Khalid Latif – Imam Nawawis 40 Hadith for Modern Times #22
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of learning about prophet "40 hadith" and navigating the suness to enhance one's values and allow them to become people of affluence. They also stress the importance of following Sharia and finding one's own values to enhance them. The speakers emphasize the need to leave the car to pray, adapt to various scenarios, and bring food and drinks. Prayed during a rest area is emphasized, and the potluck dinner is encouraged.
AI: Summary ©
So we've been looking at the 9th hadith
of the 40 hadith collection, Imam Nawawi. People
wanna pull it up on your phones.
If you don't have the text, you just
Google,
40 hadith na'awi,
number 9, and it'll show up. It's narrated
by Abu Harayra Radiallahu an.
Where the prophet says what I have forbidden
for you, avoid.
And people have it. Maybe somebody could read
the English, read the Arabic.
You could do either or.
If you can't read the Arabic, you can
read the English.
Or if you can only read the Arabic
and not the English.
Yeah. Either one. Does anybody wanna read?
Do you wanna say?
Yeah. Go for it. I read the English.
Yeah. Go for it, man. Yeah.
Well, I have forbidden to you, avoid.
What what I have ordered you to do,
do a bit for you are able.
For it was only their excessive questioning and
their contradiction of their prophets that destroyed those
before.
Great.
Somebody wanna read the Arabic?
Do you want to?
No. No. You don't want to? Oh, well,
thanks for being honest.
Great.
Somebody else wanna read the Arabic?
Maybe we wanna try to do do you
wanna
try? Yeah. Go for it.
I'm Abi Hureyatta,
Abdul Rahman,
Bin
You wanna try to start memorizing some of
these. If you can't read the Arabic,
you can transliterate it to yourself.
But even if you can read the Arabic
not so fluidly,
anything that creates
an opportunity
for you to
find hesitancy in engaging some of these things,
you wanna see where that's coming from. And
if it's not coming from a good place,
then the only way you can overcome it
is by doing contrary to what the thought
is creating. Right? So just think about it
a little bit. If you have anxiety
in, like, reading Quran,
we have anxiety in reading hadith,
do you know, it's gonna already create an
obstacle
in being able to then get to it
at a deeper level.
The person whose words you're reading
would look for what was inherently beautiful within
people.
Wasn't an individual that judged
people in the ways that people judge us
today. So when you're reading his words,
don't read them with an anxiety that says,
how will it sound to the people around
me? But you're reading with an intentionality that's
bringing you closer
to this man,
who was the best of creation
and
was looking for every indication to bring people
in as opposed to pushing people away.
He's also a messenger of God, and
his representation
was rooted in this understanding. Right? In our
tradition,
we believe in a God that looks for
a reason to accept from us, not looks
for a reason to push us away. You
know? So you can't get
close
to something that you have
an unhealthy anxiety around, right, which is distinct
from an a healthy anxiety.
So get into,
like, this place. And when you're surrounded by
people in spaces that you don't have to
validate
your existence in order to be. This is
where you wanna be comfortable and stumbling and
whatever else. We're gonna do it like it's
not like a surprise. Right? Like, the hadith
in the book go into order. Do you
know what I mean? So you just go
home and, like, you can go online and
just on YouTube
type in the hadith number
and they'll there are recordings of people just
reading the hadith out loud. Do you know?
So you can start to, like, read it.
It'll help
to improve some of your reading as well
because you're same way you learn English, you
know, you're putting letters together to diffuse and
they form words. Arabic is not any different.
Does that make sense? And there's to this.
Right? Like, when our teachers teach us about
the
prophet hadith,
the etiquette
of, like, listening to the hadith is that
you want to embody
kind of a presence as if it's the
prophet saying the words to you directly. You
know? So there's many people when they hear
hadith,
they lower their head out of just a
certain deference as if the messenger was standing
in front of you. You know? But to
connect at a level that it allows to
have that impact
has to overcome some of these other obstacles.
Right? Like, these are teachings that are here
for you individually more than anyone else. You
don't wanna have a fear of it. Right?
You wanna feel empowered
by your tradition. Does that make sense? The
same thing with the Quran. You know? So
when you're hearing Quran being recited, hadith,
it's a time you put, like, forks down,
you put other stuff away, and you're just
listening.
Other etiquettes and
around this is like, you know, you don't
talk over it. So if someone's reading hadith,
reading Quran,
it's not like a background
kind of thing,
as such. But if you know it's happening,
you're just kinda present and and taking it
in and absorbing it so you can engage
in it. And if you've ever been moved
by Quran and you can't understand the Arabic
of it, whether you speak Arabic or not.
Right? But just the recitation of it and
the the lang like, the sound
experientially
has that capacity.
I mean, that's the uniqueness of these kinds
of texts, you know?
And those
obstacles that come inwardly,
they're purposeful to block
us from really being able to absorb from
it as much as we can. Do you
know what I mean? So there's a lot
of you in the room who can't speak
Arabic
and you hear the Quran being recited and
it still moves you.
Right?
Right?
Do you know?
So you don't wanna get to a place
that says, I don't understand what the hadith
is saying,
and it's still not impacting me. Like, there's
just still
metaphysical impact
because the one who says it,
is
just genuine in every sense of the word
and is the best at creations. You wanna
absorb that and allow for it. You know?
And then have the opportunity to iterate some
of this. There's, like, to that. Do you
get what I'm does that make sense?
Okay.
So we've been looking at this hadith for
a few now.
To recap quickly, we talked about who Abu
Harada was. We talked about, like, terminology wise,
why it's important for us to have a
basis of something being haram, and we talked
about what the are.
So every action that one can undertake
has a hookum to it. Like, it can
be categorized
into one of these
categories. Most schools of thought will create a
spectrum that has 5
kind of categorizations.
What is obligatory or fard and what is
haram
strictly prohibited
at the ends.
Then if you go in one increment in
both directions
to
the step away from obligatory is or recommended,
and a step away from Haram
or religiously prohibited is makru or what's disliked.
And then in the middle, you have what
is mubba or neutral.
Everything
that's to the other end of what's haram
is permissible
in some way, shape, or form, theoretically.
And then in the Hanafi school,
they break Makru into 2 categories.
Makru Taherimi,
like,
that is close to Haram and
Right? It's in the direction
more so opposite of Haram.
And then there's a category of wajib
between what's fard
and mustahab,
obligatory and recommended. The wajib is necessary.
Why they interject these, like, 7 categories instead
of 5
is they're really cautious about labeling something as
haram that might not be haram or something
that's
that might not be categorically,
like definitively
obligatory or definitively impermissible.
And so when we're talking about the first
part of this, we talked about it in
a lot of different ways. Do you know
what is the definition of something that's haram?
Right? It's got a clear, concise, what we
call
evidence.
So don't eat pork just means don't eat
pork. You know? And where you get
it's more probabilistic
in the evidence, what's called the evidence.
We talked about why people might engage in
haram,
and it's not
necessarily because people are terrible human beings.
But quite often people turn towards
what it is that's impermissible,
because there's an absence of communal support,
you know,
substance that's used to numb pains.
Right? Other things that create temporary satisfactions.
We talked about
kind of the different parts to an action,
especially when it's habituated
and how the act in and of itself
is what people kind of focus on often.
You know? When somebody comes to talk to
me in my office and says, I don't
wanna smoke this anymore. I don't wanna drink
this anymore. I don't wanna watch this anymore.
I don't wanna listen to this anymore.
You can focus on the act in and
of itself, but if you understand that there's
components to this and what proceeds an action
is a catalyst or a trigger,
and what comes at the end of it
consequently
is a craving or a reward that's being
satisfied to the performance of the act. So
rather than focusing on the act in and
of itself, you figure what it is that's
setting it off, what is it seeking to
satisfy,
and these are things that are a little
bit more easily
kind of made malleable
with now an action that can render the
same results or be a response to, like,
the trigger
that then enables you to shift behaviors
a little bit more. Do people remember what
it is I'm talking about?
So last week, I also said, like, there's
an article that I recommended people reading, and
I asked over here who read it, and
nobody
read it, but maybe other people trickled in
that read it. It was called the Sunnis
primordiality.
Right? Because this is also a hadith
that's about listening to the prophet of God.
You know, things aren't haram in our religion
because your grandma said it's haram or your
dad said it's haram, and it's not to
undermine
their role in your life,
but
we do and don't do based off of
what Allah says and Allah's messengers does. Right?
We strive to do it. Some of it's
gonna be tough. We might struggle with it,
but the basis of it isn't
anything other than this.
Do you know?
And so we said a lot of us,
whether we're born into Islam or convert into
it at a later stage,
we're taught words like fard and haram,
obligatory and impermissible
before we're taught who God is. How do
we celebrate the divine?
You know, if I asked you, who is
Allah to you,
not rotely regurgitating,
like, verses
that you've memorized, but who is God to
you
individually?
A lot of you would say, I don't
know. You've never thought about it before.
You're taught to pray your sunnah prayers before
you're taught whose sunnah it is that you
follow.
And so here,
like, it's very kinda
easy to understand conceptually,
but the religion would say that you follow
what the messenger of God willing you to
follow. Right? What I have forbidden for you,
avoid. He's speaking this first person voice
that's giving you this insight that as a
Muslim,
you listen to the prophet who was sent
to teach you about Islam.
But then you get to a place that
says, well, what makes it difficult for me
to follow
in that regard?
And so the article that I'd recommended people
read is called the Sunnis primordialities
written by sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad, professor TJ
Winter. He's a convert to Islam.
He's
really amazing scholar of Islam.
Cambridge University helped founded the Cambridge Muslim College.
It's very deep and very substantive.
And that article is really great in giving
an insight as to just how the sunnah
is meant to be a real source of
beauty.
Right? In contrast to
in the prism of modernity,
what people deem to be outwardly
attractive
is quite often from amongst some of the
most ugliest of things.
Do you know?
Did anybody actually read the article?
You read it? Oh my god. You're the
best.
Look at you. Did anybody else read it?
Yeah. It's not as exciting as the one
person who said they read it first, but
it's also great. It's amazing. I read half
of it last night. I read half of
it last night. It doesn't count. Yeah. So
yeah. You should read the article. Right? You
don't wanna come to spaces. I don't know
why any of you come to this space.
Do you know what I mean? But to
put it out there, just so you can
combat intentionality,
a lot of people go to, like, large
conferences, weekend seminars, whatever else,
and
you wanna
shift and align intentionality
that moves from entertainment to education. By osmosis
or being present, we can learn from one
another, but to also enhance now. And one
of the ways you can broaden in scope
is by hearing other people's perspectives. That's why
I have you guys talk to each other
so we're not just being talked at, but
there's kinda different levels of engagement pedagogically.
And, also, you can enhance from what other
people have kind of written
about different things. And so this is a
really important article to read. Right?
If you don't, you still have perspectives on
things that can create now a challenge if
you haven't thought critically about something.
So here,
we have this hadith that's telling its reader
that beyond the specifics, which we'll get into
a little bit more. If you missed the
first few things that we talked about, you
can find them online.
It's also about, like, who you take an
understanding of this religion from and the centrality
that the messenger of God plays in this.
So I'd like for us to do just
so we kinda get talking, and I know
for some people, it might be your first
time here, you don't wanna speak only because
you feel like you're saying the right thing
or avoid talking because you're worried you're gonna
say the wrong thing.
You wanna listen
and share, and so we speak in pairs,
so everybody gets to talk and hear. So
2, but no more than 3.
Right?
Why do you think, like, this is an
important variable
in an individual's
relationship with the divine?
You know? Because innately, someone can understand the
existence of God. Do you know if you
have little kids in your life and you
try to explain to them conceptually the idea
that God exists?
It's not hard for them to understand that.
No one innately understands the existence of a
prophet.
Do you know what I mean?
You don't have, like, little kids who are
like, there must be a prophet, and they
don't have challenges in understanding
the existence of a divine entity. And you
can try it out with kids. They'll understand
it. But innate understandings
of a prophet,
they're not necessarily
there the way one innately
can be wired to just understand conceptually
the existence of a divine entity.
Do you know?
So before we get into that, if you
turn to the person next to you, like,
what does this mean to you following the
sunnah?
Why is that something that you feel like
is an important thing for somebody to do?
If you don't have a mechanism
or what does even the phrase mean to
you? Right?
If someone came into the room,
ran you to Islam,
a child walked in, maybe not a kid.
Right? Somebody your age came in, they said,
I heard about this thing. What is this,
like, sunnah thing?
Why do Muslims follow the prophet? Do you
know? Because he's not claiming to be God,
so it's not the same as in religions
where you have a deification of an individual.
So how would you understand this? Like, in
the extent that you could explain to someone,
what is the
reasons,
the incentives,
like, the purpose?
Who is the person
that we're claiming to follow in this way.
So question makes sense. So you can turn
to the person next to you just for
a few minutes. We can kinda talk this
out, and then we'll come back and discuss.
But go ahead.
Just really quickly too. Like, you wanna think
about it in a way
where you're not answering just as, like, the
how and the what.
That's
how people get confined quite often when they're
utilizing just empirically driven
evidences
to justify things. You know, like, people know
how, like, like, someone came into my office
earlier today, was talking to me about something
that was a struggle in a hospital, a
family member
that wasn't doing so well. You know?
And my dad's a doctor,
My uncles are doctors. A lot of my
cousins are doctors. A lot of family would
like, most doctors can't explain to you why
things happen the ways that they do. They
might pretend like they can, but, like, fundamentally,
the why of why something happens. They might
be able to tell you what and how.
Do you know? So we don't wanna think
about this just in terms of what and
how.
What is the sunnah or how is the
sunnah done? But, like, the why. Why is
this
something
that
you want to have a relationship with? Do
you get what I mean? So it's not
like, well, the sunnah is you roll your
pant legs up like this. We know, like,
the how and the what very easily. It's
this many rakas before you pray this prayer
and that prayer. I'm saying, like, somebody walks
in and they tell me why is this
a thing.
Like, what is the answer that you give
to them in that way that you have
a
relationship with this beyond just the, like, what
and the how. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Okay. So talk about that, and then we'll
come back and discuss that. Go ahead.
No. No. I just I was hearing people.
Okay.
It's easier for me to just.
I might be free at 4.
If you check-in with me tomorrow, I can
it's not Wednesday.
Okay. Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. I'll see you then.
Okay.
So what are some of the things we're
talking about?
Like, why is this
a thing we need to have a relationship
with?
Or how how does this factor in?
What did you discuss?
And
because he has his own trials and tribulations,
it kinda shows how to navigate through those
things. And because his companions have also asked
questions to him, he had responses to those.
And just having that
and, like, navigating this thing, yeah, it's kind
of it helps kind of
navigate this thing as well.
Okay.
It can become a mechanism through which one
structures how to move through this world. Right?
What else?
Like, why why that one over any other
system?
Why
not
Why
use the sunnah as a means to navigate
the world
over,
like,
you know,
capitalism.
Yeah. I think it shows, like, the most
respect or the most love for the prophet
that we're following in his footsteps.
And
he set the example, the best example for
us. And so
we're
choosing to follow this concept with our other
concepts
because
of how much respect we may have. Yeah.
But we're not doing anything. Right? And we
each are individuals.
Do you know what I mean? So don't
say the answer that you feel like you're
supposed to say. Like, you wanna say the
thing that's gonna actually get past
here and deepen in here. It's if you
don't buy into it, then you're not gonna
actually do that. You know what I mean?
So if you don't know for yourself what
it means, you know,
Getting to a place then where you have
to choose. Right? Because the sunnah is what?
Do you know? Like, you you greet people
you know and greet people you don't know
is the prophetic recommendation.
You hear me say it all the time,
but you still don't greet people that you
don't know.
Right? Why? Why don't you greet people that
you don't know?
You know?
What gets in the way?
What is it that's influencing
behaviors? What is it that's teaching you, like,
how to treat your kids? If you have
a parent if you're a parent, how to
treat your spouse. If you're a spouse, how
do you treat the elderly? How do you
treat the orphans? How do you engage in
these things? How are you delving
into what informs decision making? You know? So
we know that it's a means through which
you can choose
how
you navigate this world, the philosophy
in life. Right?
And in doing so,
it can bring you closer to the prophet
of God.
Why is that a good thing?
And
why is it
better than other
potential avenues you can take?
Because you're listening to something. Do you know
what I mean? Right?
Something is telling you
how you should design your life. You know?
The systems that were
kinda
suffocated by at times, they're not rooted in
the prophetic sunnah.
You know? You didn't sign a contract for
your job
that said,
Adnan is gonna go off in the office
building this many times in a day. If
anything, it creates trepidation.
You know? Like, I have to be able
to ask for time to go and pray.
Right? Where do I make wudu? Like, all
this kind of stuff. Do you know what
I mean?
So around us, there's a world that is
antithetical to this, you know?
What is this one they're calling to
foundationally?
Why is that something that's gonna bring benefit
to you?
It's a question.
Like, what is this in the call to
if we started to just list out stuff?
Yeah.
Try to schedule your day around the 5
daily prayers as opposed
to schedule, like, squeezing in the 5 daily
prayers in your day.
So it's a few more work to the
board. And I think what what my dad
my community is
just to follow
the advice
atmosphere.
Like you were saying, like, try to find
the time to squeeze in a period in
the middle of my work day.
Like, again, like that that is each our
day revolves around the 5 day experience. So
that's just one example. I'm sure there are
many others. That's just an example that Sure.
Sure. So let's think about it this way.
Right? Like,
the
offices we work in, the classrooms that you
study in, you know, you're training
in whatever industry that you're in. Even if
you're working in retail or food and beverage,
they tell you to smile at someone
so that they will buy more stuff from
you, right, not just to be nice to
someone.
Right? Where do you go that someone says
be kind? Think about the bookstores that you
frequent.
They have all kinds of sections, including self
help sections. How do you better yourself and
treat yourself?
There's no section to a bookstore that tells
you how to treat other people.
Right?
There's not. Right? Do you ever go into
Barnes and Noble, and here's a section that
says, this is how you treat others well?
No.
You draw closer to the prophet not because
the prophet benefits from you drawing closer to
him.
The same way when you pray your prayers,
Allah is not benefiting from the prayers, but
who benefits from these things?
If you read the Quran and you read
the hadith, embedded within them
are the
outcomes potentially of the exercises.
Right? Like, a lot more Muslims fast and
pray. Do you know? Fasting is a very
passive act.
In the Quran, it tells
you. Right? It was written for you as
it was written for those that came before
you so that
perhaps you might attain taqwa. It's kinda god
consciousness, wakefulness. Right? May Allah make us from
the.
The exercise is telling you what the outcome
of it can be, the yield, when you
read about prayer and salah and these kinds
of things. The prophet says that
when you have this, right,
it means, like, this is the only thing.
This is what it's about.
So he's saying,
that I was sent only
to perfect
complete
ethical conduct, like good behavior, good manners.
So this religion
has this as a potential outcome.
Do you get what I'm saying?
Contrast it to other systems that you're bombarded
with every day. So I said read the
sunnah's primordiality,
right, because
Sheikh Abdul Haqim Murad is gonna tell you,
like, what people think is artistic today. He
literally uses one example of art in the
article
where he talks about people making art out
of fecal matter, and they're saying, like, they're
literally saying we see beautiful
in the prism of modernity.
Skewed understandings of what beauty actually is.
It's beautiful to be egocentric
in the world today.
A God centric worldview
does not enable you to be selfish, It
calls you to selflessness.
Right? The point of it is not the
achievement
of just
kinda cycles and units of ritual and practice.
They're supposed to bring you to something. So
you have,
like, rugged forms of supremacy.
They're calling you to something. Right? What does
white supremacy
call one towards?
Well, it calls towards anti blackness.
It calls one to the superiority
of individuals with a certain racial
demographic and creates hierarchy around it. You can
say
that this is an ugliest thing.
Right?
Right?
Right?
It's not beautiful.
Right? It's bad.
The sunnah does not call to that. It
calls to the opposite of that. It's not
a system that exists in a vacuum.
It's inviting you to something. What is it
inviting you to?
And then hadith like this don't resonate as
fully as they can.
If you think the prophet, when he is
saying
that
you, like, follow me, right,
what I have forbidden,
avoid.
It's not because he's getting an ego trip
out of it, but the benefit lies in
it for you. Why? Because what he's telling
you not to do,
those things are gonna be things that then
render
the opposite of beauty.
Integrity,
honesty,
good character.
I was only sent
to perfect ethical conduct, good behave.
Right?
But if you don't read it that way,
you read the Hadith
of
the prophet
that's saying, follow what I'm telling you to
follow, and the voice of the person who
only said,
do and don't do in ways that were
black and white where they shouldn't have been,
and you're channeling now someone else's voice into
it. Right? What is the purpose
of this stuff?
The Sharia
is not meant to be something that you
perform in a vac,
but its implementation
is meant to increase benefit
and reduce detriment.
That's why the exceptions to haram
are when the opposite happens.
So if you implement Sharia
and you're starving to death, and the only
thing you can eat is a piece of
ham,
then implementing
the command
creates detriment
to your life. You will die.
So it doesn't make the haram suddenly halal,
but the sin is lifted from the act
because you have to survive.
You understand?
The command to good and forbidding wrong are
commands, but if their implementation
rendered detriment rather than benefit, then that's a
problem. Right? That's why people shouldn't walk into
spaces and just start throwing words at people
that don't even know their names.
That's not the sunnah. The sunnah is to
greet those you know and those that you
don't know.
And it's hard to practice certain systems simultaneously
when they call you to different things.
The ethos of many of the spaces
that we function in day to day,
they are antithetical
to what this no calls to. Then what
you're put into a place where you're making
choices
is, do I do what Allah and his
messenger says, or do I do what something
else is telling me to do? And quite
often, the conflict is rooted in
things that create a pull at us inwardly,
because we're built to be creatures of beauty,
not creatures of ugliness.
Right? We created humanity in the most beautiful
of forms.
And the beauty is not just in the
performance of the ritual but seeing it as
a part of a bigger system.
So as much as you revolve your day
around 5 prayers because they're meant to be
an oasis
of replenishment,
you also build your week around visiting the
sick,
about maintaining ties of kinship,
about engaging some actions of service.
Do you get what I'm saying?
Right?
If you have limited the sunnah
to only the performance of your sunnah prayers,
right,
you've taken
a percentage of something that's much greater than
that, and
then that's the prism through which you're understanding
a deep like this
that are much bigger in terms of the
scope of what it is that's being offered.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense?
It's hard to want to follow somebody in
something that you don't know anything about them.
There can't be trust.
Though hid,
pure monotheism,
is quite often coupled in our tradition
with a value called
or reliance.
Right? How can you rely on someone you
don't know? Do you know?
Like, we have a convert punch in my
apartment. I say, Solo, can you bring some
cups? I know he's gonna bring the cups,
and I know Solo. He's gonna bring the
cups. Do you know what I mean?
Right?
But I have a knowledge of him that
he will achieve that act.
Beyond this, what is iterated outward,
iman
is not a
outwardly expressed experience
alone. Imaan starts in terms of conviction that's
within you, then it's what's expressed on the
tongue and manifest in actions from limbs.
Most of us folks focus just on those
last two things,
what's spoken and what's done, but the presence
of conviction isn't necessarily there. How can you
follow the sunnah if you don't know what
the sunnah means to you or you don't
think it's a good thing to do? You
might not think it's a bad thing, but
you never understood it as being the best
source of decision making
in my philosophy on life.
Do you get what I mean? And how
do you know something else might be taking
precedent?
Well, whose ways are you following right now?
Right?
If we asked everybody
who read an article, one person read their
hand. Right? You're the best. Right?
Don't raise your hands,
but if I ask
how many people have fed someone who's hungry
in the last week?
How many people know if their neighbors have
food or not?
And in New York City, it's crazy, man.
It's not like your neighbor lives all the
way over there. Right? Your door to your
apartment's here. The next door to the apartment's
right there.
How many people have visited the sick in
the hospital?
Do you get what I'm saying?
Right?
And it's not to be self deprecating,
but to be able to determine
what becomes the basis of my decision making.
When you live in a world
as Americans,
whether you were born in this country or
not, right? American exceptionalism,
American entitlement,
right? I want it means I should have
it. I feel it means that that's real.
Most of what you feel are not your
feelings. What you're feeling are your thoughts. And
then your thoughts are dictating a prism of
reality
intertwined with these systems and structures
that make you believe
in the things that are not being taught
through the sunnah, but through the systems that
are the opposite of the sunnah. Do you
know?
This is not how it fundamentally is going
to render beauty
because it breeds now a lot of the
ugliness that we find. Right? If materialism
is the goal, materialistic
gain is the goal, and that's the prestige
variable to this. Well, it was the Meccans
that were told that their
and their
the Quran says, is not going to bring
them benefit on the day. Right?
Because they thought me having kids and me
having money, that's gonna be my source of
legacy.
And the Quran says, like, that's not gonna
do a thing
when you're standing in front of God.
Do you know?
So understanding
that the sunnah is good theoretically
doesn't then become enough to say, well, what's
gonna get me to actually want to act
upon it?
Do you know? To not act in a
way that is just superficial,
but to dig deep and say, what would
the prophet of God be calling or teaching
us to do in this situation
in a world right now that justifies killing
children?
What would somebody who actually professes real tawhid
be doing in a moment like this?
The prophet was someone who professed real.
So what would he do?
You determine the way you invite people to
your home. Does it follow the sunnah, or
does it not follow the sunnah? Right? A
lot of you have never had a meal
in your family's home growing up, or the
people who were invited into your house
didn't all come from the same cultural background?
How many people of different races ever ate
in your family's home growing up? Not good
or bad, but just think about it objectively.
When you go to gatherings, weddings take place,
ifthars take place, how many people are outwardly
this name?
Right?
Where does that become validated in the sunnah?
Do you see what I mean?
And, what does this sunnah call towards,
right? There's beauty in this room. Look around
you, the people who you're seated with. Most
of you are not the same as the
rest of you in terms of country of
origin, in terms of
variables that we could, like, break down
that is not an achievement in and of
itself, then as a community, what we do
with it can then be categorically
achievements or not.
But that's what prophetic communities look like. Communities
of God are meant to be accessible by
all of creation,
not just certain elements of creation. You know
what I mean? How many of the spaces
do you function frequent that function in those
ways? Right? But what are they using as
a basis to determine these things? Do you
get what I'm saying?
Like, what are they using? The number of
people that I've spoken to in the last,
like, 8 months
who are in a place of wakefulness,
they're like, man, I'm sending my kids to
these prep schools in New York City. That's
$60,000 a year for kindergarten,
and they're the only brown, black kid in
the place, the only Muslim kid in the
place. They're the only kid
that is, like, now going through dissonance every
day. Narratives are not being shared and aligned
with us. I'm paying people to teach my
child
to hate their Islam.
Why are you doing that though?
Right?
What compelled you towards that decision in the
first place
was the outcome of convictions that you have
that are rooted now in a socialization
that has gotten you to start thinking about
things through a certain prism.
If you buy into the idea that visiting
the sick is a good thing,
why don't you do it?
And you can't ask that question in a
self deprecating way, but you ask it in
a way that acknowledges the obstacles.
You get what I mean?
The sunnah is nonconformist
in its attitude
because it is
revolutionalizing
a Meccan experience.
It comes to enhance the beauty in spaces,
not
give in to degradation.
Right? The sun that revitalizes.
It doesn't gentrify areas.
The prophet didn't come into Medina to kick
everybody out. The prophet came into Medina
to be able to just be a part
of what was happening in Medina. Umar
comes and says, you Rasool Allah, the women
in Medina, they're not like the women in
Mecca. Right? The women in Medina, we tell
them to do something. They talk back to
us. The women in Mecca didn't do that.
Right? The prophet doesn't say, we're gonna change
the women of Mecca. He just laughs at
his companion.
Right? He's not coming in
to do things the way that we think
sometimes things take place. Do you get what
I mean? The sunnah is what exactly? It's
kindness,
it's mercy, it's generosity,
it's compassion.
When you walk into most of the spaces
you walk into,
do you think decisions
are being made with those things in regard?
Where is that when people are deciding that
their child can't marry someone from a different
cultural background?
Like, whose sunnah are you following then at
that time? Right?
And so this hadith is also saying
that
remember who your teacher is,
Do you get what I mean?
And the prophet is saying in this hadith,
what I have forbidden for you, avoid. What
I have ordered you to do, do to
the best of your ability.
Right?
That it's establishing
also
his authority
in our life
as much as he's a leader, he's an
authoritative
individual as well. Does that make sense? Do
you understand the difference between these two things?
Someone can be an authority and they're not
a leader.
A lot of us work in places where
that can be the case.
Right? There's people who have authority, but they
don't care about the people that are under
them in their employ.
Do you know? You walk in and you
worry you're gonna get fired today. That's not
leadership.
Do you know what I mean? That's that's
that's not leadership.
Do you know? It's the same thing in
households. Just because
you fathered somebody doesn't make you like a
good parent. Right?
You know, authority
is very different from leadership.
Yeah. What I'd like for us to do
what are you taking away so far? What
is it bringing up for you? You can
turn the person next to you. Just talk
it out a little bit. What's it bringing
up? And then we'll come back and discuss.
But go ahead.
Okay.
So what are some of the things we're
talking about?
What's coming up for people so far?
While we discuss?
We talked about on our end,
how one thing that reminded us of was,
like, the practice of doing something to help
kind of just, you know, like, purify or
create that, like, good character. It reminded me
of, like, self affirmations people do. So, for
those that don't know, like, sometimes they would
say, you're, like, going to be here. You're,
like, tell yourself, like, you're this,
and then they will make yourself feel like
a good person, things like that. So talking
about the students and, like, those all things
that you don't need to do,
still does anything that make you feel better,
like, become that good care, I guess, and
make sure for yourself,
for things you might find you know, to
do.
Great.
Other thoughts?
Yeah.
We talked about how, like, humans inherently learn
things by memory.
And
back to, like, the example you, you know,
like, just use, don't really learn what's going
on by just, like, saying these people. You
have to, like, witness these behaviors in action.
So the sunnah, like
and just to lift the fuck. So there
was someone who's, like
yeah. Without having someone who actually embodies
not just the teaching, but what it means
to have empathy, good character, and all these
things, like, we can't dictate them to have
an
example.
Yeah. Right? And just just think about
how much do you do right now because
other people do it?
Do you know? So if someone was to
say,
is it bad to visit the sick in
the hospital?
Like, no. Right?
But
why don't you do it
while nobody does it?
And isn't that more of a reason as
to why I should be doing it if
nobody's
doing that?
You know?
And then
not in a distinguishing variable,
it's really an arrogance.
It's not Muslims who are doing good things.
Who else would be the ones doing it?
Do you know what I mean? Like, the
practice should bring us to something.
Right? It's gotta have that transformational
variable to it. Do you see what I
mean?
And this is, like, a challenge
that many people leave behind prophetic practice as
a whole,
and people
find their
reality
through acts of goodness
because they don't become the norm necessarily.
You know?
Like, it's unique that someone is actually caring
or compassionate. Do you know what I mean?
I had
a colleague
say something to me,
in relation to, like, an issue that was
coming up, not at the Islamic Center, but
in another place that I was at. And,
essentially,
in the midst of it, was speaking to
other people in
the evening
saying that, you know, I didn't ask for
you to be considerate
of
right? And then they looked at me and
they're like, well, what do you think? And
I was like, I'm sorry you live in
a world where you need to ask people
to be considerate for you. Do you know
that it's strange to you that somebody's making
a decision with your well-being in mind? You
know what I mean?
Like,
I mean, literally. Right?
How many people do you know where,
you know, I just have to work this
much,
and your boss has no emotional intelligence whatsoever.
They don't care. Yeah. They don't care that
you got places to be in, people to
see, and whatever else.
Do you know? But why?
Because
it's not the system
that
is
is idealistic
in our minds. This is what the sunnah
is.
The sunnah is thoughtful.
You know? The sunnah is caring. That's what
it is.
It's it's supposed to call towards things of
beauty. Do you know what I mean?
If you're gonna claim to speak now about
the prophet of God, and you're a jerk,
you need to think twice
about what that is because you could exemplify
outward aspects of things, but not necessarily
body what it is that's inward.
And it creates now a conundrum
because the focal point becomes on what and
in what capacities.
Do you see what I'm saying? Right? And
you think about the results of metrics
of assessment.
Like, how do I know
that I'm doing this as something well, my
prayers are impactful, my charity, my fasting, whatever
else?
Well,
it should like bring you to perpetual. You
want to take advantage of openings.
Right?
Like
my fudger might not be going well
if I walk past the homeless person on
the street
and think that they're the worst thing ever
made in the world. Do you know what
I mean?
Right. The prophet literally had 4 people living
on the doorstep of its house. Do you
know?
Right.
I mean, like, and you think about what
your house has towards certain things.
Is it now impossible
to live according to the sunnah
in the prison of modernity?
Like, no. It's it's not.
Because the system is one that's rooted in
universal ethics.
Right? It's a
last message to all of mankind
that's meant to be applicable in any society
whatsoever.
So its implementation
doesn't have to be in conflict.
It might look different from place to place,
but fundamentally, what it calls towards are still
universal
principles of ethics. And you might say, well,
aren't some of those things just understood?
No. Like, Islam tells us to sanctify human
life.
There are people who are totally fine with
other people,
and not just people who are stereotypically
humanized and vilified,
again, through the premises systems.
There are legally sanctioned,
like, military
advancements
that are deeply
unethical,
rooted in just the acquisition of more materialistic
gain and money
from, like, killing people
that are right now
massacring
innocent people, and Allah grant them ease.
So everybody doesn't think that murder is bad.
Do you see what I mean?
And when we don't have Muslims who follow
the prophet
inwardly and outwardly,
or even also just like a combination
of both,
but outwardly as well.
Right? It's not just one direction.
It's both of those things going in tandem.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense?
Right?
And then the
metric through which we
start to engage, it feels a little bit
different.
Would you want to be able to see
what is inherently good within someone, or would
you want to be able to always point
out what you perceive to be lacking? Like,
what vision do you want?
Do you enjoy complaining
as much about things you complain,
pointing out what's wrong with everything, the flaws
of the world around you, or do you
want to be the person who sees what's
there versus what's not there?
The implementation now of this as a philosophy
on life altogether
is not then something that says that I
put pieces together. You struggle with something, you
struggle. That's fine. But the system in and
of itself
is not something where there's a lack and
struggle, that you say, I'm only gonna just
focus on this one part of it. They
have to go hand in hand.
So the practice is they go hand in
hand with the ethics.
Right? They enhance it. In the
that if you're actually praying Fajr right,
then it should be
also contributing
to the development
of this in
this way.
Good character.
You know? And then when the openings come
in front of you, you do it. This
hadith is also really powerful
because
it's telling you,
like, don't buy into what other systems tell
you you can do just because you feel
like doing it. Like, don't engage in the
Haram. Stay away from what we've forbidden.
Because you can think about the Haram in
terms of drinking and drugs and these kinds
of things,
but a lot of what it is that
people forego in terms
of acts of goodness
stem from just what a lot of materialistic
pursuits
tell us to go in the direction of.
You know what I mean? Right? Like, we
validate
a compromise on ethics
in order to be people who become people
of affluence,
right, people of influence.
Do you know? Who cares
how many dollars you have if it's gonna
send you to *?
Right?
Who cares how many people know your name?
Like, what what difference is it gonna make,
man? You made a ton of money, and
all it cost was other people living miserably.
You know? Like, why is that a sensible
decision to make? Do you get what I
mean?
Right? And so it's implementation,
like, might not be
as a holistic system, Islam,
doing what it's supposed to be doing if
it's not still creating now a sense of
inward balance and contentment.
Do you know? And if you don't see
the sunnah as a contributor to it in
that way, you probably were taught what the
sunnah is wrong.
And
unlearning becomes a key variable to learning.
Do you see what I mean? And then
you wrestle with it. You struggle with it.
It's a lot harder to be positive than
negative.
It's a lot easier to just unleash
different things without any sense
whatsoever.
And then the systems
that are built in other philosophies,
because they're predicated in large part about the
feeding of the self, they're built off of
teaching you to not have contentment but pursue
complacency,
to numb pain, to be hopeless,
to be in a place where you're dejected,
to find flaws, to find inadequacies.
Do you see what I mean?
To feel weird about hanging out with people
that you can get away with never speaking
to. You know? Right? You hang out with
that guy. Right? You're gonna let your kid
marry that person. Yeah. What you mean? Right?
What's what's wrong with that? They're not from
our country. They're not from our village. Who
is your teacher?
Don't forget who your teacher is.
So the hadith is saying in this way,
like, you're gonna figure out what to avoid.
Avoid what I'm telling you to avoid. You
know? Don't avoid spending time with your kids.
Spend time with your families.
Don't avoid spending time with your friends. Spend
time with your friends. Do you know what
I mean? You're gonna avoid stuff. Avoid racism.
Avoid bigotry.
Do you do you see what I'm saying?
Does that make sense?
Okay.
We wanna just run through a couple of
the other parts to this a little bit
so that we understand the hadith on a
whole?
Read the article that I told you to
read. Right? The sunnah is primordiality
by sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad. So you can
start to frame understandings
of what beauty actually means.
Right? What is real beauty? Not like superficial
beauty
from a society that teaches you to hate
yourself
unless you fit into
certain boxes of what it deems
beauty to actually be. Right? And then you
get bold enough to be able to say
that divine
disobedience
of the divine
never can be equated to beauty.
You know, there's no beauty
in following
the lower self and following,
like, the ego,
and unchecked in a prism of moral relativism,
it creates a lot of the ugliness that
we see in the world. Right?
Does that make sense?
So read the article and then come back
next week and tell me what you think.
Right? Otherwise, just the 2 of us are
gonna have a conversation,
and you're gonna have to sit and watch
it, you know?
Okay. If we read the rest of this
hadith,
what I've ordered you to do, do as
much of it as you can.
Does not mean that you only do the
parts of it that you feel convenient to
do. There's 5 prayers, you do 5 prayers.
Right? If you struggle with it, that's fine.
There's a difference between struggling
versus just
convenience and inconvenience. What this part of the
hadith is saying
that you do what you have the capacity
to do
in relation to things like, for example,
I, last week,
got really bad food poisoning.
Do you know?
And it was, like, gross.
Right?
So I usually fast on Mondays Thursdays. We
do have tars here on Mondays Thursdays.
You're more than welcome to join us. Now
the building is open, and the food is
gonna be out here, which we'll talk about
in a bit. Because if we put this
food out here at 6 and people came
in here, you all were just talking to
yourselves,
and it was very like, we wanna build
community. You gotta be bold enough to talk
to others that you don't know. That's how
you increase love, the hadith says. Right? You
wanna know how to increase love? Like, spread
salaam, the prophet says. Why do you want
to increase love? It's not because it's a
fun thing to just, like, love, but
also the completion of your iman is conditional
upon just loving people
and loving one another. You know? So you
didn't come to sit in here to stare
at a phone or a laptop. You could
have gone and done that someplace else.
Sit down and talk to people that you
don't know so that you overcome some of
these obstacles
in an actualized
way. Right?
I usually fast on Mondays Thursdays.
So last Thursday,
I did not fast
because
I had food poisoning.
And what
the religion teaches me
is
that
I do what I have the ability to
do.
Sometimes it's harder to actually take the leniency.
Do you know?
So Ramadan time and you're sick, why are
you still fasting, dude?
There's nothing that tells us that you,
like, pushing yourself to a place where there's
no mindfulness
to it, you're,
like, vomiting and throwing up. It's different. You
just have a slight headache. Right? But there's
people
who they become so
entrenched
in the observation of it that they're creating
hardship
in ways that don't fundamentally make sense.
Right?
So
I, last week, do not have to observe
a recommended fast
because I am sick.
Do what you have the ability to do.
There's hadith that say that the acts that
are most beloved to Allah are the ones
that are most consistent.
So you can read one verse of Quran
every day. It's a lot different than if
you read, like, the entirety of the Quran
in a sitting, and then it exhausts you,
and then you don't touch it for an
entire year. And you could say, well, I
wouldn't do that. I could read more. But
you don't engage the Quran outside of Ramadan.
The companion asked the prophet for advice
and he says,
Then, oh, Abdullah, don't be like so and
so and such and such.
He used to stand in the night, and
the construct means habitually, not just once, but
was doing it regularly.
And then he abandoned
the standing of the night.
So you think not from a quantifiable
aspect, but a qualify.
When they ask for advices on, like, recommended
fast
outside of obligatory fasts, the prophet starts with
3 days in the month, the middle days
when the moon is at its fullest,
13th, 14th, 15th.
He says I can do more. He says
Mondays Thursdays. He says I can do more.
He says fast as was the sun of
the prophet Dawood alaihi salaam every other day,
but don't do more than that. Why is
the prophet starting with a lesser number of
days and working his way up
3 days of the month to 2 days
in a week to 15 days out of
a month, potentially.
Right?
Because it's not about how much you do,
but how you do what you're doing.
Do you know?
So you do what you have the ability
to do, but you own up to your
capacity.
Does that make sense?
And there'll be certain times when that ability,
you have to make the decision, and the
more religious thing to do is to not
do the thing.
You see what I mean?
Does that make sense?
Right? If I force myself to fast last
week when I have severe food poisoning
because I'm typically consistent on fasting
Mondays Thursdays,
and last Thursday was not one of the
days of the eve, so I could fast
on that day,
but I am not
in the capacity
to be
in a long summer day
fasting after I've now been dehydrated
from food poisoning
and everything else that's there. Does that do
you get what I'm saying? Right?
It's not relevant to the things that are
obligatory.
You gotta pray
your prayers,
5 daily prayers. You gotta do this other
stuff. You're struggling with it? Try to the
best of your ability
even in that regard, but not as a
it's a
choice
in the ways of some of what we're
kind of distilling here. You see what I
mean? And the other thing about ability
is about, like, capacity in given situations.
So, for example,
you know, there's a sister who comes to
the IC. Her name is Saman. A lot
of us know Saman.
She volunteers a lot and
does so much that benefits this community. Make
Dua for her, a lot make her a
continued source of benefit
for our community.
Is flying to Denmark,
and so she asked me about, like, prayers
and traveler prayers. And then you're flying to
Denmark
from New York, so time zone in that
direction,
like, the day is gonna go a lot
quicker.
Right? And she's on, like, Iceland
Air or something like that. Do you know?
Iceland Air is not like Turkish Airlines. It's
not, you know, Saudi Arabian Airlines.
Saudi Airlines has a prayer room in the
back of the plane when you fly on
it. Turkish Airlines, you turn on the monitor
and the compass
and the direction of the plane also has
one frame you channel through that shows you
the direction of the Kaaba, the way you
pray. Right? On Iceland air, I'm gonna assume
that that's not the thing.
Right? Do you know?
She's gotta, to the best of her ability,
just figure out while she's on the plane,
what's the direction of Mecca?
If she can't prostrate
on the plane,
right, if you fly a lot I don't
know how many of you fly a lot.
I fly a lot. Some of these planes,
man, they've hardwired
differently to now fit as many steeds as
possible. There's no there's no place
on some of these planes that any human,
even somebody as small as me, you can
there's no place you could prostrate on the
plane. Do you know? It's just not possible.
The aisle is this small. The distance between
the chairs are this small. The area in
front of the restrooms is this small. There's
some planes that are like that.
To the best of your ability,
do what I told you to do to
the best of your ability
means then if all you can do is
stand and then you sit in your chair
for the rest of it, you stand and
then you sit in your chair for the
rest of it. But if you have the
capacity
to prostrate,
then you prostrate.
Does that make sense?
So if I'm driving
from Virginia to New York
yesterday, I'm coming back
to New York. We stop at a rest
area.
We got out to pray at the rest
area.
It doesn't
work for me to just sit in my
car and pray
because I can get out and pray on
the ground.
Right?
Somebody might then say specifically to themselves, like,
oh, man, there's like a torrential
downpour outside or I'm worried about my safety,
you know, I'm like a single woman doing
this and that.
There's nuance to certain things, but
I can't pray in my car when I
have the ability to get out and pray
on the grass. Do you see what I
mean? But I'm on the plane, and I
can't do anything. The prayer time comes in.
I gotta pray it as it comes in
while I'm on the flight,
and sometimes all I'm gonna be able to
do is stand. Sometimes you might not even
be able to stand because you're in turbulence,
there's all this stuff, they're gonna say,
sir, please sit down. Right? You know? So
you guys gotta pray sitting down. It's to
your
capacity, to your ability. You know, it's a
beautiful thing as a tangent.
My wife and my son, my daughter and
I were praying at this rest area
in Maryland yesterday,
and
a lot of times I've prayed at that
rest area. There's always somebody who comes and
joins us in prayer
that we don't know. Do you know? And
so I was telling my son, my daughter
on the way,
this guy came and pulled out a prayer
mat and stood with us,
and I said, you know, what do you
think about this? Right?
And, you know, my son is 8, my
daughter is 11,
and they're, like, telling me stuff that a
8 year old and 11 year old would
do. And they're, like, well, he had to
pray too, baba. And I was, like, yes.
Thank you. I know he was Muslim and
he had to pray also. Right?
Instead,
there's no other religious community
where you could be praying
and a complete stranger comes and stands next
to you, and you actually feel happy in
that moment, not afraid of for your life.
Do you know? Random guy, I don't know
this guy. Right? Do you know what I
mean?
And that's like a unique thing experientially
that
is not abstract or theoretical,
it's like a learning of the heart. Do
you know?
That you're really genuinely
connected at a different level.
And I said to my son and daughter
also, like, we prayed on this patch of
grass and this guy was praying next to
us and I was telling them, like, you
know, in our religion,
we believe that the earth that we undertake
certain actions on or any actions on, like,
the earth will testify what we did upon
it. You know? And so I said that's
why if you do something wrong in a
certain spot, you wanna do right things on
that because the hadith says, like, follow-up a
bad deed with a good one. You know?
But I also said to them, what's crazy
is we might be the only people who
ever pray on that spot of earth, like,
ever. You know? We don't know. But it
wasn't like there were thousands of people jumping
to pray behind us. There was 4 of
us, and then there was this guy. And
the whole thing is like this
you know, we're in Maryland. Right? They just
got lots of space. You know what I
mean?
But, you know, to speak to the point
of what we're talking about here,
like, we have to get out of the
car to pray.
Do you understand? Does that make sense? We
have the ability and the capacity.
It's not a choice. This is saying, what
I have ordered you to do,
Do as much of it as you can.
In that moment, we have the ability to
do it in that way. Does that make
sense?
One of the things we wanna close off
with here, this is why you want to
learn fic, like, in a way that is
not just
the end form of practice.
Like, most of us in this room will
know how to pray our prayers.
Right? But it doesn't mean that we know
how to teach somebody how to pray who
doesn't know how to pray
because the end form of a prayer
is not what the expectation is that somebody
who's new to like, somebody comes and takes
their shahada right now,
they gotta pray Maghrib.
How are they gonna be expected
to pray in the final form of prayer?
A
portion of the Quran,
all of the
in the different positions and whatever else. Right?
Does that sound like a reasonable
scenario
for somebody who's new? They might not even
know we pray 5 times a day. Right?
Somebody could be in Washington Square Park. Man,
I saw you guys going up and down.
It was so beautiful.
I wanna be that too.
Right? And there's people who convert to this
religion for all kinds of reasons. Do you
know?
So if you don't know, like, the thick,
you won't then know
how it is you can implement it in
different scenarios,
different situations.
Do you see what I mean?
Like in Hanafi fic,
there
is when you,
wipe your head in wudu,
you have to do a quarter of your
head. Right? If I asked you from a
fixed standpoint,
like a legal ruling standpoint,
what constitutes the face?
That's like a thing because you have to
wash your face.
Right?
So if we don't know what the face
is, we probably then don't know what the
head also constitutes.
Okay.
So let's say we know what the head
is. Right? In the Hanafi school, a quarter
of your head. In other schools, it's even
less than that in some attendance.
It's a young woman
who has an anxiety disorder
that came to see me in my office
is new to not Islam.
She has practiced Islam her whole life, born
into a Muslim family. She's new to
having to run her own schedule as a
1st year college student.
She wears a headscarf.
She has, like, 10 minutes in between class,
and she's gotta figure out how to make
her wudu.
I, you know, wear long sleeves. I cover
my head. I have a beard that covers
my face. I don't know what it's like
to wear a woman's hijab.
You know?
How would I know what that is?
This girl has got, like, all kinds of
pins in different places, and she's got this
much time
to perform her prayer and her.
And what's adding to her anxiety
is in between classes,
she's like, it'll take me
5 minutes to take it off and another
10 minutes to put it back on.
I don't know if that's accurate or not.
That's what she said.
But she also
doesn't know,
like, the fic. That doesn't mean you do
it every time a certain way,
but we can work within it. So the
end result
doesn't have her leaving it all behind
and that building a notion inwardly that says,
I'm not right for this religion or this
religion is not right for me. Do you
get what I mean?
Does that make sense?
And if you don't know it, that's where
you don't wanna tell somebody something
just based off of what you think you
know cause you might be creating more hardship
for somebody. Right?
Knowing what is the obligatory
in the Hanafi school, we have the category
of necessary, the
what are the recommended acts, what are the
disliked acts, so that there's an opportunity
for it to still be implemented
in certain ways. What you have the ability
to do, you do that. Do you see?
Does that make sense?
Yeah. It does.
And that's why you don't wanna just have
a list of do's and don'ts, but as
you have evolution in yourself organically,
you don't eat the same foods as when
you were 2 years old. You don't wear
the same clothes as when you were 5
years old. Your ability to express and your
mental capacity has evolution and maturation to it.
Your spirituality
necessarily
has to grow and evolve also.
And so you have to see fic as
a spiritual experience as well, that you render
mindfulness and consciousness
to it
that allows for you to be adaptable in
different scenarios
where you can preplan in certain ways.
Do you get what I mean?
And sometimes,
it becomes harder
not because we don't know what we do,
but we don't know why it's done that
way, and then we don't know how to
make it malleable in certain situations
because it just creates that much more stress
and anxiety.
Right? Like the example I gave a few
weeks ago of the kids who reached out
to me from Central Park, and they're sledding,
And
window is getting shorter and shorter, and they
are now trying to figure out,
like, can we make will do with the
snow? And, yes, you can make will do
with the snow.
But of the of
the wudu,
like the obligatory acts in the Hanafi school,
the order in which you make your wudu,
like the order
and the number of times,
and the mouth and the nose
are not obligations.
So the example I gave to these guys
was walking them through it because what would
be the alternative? They're gonna be gargling with
snow 3 times.
They're gonna be shoving snow up their nostrils,
like, multiple times. Right? It's gonna be miserable.
And then other ways to adapt from a
clothing standpoint so that we'll do is easier
to make in different situations
so that thick becomes an empowering tool. You
see what I mean? Does that make sense?
Okay.
So we're gonna take a pause here. What
I love for people to do just for,
like, 30 seconds is turn the persons next
to them. What are you taking away from
the conversation on a whole? And then we'll
come back and make a couple of quick
announcements and then wrap up. But go ahead.
It depends on different people will tell you
different things. Oh, okay. Yeah. But will you
be here next week? Yeah. So let's start
with that next week, Sarah. Yeah. Okay. And
we'll tell everybody. Just remind me. And we
can tell them. Yeah.
Okay.
Sorry. Just because my group's coming in,
and I want my
kinda,
you know, long winded
tirades to be the last thing that you
guys discussed. So a couple of things,
we're doing, like, this potluck
dinner iftar
stuff.
Right now it's before at 6 till 7.
People feel like that doesn't make sense. We
can shift it back to just purely iftar.
But if you're fasting today,
feel free to grab some dates,
and grab some food also as you're heading
out. The building closes at 10, so you
won't be able to make ishah here right
now.
From July 15th onward, the building will close
at 9. We're keeping it open purposefully for
prayers,
more than anything, and we'll adjust the halukkah
as need be.
And it's potluck on Mondays, also, I think
on Thursdays. So feel free to bring stuff
with you if you'd like.
I know last week we had pizza.
This week we changed it up a bit
just just because we don't want people eating
pizza, like, every week, multiple times a week.
But if that's also a problem, feel free
to let me know, and we'll figure that
out.
So for the rest of this week,
I don't know
what we have going on. Is there anything
happening this week other than the halukas?
I don't remember.
Oh, there's an IC Professionals event. Do you
wanna tell people what it is?
I wanna apply the IC Professional.
So we're gonna have, like, on Friday afternoon
evening. At 5:30, we're gonna be upstairs in
Grand Hall. We're doing, like, a chai and
faint event.
So, you know, if you're ready to sip
and paint, with the IC version of that,
you're gonna be sipping chai and show them.
So, you know, if you have a great
time, Anam Asini, she's a community member. She
comes to the IC a lot.
She's gonna be leading the class. We're gonna
be together,
painting.
It's it's a good place to hang out
just like, you know, if you're having us
on Friday.
You'll be, you know, a chai. You'll have
to, you know, the opportunity to get some
creative juices flowing, inshallah.
So, yeah, that's Friday evening. If you wanna
RSVP to it, it's on the IC Instagram
or come see me, and, like, you know,
we can I'll I'll send you the link
as well.
Great.
We'll have lunch after Jumah. It's Friday, June,
Friday.
I think, our parent child class will be
happening also, and all the other holocaust that
we do during the week will be taking
place as well.
So definitely stick around for that. Couple of
other just quick logistical things, Really important that
when you come to the building, you have
a government issued ID that's not expired with
a photograph.
You might have some security guards that let
you in, but that doesn't mean everyone is
required to. That's just the policy of the
building. It can't be a photograph
of an ID card, and it has to
be valid, so not expired.
So please just be mindful of that,
when you're coming into the building. And if
you have guests coming and other things let
them know as well also InshaAllah.
Okay. So people can just put their chairs
against the wall, We'll call the Adan,
and then after, if you wanna still stick
around, help us finish some of the food,
and we'll see everyone next Monday inshallah.
I'll call you.