Khalid Latif – Imam Nawawis 40 Hadith for Modern Times #02
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Okay. Should we get started?
Assalamu alayhi wa sallam
So
last week, we started looking at the first
hadith in this hadith collection,
the 40 hadith of Imam Nawawi. People wanna
just pull it up on their phones.
This hadith
is
a very well known hadith, and it's the
first hadith that starts a lot of different
books.
It's called the Hadith of Intentions.
It says
the indeed
actions are by their intentions,
and we write through the hadith in its
entirety.
Today, we're gonna try to get through the
entire
text of the hadith.
And just to recap from last week, we
broke down
what are the different parts that make up
a hadith, the the
the chain of transmission, the text.
We talked about
the
word hadith itself, what that means.
In the first sentence of this hadith, in
the
we translated
what the meaning is of each of these
words.
And the crux of our conversation last week
focused
on the word,
and why that was something that was important,
the idea of deeds and
actions within the framework of our religious tradition,
and how that fundamentally is the only thing
that you're really taking with you when you
go from this world are just the actions
and deeds that you have. Right? May Allah
make the best of our deeds, the last
of our deeds, and let not any one
of us meet him
other than in the state that is most
pleasing to him.
So if somebody who has the hadith pulled
up wants to just read it in its
entirety again, and we're gonna delve a little
bit deeper into the meaning of this hadith,
its relevancy,
and its application in our lives.
And as people kind of trickle in,
you know, we'll get into more discussions and
things about parts of it.
But does somebody who have it pulled up
can read it in the Arabic, and then
we'll read it in the English?
It's just the first hadith
and the 40 hadith of Imam Nawi.
Okay. You wanna read the English first? Go
ahead.
Who said, I heard the messenger
of say, these are only by their intention
intentions, and every man shall have only what
he intended.
So one whose hijra, immigration was to Allah
and his messenger. His hijra was to Allah
and his messenger.
But one whose hijra was was to achieve
a worldly aim for 2 women to agree,
then his Hijra was to that for which
he emigrated.
Is that clear? Does anybody wanna read the
Arabic?
It's okay if you're not comfortable with it.
It's fluidity. It's fine.
So you wanna get into the habit of
kinda reading it, trying to memorize it piece
by piece, especially the foundational hadith. Not so
that you're remotely memorizing them, but so that
they're there as kind of
opportunities of implementation
from sticking to, like, the words. Right? They
become
not just slogans, but essentially, like, guiding principles,
philosophy on life. So in this hadith, the
prophet alaihi salam, he says,
That
indeed actions are by their intentions, their motivations,
and each individual will have that which they
intended.
Thus, whose migration
is for Allah and his messengers, his migration
is for Allah and his messenger,
and he whose migration is for something of
the world
or for a woman to marry, then his
migration is for that which he migrated.
Right? And the
kinda reason of this hadith is rooted
in the instance of a companion
who's making a Hijra along with all the
companions.
The Hijra is there leaving from a place
to go to another place. They're migrating now.
Right? And there's 2 major migrations
within Muslim experience.
They migrate in their early periods of revelation
from Mecca to Abyssinia,
where there's a lot of persecution
and they are seeking just a free place
to worship Allah. So the
Muslims
in the early period of Islam, they're sent
to live under a Christian king,
the Najashi
in Abyssinia, what is modern day Ethiopia,
and it's an incredible thing that you wanna
think about deeply.
Because also for a lot of these people,
the first time they've left from a predominantly
stratified society,
that is run by elite
tribalistic
clan system of Arabs,
and they're now in a kingdom
that is run by Africans. It's all black
people
and just to experience that in and of
itself and understand that,
in terms of what that's like is an
important thing to delve deep into. But that's
the first Hijra that we kinda have. And
the second Hijra is when they go from
Mecca to Medina,
and the prophet establishes the city of Medina
to Munawwera, and so the companions, they ask
about this instance of a woman named,
and there's a Sahaba
who is going to marry this woman. And
so they're asking the prophet and the prophet
is giving us now these scenarios.
And today, we wanna focus on this part
of Nia intention,
but not in a way that quite often
gets given to us. Right? Like, live with
intention
in a very platitudinal
way, but to distill that in terms of
how you actually build that out concretely
and what does it mean to have this.
That indeed actions are by their intentions,
and we said the last week, and if
you missed it, you can go online, listen
to the podcast,
But the grammar there is in 2 ways.
This ba is a word by itself.
Right? And there's so many different ways the
word ba is used grammatically in Arabic. So
even when you say bismillah,
right, there's, like, such depth in what we're
saying
just with the ba in Bismillah
that is not, like, hard to understand,
but you wanna, like, actually
take steps to understand it. So this
ba has, like, 2 kinda broader understandings. There's
a ba of companion,
a com companionment here. Right? That these two
things go together
the way, like, companions go together. Right? Actions
and intentions go hand in hand. Do you
know what I mean? And there's a ba
that is of causality
that
it is because of this.
You see?
And so
here, it's giving us 3 different categories.
You do it for God and his messenger.
You can do it for dunya,
you could do it to marry a woman.
Right? It's 3 separate kinda states that all
have the same manifestation.
The form, the outward takes on its
kinda similar
manifestation,
but the inward is what's different.
So in order for us to align
with intentionality
that renders now accepted action.
Right? A solid intention
that goes hand in hand with a solid
action.
It's not that the outward in and of
itself is good enough.
This becomes a challenge
because you could do things for the wrong
reasons. There's hadith that say the fires of
Jahannam will be ignited
by a person
who
was a scholar of Islam, a person who
gave a lot in charity,
a person who was a soldier in the
battlefield.
Seemingly from the outward, they're doing what they're
supposed to be doing. That's good. But the
n word is where it's lacking.
So the person who was scholarly,
they just wanted people to tell them that
they were great because of their knowledge. The
charitable person was looking
to be praised for their charity work. Right?
The person who is a soldier in the
battlefield.
Right? It's a challenging thing
that the measurement of it in and of
itself
has to be rooted in the assumption
that I have the capacity
to actually
play a role
in determining
why I do the things that I do.
That it's not just something that is beyond
my ability.
Do you know?
So if I asked you,
why do you study what you study?
Why do you work where you work?
Why do you want the things that you
want? And to distill that for yourself
to its base
foundational
block of information.
Most of us don't know why we do
what we do in the ways that we
do them. Sometimes it's just very habituated.
Right? And this is all rooted in this
hadith, in the
that your actions are by intentions.
So there could be a ton of actions
that you carry out that have no fundamental
intention to them.
They're not the ones that are going to
be the key entry points into Jannah. Right?
When you're standing in front of God and
actions are being assessed, you don't wanna just
pray with a body, you wanna pray with
a heart and pray with a mind. You
don't want to just give charity mindlessly.
It's meant to be a spiritual act.
Right? There's meant to be inward transformation.
How can you align intention to be correct
if there's not an understanding of, well, how
do I build intention in the first place?
How do I render consciousness and awareness
and wakefulness
in what it is that I'm doing? Does
that make sense?
Does it?
So how does one do that? How do
you build that sense of awareness and wakefulness
within the course of what it is that
you're doing. The goal is to not live
with hypervigilance
that creates paralysis
that has an overt level of unhealthy self
scrutinization.
But the idea is in a good crux
of what we're doing in the course of
the day. I know why I'm doing what
I'm doing before it is that I'm getting
it done. But I also now have a
framework
to be able to assess,
am I actually going in the direction that
I had intended to go in?
So how do I start to bring that
level of consciousness and presence to what it
is that I'm doing? Right? Why do I
wanna do this? Well, I mean, think about
it.
Could you willfully,
like, gossip about someone for the sake of
god?
Can somebody engage in domestic violence truly in
these three categories that are just even outlined
in this hadith?
Whoever makes Hijra for Allah and his messenger
made it for Allah and his messenger. Whoever
did it to achieve some worldly thing or
to marry somebody,
then they did it for what they intended
it for. Right? Can I fundamentally
engage now
in processes
that are damaging other people's lives or hurting
my own life
with willful intention?
And there are. There's, like, people who are
just pure evil people. Do you know? If
you ever watched the documentary 13th, for example,
you read the book, The New Jim Crow,
prison industrial complex.
There are people who on their record,
advisors to president Nixon,
the lead office of the entire country
who affirms intention
through what their strategy was. We couldn't get
people to hate
anti war activists
or
hate black people,
but we knew that if we could associate
hippies with heroin
and black people with crack cocaine, we could
influence
public
perspective on them.
And then they create a war on drugs,
which is a war on black people.
They can't call it a war on black
people, but the guy is telling you, this
is what we intended to do. They sat
in a room like this, and they created
a strategy
that said
the only thing that's gonna happen is a
bunch of black people are gonna go to
prison, and there's gonna be a bunch of
cops that also beat up hippies.
And that was something they were willfully
able and committed to seeing
as a necessary component
to their retainment of power and privilege.
The intention is to achieve dunya. This is
what the hadith is saying. They have a
willful intention that's there. Do you get what
I mean?
Does that make sense?
So people can bring consciousness
and strategy
to doing all kinds of horrendous evil things.
Right? And what they take advantage of is
a population
that is deeply
without wakefulness,
is stuck just in
automatic
default settings,
Is in a place where you are looking
at yourself, but not for yourself?
So I'd like you to do is just
turn to the persons next to you.
Introduce yourself if you don't know names.
How does one go about
in increasing
this thing of intentionality?
How do I increase consciousness,
wakefulness
in my day to day actions? There's certain
things that's a blessing that I don't have
to have presence in, but there's a reason
why this is a hadith that starts pretty
much every book of hadith.
And it's something that is not meant to
just be remotely memorized, but implemented and actualized.
This is what makes you different. There's certain
things that make us different from the rest
of creation.
From an outward level,
you have been given the gift of language
and words.
It's pretty much the only thing that makes
you different from the rest of animals.
You sleep the way other animals do. You
eat the way other animals do. You engage
in physical intimacy the way other animals do.
There's all kinds of things that you do,
that you have needs
of the animals do. They cannot communicate the
way that you do. You have been given
a different capacity.
Inwardly,
there's also different capacity.
You have
similar
physiological
makeup,
but there's not intellect the way you have
intellect.
There's not the ability to perceive the way
you have the ability to perceive.
So I'd like you to do is turn
to the persons next to you. What dilutes
this quality
and what enhances it?
What is it that makes it, like, super
awake? And what is it that makes it
something that is blurred?
Right? Why does it feel weird
to eat food
the day after Ramadan ends?
What is giving you that sense of consciousness
at that time? Think deeply about it. Don't
trivialize it. Think deeply, because it's all connected
to some of these bigger issues. Right?
When you can actually be mindful of whether
you should put food in your mouth or
not, you're gonna be mindful of what your
role is in ensuring
that there's consequences to people who kill black
people in the streets.
But when you're not even thinking about the
food that's going in your mouth,
it's gonna not necessarily
put you in a place where you're so
aware and awake to other things that are
happening. Right?
So we wanna know what the blocks are.
What is it that builds it up? What
is it that breaks it down? So we
turn to the person next to you. What
dilutes
this consciousness
that's necessary
and what enhances it? And if you could
talk for a few minutes, and then we'll
come back and discuss. But go ahead.
Okay.
So what are some of the things we're
discussing so far?
And people wanna move in, like, towards the
middle.
That would be helpful
since we could,
like, what enhances this thing of consciousness? What
enhances this thing?
What dilutes it? What did you discuss?
What gets in the way? Why don't we
start there? What can dilute,
like, our presence or our awareness or consciousness?
Yeah. The society's expectations of us and people,
I mean, just like the world around us
is constantly,
telling you to
want things that you don't necessarily need and,
like, prioritize
things, in a way where,
it leaves very little room
for you to think beyond yourself. So
not that these things are, like, inherently bad,
but if, for example, like,
people are just, like, wrapped up in, like,
what house I'm gonna buy, what car I'm
gonna drive,
you know, my health insurance. And this like,
everything is just, like, geared towards, like, the
self, and that's, like, the and and, honestly,
like,
that blurs the the wakefulness. And to really
step out of that, one really has to
take a take a step back and,
and realize that even, like, during the time
of the prophet,
I mean, the beginning
years of Islam, like, it was only, like,
a handful of companions that were written.
But, I mean, those are the people that
set the
they became role models for us. Right? They
they they they set the precedent for us.
So,
yeah, I mean, it it's just
the world around us. Definitely, like, there's our
our wakefulness.
Okay. And how how does it do that
tangibly?
Or why does it do that? Right? And
then you wanna distill these things.
Because the minute somebody can control your heart
and your mind, they've got you. Somebody controls
your body, it's very different.
You look at
psychological methods that are utilized in the most
grotesque of ways.
Slavery
in this country
is very purposeful
in having our black brothers and sisters
naked,
eating from plates, the leftover
food from animals being fed, being called boy,
having their names taken away from them. The
idea is to create a psychological
shackling, a psychological manipulation.
Right? You build within yourself through socialization,
hearing again and again and again. If somebody
tells you every single day of every week
of your life that there's nothing good with
you unless you're married, you're not going to
think there's anything good with you unless you're
married. The man whose book we're studying, whose
name is known around the world for centuries
did not get married.
In terms of the life that he lived,
he lived a very just simple life. Your
prophet slept on straw mats.
Did not have a huge house.
I'm not saying you shouldn't have a huge
house. You wanna have a huge house? Allah
bless you with the biggest house, man.
I'm saying you don't know why you want
the house.
And there's a difference between you wanting the
house
for the sake of Allah and his messenger
or praising Allah for it versus you wanting
the house because you think you're a bad
person if you don't have a big house.
You think you're lesser of a person if
you don't have a child or a car
or certain clothes that you wear.
This is where the crux of this comes
that you're not living now through intentional living,
You're living through a negative core belief structure
that says, if I don't have x, then
I'm not good.
Do you get what I mean? It's the
entire opposite of what the prophet Alaihi Wasallam
seeks to instill within his people.
The most elevated amongst you is the one
that has the most taqwa. The verse doesn't
say the most elevated amongst you is the
one that has the most babies, the one
that has the most wealth, the one that
has the it doesn't say these things are
bad. There's literal companions who are described
that when their caravans of wealth entered into
the city of Medina,
it would just take, like, tons of time
for this whole thing to be able to
pass through the city. You
know? Like, the way that it would move.
People had a lot of wealth. Was
very wealthy. Right? Abdul Ahmedaba and Auf was
very wealthy. That's not the idea.
But the idea is to sit down and
think, why do I want it so badly?
What is it that's going on in me,
and do I perceive
inadequacy in myself? And this is where Allah
and his messenger becomes a key category to
understand
because you stop seeing yourself the way god
sees you.
You see yourself only the way the dunya
wants you
to see yourself.
Then you have to chase in a consumer
driven society after things that can create more
frustration.
Right? The hadith that says you give this
child of Adam a mountain of gold, then
they seek out a second mountain of gold.
Could be about greed, but also just about
an absence of happiness.
I thought one gold mountain would make me
happy. It didn't make me happy. Maybe the
problem is I need more gold, and then
I'll be happy. No, man. The problem isn't
that you need more gold. That's not where
happiness comes from. It comes from in here.
And this is why Nia
is not just on the tongue. It's in
the heart and it's in the mind. You
live with a certain intentionality.
What else dilutes this thing? What else gets
in the way? Or what can enhance it?
What did you discuss?
In terms of enhancing,
enhancing,
I might go over
how we have
Marshall, we already have these systems in places,
like, phrases to say before actions
and after actions like this before eating
after,
eating.
I think that's one
slice of it and then another slice of
it to really enhance that consciousness is, like,
breaking down those phrases.
Like, what what does
actually mean? What does
mean?
And kinda, like, why the prophet
said these things?
Yeah. There is a dua before pretty much
every act that the prophet engaged in.
Right? These are sunnah duas. We call There's
buddakah
blessing and memorizing them. But what you also
understand principally
is that before the prophet did anything, he
knew why he was going to do what
he was about to do.
There's intentional living there.
Right? There's presence. There's consciousness. There's awareness. It's
not just running on autopilot.
And so you take a moment.
If I was to utter a prayer
before I ate, before I sleep,
before I go on a journey,
before I walk into the mosque, before I
walk out of the mosque? What is necessarily
happening in that moment?
I have to be able to take a
pause to do that thing.
I'm not just moving as a body,
I'm finding stillness and I'm breathing.
This is why Allah
and just the utterance of Allah, even in
Bismillah
or
Right? The alif comes from the back, the
laam necessitates a full mouth, and the is
aspirated.
You're literally breathing when you say god's name
in Arabic,
but you're bringing breath into your life,
stillness into your life. So it's not just
kinda regurgitated.
I'm just pecking at the ground like a
rooster.
I'm finding an opportunity
to separate
and just take a minute to bring some
intentionality
into this.
What's really going on here? Why am I
doing this? Do you see what I mean?
And to catch yourself.
What else?
Anything else that we discussed?
Yeah.
In the same way that taking those small
moments to pause,
helps you be mindful and conscientious,
I think taking larger moments throughout the day
to
pause and praise a lot
and reflect on the movement of the day,
is a great way to remain steadfast and
conscious
of what you do and why you do
it. Amazing.
Right? And so we're gonna talk about all
these things in a little more detail right
now in the frame of building intention.
Right?
Intention is in on itself something that you
only do prior to an act.
But what we're just talking about right now
is built in as a deep spiritual practice
within our tradition.
It's called muhasiddha.
The word
in
Arabic, like, if you went to a restaurant
and you wanted the bill, you'd ask for
the.
Right? So it's got the word in there.
Right? Can everyone see that? It's a little
faint.
This is essentially like an inventorying.
So intention in and of itself is not
just now I'm going to step, now I'm
going to do that. It's too simplistic
of an understanding of what we're talking about.
You want to tap into all of your
organs of cognition.
To think about intentional living
is also not without the reality
that I'm a created being, but I was
made for eternal existence.
Don't play a game that is just about
day to day measurement,
but understand yourself in an entire life journey
that you're living
So that you're now not in a state
of assessment
that renders
little bits of growth
and has
a limited
capacity of vision, you wanna have foresight. And
so what Muhasaba does is that
at the beginning of the day,
the end of the day,
you are in a place
where you say, what will make this day
good?
And at the end of the day, you
assess
how did things go in this day.
Do you get what I mean?
And you can then think what got in
the way for me getting able to get
done what I wanted to get done. I
wanted to go to the Halukkah on Monday
night.
What really made it difficult for me to
get to there? What messed up my intention
from it? Well, there was like this
random rainstorm all day that was taking place.
Great.
That obstacle is something that gets in the
way that is outward,
but you wanna start to assess
that certain things that are perceived as outward
obstacles
are in reality internalized
obstacles.
What is getting in the way if intention
lives in the heart, is expressed on the
tongue, is necessitating
a presence of mind,
then if I got fear in my heart,
I got anxiety in my heart. You're not
always not living your intention because you're just
a bad person. Don't give shaitan victory over
you. But there's things that get in the
way. It can be intimidating.
Why am I not fasting on Mondays Thursdays?
You're literally sitting in the place. There's gonna
be a far. What's getting in the way?
Maybe I don't think I'm good enough.
When I'm inventorying,
I can be honest with myself. This practice
of mohazaba,
that's just all that it is. I'm taking
into account
what did the day bring, what did the
week bring. The reflection into a notebook is
a lot better than just empty reflection
because you today are still you,
but you're not the same you you are
today that you were a year ago. And
in order for you to recollect what you
were a year ago, a year lived later,
you need to have something that allows for
you to access your authentic self from a
year ago
from when you were actually a year ago,
not this version of you remembering it through
everything you've had
experienced
another 365
days in totality.
Does that make sense?
So you take out a notebook and you
write down. You're like, hey, what happened today
that was good? What happened today that was
not good? What's gonna happen that makes tomorrow
a little bit better? I'm bringing more presents.
What got in the way?
Maybe I shouldn't eat like a ton of
sugar before I go to sleep and fudger
won't be as messy as it is.
Maybe I can see that hanging out with
that person last night was really great and
I got to unload a bunch of stuff
in my heart.
I laughed in the time that I haven't
laughed in so long.
I was with people who weren't making fun
of other people as the primary way of
us socializing
or gossiping or backbiting.
I went to volunteer.
I prayed all 5 day of my prayers.
Like, it creates an opportunity
to start to distill,
and you're in a place where vulnerability
is something that's important. There's something wrong over
here. It's just this little battery.
It's not plugged in through the back.
Good.
It's fine.
Do you see what I mean? But you
need to have an assessment metric that isn't
just about I put the intention into play
prior to, but I look back to say,
did I actually fulfill it?
And then be comfortable enough. For this to
work, you need to have an understanding of
self that is not rooted in delusional
understandings of self,
superiority
or inferiority
that are rooted in that consumer driven society
that Anwar is talking about
that has you now in these delusional senses
of comparison.
Right? I'm better than everyone. I'm worse than
everyone.
I'm greater.
I am not so good. This delusional sense
of grandeur
insignificance
is gonna make that inventorying
harder
when you are trying to assess, did I
actually get done what I intended to get
done? And life can catch you up, man.
It's not just about I wanna wake up
for fudge it tomorrow. It's 10 years into
your career, you're saying, I had said if
I got this job
that I would start giving some money to
people in need. It's been 10 years. I
haven't given anybody anything. What's going on?
Am I actually owning up to that intention
that I said I was going to?
But I can start to do that by
just regular
engagement of it.
What you want to have is a comfortable
sense of self
rooted in interiority
that I'm not in competition with anybody else.
I'm just in a place where
I'm trying to get to the best version
of me that I can be. I'm not
afraid to meet who I can be tomorrow.
This is what the gift of intention
allows for you to do, to be bold
enough to actually live
in your own shoes,
not based off of what whiteness wants you
to do, what anti blackness wants you to
do,
what a traumatized
colonized
community wants you to do.
You are just trying to do what God
and his messenger wants you to do, and
all they want is what's best for you.
They're not trying to make you into super
Muslim on steroids
where everybody's gotta stand up and suddenly turn
into the Sharia police
saying that I've memorized every that's not even
the point of all of it. Most of
the companions didn't memorize too much Quran.
They were just living intentionally with an understanding
that I have a god that's watching over
me, not just watching me. It's much easier
to live in pursuit
of validation of that god than god's creation
that makes you think in these buckets.
Some of you have heard me talk about
this before, but it's important for us to
understand it in light of what we're talking
about here. We all function now through processes
of socialization
in ways where we have what's called a
core belief structure.
And this builds itself into
intermediary beliefs.
My handwriting is so bad.
And then you have what's here are the
fruits
and actions,
behaviors.
What a core belief is is rooted in
perceptions of self. I am,
I am not.
People
are. People are not. The world is.
The world is not.
Right? How you see you, how you see
others, how you see the world. I am
worthy of love. I'm not worthy of love.
I am beautiful.
I am not beautiful.
I'm worthy of success. I'm not worthy of
success. People like me. People don't like me.
The world is safe. The world is not
safe.
It builds itself into this level of intermediary
beliefs, which sets itself up as rules and
assumptions
that then influences
behaviors
and choices,
and people will manipulate this.
So if I don't think I am beautiful,
I'm not beautiful.
And then I get to a place that
starts to build rules and assumptions.
If I was lighter skinned, I would be
beautiful.
And then there's behaviors and actions,
entire skin whitening cream that builds itself around
the world that makes people hate themselves.
Is that living with good intention?
No. It's not. Right?
But are we gonna tell the person that
has that mindset
that they're a bad person?
No. They're a product of that second category
that Hadith talks about.
That if you are migrating
for the dunya,
then that's what you're doing.
And then I deal with the consequences
of your intention.
You are so
ingrained in the pursuit of the world. You're
willing to take away people's consciousness
and make them hate themselves.
And this is when it goes down to
to what Anwar is talking about before.
Why do you need to have a big
house?
Why?
It's not that there's anything wrong with it,
but this is what our dean teaches us.
Go have whatever you want.
Just remember where it came from
and think about what its pursuit is actually
doing to you.
If you let yourself believe that you are
not the beautiful person that Allah made you,
unless you fit into this rigid box of
what the world says is good
in its own sense of moral relativism,
is gonna screw up this thing of intention.
Then you're gonna chase after things thinking that
they're going to be what makes you happy,
but then you could set yourself up for
a rude awakening
because I could put you in front of
a 100 people right now that nothing is
categorically
a blessing in their lives
other than the gift of iman.
For some people, marriage is a big fitna.
For other people, marriage is a blessing.
For some people, family is great. For some
people, family is *.
For some people, having kids is
the best thing that ever happened in the
world. For some people,
having
kids is something that they regret every single
day of their lives.
There's nothing that tells you that it could
work well.
What this religion posits is
you just try your best.
God is not gonna ask you to do
something that's hard for you to do. And
And if you struggle with it, there's more
blessing in it for you
than the one who could do it with
ease. You just get up and try again
and do what you can.
You see what I mean?
These things are going to get more in
the way
of formulating
conscious intention
than anything else
because they are going to run you into
the ground
exhausted,
trying to chase after everything you chase after
in the course of your day.
Why do you need friends?
It doesn't mean that you don't,
but why do you
have the company that you keep?
Why do you pursue what you pursue?
Dress how you dress or don't dress how
you dress. Do you get what I'm saying?
And you can assess what this is by
thinking about some of these things in terms
of the rules and assumptions that you set
up for yourself.
And that sense of wakefulness,
that consciousness
gets attached now to the
that the Hadith is talking about,
that you're able to now approach it with
a different
set of perspective,
a paradigm shift that says, this is about
empowering me. This is about giving me a
sense of growth,
not confining me. I'm not just in a
place where I have a checkbox that says
I got the deed done, but I can
actually
relish the experience
by allowing for me to be in a
place where I do it with my heart.
Right?
I don't want to think that I am
a bad Muslim
is the core belief I have in relationship
to my intentional living of Islam.
And if I was to ask most of
you in this room, do you think you're
a good Muslim?
Do you think you're good with god?
Do you believe in a god that loves
you?
And it's all still stuck in this core
belief structure.
Parents that yell at you, cultures that are
different,
that you're not a part of, that make
you feel like you're not Muslim enough,
like all kinds of things that get in
the way. And all it's taking now
is
off the table,
like set
pure
intention
that is rooted in what we call Ikhlas,
sincerity.
Does that make sense?
I love to hear what you all are
thinking about what I'm saying. If you could
turn to the person next to you, what
are you taking away so far? Then we'll
come back and discuss in 2 minutes. Go
ahead.
Okay. What are some of the things that
we're talking about? What are we taking away?
Just so I know
that what I'm saying is sticking in a
certain way.
What are you discussing? What are we taking
away so far?
Yeah. Something that we discussed was the idea
of core belief,
how
oftentimes it's it's hard to even,
decipher what it is that we really believe
about ourselves,
let alone change it just to even, like,
know what it is that we believe about
ourselves and to then
identify, like, where it's coming from. Like, who
put that there or where that came from
because it's not always the case that we
put it there ourselves because, like, who would
put a a bad or belief themselves?
And,
like, on that point, like, sometimes
we don't want to admit that we believe
a certain thing because of what that might
say about us.
So there's definitely the struggle involved when it
comes to relating with our core beliefs.
Yeah. It's It's not easy. It's tough. You
just gotta start somewhere. Right? You just try
your best. That's all you gotta do. So
it's beautiful the prophet has companions, alayhis salam,
who struggle with drinking alcohol, and he walks
with them. He helps them. He doesn't push
them down.
He's there. He's their companion. He knows what
role that plays. Do you get what I
mean? He's got people that struggle with Zena.
He's got people that struggle with all kinds
of stuff. What else do we take away
from this?
Yeah.
I think, like, we often forget to put
an intention on what we want to believe
and whoever, like, we hang up with.
Yeah.
But this is, like, what we wanna think.
Right? Like, you're not a cow. Do you
know?
The Quran says, like, that's what they're like.
You just go with the herd.
You know?
And
you can be wired in that way,
which is not a good or bad. It's
just how you function.
But when you can separate
and you can build a positive structure, this
is why reading the Quran is important because
Allah tells you again and again
how important you are,
tells you, like, what your point of existence
is,
offers consolation,
gives a sense
of his love for you, tells you that
you were made beautiful
is not something that is just by chance.
Right? You're wired in certain ways,
but you have a depiction of the divine.
How can you intend
to do for Allah and his messenger
the primary category of intention
that is rooted in here when you have
subconsciously
built a perspective of the divine
that is not through his words, but from
the words of the people that you interact
with.
You don't believe in the God of Islam.
Unless you believe in a God that believes
in you more than you believe in yourself.
The God of this religion tells you that
he is not just watching you, but watching
over you. His messenger
tells you that that God loves you more
than a mother loves his child.
The thing that gets the way of building
that firm intention
is the unconscious
formulaization
of who Allah is and Allah's messenger is.
Right? At this phase in your life
where you are at right now, when you
live in a materialistic
world, this is why bucket number 2 is
the person who chases after dunya.
Think about the number of people in your
life, not because they're good or bad. Don't
think in these simplistic terms. Everything is not
always just good and bad. Just think about
his objective reality.
How many people do you know that get
up and make Hijra
leave from one place to go to another
purely for pursuit of things of the dunya,
things of the world? I'm gonna get up
and leave for this job. I'm gonna get
up and leave for this degree to get
a job. I'm gonna get up to leave
to this degree to get a job so
I could get married in these ways
at the expense of their Islam.
I go live in a place where there's
no Muslims. I go live in a place
where I have to hide my religious identity.
I go to a place that builds immigration
policy
that bans my countrymen from coming here.
Do you get what I mean?
For the sake of dunya, I'm able to
move,
stay up, pull all nighters,
study until I can't think anymore,
do whatever it is I can.
You will fight with your parents to marry
the person you want to get married to
in ways that you are not fighting for
the sake of your heart.
It doesn't mean that that's a bad thing.
It means that you have demonstrated
though your capacity to stand
in pursuit of something that's meaningful for you.
So you gotta make your inner self that
meaningful to you. This is why intention is
so important
because it is the root of the acceptance
of actions that we put into the world,
and the world wants you to be a
zombie.
It wants you to be a consumer
zombie. It doesn't want you to be a
contributor.
It wants you to just consume
and consume and consume.
It wants you to think happiness is rooted
in what it's selling to you. And what
our religion is telling you, no, man. Sometimes
happiness
is just being able to sit down with
your boys
and watch the stars come out at night.
Smiling can just be a charity. Sometimes happiness
is just finding light
in someone else's glowing face looking at you.
You know why when you live in tall
buildings in this city, in every hotel, they
put mirrors near the elevators?
Because when they didn't used to have mirrors,
people would complain at the long elevator wait
times. When they start putting mirrors inside the
elevators and outside, complaints stop because people just
stand and look at themselves.
It tells you to be infatuated
with your outward, but to be in denial
of your inward. The first hadith that's in
most books is, hey. Don't forget
anything that you put outward
is only accepted based off of what's happening
inwardly around it.
How can you do for the sake of
Allah and his messenger if you don't know
who Allah and his messenger are to you?
Do you get what I mean?
You can't just do it because mom and
dad said to do it. You gotta dig
deep and say, like, hey. Who is my
divine creator?
Who do I believe God to be?
And not in the reverse end of it
that creates the same conundrum.
You pick up the Quran.
Read what Allah said to you about who
it is that he is.
Don't just go in aimless conjecture
that also then justifies
and validates what is the other challenge that's
here. That the intention has to be good
and the action has to be good. They
both have to be good and not relative
to me, but they have to be good
in what
Allah
has said, this is what goodness is. And
there's a lot more room in terms of
what is permissible than is impermissible.
You just gotta be able to recognize it
from its foundational level.
Many of you in this room who have
experienced Ramadan
know that the day after you stop fasting,
it feels strange to put food into your
mouth.
You have awareness
for moments.
It means you have the capacity
to have intentional
aspects of what is typically mundane.
You don't wanna lose that.
When you forego
what you can only do for the sake
of Allah and his messenger, which is devotional
acts in pursuit of bucket number 2,
which is what?
The dunya, then it's gonna tell you, it's
okay to not pray because class is happening.
It's okay to forego your salah because you
have a meeting at this time. That's not
how it works. What you're diluting then is
the wakefulness that comes only through these spiritual
exercises.
As the hadith continues, we want to think
about the 2 categories that are mentioned specifically
because the prophet could have said anything,
but he purposely
adds in the category
of what is
materialistic,
worldly existence,
the dunya.
If somebody is moving for the dunya,
then they are moving for the dunya.
You want to be able to take a
pause and say, what is the root of
my intentional living?
Am I getting up and
living
to pursue
what it is that I was initially created
from and I'm going to return to. And
I can't take all of these things with
me. The only things that I can take
are the that
have righteous intention to them.
So you want to take some moments
to pause,
think about this in terms of what the
hadith is telling us.
The role of intention is very particular in
certain ways.
The only thing that's differed between the 2
of fajr and the 2 fard of fajr
is the intention.
You pray it exactly the same way.
And so in devotional acts, it changes things.
In acts that are nondevotional,
it can take the mundane
and turn it into something
that is a source of
luminosity,
illumination.
You're not gonna get it right a 100%
of the time. That's not the idea. If
Allah wanted you to be an angel, he
would have made you an angel.
He purposely made you somebody who can make
a mistake so that you can recognize your
ability to make mistakes
so that also you can recognize other people
will make mistakes.
Can I tell what is inside
of myself?
Most of us don't even know why we
do what we do. How am I gonna
know why you do what you do?
How can you then walk into a place
with intentionality
that says,
I know exactly
why you are not a good practicing Muslim.
And I can tell you that it's within
my jurisdiction
to comment now on your dress and to
pull at your sleeves and to tug at
your scarf and to make all kinds of
annoying
sounds at you. You don't know what people
go through, man.
You don't know what people have been told
since they were little kids.
You don't know what's going on inside of
them, and and you don't want your words
to be what breaks them even further.
When you do for the sake of Allah
and his messenger, why intention and action go
hand in hand is because both things have
to be right.
Not just righteous
in the sense of self righteousness,
but they have to be right in every
which way. The right time, the right place,
the right words, the right content.
So the default is silence as opposed to
speaking.
And you can't then justify a bad deed
through an intention
that you thought was right. And when you
distill it down, are you advising that person
to inflate your ego? Are you advising them
for the sake of what is actually
their benefit?
Do you get what I mean?
Does that make sense?
Show me a hadith where the prophet says,
I don't really care what you do with
this information.
I'm just telling you so that when I
stand in front of God, he won't send
me to *.
In most instances, when things weren't going right,
the prophet thought he was the reason as
to why revelation stopped, not somebody else.
He saw himself
as being a cause of perhaps
they're being
difficulty for people,
not blaming people
saying that you're the reason as to why
these things are happening.
In every which way possible, you want to
bring that sense of intentional living
with simplicity.
And you know what the best thing is?
If you're just a nice person, then you
don't really have to keep your intentions in
check so much.
90% of it is just gonna be done
well.
But if you're a jerk, then you gotta
be ready
that a lot of what is outward
is going to be assessed by what you
brought inwardly to it. And if you're trying
to get a ego trip by pushing somebody
down. Do you get what I'm saying?
Okay. Let's take a pause here,
and we'll give people a chance to get
some food, and then we'll come up and
wrap with this hadith for today so that
we can go into the next one.
So people wanna make, we'll do. If you
can move the chairs back a bit.
If anybody brought stuff for the potluck too,
feel free to put it on the table.
We'll go for, like, 15 more minutes after
Maghreb and then wrap
up. Can somebody call the azan, and then
we'll we'll stand to pray?
A long
ago.
A long ago,
A log on a cabo.
A log on a cabo.
A long look bow.
A long look bow.
A law much about
A love.
A lot of what you've owed.
I like them. Once you're done praying, your
people wanna grab some food.
The stars we do on Mondays Thursdays, the
IC provides a a bunch of different stuff,
but they're also potluck. So people wanna bring
anything to share with people. It doesn't have
to be for as many people in the
room, but just for a handful of people.
We started doing this in the summer, and
it worked really well. It'd be great for
us to kinda continue on with that.
If you wanna grab something after you're done
praying, we'll finish the
for, like, 10, 15 minutes, and then people
can kinda sit and talk and get to
know each other as well. So please stick
around whether you're fasting or not,
Join us for for something.
We'll get started maybe, like, 5 minutes and
then see it.
You want green tea?
No. Like, is that okay? Of course. So
how are you going? How are you?
Did your show happen already? Did your show
happen?
No. October 1st?
Do you guys know each other?
These guys go to comedy shows all the
time, so they were gonna be some of
the people I was gonna send your stuff
to. Did you send me your thing? Yeah.
I did. I'm a little out of it
right now, so I apologize. Yeah. I know.
Don't worry. I know what you're dealing with.
I was gonna say hi on Friday, but
you were a little No. No. No. It's
okay. But, Well well, I still feel yeah.
I don't know. No. Did you send it
to me? I did. Okay.
Maybe 2 days ago. Okay. I'll take a
look at it. Maybe And then we'll pass
it around to people. Yeah. He's gonna be
performing at a at a comedy store. I'm
sorry. I'm a
comedy. Like, what does this have to do
with her? Like, what do you No. No.
No. No. He knows. He understands. Okay. I
can help. If you can forward me her
ticket, I'll just circulate it. Yeah. We'll pass
her. Okay?
He was like, what what's the deal with
this girl? Like, who is who is this
girl? He does it all the time.
He's like, what what's the deal with this
girl? Like, who is who is this girl?
He does all the things. See, like, he's
laughing already. See?
I can be entertaining.
I'm also out of it. Yeah. I want
to say hi. I told her I hope
you're okay. I know you've been I just
At
the end of the last week, it kinda
caught up with me. So I'm doing well,
I'm really but then I fell behind on
some things. I'm sorry about that.
Yeah. But we'll take care of it as
well. Yeah.
Yeah. So
Get some food before you go. I just
eat from your friend. Yeah?
No. Do what you gotta do. Yeah. I'll
see you. It's not.
That's alright, man. Let's get it. How are
you? Doing okay? Yeah. I know you've been
all over the place. Yeah. A little bit.
A little bit. I forgot what I was
just about to do. Sorry.
No. No. You don't have a moon right
now. No. I was what? I can't I
can't I was before he said something to
me Yeah. There's something I was about to
do, and I can't remember what it is
then. The mushroom. Usually, I just repeat to
myself, what was I gonna do? What was
I gonna do? And it'll come back to
me because I look at it all the
time. Like, I was like, why don't you
go back to where I initially had the
thought.
Yeah. It's all okay. You doing okay? I'm
good, man. I'm good. Just super busy at
work. Just all about good. Yeah. I just
had a question because Paris asked me a
question. I was like, I don't know.
He was asking some people we've been talking
about fasting on Mondays Thursdays, and he was
like, what do I put resources?
You
know? I don't know. Guys, once you get
your food, take a seat.
Otherwise, people will stand around and create a
bottleneck.
So take a seat after you get your
food.
Oh, yeah.
I think we got them, possibly. Oh,
yeah.
I know I can't do October 1st
or October 22nd.
I I'm I think it should be 15th.
I'll go back and double check.
Because the board wanted to move around dates,
so I have to I could theoretically do
the 15th. Yeah. Okay. So I'll let Aminata
know, and then
We're gonna get started again. If people wanna
come towards the middle of the room, feel
free to grab chairs too. Just like another
10 minutes, and then we'll take a pause.
Do you guys want chairs?
You don't want chairs?
Okay.
If you wanna move towards the middle of
the space, that'd be amazing for those who
wanna just rejoin the halukkah.
But what I'd love for you to talk
to each other about, just a couple of
minutes,
why do you think this is like a
foundational hadith in our tradition?
Why is it something that is so emphasized?
If we were to think about the purpose
of this religion,
like, what it is that Allah is giving
to us through this,
Why is this something that is fundamental?
Indeed, actions are by their intentions. You wanna
just turn to the people next to you,
because you wanna incentivize for yourself. Right? The
implementation
of prophetic counsel
is not something that you wanna leave to
chance.
But as you have maturation
in your own life organically,
revisiting these words at later stages
should be bringing about different meaning.
And not just thinking about them in terms
of absolutes,
but in terms of this is something that
is
purposefully crafted for us
at any stage of our
life as well as our relationship
to
faith, observance, practice.
It's like a very critical
message in this hadith.
Like, why? Why is this something that's so
important
for us to understand? If you can just
talk to the people around you for a
couple minutes about it, and then we'll go
into some practical things, and then we'll,
pause so people can kinda just be in
community with each other over Iftar. But go
ahead.
Okay.
So
what are some of the things we could
say?
Like, why is this such an emphasized part
of our tradition?
You know, there's people who say that
this equates to,
like, half of knowledge in Islam.
You know, a third of the religion, a
fourth of the religion, a 5th of the
religion.
There's a lot of emphasis that's put on
this particular hadith in the mal'amalu baniyat.
Like, why?
Why
would this be something that one could make
these claims around? Yeah.
I think,
the reason that this is such a foundational
hadith in our faith
is
that is because it works in tandem because
of with another foundational belief in our faith,
which is that God is the most merciful,
and as a reflection of that attribute of
God,
we must think that
it's a great mercy that we are judged
by our intentions and not our actions
because God recognizes that we fall short.
And by extending us the mercy of judging
us by our intentions,
he is in in a way,
embodying his mercy.
Yeah. Right? Like, in this hadith
where the man kills 99 men,
and he then says, can I be forgiven?
He's
not told yes. He's told no, you can't
be forgiven. And so the guy who tells
him you can't be forgiven, he kills that
person too.
Now he's killed a 100 people and he
speaks to somebody who's known for having more
wisdom.
This person says, yes, you can be forgiven
but you have to leave from this town
and move to this other town.
And he sets out on the journey, doesn't
make it to the second town.
The angels come now and they argue that
he should go to the pits of Jahannam
because he didn't make it to the second
town. He should be taken to Jannah because
he was on his way
to the second town,
and they ask Allah and Allah says if
his body is closer to the first town,
then take him to
the fire,
the town where he had committed these atrocities.
His body's closer to the second town, then
take him to the gates of paradise,
and they measure and they see that it's
closer to the second town. In some of
the narrations, it says the body is actually
closer to the first, but a lot of
his mercy makes it seem as if the
distance to the second is shorter. Right?
He didn't make it, he just intended and
he set forth.
Right? The intention in and of itself
is what it is that is the motivating
variable behind this. Like, you gotta get up
and try. It's one thing that you didn't
achieve from a lack of trying
versus you tried and it still didn't get
done. Do do you get what I mean?
Right? And this is where you have, like,
a gift. There's a hadith
that is narrated by a man by the
name of.
And in this, it just talks about the
gift of intention, you know, that Moses looks
in the tablets
and he sees people mentioned in the tablets.
And again and again, he's asking Allah, like,
make this my Ummah, Musa alaihi salaam is
saying. And Allah keeps saying that this is
the Ummah of Ahmed. Right? Meaning, like our
of
Muhammad
and embedded within these words is this notion
that you intend to do a good, and
you didn't do it. It's still written as
if you did it. You carry forth on
the intention of doing good, then it's written
for you 10 fold over. You intend to
do a wrong
and you actually do it, then it's written
for you once. And if you intended to
do a wrong and you kept yourself from
doing it, then it's written as if you
did a good deed. Right? Like the gift
of Nia in and of itself.
You know, this is an important principle
to understand concepts in relation to each other,
not in isolation of each other. That here
exist intention, here exist prayer, here exist family,
here exist inheritance,
here exist livelihood.
You can't compartmentalize
the way
society
has you leave your Islam at the door
when you walk into an office place, or
you go into a place of work, or
some of you even when you walk into
a place of prayer, you have to leave
behind salient parts of your character
because
the place you go is not like the
culture you're a part of. So you have
to leave behind your racial, ethnic, cultural identity.
Right? You have to leave behind your socioeconomic
identity in order to just, kind of, find
presence and belonging.
It doesn't work that way with the law.
Right? Looks at your heart and your actions,
not just the forms and the bodies. What
else, like, could we say this hadith speaks
to or why it's important?
Like, why is this such an often
mentioned foundational
hadith?
And it's important to think this way because
when you hear something so much, you would
say, I got it. Like, I get it
to the point that you then stop acting
upon it. Do you know what I mean?
So what else would make this
something that stands out that it's so
emphasized as being one that you should learn
it? It's the beginning of so many different
books.
What did you discuss?
Yeah. He's telling the companion,
it all looks the same.
The only place that is different is inward,
but that's not for you to assess.
Allah is the only one that's gonna judge
that.
You want to base things off of the
best of intentions from yourself,
which doesn't mean you justify things that make
no sense.
People today have done the opposite of what
needs to happen.
We make excuses for people's terrible behavior.
You turn your face when someone is abusing
someone.
It's not our dean telling us to do
this.
You know that a father mistreats his daughter.
You know that a neighbor mistreats their child.
You know there's inequity and oppression.
Your best friend is not treating that girl
well, that doesn't make you okay for you
to start saying, I don't know someone's intentions.
That's not what this hadith is saying. But
when you get to a place where you
see somebody walking down the street, and you
butt your nose into somebody's business, on the
things that you should be minding your own
business, And the things that you should not
be minding your own business, you're too much
involved within your own self. Do you see
what I mean? Does that make sense? Right?
The manifestation of the act has to be
something that also understands gradations of certain things.
Right?
What else what else do we take from
this before we talk about just a few
practical things? Yeah.
Yeah.
You don't have a god
that is judging you based off of your
country of origin,
your cultural heritage,
these kinds of things.
The thing that you are going to be
assessed on is going to be inward,
And it creates now a
equitable
sense of understanding
that didn't necessarily
fall into what the theological premises were of
a Meccan society
at that time.
Forget about it even in, like, contemporary society.
Right? What does, like, the doctrine of manifest
destiny really speak to?
Do people know what manifest destiny is? What
is it? I was having justify moving, like,
westward expansion and, like, slaughtering,
like, indigenous people all across this continent. Yeah.
These guys
came in
and they committed genocidal violence in this country
saying that
God wants us to do this.
This is our right.
You have prosperity doctrines that are rooted in
similar mindsets.
The theology
of this tradition
is something that says,
all of you are going to have a
common source of judgment.
Every single one of you
is going to have assessment
that is going to be
uniform across.
There will be individual accountability.
A lot knows circumstances
in ways that we don't know. So judgment
is in his wisdom,
not in our wisdom,
limited in capacity.
But
you are going to be still in this
place
where
the rich don't get out of something just
because they're rich.
The privileged don't get out of something just
because they're privileged. If anything,
they're more accountable
because they got more stuff to be assessed
on.
You see what I mean?
What I want us to think about is
a few practical things now that can get
in the way of this.
Think about when it's hard for you to
exert consciousness
in your day to day exertions.
If you are sleeping very little,
are you going to have ease in living
intentionally?
No.
So when you're looking at prophetic guidance
to be in a place that says, well,
what's the benefit for me to live with
wakefulness and consciousness?
What is the alternative?
I'm inundated with emotion
so I just eat my pain away.
It's not good or bad. It could be.
But you're just numbing.
Right?
It's not helpful. It's putting a band aid
on it.
When you don't sleep so much,
it
renders more irritation.
It renders
ease of frustration.
You get to a place where you're more
argumentative.
Does it make any sense?
My child,
I love her to death.
When she does not sleep, the words that
come out of her mouth, I don't even
know what she's talking about.
I went
home, and my baby girl some years ago,
not, like, now. She's 10. But even now,
Marcella. Right? But she's little, and we're sitting
in some place,
and I don't even know. It's, like, 2
in the morning. Yeah. We were in a
hotel. I was speaking at a conference, and
they came with me. And it's 2 in
the morning. Our flight was delayed so much.
And I walked in to the hotel room
with them
and went to get some food because we
were sitting in an airplane
on a runway for 6 hours.
And when I got out of the hotel,
room,
I heard this noise, and I went back
in. My daughter, she's looking at me, like,
more angry than I've ever seen her face.
And I was like, baby, what's wrong? She's
like, you always leave us
and go places. And I was like, I
went to get you food. She was like,
no. You're just gonna leave us here in
this place. And I was like, I didn't
leave you anywhere. You are here with me.
And my wife is looking at me and
she's looking at me. And I'm like, Medina,
what's going on? And she's like, I don't
even know, papa. Everything is just blah blah
blah blah.
How can you live with intention
when you're 30 or 40
and you've now had 30 years of just
bitterness,
harsh life experience,
friends that betray you,
people who judge you based off of bullet
points on your resume,
members that are filled with that tell you
you're more prone to hellfire
than anything of mercy
that sets and encrust your heart with all
of this heaviness,
and you're telling me that sleeping in the
way you sleep is gonna help you live
with more consciousness?
The food that you eat, you want to
think about it more mindfully.
Literally, what hardens your heart on a physical
level is going to harden it on a
spiritual level.
Your physical wellness is attached to your mental,
emotional, spiritual wellness.
Bringing exercise into your life so you're not
just sitting sedentary.
These things impact
the inward and the outward because the outward
impacts the inward.
Finding moments of deliberate stillness
to be able to just reflect,
to synthesize
so that you are not just experiencing the
world as a body, but you can live
intentionally because you take with all of your
organs of sensory perception.
When was the last time
you remembered something just from the smell of
it from when you were a child?
It's still there.
But how many memories do you have attached
to scent from when you're an adult?
And it's not because you stop smelling things,
it's that you stop smelling them purposefully,
consciously.
When was the last time you sat and
just listened
and experienced something through your hearing?
Allah gave you the ability to hear for
a reason, and you wanna
move now and transition
from just eating to tasting,
to hearing to listening.
Right? You don't wanna just see, you want
to perceive.
And all of these things will impact how
you can live with consciousness and intentionality.
Does that make sense? The heaviness that gets
in the way. The things that are just
plaguing your heart. Anxiety,
stresses. Who do you go to talk to?
Who do you open up to? Who carries
some of your burdens? That doesn't allow now
for
perpetual negative thoughts that are running you into
the ground to be what's defining and dictating
your decisions.
So much of what people choose to do
is in response to heavy feelings these days.
And then you're not choosing a choice that's
about what's for foresight,
but it's how do I not feel this
pain anymore.
And the alignment of the intention can be
skewed in certain ways. Do you know what
I mean? But as a starting point as
we go through the remaining
41 hadith in this collection,
this one is going to be the basis
of so much.
And so you want to start to gradually
build it in.
The
note of actions attached to it
is just like any other virtue or value.
The way to increase it
is through the virtue, the value as a
vehicle itself.
So you want to increase in consciousness,
then you just have to be conscious.
Just like if you want to be more
patient, the way to be more patient is
by being patient.
So don't live mindlessly,
live mindfully,
and think about what contributes
to the mindlessness of things versus the mindfulness
of things. So choose intentionally,
who do you spend your days with? Who
are you not spending your days with with
intentionality?
What spaces do you frequent? Which ones do
you not frequent so much?
And then juxtapose it to the two things
that are being contrary
to
the idea of doing for God and his
messenger.
What am I really doing that's just about
the pursuit of this world
as a finite?
And this is the trick of modern day
secularism.
It's not that you live in worlds that
have you have no conversations of God. That's
not what secularity
yields
in a contemporary
setting. What it yields
is
the idea that this is just all that
there is. There's nothing after it.
So all you're gonna do is chase after
dunya.
Because like what else am I gonna chase
after?
So the alternative is like, no. I'm like
a person who aspires to be an inheritor
of paradise.
I want to be from
the of Jannah. May Allah make us from
amongst them.
But you affirm it for yourself. You think
about it for yourself.
Is this what's there? Like dunya, dunya, dunya.
How much of my day is just about
dunya? How much of my day is just
about materialistic
gain, materialistic
possession,
materialistic
notoriety,
materialistic fame and wealth, and all of these
kinds of things?
And then the third part to it is
how much of it is attached to
just
finding a place where I'm not alone,
which people could tell you this part of
the hadith and say, you know what? Too
many people, they just live because they're trying
to find a partner. But you wanna remember
who God and His Messenger are sallallahu alaihi
wasallam. You don't want to be in a
place where you are imposing now other people's
insecurities
that yield these negative core belief structures. Why
would Allah wants you to be alone?
Why Why would Allah's messenger wants you to
be alone? Before I was married and I
was single, I had the added difficulty
of everybody knowing I was single. And I
would be the one invited to speak at
all places around the world, including pair,
panels on marriages, where they would say, talk
about what it's like to be single.
And quite often, I'd be on these panels
with people who are married, and they would
say the dumbest stuff, man. They'd say things
like, you don't know what it's like to
be married, then you're just, like, chained down,
and those of you who are single, you
should enjoy your freedom. And then I'm a
pretty shameless human being. So I would get
on the microphone, and I would say, I'm
sorry, but that was the stupidest thing I've
ever heard in my life.
You don't know how hard it is to
be alone.
And the kind of idiocy that people put
in your face. Don't you want to get
married? Yeah. It must be because I don't
want it enough that that's why it's not
happening.
But the whole idea is that Shaitan manipulates
us and our
insecurities.
So if you can understand where Allah and
his messenger play a role
and recognize that when you know Allah is
with you, you're never alone,
then you don't have to be in pursuit
of something that you already have.
You get married on your terms, not in
a root of a negative core belief.
You don't make people feel like garbage just
because they don't have a ring on their
finger. That's dumb.
But in being able to think about the
intentionality
of it,
I'm not pursuing this because I'm incomplete.
You're already a whole human being. You're not
2 halves that make a whole. You already
exist as a full person.
But how many people's decisions
are rooted in this? This is how the
world functions whether it's Muslim or not. You
make certain money, you get a certain job,
a certain degree, credential, this and that, just
so you are potentially the best suitor possible.
That's what they're selling you on. Right?
In cultures across the board,
you gotta have all of this stuff lined
up so that you check off every box
to be somebody who's marriageable in this way.
It's like, no, man. You're already good.
Don't let the doubt have an entry point.
And it's beautiful that the hadith mentions this
specific thing
because most of us know people, if not
ourselves,
who this thing creates such a frenzy for
us. Right?
They can really skew the intention of what
it is that we live through. Do you
know what I mean?
Think about the hadith in its entirety.
When we meet next Monday, we're gonna look
probably, we'll be set up on that side
so we can get into other parts of
the Hadith now. The second hadith is the
Hadith Jibrael.
It's very long. We won't go into too
much detail. But I wanna start to show
you, like, aspects of hadith grading, hadith classification,
what does it mean that a hadith is?
What do we mean when we say a
hadith is or a hadith is a kharib?
What does that mean when we look at,
like, the chain of transmitters
and a hadith tree that shows us, like,
all these things and how they function. So
we have more of a hands on relationship
with it and can really, like, look at,
like,
the beauty of this mechanism that is is
not
how it functions and allows for us to
take from a very well thought out
formulated system
as we get into, like, the crux of
it. So before next Monday,
read like hadith number 2,
but read it in a way that's not
just surface level. Read it in terms of,
like, what can I really extrapolate from this?
What are things that I never noticed before?
Write some of it down. And I'm gonna
tell you this, some of you won't do
it.
You're not gonna do it because you think
you're not the person that's supposed to do
it. Somebody else is supposed to do it.
You're gonna say this is weird. Right? But
once you get the hang of it and
you start to actually engage, it's gonna make
the religion feel so different.
It's gonna make the relationship
with faith feel so different.
And so my suggestion,
open it, read it sentence by sentence, have
a notebook,
and just write out, like, what is it
saying to me? What are things I didn't
notice before? So that you're ready to come
because you know I'm gonna ask you to
talk to the people next to you and
share back. You don't want to start you
don't wanna have an intimidated
relationship
with your faith. When you really love something,
you wanna talk about it. Right? Then look
at all the idiots that talk about this
religion so much and make people feel miserable
about it. If good people like you started
talking about it, it would turn the world
upside down.
So you can't be scared to talk about
something that you love.
And in your love, if you say something
that was a mistake, it's okay, man. You
said it out of love.
Allah knows your intention. We'll just kinda remedy
where we need to. Do you get what
I mean? And then also look at this
hadith.
Spend some time thinking about it. What's the
point of this? What's its basis for me?
How do I live with intentionality?
How do I start to increase?
What are the things that are diluting for
me subjectively?
My awareness, my wakefulness.
What are the things that enhance it where
I have deeper senses of perspective because I'm
more present in what's going on? Right?
Do I notice the things around me? Do
I not notice them? Do you get what
I mean? And then we'll start from there,
next time.
So people wanna get more food. Please stay
in the space and also get to know
the people around you.
It'd be amazing if we leave
with some new friends,
before we go. We'll see everyone next
Monday.