Khalid Latif – Imam Nawawis 40 Hadith for Modern Times #05
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Voila.
So we haven't met in this
for a few weeks.
Last week, we did the healing space for
Palestine.
Grant them ease
and and the occupation that's taking place there.
And
2 weeks before that,
some of us had gone on a trip
for the IC,
upstate, and there were just some delays coming
back, so apologize for that. So where we
left off 3 weeks ago,
we've been looking at the collection of 40
hadith of Imam,
which actually has 42 hadith in it, and
we're on hadith number 2, which we had
looked at for a couple of weeks.
It's more commonly known as the Hadith Jibrael,
the Hadith of the angel Gabriel, peace be
upon him, where he comes to teach the
prophet, teach the companions different things about
the religion.
This hadith has a lot of different things
going on in it. One of the things
that is called,
is,
Umma Sunnah.
It has pretty much everything
embodied within it in terms of what one
would need to know and and understand about
Islam as a religion. In the 1st class
that we talked just to do some recap
on it, contextualizing
this, this was taking place
at a time when the prophet alaihi wasalam
was towards the latter part of his life.
You know? So you wanna just kinda think
out what it is that it's leading up
to, and we have kinda corresponding statements of
the prophet of God
in his farewell chutba
to the people,
on, you know, his last Hajj, you know,
these kinds of things. And so here you
have just a very concise breakdown. If people
wanna pull up the hadith, what we're gonna
do is look at the hadith,
probably
for a little bit of time, kinda discuss
some parts of it together,
and then
I have a,
for my own, like, personal, like, reading of
Quran.
Today is the day that I have a
khatam, so that would be good if just
altogether
we could do the khatam,
make dua at the end. There's a lot
of different,
narrations of companions
who would gather their families and friends together
at the completion
of a Quran's
reading.
It would be also like a very joyous
occasion where people would share sweets and different
things,
but they come together to also make dua
together.
We've done this in the past before at
my home and in other situations,
but just given the
difficulties that surround us right now, both here
in the states and in different parts of
the world, but in particular,
our brothers and sisters in Palestine are experiencing.
May Allah grant them the ease.
That would be a good time for us
to also make dua
the conclusion
of a recitation of Quran.
There's
in the moment.
So we'll probably do that,
and then we'll wrap up. We'll pray together.
Yeah. So can somebody pull up the Hadith
or everyone if you wanna pull it up?
You can just search if you don't have
a text or a copy of the book
with you.
The 40 Hadith of Imam Nawawi. You could
just take look up the Hadith Jibrael.
If you do the 40 Hadith of Imam
Nowi, you're gonna put,
Nowi Hadith number 2, and it'll pop up.
And there's different variations of this Hadith. The
one that we're looking at that Imam Nowi
records,
is a little bit different from others in
terms of wording. We talked about this in
the first session. If you missed it, you
can go back and look at it.
But,
in this particular one,
the angel asked the question of what is
Islam before what is iman
and other variants of the Hadith. The question
of what is iman
precedes what is Islam. We'll talk about that
a little bit today. Does anybody have it
pulled up?
Yeah. Can you read it for us?
Well, also also on the authority of Omar,
while we were one day sitting with the
messenger,
there appeared before us a man dressed in
extremely white clothes and with very black hair.
No traces of journeying were visible on him,
and none of us knew him. He sat
down by the prophet,
pass and
perform Hajj to the house,
the combat, like that if you can find
a way to do it.
And his books and his messengers and the
last day in faith public,
both in its good and evil aspects.
He said, you have spoken the truth.
No more than the questioner. So we said,
well, inform me about science. He said,
they are that the slave girl will give
birth to her mistress and that you will
see the barefooted
the the barefooted ones, the naked, the destitute,
the herdsmen of the sheep competing with each
other and raising lofty buildings.
Thereupon, the man went off. I waited a
while, and then the prophet
said,
oh, Allah, do you know who that questioner
was? I replied, Allah, his message didn't know
better. He said that was pretty he came
to teach you he came to teach you
he came to teach you
Great.
So in
understanding some of what we talked about in
the first session, the second session,
the entirety of this hadith is seen as
a teaching opportunity, not just the questions and
the conversation between the angel and the prophet
of God. So what is extrapolated from the
first part of it, which we kind of
dove into, which is etiquettes of being a
student in a student teacher relationship,
as well as different things that we could
draw from that. The angel having dark black
hair,
gave an indication that part of the etiquette
of learning is that you wanna do this
when you're young, not when you're older. Right?
The idea that he's wearing these, like, kinda,
you know,
new very white clothes that you wanna dress
your best when you're engaged in kind of
these experiences. You go to Jomah, you wear
your best, you know, not just in terms
of kind of the Friday prayer when you
wake up for Fajr, you know, just rolling
out of bed and then praying and rolling
back out, but it's kind of creating a
sense of adab for the gathering and getting
you centered as well. Like, what what is
this that I'm about to enter into? Right?
The proximity of the angel to the prophet
alaihis salaam showing that you don't want to
be kind of at a literal distance from
the
the teacher, but you want to be in
a close proximity,
so not sitting far away. Right? And you
think about people in going to the masjid.
They're kinda sitting,
you know, not in the first rows, but
kind of scattered throughout in different ways. Right?
That's what we were talking about in the
beginning, the etiquettes that kinda go into it.
And
we looked at some other parts of the
Hadith,
and talked about
how the next Hadith and Imam Nawawi's collection
is gonna talk about the pillars of Islam
in more detail.
So we likely won't do a deep dive
into that. But if you look at this
hadith in its entirety,
and the idea is that it contains pretty
much,
like, every
category of Islam within it. Islam is a
religion, not Islam as, like, the pillars of
practice.
So if we were to identify from the
Hadith,
what are the parts that are here that
are being outlined right now? Like, how would
we name those?
This question makes sense?
Yeah. So, like, the 3 parts would be,
like, this stem, this stem.
Okay. But what is that?
The this down is, like, your outwardly actions.
Okay.
So there's Islam.
Right? And that's outward actions. So this is
ritual.
And then what did you say? Email.
Okay.
And what is this? That's your internal beliefs.
So belief,
and then if so, yeah,
Sort of like the perfection
or,
how you do your data data line.
Okay.
Right. Let's leave that until we find a
word for it. What else does the Hadith
talk about?
The hour. So what does that mean?
Yeah. So you wanna think about this as
an entire system.
Right? And if we were to start to
outline this in ways that make it more
tangible,
when we think about Islam,
then we think about the religion that is
named Islam.
What is it giving to its individual practitioner?
So here, Islam
in terms of ritual and practice
is giving you something
to do.
Here, you're having something to believe in.
With Ihsan
you have something to embody.
And with the hour, you have something to
get ready for.
Does this make sense?
Right? And if you think about this in
terms of kind of a holistic life as
a practitioner of the faith,
it necessitates
having these different parts to it in order
for you to have an experience as an
entire being.
If you only have one element of it,
it doesn't necessarily
have
kind of the same impact.
And you can see how these things become
important and how they have kind of synergies
with each other, right? Like when you live
in a world that is a secular world
that is not just without mention of God
but the secularity
of modernity
is one that
has people live consciously or unconsciously
with an idea that this is just it.
Like this experience is only it.
There's nothing that comes beyond it.
So why do I have a sense of
accountability?
Do you know what I mean?
If I'm praying my prayers,
they're not in a vacuum. They're still attached
to be getting ready for something.
They're still being prayed
to an entity. They're not just prayer as
impostures.
Right? And they become a vehicle for me
to have transformation.
Like what should somebody be like
who prays Fudger every single day?
The sunnahs of Fudger, they're praying all their
prayers. Somebody never misses Fudger.
Should that person be a jerk if they're
really praying Fudger well? Do you know?
Just like just picture that person in your
head. The person who is deeply impacted by
this,
should they be in a place where they
don't have some aspect
of character refinement.
Right? And sometimes the challenge comes in when
we're not engaging this as an entire system.
When we're in a place where our relationship
to it is just kinda one dimensional
as opposed to multifaceted.
Do you get what I mean? This is
really important, you know, because you could do
a deep dive into this hadith and people
could just tell you things that you memorize
wrotely,
but you wanna see the beauty of Islam
as a religion and how it is systematized.
And in its systematic nature, there's a simplicity
because there's not so much that goes into
it. When you read this hadith,
there's not a lot that you have to
actually do
to be Muslim.
There's not so much that you have to
believe in fundamentally.
It doesn't require you to do so much
in terms of personal development. It's rooted in
just here's is like a state that you
want to be in in terms of consciousness
and wakefulness, and
it all gets rooted in this sense of,
hey,
like this isn't just it. There's a world
that's gonna come after this world. Like be
a person of Jannah. Do you get what
I mean?
And when we can start to think about
it within this structure,
it creates for me now an opportunity
to think out
where am I in relation to these different
facets of this religion.
Not just in a black and white mold,
but in a way where I can understand
it
as like a source of replenishment and rejuvenation
and its default is that it gives me
vitality.
If I'm only operating in one sphere of
this, it's not going to be something
that has this holistic impact. Right? And a
lot of you have heard me say this
in this way before but we wanna do
it quickly but understand it now in the
prism
of this breakdown. Right? It gives me something
to do, something to believe in, something to
embody, and something to get ready for. When
you have just one dimensional understanding of this
religion,
if you have one dimension of anything,
then regardless of what it is that you're
experiencing,
that one dimension is going to
have a reductive base to it. It's simplistic
not in a positive way. This is what
a lot of us have, just mechanics. Right?
And a lot of you have heard me
use this example before
but think about it in relation to this
breakdown. So if you have just one dimension,
regardless of what you're looking at, it's gonna
just be a line.
It's simple. I can't see you bigger than
how you dress so you don't dress, The
color of your skin, the accent that you
have. I can't identify you bigger than one
variable. It yields an intellectual laziness, Right? It's
not a cognitive function of stereotyping
that renders something of benefit,
but it's just going to be simple.
I only see you in this one box.
You know what I mean? It's what people
are doing to us right now. They've been
doing it to us for a while. Right?
May Allah make it easy for all of
us. So that's what a lot of us
get and that's what a lot of us
give. Like if somebody converted here right now
and you have the responsibility to teach them
this Islam,
not this Islam, but this Islam. What would
you give to them? Because you can't give
somebody something that you don't possess in the
first place. A lot of us would just
give them this one dimensional understanding,
which is just black and white, the thick
do's and don'ts. Do you get what I
mean?
What we have then is attitude a very
robust theology that is Iman.
And when you add a second dimension,
it goes now from being
simplistic
to something that has shape to it,
right? You can ascertain more meaning
from this versus this,
Right? You can draw more from it. Right?
The line doesn't give you so much. Now
the rectangle,
the diamond, I can understand it a little
bit more.
What Exxon does is it adds a third
dimension
that is what brings to us volume and
depth. Right? That things are in a place
where they can be seen from a multitude
of angles.
I see this and you see it. Neither
of us sees it the same way. But
neither of us is also seeing it better
or worse than the other. Right? The husun
of the prophet sallallahu anaihi wa sallam was
such that he could understand why somebody saw
it the way they saw it while he
still saw it the way he saw it
without him having to become them. And this
can be seen on 360 degrees of perspective
on almost an infinite number of planes. It's
got depth to it and volume to it,
and that's what a dimensional understanding of this
religion offers to us. And what this all
gets offers to us. And what this all
gets
encompassed in
is
the variable of time,
right, which is here.
It's not something that's infinite,
you know. You don't know how long you're
gonna live. I don't know how long I'm
gonna live. Right? Inshallah,
Allah makes the best of our deeds the
last of our deeds and doesn't let any
one of us leave this world other than
in a state that's most pleasing to him.
But all of it is outlined
within
this religion.
It's not giving you things in a vacuum.
We are given in large part this
and this isn't something that comes prior to.
And that can create a challenge
quite often. We're not talking just about like
creed which is aqidah.
We're talking about iman which is faith. They're
2 different things.
You can have a codified creedal system that
we'll talk about in like 10 minutes,
but you want to think about the need
to have
faith as
a precursor
to practice.
Right? Faith
as a variable
to think out
why do I embody what it is that
it's telling me to embody. And this is
important, man. How many people do you know
right now in the world who are just
telling straight up lies?
Just blatant
lies.
All day every day.
Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie. You think about how
remarkable
the prophet
is as a human being that even his
opponents knew him to be a trustworthy person.
And why this religion is so rooted in
things like integrity
and honesty and good character and trustworthiness.
And why there's so much that's even referred
to in the hadith that says you can
make excuses for certain things, but you can't
be a liar and be a good Muslim.
The two things don't go hand in hand.
Do you get what I mean? So what
I want us to think out is first
just about
this
kind of structure here.
Islam,
it gives us something to do.
Iman gives us something to believe in.
Ihsan
gives us something to embody, and
the idea of the hour, the last day,
it's giving us something to get ready for.
Does this make sense?
So if you take, like, 2, 3 minutes,
just turn to the person next to you.
If you don't know their names, share names.
What are you taking away from this structure?
What does it make you think about? How
does it relate to your understanding of Islam
as a religion on a whole?
And let's talk for a few minutes and
then come back and discuss. But go ahead.
If you don't know the people, tell them
your names, and then we'll come back and
debrief.
If we just make sure everyone's talking to
somebody, that'd be great.
While you're talking, like,
what you wanna think about when you think
of Islam and your practice of Islam, do
you think about it in this way?
And why or why not?
Right? Like, do we see it as this
entire system?
Why or why not? Does it make sense?
Okay. Go ahead.
Okay. So what are we talking about? What's
coming up for people? Do we see, like,
our religion in this way?
Why or why not? Anything else that it
kinda brings up for
people?
Or how? How do we start to kind
of engage it in this
way in more totality?
Do you know?
That all these things inform one another. Do
you know what I mean?
What do we talk about?
Yeah. Go ahead.
I I was talking about how
I I feel like I don't,
fully separate them out in my head, but
the one that I feel like I think
about the most, would be, like, the hour.
Because, like, when we pray, like, they're gonna
be do not, like, protect us from the
hellfire.
And that's
you sort of need to be, like, reminded
at all times that, like, you're going to
be judged in the end. Like, you're going
to be judged in the end.
So I feel like that's the one that
I feel like
I maybe not separate out the most, but
focus on a lot, and it, like, affects
my ability to do the rest.
But I was also talking about how, like,
you you need to have all 4 components
to actually
be practicing a step because, like, if you're
if you do,
like, if you're not doing the physical stuff,
but you're doing everything else, then you're not
you're not fully,
practicing a stem.
But to achieve what end? Like, what's the
idea with understanding this as an entire system?
What's the yield from it?
Yeah.
I mean right? But what else in a
worldly sense?
To be more at peace, Yeah. Right?
You can get contentment from it. Sometimes when
the word is really heavy and we're flustered,
the idea isn't to be divorced of emotions.
Allah is the one that gave us all
of our emotions in the first place. Right?
There's a place for sadness. There's a place
for grief. There's a place for anxiety.
Right? The prophet
has
the year of sadness, the year of grief.
Do you know? He's the most centered and
content person
ever created.
Do you know what I mean? But as
a foundational
understanding,
if you're picking and choosing from systems
on a whole, then the system on a
whole doesn't give to you what it can
only give to you if it's being seen
as an entire system. You get what I
mean? Like, if I only pray
versus I pray to God. If I only
pray,
but I am praying in my body, I'm
not praying with my heart.
Right? If I make decisions,
but they're devoid of an understanding
of an afterlife.
You know,
if belief
isn't something that I've ever even figured out
for myself what I believe in, doesn't mean
I'm not making decisions. The paradox of decision
making when you don't make a choice you've
essentially chosen still. Right? What else did we
talk about in relation to this system or
structure?
Yeah.
So we talked about how a lot of
these things, it they're almost not necessarily
they're independent from each other, but at the
same time, they're not.
Because if you
practice
Islam as something to do
perfectly,
your iman and your esan
also will rise almost as a byproduct.
So in a way, they're all kind of
connected.
But then,
from my understanding of Isan, that's how you
carry yourself
morally, integrity wise.
And so we've kind of had this conundrum
of, let's say you have,
like, a perfectly moral atheist person,
and the downsides of that, you can't.
Where does he draw his morality from? Is
it something that can be emulated?
Is it something that other people
would respectfully emulate?
So
it kind of
in that kind of conversation.
Yeah. And this is where words have meanings
to them. Right? So good
and bad,
it has to have a definition. Can a
person be a good human being
in terms of just how they carry themselves
Yeah.
I
mean, there's a lot of Muslims who are
just terrible people. Right? There's a lot of
people who are not Muslims, who are very
kind and generous.
But the question more so is rooted in
the idea. Does human
does the individual human have capacity
to be able through moral relativism
determine what is ethical
in a sense that is applicable to all
kind of diverse
populations.
Like, you literally right now are in a
place where you see what the absence of
morality is capable of
and where moral relativism
has a deep challenge to it in terms
of its manifestation
when it is defined and dictated by people
of power and privilege.
Do you know?
And they're telling you what they believe in
every day.
A big gap is not that
these people believe in something,
but a big gap is most everybody else
has no idea what they believe in.
When you live in a default state as
a body walking through this world
and you think that the thoughts you're thinking
are your own thoughts, but in reality, you're
thinking the thoughts that
those who are in positions of power want
you to think.
You then make decisions that are not attached
to something that is as simple but still
deep as what this is that says, if
you get this, it's gonna give you an
inner
peace and contentment. Doesn't mean the world won't
be heavy, but allow for you to navigate
crisis in a different way. Do you know?
He has your hand raised too. Yeah.
I think the order of Islam, Iman, and
Hassan and how it's mentioned matters. I think
being a kid
of a convert,
I was able to see my dad
do actions first,
praying, doing,
zakha, like, physical actions.
And then the iman comes later after a
while in the converts journey. And then Islam
is like
the culmination
of those two things.
Yeah. And you get to a place where
as you grow. Right? This is a challenge
as well as a blessing.
Consciousness
is that much more awake as you kinda
go through life and get older. Right?
My children
who many of you have met, make
Dua for them,
the greatest blessings in my life.
They are 8
and 10. My daughter's gonna turn 11 in
December Right?
They're at a place where their faculties and
capacities are that of an 8 year old
and a 10 year old.
But you think now when you're 20,
you're 30, you're 40, you're 50, you're 60,
how you make sense of things that happened
to you when you were 10 is different.
Not because you didn't experience it when you
were 10 fully,
but you now have faculties
that are existing in a different capacity
than when you were at that age.
So something makes more sense when you are
older of what you experience when you were
younger
because you now have greater capacity for wakefulness
and consciousness.
There's that much more room for you to
be able to understand some of these things
because you have maturation in these ways. Do
you get what I mean? And so there
is, like, a set of building blocks that
goes into it. The child is taught when
they're 7 years old about prayer
and prior to their seeing, like, their family
members pray. And then as they hit an
age of post pubescence,
they are now obligated to pray as well.
And they're building through the exercise now
capacity
to be able to then deepen
as they're getting older within the refinement of
it as a mechanism
for that kind of growth. You see what
I mean?
Most of us when we think about Islam,
like, think about it from the standpoint of
somebody who's a convert. They walk into this
room, what are you going to give to
them before you give them anything else?
9 out of 10 times, most Muslims are
gonna just give bucket number 1.
Here's what you do as a Muslim.
Right? But it has to be complemented with
all of the rest of it. And when
you're born into Islam and your Islam has
now relationships to culture, which is not a
problem because Islam cannot exist without culture. It
necessarily needs culture to manifest itself. It doesn't
just exist in a vacuum. Right? They can't
fundamentally. You go to China, Islam looks Chinese.
You go to Malaysia, Islam looks Malaysian. You
go to Nigeria, it looks Nigerian. If you
went to Nigeria and Islam looked Chinese, it
would look strange.
Right? It would be out of the ordinary.
Right? It has to synergize with what is
normative but not in conflict with the religion.
This is what the relationship is. But when
you get exposed to it in a way
where it doesn't have all of the facets
and you're just passing on now generationally
what is a part of tradition but not
the whole tradition,
it's going to not then be empowering
or a mechanism for that contentment.
It's just like a checkbox that I have
to get done. And then when I get
to a certain age, it's gonna be a
lot easier for me to not pray
and its time
because it's not yielding for me what it
would fully yield
if it had these other components as a
part of it. Does that make sense?
So what we wanna look at today a
little bit is bucket number 2. You have
the listings there. Do you know what I
mean? This is what Islam is. This is
what Iman is. This is what Ihsan is.
The component of iman
is something that is not meant to only
be kind of engaged in
a rote memorization
type format,
but the component of iman has to be
something
that is rooted in conviction.
So you can memorize that articles of faith
in our religion,
belief in Allah and his angels and his
messengers and his book and the last day
and qadr, divine decree, the good of it
and the bad of it. Doesn't mean you
believe in
it. The same way you can believe that
Allah is
he created you, but you might not believe
that he is the most merciful
Ar Rahman.
You might not believe
that you're gonna stand in front of him
on the day of judgment.
So what I'd like for you to discuss,
because we could go about this in a
few different ways. I could sit here and
distill for you. This is who Allah is
in Islam.
This is what the angels are in Islam,
and we can do that. That's something we
can definitely do. But in order for us
to do that in a way that is
yielding something robust,
you gotta first have awareness of yourself.
And you have to be able to know
how do you even know
what you believe in and why you believe
in the things that you believe in.
What is it that gives you indication
to what you believe?
Right? Like, a lot of people right now,
they're recognizing in our community
that their sense of was
not,
but
their
was in like dunya in oppressive systems.
They were putting their trust in wealth and
money thinking that that is going to be
what protects me in terms of what holds
other people down.
Nobody cares how much money you have. They're
looking at your black and brown skin. If
you are white, you are racialized in Islam,
and you are still now black and brown.
You are giving up your whiteness when you
become Muslim.
So it becomes now a point of reflection
and contemplation.
So before we can think about
belief in Allah, belief in angels, these things,
you gotta first think about what is it
that you actually have faith in?
What do you believe in?
How do you have metrics to assess that
that's what you believe in? Do you know?
Right? Like, you could probably
ascertain
from the way I talk about my children
and my wife that I love them very
much.
Right? And may Allah increase us in that
love. I do. I love my kids. I
tell you all all the time that I
love you, and I hope that my actions
demonstrate that. Do you get what I mean?
But you can fundamentally
assess
through certain parts of how my words relate
to my actions
that here's some of what this guy is
about. Right?
How do you know what you are about?
How do you know
what you actually hold as conviction?
And it's not meant to be just an
academic
intellectual exercise, but
there's
a
lot
of
us who but there's a lot of us
who believe certain things,
but the world is not built for us
right now in the part of the world
that we're in. This is why you have
hadith that say towards the end of time,
holding on to a sunnah is gonna feel
like you're holding on to a burning coal
in your hand. It's not easy to be
Muslim, but we still want to have mechanisms
where we can harness that contentment.
Even if there's chaos in the world outside
of us, we have a sense of just
stillness within us that comes from embodying
these parts of this system in this religion.
Something to do, something to believe in, something
to embody, and something to get ready for.
The aspect of conviction and belief is going
to be important.
Not just what you can really spit out
that any person can memorize and parrot. You
go online right now. There are YouTube videos
of literal birds, parrots that say
Right?
How do I know what I believe in?
How do I know what my convictions are?
If you can turn to the person next
to you and just talk this out for
a few minutes, what are ways that I
know, like, what my convictions and beliefs are?
And then we'll come back and discuss. Go
ahead.
Okay.
So
we're gonna have this
piece, and then, we'll do the khatam and
dua, and then we'll pray Isha.
So how do you know? Like, how do
you know what you believe in?
How do you know what your convictions are?
Yeah.
So they could influence you to have beliefs,
but how do you know what the belief
actually is?
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay. What else?
Yeah.
Okay. Yep.
For us, we're talking about being put to
the test, kind of like what's happening right
Okay.
You guys your hand raised for me? Yeah.
It was, very similar to what she said.
It's
Yeah.
You said you were talking about this
place where the things in Islam that you
do, like prayer. Every time you do prayer,
you come out more focused, more energized, more
at peace. If you do something that's against
Islam, you always get these regret, and you
always get
these If you do something that's against Islam,
you always get these regret and negative effects.
And so way long as, like, gravity, no
matter. It's always there. It's always pulling me,
and
it's
undeniable in many ways.
Yeah. Right? And so if we kind of
extrapolate from these things,
if you believe that the Quran is something
that has truth to it,
then you would be making decisions based off
of the Quran.
How can you make decisions based off of
the Quran if you don't read the Quran
or if you don't know what the Quran
says?
Right? And you don't wanna think about it
with your back against the wall making, like,
justification. Nobody's accusing us. We're just thinking.
Right? We wanna take it to its logical
conclusion.
Believing in a law and believing a law,
it's not meant to be, like, a clever
statement.
These are 2 different things. There's a nuance
there, but they're connected to each other.
Right? Believing in Allah and believing Allah, and
Allah tells you something. Do you know, like
and it's hard. Right now, it's hard
to try to understand a lot of what's
going on in the world, but our tradition
teaches us that Al Aqsa will be free.
Right? May we be a generation that sees
that. Right? But how do I find not
indifference or passivity through that, but through it
I find a still sense of place in
the world when the world doesn't make any
sense?
And if you cannot get to a place
where at this point, regardless of your relationship
to Islam in terms of the number of
days, weeks, months, years, you've been
Muslim within the sense of
it being something that you are, like, engaging
deliberately and consciously,
you have to be able to figure out
what you actually believe in. So if you
want some metrics,
1, look at the choices that you make.
The choices are going to show you what's
important to you and what is not important
to you.
If you really believe that fudger is something
that brings you benefit,
why are you going to sleep at a
time in the night that you know will
not let you wake up for fajr?
And that's not meant to be like a
question that, again,
Spurs well, you don't I'm not it's not
for you to explain to me. I'm not
your
god. But I'm asking you to explain to
you how does it demonstrate to you what
you actually believe in.
Your choices,
your decisions. As an extension of that, you
can think about what you believe in from
the standpoint of just fundamental etiquette.
How is it that you treat
every aspect of God's creation?
Has a very robust element of theology
in terms of how we just sanctify humanity
on a whole. All of the children of
Adam have dignity.
This is a tradition that teaches us to
honor, like, every aspect of creation.
Right? Literally,
the Quran tells us that the pieces of
earth that we tread on are going to
testify on what we did upon them.
So where and how I start to piece
this together?
Because in a world that's really heavy,
if you also only have bucket number 1,
you only have something to do. When you're
exhausted,
it's hard to do things.
When you're running on empty and you're burnt
out, it's hard to just do more.
But if you understand the religion
gives you something to do, something to believe
in, something to embody, and something to get
ready for, is very different than just only
do's and don'ts.
And a linchpin to all of it is
going to be the bucket of what you
believe in.
There's people, man, who come. May Allah bless
them and give them Hidayah. They come and
fast with us in Ramadan.
They come and pray with us in Jummah.
Right? They're not Muslim.
They don't have the second bucket to it.
It doesn't mean that we are better or
worse in the ways that we think about
these terms,
but they're going through the postures
in certain ways,
sometimes
very differently
than somebody who's exploring religion. Right? How many
of your friends come down every so often
in Ramadan? I'm gonna try to fast with
you too. That's great. They did it. Amazing.
What is the difference between that
and somebody who has bucket number 2? You're
doing it for a different reason.
There's gotta be a different component when you
bring Allah into the picture.
Relationship? Into your relationships?
How does my belief in Allah inform my
relationship with my son and my daughter? How
does my belief in Allah inform my relationship
with my wife, with the community I serve?
How does my belief in Allah inform the
relationship
that I have with the person who's the
delivery guy that brought the food order for
the iftar that we just had. Right? The
people who are going to come to vacuum
the floor.
These kinds of things. Like, how does my
belief in Allah impact this? And why it's
important?
Because bucket number 3, on top of Allah
that you worship Allah as if you see
him,
who you understand Allah to be.
Watching over you is going to then impact
how you identify in a relationship with Ihsan.
Because Ihsan is you worship god as if
you can see him. For although you cannot
see him, you know that he can see
you.
If you do not believe in Allah the
way that Allah tells you about him
and you believe in Allah just from your
family,
just from community,
just from how you've been socialized,
there's a good chance that people who didn't
do right by you, who speak on god's
behalf, are gonna give you a conceptualization
of the divine
that is not who our book teaches us
our creator is.
And so then you go back to this
bucket here. You believe in Allah. You believe
in his angels. You believe in his messengers.
You believe in his books.
There's a book that you've been given, and
you believe in the angel that came to
bring it down to the messenger
who has given you now through that connection
of Wahi, a last guidance
that is not meant to just come out
at major life experiences.
How do you believe
that this is something
that can actually
build for you a philosophy on life?
You can't open its pages, and it's going
to tell you
specific answers always. Should I specifically
marry this person? Should I specifically
take this job? But it'll give you an
ethical framework to maneuver in and work within
that allows for you to still have decisions
and choices rooted in accountability.
Accountability is hard to embrace
when I don't even know why I do
the things that I do.
And that's where a lot of us are
getting deflated in the last couple of weeks.
What is the point of everything that I've
been chasing after
when so much of the world is ready
to just cast me out like this?
People that I thought were my friends are
the ones that are speaking in ways against
me and my people.
They're validating
erasure of entire demographics
in front of our eyes.
It's a hard thing to think out,
but you're seeing in some of it for
some of us
why it's not worth it to believe in
certain things and buy into
the facade of what dunya tells you you
will have.
This construct that says
success will be x, y, or z yield.
If I go to school and get a
degree and get a master's and then I'll
get married and then I'll get some babies
and I'll have a house and all of
this. That's not what our religion is rooted
in.
Imam Nawawi himself
dies at a young age.
The man whose book that is celebrated
across
ideological
schools of thought within the Sunni Muslim tradition,
he didn't necessarily fit into any of those
boxes and buckets. His name is still being
remembered and recognized
centuries after his passing. May Allah grant him
peace.
But he knew what he believed in.
He wouldn't eat from
the harvest and crops of the locale of
his place because he believed government unjustly usurped
land from people.
He had a belief in certain things.
Do you get what I mean?
So if you do not have this, and
that's why in some variants of this hadith,
the angel asked the question first, what is
iman
before he asked what is Islam?
Because everything goes back to Allah in this
religion,
and the rest of the hadith
is built off of a belief in Allah.
ISAN is about
the way that you understand
Allah's presence in your life.
The last hour is a recognition
that Allah is the one that put me
in this world. Allah is the one that
will take me out. I will stand in
front of Allah one day. Why do I
need to know when the end of time
is coming?
Well, for me, it's gonna come at some
point just like for you. This is why
there's hadith that the prophet tells people when
he sees a older man and a younger
man, his last day will have started when
his will be ending when his has just
begun
because we are not a religion that is
afraid of our mortality.
We don't see death as something that is
finite. It's just a mechanism to get you
to the next world of existence.
If you don't know what you believe in
and you don't see this in all of
its entirety,
it doesn't need for you to believe in
it in order for it to be true.
It's going to still be what is actual.
So this is where you take time to
reflect upon it, to think about it, to
understand it.
We're gonna not go through the rest of
this hadith in detail the way you would
in other classes that talk about the of
Imam Nawi
Because we could spend time saying angels are
creatures of light, and they are deeply obedient
to Allah. They don't make mistakes and make
sins and these kinds of things. And, yes,
there's a value to that. What I want
you to walk away from with this hadith
is that it's giving you an understanding
of how
Islam functions systematically,
and you cannot just pick and choose if
you want to harness contentment.
You have to see how ritual,
faith,
spirituality,
and
understanding
of time
all fit together as the different facets and
dimension
to create a very robust experience
for Muslims as practitioners.
Does that make sense?
And what our religion is built upon
is this the exact same as when it
was revealed.
It's not reformed
in these ways.
You see the development
of creedal schools of theology
as Islam expands
and legislatively
it has to entertain different questions from a
fixed standpoint,
so too it needs to answer questions from
a theological
standpoint. And there's books that you can look
at and read that will tell you, like,
codified creed, which you should. The creed of
Imam Tawawi
is a creed that within Sunni Islam is
very broadly engaged and understood
as an
intro kinda as a as a text, like,
widely kind of embraced. And there's other things
as well that we can talk about as
we get into it more, like
the development of these different theological schools, the
school, the school, the school,
how
the school is more directly attached to what
is kinda more in the prism of modernity,
Salafi theology,
and how these all kind of function within
a broader prism
of theology within our school,
within our religion.
But step number 1 is just spend some
time with the Hadith.
Think about it in a systematized
way and think about how is it that
my Islam fits into these buckets. You
know, how is it that I relate to
it? And not in a way that's self
deprecating.
You are exactly where you are supposed to
be. Don't get caught up in saying, man,
I didn't have this when I was younger
or I should already know this. No. Like,
you're good.
Right? But something's gotta click.
And in difficult times, it makes it a
little bit easier
to just reevaluate
and reassess.
What do I really understand?
What is it that I actually have conviction
in? What is it that I'm putting my
trust in? Do I really
believe in what I'm claiming to believe in
or is it just lip service? How do
my actions and decisions
demonstrate what it is that I have belief
in? Does that make sense?
Okay. So for 2 minutes, let's just turn
again to people. What are we taking away
from today's conversation?
Then we'll do the and make dua,
and then we'll pray Isha. But go ahead.
Okay. So what are some of the things
we're taking away from tonight's conversation?
What's, like, sticking out for people or coming
up for people?
Yeah.
Other thoughts were we taking away?
Yeah.
I was talking about how,
how you mentioned, like, you can look at
the the your actions
to
see what it is you actually believe in.
So, like, your everyday
choices that you make every day. Just like
every
little things,
like, how you deal with people or just,
like, what are the things
that guide those responses or guide your choices.
And that's sort of made me want to
be a little more aware. Like, every time
I make a decision, like, why did I
make that decision,
so I can be more focused on
realizing what it is that is guiding me
to and noticing,
like,
what it is, what beliefs are actually
being prioritized.
Yeah. Great.
And you can do deeper dives into some
of these topics, but make them relevant back
to myself as an individual. Right?
How does my belief in angels impact me?
Well, it's 2 angels are sitting on my
shoulders. There's an angel that's gonna blow this
trumpet that's gonna be
sign of the last day.
Trump is blown again. We're all resurrected.
You know? Angels coming into the gatherings that
we're in. So why am I not in
those gatherings? Right? Like, literally,
this is one of the gatherings the angels
are descending. We can't see it with these
eyes, but all around us and what our
tradition
evokes is a notion that there's, like, metaphysical
blessing
just permeating throughout every inch of this room.
Right? It's just going everywhere.
Do you know? So why wouldn't we wanna
be in those places? Do you know what
I mean? Versus, you know, I remember a
friend of mine, I was walking with him
when I was an undergrad, like, years ago,
and he took this, like, super roundabout way
to get to where we wanted to be.
And I said, why did you do that?
And he said that I passed by this,
like, group of people
that was doing something that was just overtly
haram, you
know. And I said, you know, and why
is that a problem? I'm like 18 years
old. I'm trying to figure out what he's
doing. And he said, I didn't want to
potentially die in that moment
surrounded by these people, and then I would
have been resurrected, like, in that place.
And I was like, woah. Like, I just
I'm not thinking in that way. Do you
know? Like, it it's just not in my
head and in my consciousness. Do you know
what I mean? That's why
is not like the simplistic understanding that we
have of what modesty is.
And its definition
is that Allah does not see me present
in a gathering that he would not want
me to be in nor am I absent
from the gatherings that God would want me
to be in. Do you know what I
mean? And the ways that I'm in those
gatherings, like, also as a part of that,
but there's,
like, a lot more to it than sometimes
we're given. Do you know? So let's say
with the hadith, like, engage it. One of
the things we were saying is we wanna
try to memorize these hadith. Right? Even if
you can just memorize it piece by piece.
The first one,
that we looked at, you know, if that's
even the main part of the hadith that
you memorize, you memorize it. So it becomes
something that's impactful of your decisions, your choices.
Right? Here, you have, like, parts that are
repetitive.
Islam.
Right? And he's giving these definitions
that if you can in your head even
memorize a part of it, you're going to
by logic,
not by logic, you're going to just cognitively
be able to
remember a good chunk of the rest of
it in whatever language that, like, you are
more comfortable with. Do you know? So you
wanna start to engage it in the way
so the words come up at times when
you're making decisions and choices. And it's like,
what is my philosophy on life drawn from?
So it's not a moral relativism.
I can say that I make decisions from
the Quran and from the Hadith,
and I know that because I know, like,
Quran and Hadith.
You don't have to know a lot. That's
like the best part of this religion. You
don't have to, like, know the whole book.
You don't have to know all these different
things. Do you know? If you know this,
you're like steps ahead of most people
in keeping connected, acting on what you know
with what you actually know so that it's
now manifest in ways that it can be
transformational.
Okay. So we're gonna, what is going on
in there?
Yeah?
Is it, like, one of the protests we
wanna be in or no?
Yeah. You can turn it off.
So