical Muslim?
Are you aware of when it's available? See if I have a copier.
So Mohammed Faris, from productive muslim.com Yeah, he's written a really good book.
And this book has been translated in Bengali as well.
Okay, Mashallah. Excellent, excellent. So, so that's your other starting points, right? So if I'm going to go with the author besides myself, that that's the other author whose books push one book he has written on this topic is truly beneficial. Maybe you could start with his book, so inshallah read the productive Muslim, I didn't read my books on time management and self confidence and Inshallah, if my book of productivity principles comes out there as well read that as well. Meanwhile, you can try getting a hold of the bank, the PDF on my website, or, you know, find some other way to get Inshallah, as for other books in the field. As I said, this is a relatively new
field. The Self Help field itself only came about less than 100 years ago, and the Islamic self help is probably less than 10 years old. It's an entirely new concept. So there aren't that many books written in the field. And sadly, many of the other books are read in this field. The authors didn't do a good job. In the sense they just took what was written by the non Muslims and they just put Islamic dressing on it without actually getting into a proper Islamic photo. There is one more author with books I would recommend. It's from India. That's Mirza
Uh, yeah wouldn't be. So I don't know if check our books books are available in your country, but he's books on personal development on business specifically are very beneficial. So I would inshallah recommend
the books of leadership lesson from the life of Rasulullah. And another book on marriage. These two books are available in Bengali, in his book on leadership lessons on the life of Rasulullah that's a great starting point. Yeah, because that book gives you a lot of the foundations of about what the Islamic paradigm is. So yeah, that's excellent book to start with Inshallah, because
there's another question. The major problem that I feel with personal development is consistency shake, can you give us some tips on how can we be consistent and committed.
So the best way to grow consistent that something is actually found in the Hadith of the Prophet sallallahu Sallam is narrated by Aisha Dylan, Ha, that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Allah loves deeds that are consistent, even if they are small. So in this Hadees, we get the, the primary principle of consistency. And this actually is the, this is a primary principle of purification of the soul. But we can apply to personal development as well. So when it comes to purification of the soul, how do you get better at something through small actions, right, this is the mistake we make, somebody wants to be pious, they wake up the next morning, and they pray to the
gods of tahajjud. Or they try and read six Jews of the Quran in one day. And what happens is within a week to give up, it's too hard to the problem is you went too big, too fast. Rather, you start with something small, and you make it a habit, and then you add something else. So for example, if someone's not praying as soon as salah, just tell yourself, I'm going to start praying to sunnah before Fajr everyday. And just focus on that and be consistent on that until it becomes a part of you. Then you say, okay, that's consistent. Now, let me start playing the four before zookeeper as well. So you now gradually improving and adding layers of good deeds to your life. Now, the same
thing is going to apply to personal development, someone reads a book on time management, and to apply all of those principles in one day, that's not going to happen. Nobody can change overnight like that. You have to take small dosages, take one thing at a time, be consistent on that one thing until it becomes a habit, and then move on to number two. So for example, if you find that you are wasting too much time on social media, so just focus on one thing, I'm going to cut down on my social media time, and make a plan for that. And be consistent on that until you find that you are hungry, like not spending as much time on social media, as we used to, then you move on to something
else, our problems, the number one, we try to change too much too quickly. Number two, we expect too much from ourselves. And number three, this is the biggest problem, especially from the part of the world where we are from, we expect perfection of ourselves and our family members, right, expecting perfection from anyone is going to end in disappointment. So many of us when you want to become practicing Muslims, we expect perfection from ourselves. And as soon as we commit a sin, we cook we lose hope. No one's perfect. Every son of Adam makes mistakes, we're not Ambia, we're going to make mistakes. So don't expect that level of piety for yourself. Same with personal development, someone
says I'm going to be the absolute best in the world at what I do. Then they make a mistake and they feel terrible. And they feel like you know I'm not good at this No, relax, start small and build up slowly. So again, go back to the advice of Rasulullah sallallahu Sallam something small, but consistent. That is your starting point. And you grow from there and you build from there. Don't aim users to example, if somebody's writing a book, don't go from someone who writes one line a day to trying to write 50 pages a day. It's never going to work. rather commit to one paragraph per day. And once you consistently that, commit to one page a day, and once you're consistent at that then
commit to two pages a day. And guess what, within a year you may be writing five pages a day, but you start small and you be realistic. This is the key point to start small and be realistic and inshallah you will find consistency in that Allah knows best.
Sheikh
next question Sheikh we know you have four children and also a very busy schedule. How do you get back in time any advice for
parents?
Okay, so this is a challenge for everyone, myself included?
How do you get Baraka in time? How do you manage your time are two separate things. Baraka is a karate miracle that Allah gives to whomever He wills. It's not something that we can just press a button and we get it. Really that's from Allah. How do you gain Baraka in anything? By trying to live a life that's pleasing to Allah by being sincere to Allah by having a workload in Allah but making dua to Allah? That's all about your relationship with Allah
Right, the closest someone is to Allah, the more Baraka they'll have in their wealth, their time, their life, everything else. So I would say the main way to get Baraka in anything is to get a really strong relationship with Allah, and to make dua for Baraka. How many of us actually make dua for Baraka, right? Make dua to Allah put Baraka in my well to Baraka, my time with Baraka my efforts with DACA in my family, how many of us actually make these to us? So, if you're not making these to us, why, why would we expect it? So we'll get the actual Baraka is a medical, it is a Koran, but it's one of the proofs that Islam is the true religion, the fact that people do the experience to
see their lives.
And the only way to get that is to try and live a life that is pleasing to Allah. Now, as far as time management is concerned, again, you have to see where you are, and work your way up slowly. Everyone's different, and no one's perfect at it. I myself am not perfect at it. I mean, I'm a research manager at Yaqeen Institute of running Islamic self help. I'm writing my own books, I'm doing webinars, and I'm making YouTube videos, do the Joomla lectures ethical masjid, teaching a local Holika, homeschooling my kids,
sometimes I mess up, sometimes something gets neglected. Sometimes something falls through the cracks, sometimes they don't do a good enough job. No one's perfect. The point is that you're trying your best. So some of the things I do that helped me to manage my time, number one, a habit to do lists, right, so I have a to do list for every day, these are the things that have to get done today. And I try my best to make time to get every single thing on the to do list that number two, I keep a written journal. And in that journal, I have all of my deadlines. And my times when this is when that is, and I work according to the journal, and I made sure that everything is done at the
right time. Number three, I scheduled certain things for certain times of the day. So for example, 9am, to 12pm, for homeschooling my kids, so that time is blocked out, it's just me and my kids, or 2pm to 3pm for writing my books that time blocked out just for writing books. So blocking out time in your day to do certain things. Another thing you can do is cut down on your fun activities, right. And as we grow older and wiser and more focused on the purpose of life, we really should be finding the joy in our work, and not having to supplement that with too much other things. So if you're spending six hours a day playing video games, or watching movies, you have to cut down, you
know, because you could do maybe two or three hours of fun and have now you have two or three hours extra to focus on other things. So, you know, cutting down and out distractions is also very, very important. And one of the most important things we can do is start our days early, start our days early, and just fill it up with as much good things as possible. From the time we wake up till the time we go to relax, to just fill it up with as many good things as possible. Again, I can't if I'm going to go to all of this and would end up giving a full time management lecture now. Rather I recommend everyone reads the book. It's all in there, how to do things the proper way. So that's my
time management jobs as far as Baraka is concerned, ask Allah only Allah congratses Baraka in anything.
Because Hello, Karen shake, we have only four minutes left. And so this will be our last question that we'll be taking
for this question is
Salam o alaikum machine, we do a lot for this dunya.
So how to convert that as an act of worship. That is, what the sister was to tell is, we have very limited time and we do a lot of work. So how we can convert that was an act of worship as well.
Okay, I'm actually writing a book on this topic at the moment. So the book I'm writing is called lesson sustenance and Inshallah, it's going to talk about how to focus on how to use our time that we spend making money in a way that earns the blessings of Allah and answer Pleasure of Allah and helps us in the orchestra as well. So there are a number of things we can do. I'll just focus now on maybe three or four of the most important things are number one is our intention. So, anything of this dunya that is halal can become a good deed with a good intention and that includes the work so if you are going to work and your intention is I am working to take care of my families to help this
ummah to fulfill my responsibilities for the pleasure of Allah, every moment you spend working inshallah you will be rewarded for it. So intention transforms any mundane Act into an act of worship, and that includes work. So any job that you are doing, as long as it is halal, if you do it in with the intention of pleasing, pleasing Allah, if you do it with the intention of benefiting the Ummah, if you do it with the intention of providing for your family, and inshallah it can become a source of reward for us. Number two, the second way in which we can make sure that our that our money is blessed and our and our money is going a long way. Actually number two, the remaining three
is actually
We find one Hadith.
There's a beautiful Hadith from the Prophet sallallaahu Salam that supplements this, where the Prophet salallahu Alaihe Salam said that every deed we do, will end when we die except for three money that a charity that continues to benefit people knowledge that we leave behind, it continues to benefit people and our children to make two offers. So what this is doing is not talking about three things, it's talking about three channels, right? So we worried about working? How can we build our asset? Well, the key way to multiply your asset while working for dunya is to set up streams of revenue for the AKA, many of us we have the idea of setting up our streams of revenue for
this dunya. So people invest in stocks, and then they pile up, you know, money in the bank account, and they do all of these different things. But
as Muslims, what we can do instead is we all we should be investing money in the ark era. So if you've got any extra money,
you know, you start investing in things that will continue to multiply in the agora. So for example, you put a portion of your savings towards an orphanage or towards the masjid, or towards an Islamic school or towards the research center, or towards the whatever it is. So everyone, you putting a small portion towards that, that small portion. On the Day of Judgment, it's going to be huge. So you feel you are working for dunya. But your money is working for Akira, right, this is the key, I always say see the more than self help books, what they tell us is to make your money work for you. I say make your money work for your akhira. So in the olden days, with the golden age of Islam, we
had the work of system, so everybody who had money, they would invest their money in their Archaea not in the dunya by setting up a work of somebody would buy a building and dedicate the building for teaching Islam or they will dedicate their building for as a hospital or they will dedicated as a shelter for widows and divorcees or whatever it is, but they were using the money to invest in the Ophira. So they can go to work, they can focus on the business, they can focus on their careers. In the meanwhile, this other building is piling up their good deeds for them in the off camera. And this is this is where all my other ideas come from, is that yes, our time goes in working for dunya.
So make our money work for the Akira instead, whatever literally it is, Don't think I don't have enough whatever literally it is even a tiny tiny amount of money that is spent in the path of Allah, you know, even half a date given its sadaqa when it is done with a floss, it can go a very long way as it as it works its way through the lives of people and benefits people so that is the other way in which we can benefit people we can continue to grow our akhira while we are working number three is to do things that are beneficial for this ummah with our spare time right so we say knowledge that we leave behind that benefits people so if you have you know weekends or for evenings or four
Sundays off or whatever it is to dedicate an hour a week for benefiting the OMA whether it's counseling people, whether it's volunteering at a local organization, whether it's you know, teaching enables children whatever it is just find at least one project in your life where you are passing on beneficial knowledge to somebody else. So that now whatever good deeds that person does is now be added to your scale of good deeds. So you are going to work but that person is piling up your good deeds for you while you are at work. And then of course number four is our own children and that is if we raise children who are righteous believers and inshallah any good deeds they do,
you also get the reward.
So we could be going one of our kids may shall become a great scholar of Islam, guess what, while you working ever look at scholar of Islam is doing you're getting the reward for it as well. So there are many, many ways in which we can go to work and focus on our junior careers while piling up for the Aussie euro as well. These are just a few of them and inshallah hopefully I'm hoping sometime over the next five or six months my book on this topic will be out as well. And the I guess my next focus inshallah so I hope that you find these tips beneficial. Just like aloe vera and Sheikh Rila go to the end of frustration. I think we all have been benefited from the wonderful
lecture on self development expertise from Norway followed by a beautiful question and secession from the larger circle Lokeren check for people accept our invitation.
On behalf of medical institute and for your busy schedule, we know you are very busy using your tavsiye programs reading books and other programs as well. But we are very very happy that you have kept our invitation and we hope that in future will be also benefited we want to be benefited from you from your valuable lectures and your words insha Allah Tala
just like a Lokeren shake it personally. Allah will continue to work together and shall
Okay for having me like slipped back a low FICO shape from the lessor today where I think we can finish the session now fully. There's
a lot more we can take a shadow Allah Astok Furukawa to like Salam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh
leikam Salam rahmatullah wa barakato