Johari Abdul-Malik – Time to Check Out Your Mind

Things should be okay.

And thanking Allah

for so many blessings that Allah has given

us.

Blessings

beyond which any number we cannot count them.

And bearing witness

that Allah

continued to send guides and prophets and messengers

throughout the millennia.

No people have been left without guidance.

That guidance culminated with the guidance of Muhammad

1435

years ago.

Culminated

with

the prophet

message.

And

from that message, Allah sent to us

a letter, a communication

to humankind

that we might be guided aright.

We thank Allah today for that guidance from

Muhammad.

We ask peace and blessings upon him and

his family and his companions,

and all of the and those who follow

Allah's.

The ultimate reality, the truth until the day

of judgment.

Today in the, I just want to share

with you just

a few thoughts, and

I want to tell you today,

I'm probably not alone

in having a heavy heart.

It seems in the world today when we

look at the news,

every piece of news, what Noah De Bele,

seems like it's bad news.

Even bad news used to be there used

to be a little good news.

Now it seems

every channel, every station, they're saying some kind

of thing. Maybe it's against Islam or or

it's against humanity, it's against something,

against morality. I

like, almost as if the whole world is

going crazy.

And we ask ourselves sometimes,

what can we do about it?

Perhaps it might be helpful

to think about the words of Imam Shafi'i,

Rahim Allah Alaik.

If there was nothing else re revealed of

the Quran except this,

he said it would have been enough to

guide all of humankind

to the straight path.

And Allah begins

that Surah

by swearing

by one of Allah's creations,

time.

We're lost.

And then Allah informs us about the nature

of human beings.

Everyone

is a loser.

And I love the fact that Allah is

very general

because you might think, well, that doesn't include

Muslims, do it?

And if you and the Christians say that

doesn't include Christian. Everybody else is a Lord

of Jews. They they all say somebody else,

not us. We're the chosen people.

Quran gives some definition.

If you have a connection with a loss

of Hanukkah, then

it is natural that out of that relationship

should flow

righteous deeds.

If you see a person who's intelligent, they

study, they learn, they know things.

When you see their behavior, you know how

they're going to behave. They're going to behave

like an intelligent person.

If you meet an ignorant person,

comprehension, they're not gonna get it.

So don't waste your time

arguing with them.

Out of the right relationship with Allah

flows.

If you teach your child good manners when

they're growing up at that time, when they

get older, they have them inculcated.

It's called habit.

A person who has this relationship with Allah

over time,

they develop the sensibilities

that when individuals try to call them to

something different than what Allah has,

they have a fortitude that they can withstand

it. The conditions.

You and I,

through the units of time, have an opportunity

to find out what Allah's Haqq is and

then talk to each other about it.

Don't keep it a secret.

I love the

Quran is coming to the Prophet

in the early days,

and then it stops.

And when the Quran stops coming to the

prophet, he

and his companions, although there were few, they

were concerned about why we are not receiving

this communication

from Allah.

And then Allah reveals to

him

and the last

Go and tell people.

Tell people about this message that Allah is

sending to you even though maybe because that

is not coming right now, you feel like

you might be dejected. You're not.

That verily Allah is with the people who

have Amin for Allah. They are connected to

Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. In their salat, in

their zikr, they remember Allah. It affects their

behavior. It drives us.

What was so bizarre,

and that we patiently

persevere.

We don't give up.

Now I'm gonna tell you

part of what's bothering me today.

I believe that we have lost sense of

time

in our relationship

with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so that we

are as a people, I mean globally,

so hooked on making something happen right now

that the notions of sabr,

even the reality of what is hot doesn't

matter. What matters is what I want to

see happen and where I want it to

happen now.

It creates an impatience in our young people,

almost to the degree that it drives them

mad.

They want to see the establishment

of Islam. They want to see justice,

but they're impatient.

If you were to think about

connecting

the way the companions connected with time,

the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam described that there's

forgiveness from 1 jumwa to the next jumwa,

From one salah to the next salah.

So if I am

living in the time sense of a Muslim,

when I see you and I say,

let's get together later. And you say, when?

You said, how about Badr salatul Asa?

Because my time frame is set

based on what Allah has set as the

times.

What time is is our gathering? Let's meet

after Maghrib,

not 6 o'clock, 7:30,

after Maghrib because my time sense is adjusted.

When my time sense become adjusted to Allah's

time, I become more patient.

And I don't feel guilty all the time

because I am focused in my salah, that

if I make salatul asr,

I ask Allah to forgive me for what

I did before I made salah.

And I make a pledge that when I

get up from the rug, I'm not gonna

make those mistakes again,

Inshallah,

between then and Maghrib.

Now I don't know about many of you,

but I I know there are many people.

They make salah, and they're going through the

motion.

Maybe sometimes, I guess even me, I I

I realized I I finished making salaam, I'm

like, was I really there?

I know all the words.

I know all the movement.

I'm I'm in every one of them, but

am I really there

in a way that I'm connecting with Allah,

that when I leave Salah, I'm empowered, I'm

energized!

The burden has been lifted from me!

My mental health condition is improved.

I'm not all stressed out

because

I know that that salah was filled with

makfirah.

And then I hope like a person who

plugs their cell phone in when the battery

gets low,

I'm charged up.

For some of us,

we let our battery run a long time,

and then you try to call the brother

and he doesn't respond. And you say, well,

brother, why didn't you pick up the phone

when I called you and said my battery

was dead?

Some of us, our spiritual battery dies because

we let it go too long before we

charge it up.

You know,

they come out with new devices all the

time and they people ask, well, is the

new iPhone gonna have a longer battery life

because

my battery dies all the time.

Allah gave us a formula for how

we could maintain

our battery's life.

We could maintain the connection with a line

by plugging in

5 times a day

before the battery dies.

So that we might be energized from our

salah.

Right now, we're about

to go through another time change.

This time change

into

the new year.

And

used to told me to remind you they

are calendars for sale in the office.

New year.

Forgiveness

from 1 Ramadan to the next Ramadan,

from one

period of our acknowledgment of the reality of

Allah. Me, I took Shahadah.

So I know the day that I said,

everything before that Allah forgave.

But then after that,

like a person the prophet said, if they

bathe in a river 5 times a day,

how much dirt could they get on them?

They said, you Rasoolah, no significant amount. He

says salah is like that.

But sometimes

you get some kind of stain on you.

That regular washing not gonna get it out.

Maybe even the wash that comes from Ramadan

not gonna get it out.

And so you need to go to the

high detergent

Hajj.

And I want to remind you,

those who jazz who returned recently,

make sure that you visit with them to

get some of the charge off of them

before it goes down.

Many of them will come back. Their souls

are light like a feather

because they're not carrying that emotional baggage,

sin that they had before that journey.

And although I was talking to a journalist

the other day, they asked me, ma'am, tell

us about Muharram

and the Muslim new year. I said, well,

the Muslim new year doesn't have any religious

significance for us.

The first of Muharram didn't have any religious

significance for us, but

I would like to remind your readers

that the time

mark for the Muslim era

didn't begin like the Christian, didn't begin with

the birth of the prophet.

The Muslim era didn't begin with the revelation

of the Quran.

The Muslim era begins in the year of

the Hijra

where people, because of their connection with Allah,

migrated to some place so that they could

be free to practice their religion.

And the Jews

in Yesr'ab

would be able to practice their religion.

And Sabians, another kind of monotheist, that they

would be able to practice their religion freely

in a place that Muslims established for the

worship of Allah.

That era begins with

the Hijra.

So for us, when we think about the

year 0, the companions of the prophet,

they were in the time since.

Everything before that, one era. Everything after that,

a new era.

And they didn't retrofit time.

Like, if you go to your calendar now

at work, you see on the calendar 2014.

How did it get to be 2014?

In the z in the year 0, was

anybody saying this is the year 0?

The reality is that the the Gregorian or

the Christian era or or

AD

was created

many, many, many years after that event.

But the companions of the prophet

in their time, they saw the hijrah as

that dividing line, so a companion would say,

yeah, Abdullah, when did such and such happen?

They would say, oh, that was 2 years

before we made hijrah.

Say, well, and and when was your son

born? Oh, he was born 2 years after

Hijra.

Because the migration to a place where they

were free to practice their faith

was the central

issue

in their time.

So I'm not asking you to celebrate

the new year, but I am asking you

to celebrate

to be in the era of Rasulullah

and the establishment of a.

And we might want to take a moment

to reflect

on our own time,

and how we set our own priorities,

and what we think is really important.

That Allah might bless us in this next

year, in this era

with benefit.

I wanna change subjects on you,

and I I apologize.

But right now, there's a lot going on

in our world.

The first I talk about because you

you might not hear about it later.

Over 4,000 people have died from the Ebola

crisis.

That's a 1,000 little more than a 1000

people more than died on the tragedy in

911.

Why is it that everybody's talking about

that tragedy

and they move quickly to memorialize it and

to spend 1,000,000 of dollars to do whatever?

And most of the people who are affected,

by the way, in the Ebola crisis,

most of them

are Muslim.

Most of them.

Yesterday, they had the first case in Mali.

The most the largest country in Africa

with Muslim population is Nigeria.

Nigeria is not Ebola free.

Senegal had a case they have resolved. They

issued and now have been determined

Ebola free.

Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea,

still they're struggling.

And I don't know about

you, but

I know that people who live in that

part of the world,

they don't get their fair share.

They've known about the Ebola disease for 35

years.

They're only rushing now to find a cure

because it might come over to the United

States or Europe.

I'm inviting you to become an advocate

for your brothers and sisters

and for humanity

to do something

to end this crisis. Make dua when you

see the news of the terrible outbreak.

Make dua.

There's a hashtag,

hashtag, look like number sign, end Ebola.

Go to Twitter

and see if you can follow what's going

on. Maybe you can do something to make

a difference. Let congress know

that this is important because it affects

all of humanity, but also because many, many

Muslims are dying.

The other part is to do what you

can.

Not fundraising today. I'm not asking you to

spend any money.

But if you have money, you know what

to do.

The other is

there are some issues and concerns,

not only about health,

but about mental health.

I know many of you have seen

the news lately

of individuals

who have been

claiming that they're going to fight

in Syria, in Iraq, etcetera.

Whatever you think about that, that's not my

subject.

I know that there are a lot of

Muslims who are killing other Muslims

every day. Today is, so if you just

look at the news, what happened in

any country in the region, Pakistan,

India,

Afghanistan,

you name it,

you're gonna find some Muslims killed other Muslims

today. Iraq, definitely.

And over what, I'm not really, really sure.

But they're all but they're fighting.

Syria, Lebanon, Jordan,

they they find each other. I I I

I can't figure it out. I'm from Brooklyn.

Maybe, you know, just because I'm not from

the region. I can't really get it.

When I accepted Islam,

the life of a Muslim was sacred.

I accepted Islam.

Life of a Muslim was sacred.

Now you have Muslims who go and they

kill it. I was in Sudan,

met with

one faction and another faction,

killing each other

after they make salah.

That's some kind of mental illness.

You can't be a rational Muslim.

The prophet

in his khutba wada, he said the life

of a Muslim is sacred.

You get up, make takfir

on the other Muslim,

then go kill him.

And while you're at it, you can kill

his wife and his children.

Something is going wrong.

Most

of them.

Because they feel that the sense of urgency

and time, we gotta do something, man.

What we gonna do?

I don't know what we gonna do,

but let's go get busy. At least I

can do that.

You're sick.

And I know

about

about

some of the young people who have gone

over and they get sick when they're over

there.

When they find out, oh,

we're selling dope to buy weapons because they

don't make no weapons.

All the weapons come from the United States,

from Israel, from the Soviet Union, Germany. They

all come from over there.

I'm sorry. I'm making some of you uncomfortable.

That's not what they they they don't the

people who are you doing the killing

of other Muslims, they don't make they don't

manufacture what maybe IED, but they don't manufacture

weapons.

When they talk about heavy weapons, ain't none

of them weapons made by Muslims.

So someone else is benefiting

from the bloodbath.

My advice to you,

Many of our young people

are so isolated,

and some of them, they don't have good

boys, don't have good relationship with their father,

father busy working all the time.

That love and compassion that the prophet

talks about

for your children,

not there. Their friends are on Facebook.

Their friend is on the Internet.

And then the next thing you know, they

find another friend on the Internet who says,

you know what, man?

I really love you,

and I really wanna see you do something

with your life.

So why don't you come and get busy

with us?

And then when you look at the profile

of that person, you say that's so unfortunate.

They were taken advantage of

because they they were mentally

unstable.

That's your job.

That's your job.

Your neighbor,

invite them. The youth in your neighborhood, get

get together with them.

If they look like something is going on

with them,

build a relationship. Maybe there's something going on

with their home. This boy in Ottawa, they

said he's from a broken home.

He was

homeless.

This is this

is right.

These people are right for the taking.

And I'm saying to you, Alhamdulillah,

the love of this deen,

the love of Allah, the love of Muslims

is something that we have to share with

them.

Before we lose them,

and then Allah will ask us what did

we do.

Did we share this Deen with them in

a way that they would not?

I know it's 2 o'clock,

and, we used to say back in the

in the seventies,

Alham, you gotta get back to your slave,

Back to work insha Allah.

But I wanna remind you, alhamdulillah,

if there are any health professionals

who are with us,

We're not just talking.

Darahedra has agreed to join the Interfaith Medical

Specialist Network,

And we're going to have a meeting

medical people, you don't even have to be

a doctor, you could be any kind of

medical person,

to join us here at Al Hajjara this

Wednesday night

at 6:30,

because we have to do something.

It's the mind, body, and the spirit

that if

we make it home,

then you'll have in your chest that lump

of flesh that the prophet

said, if it's good, the whole body is

good.

That's the anatomical heart

as well as this inshallah.

So I ask you

please to make dua.

For those

who are suffering under the stress and the

the the diseases of the society.

Oh Allah, guide us among those whom you

have guided.

Oh Allah, protect us and our children among

those whom you have protected.

Oh Allah, take us as a friend among

those whom you have taken as a friend.

Oh Allah, strengthen us that

we might have patience

Oh allah, that you might gather us together,

that

we might love one another.

Oh allah, help us

within the of Rasulullah

that we might love you, you allah, and

love your ummah. Oh Allah, we ask for

your mercy and your peace on the prophet

and on his family and on his companions.

And all of the m b I, you

allah, those who follow the way of your

until the day of judgment

end.

Allahu

Akbar.