Khalid Latif – Imam Nawawis 40 Hadiths for Modern Times #18
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AI: Transcript ©
So we're gonna finish up Hadith number 7
today.
This is Hadith,
we've been looking at for a few weeks.
Adina Nasiha.
If people wanna pull it up, it's a
hadith number 7 in the 40, hadith of
Imam Nawi.
It's on the authority of a companion by
the name of,
Tamim Adari. And so we're gonna look at
the last category today and just some general,
kind of reflections on itself
before Maghrib time. Does anybody have it in
front of them? They can read it for
us.
English and Arabic.
Either or.
Yeah. Go for it.
On the authority of Talib Adari, peace with
him, the prophet, peace be upon him, said,
religion is a sea of sincerity.
He said to him
he, peace be upon him, said to Allah,
his book, his messenger, and then to the
leaders of the Muslim and their coming from.
Great. Does anybody wanna read the Arabic?
Yeah. Go ahead.
So
you wanna try to as best as you
can,
build a relationship
with
also, like, the Arabic.
These are very short, kinda concise hadith that
we're looking at. One of them was really
long, the hadith of Braille, the second one.
A lot of them are very short,
and it helps to just build a relationship
with it pedagogically
also,
that you'll be able to keep coming back
to it in terms of it kind of
playing a role in influencing,
decision making choices, etcetera.
So we looked at,
the first four categories here and also looked
at in detail the narrator of the hadith,
Timur Muthari.
And so we wanna look at the last
category that's here,
today,
where it says
meaning the common people. Right? So this hadith
is said to be one of the most
comprehensive hadith.
It sets a basis
of
real understanding of just how we conduct ourselves
with
all of
creation pretty much as well as our creator.
Right? That you have this thing of nasiha,
which is just goodwill, sincere conduct,
but
a relationship
foundationally
with Allah, His book, His Messenger,
the leaders
of the,
you know, societies that we're in as well
as the common people.
There's elements there that are rooted in positivity.
So we look at this last category now.
Well, I met him.
It's not necessarily
juxtaposed
only to the category that proceeds of leadership,
but just talking about people more broadly,
people in their generality.
The companions
of the prophet are asking this question
with a sense of who are they supposed
to have this to from the standpoint
of the Meccan society in which they live
being an ever increasing diverse society, also the
Medanese society,
like, how do we just engage with the
people around us?
And when you look at the prophets,
when they would speak to their people,
they would say that they have this thing
of
goodwill
towards the ones that they're in service of.
Right?
And that same derivation that comes from the
then
broadens it
from not being something that's just limited to
advice in a vacuum.
But the idea is that you don't want
to engage somebody for your own self betterment.
You wanna engage somebody for their betterment
where you have a genuine care, a genuine
affection,
a genuine compassion,
a genuine sense of goodwill
for the other
simply because you share humanity with them. You
share
this salient characteristic, and it isn't
divided in any capacity.
So when we're talking about now these two
groupings of individuals,
you're either gonna be from the,
like, people who are in a place of
leadership,
or you're from the, like, the people who
are being led. These are just, like, a
broader way of defining
society on a whole.
So we can understand from the language
and what's present, what's also purposely absent.
So it's not saying that you have this
love for somebody just cause they come from
a certain race, or you love somebody just
cause they come from a certain culture. You
have affinity towards someone cause they share a
certain level of affluence or influence with you,
right? But this is a very revolutionary
idea and thought
within the Meccan society, but also just broader
society on a whole, Right? It's not any
different from the world we live in right
now
that race and class determine who has and
who has not. The prophet
is telling his companions,
you have to have this kind of goodwill
towards just everybody.
There's no conditions or qualifications
around it.
You have this sense of sincere conduct
towards just people
on a
whole.
And that category is really important to understand
because this is what we're gonna come into
interactions with on a regular basis.
The way you treat the security guard, the
way you treat your Uber driver,
the way you treat the professors in your
class, the way you treat people who love
you, the way you treat people who dislike
you, the way you treat and think about
the people who vacuum the carpet that you
were sitting on, the way you think about
people who serve you food
as much as you think about the people
who are blessed enough to be able to
share the meal with you, and they're eating
what was served. Right? Across the board,
every single individual
that you come into interaction with
has some capacity of right over you within
this tradition.
So you have hadith that say things like
that
Allah has written on
everything,
like beauty.
Ihsan becomes the category of,
one of the dimensions of our tradition
of spirituality.
Right? In the second hadith we looked at,
that,
the angel Jibrael comes and teaches us about
our religion through this hadith
when he defines Ihsan,
on top of the
that you worship Allah as if you see
him. Do you understand? Although you cannot see
him, he sees you.
So that's the word in this other hadith
that Allah has written Hassan on everything.
Meaning
that if Hassan is written on everything
that you have capacity
to interject
Hassan
in everything that you do.
Like, there can be beauty in every single
thing that you do.
There can be excellence in every single thing
that you do.
The way that you work, the way that
you, like, rest,
the way that you engage in discussions, the
way that you cook, the way that you
eat, the way that you dress, the way
that you sleep. In Allah
that if there's an element of that's written
on everything,
it means that every single thing has the
capacity
to have
in it,
meaning you can bring beauty to everything.
Does that make sense?
So then by extension,
you can bring beauty to your interactions
with
every person that you interact with. Well, I'm
not to him.
You have nasiha
to everybody.
Goodwill,
sincere conduct,
compassion,
a sense of just
wholeness that you're bringing,
not just your physical body, but you're bringing
your heart to every interaction.
You're bringing love to every interaction.
Does that make sense?
It's important to understand
because we live in a society
where
segmentation
takes place
both overtly and very subtly.
Right? There's people who were fortunate enough to
tell us to our face that they want
nothing to do with us.
And then there's people who pretend like they
do, but they also don't really want anything
to do. And quite often, we get to
a place where our recognition
of how we treat others is not necessarily
on the terms of our tradition, but on
the terms of traditions that have nothing to
do with what our tradition calls us to.
We fall into a place where
who we chase after are the ones that
our religion tells us, it's probably better that
you don't really spend time with people like
that.
The validation that we seek makes no sense.
And the people who we probably benefit a
lot from spending time with, we don't necessarily
engage so much. Right? So you have hadith
for example that say the worst wedding feast,
the worst are
the ones that
those that should have been invited were not
invited to, and those that shouldn't have been
invited, those are the ones that are there.
Do you get what I mean?
And so figuring it all out in the
context of this 5th category in this hadith.
Right? The first
to Allah,
to his book,
to his messenger,
to the ima of the Muslims,
him, and to their common people.
You can't have that if you're not engaging
people from
backgrounds that are different from your own in
meaningful ways.
When you're Muslim,
you're just supposed to be different from everybody
else. You have to be comfortable with that.
And different isn't just I grow a beard,
I wear a scarf on my head, I
go to a prayer on Friday afternoon, or
I pray 5 times a day,
or I wash up for prayer and stick
my foot in the sink. That's one aspect
of difference that you just gotta be comfortable
with.
But difference also in the sense that you're
meant to be a person of mercy and
compassion and love.
You're meant to be in a place where
you take care of your heart.
You're supposed to be patient and kind and
generous.
If it's not a Muslim who's a person
of integrity and honesty,
who else would be a person of integrity
and honesty?
And that mode is not rooted in self
deprecation, but in these five categories,
you have now the manifestation
of
perspective
self wise of well, what's really the basis
of how I relate to these 5 things
categorically?
And then this 5th one in particular,
just the people.
How do I engage
with the people?
How do I treat
people?
How do I understand the way I relate
to people?
Especially people that come from backgrounds that are
not the same as mine?
It doesn't say that your
is only to the people
who you share race with or culture with
or class with.
It doesn't say your inclination and affinity should
be with people who are born into Islam
like you or only converts like you.
It's just saying that
you gotta have this thing
wholly, fully
just to everybody.
Why would that not be a part of
our religion?
Do you get what I mean? Like, it's
not meant to be a hardship, but it
claims to be a final testament
in a series of testament sent. There's not
supposed to be anything that comes to humanity
afterwards.
So would it make sense that there was
foundational
principle
that created categorically
conditions
on who you treat well
to be limited in some capacity
to just people of a certain kind of
locale or community.
Do you hear what I mean?
The whole idea
is that you want to embody goodness,
Right? There's certain things that are categorically
just always good. Prophet is good. Quran is
good. Allah is good. So why we have
hadith
that embody the characteristics
of the divine. So God is good and
God is Rahman.
So have Rahma in your life because you
know God is good. And if God has
Rahma, then be like God as best as
you can and be a person of Rahma.
God is Hakim,
so be a person of wisdom. Have Hikma
because God is good and God is wise,
so you wanna try to have wisdom. Meaning,
don't be foolish or ignorant or jahl.
So here too, Allah's wadood
is the source of love.
God does not love his creation because they
come from a particular background or class or
creed.
Allah's love for us is not because of
who we are, but because of who he
is, a zawjal.
The whole idea in this hadith
is that you treat someone not based off
of who they are, but you treat them
based off of who you are and who
you want to be.
And you can fundamentally assess who you are
based off of how do you treat people.
Does this make sense?
So when you get into
the Uber
and there's been people who've been driving like,
likely your Uber driver and your cab driver
is Muslim. Do you know? It's not a
stereotype, that's just fact. That's what it's gonna
be. That's why when these cab drivers
went on a strike a while ago,
like and it turned things upside down, their
union is very powerful
because they are people who are also people
of consciousness.
Right? It's what Muslims are supposed to be,
people of consciousness.
Do you know? So they were willing to
give up their livelihood
multiple times over in ways that others might
not be. Right?
But when was the last time you got
into a taxi cab and said thank you
to the cab driver?
When was the last time you asked them
how their day was going?
Right? It's not meant to be self deprecating,
but understanding it in the context of the
hadith,
that you have also this thing
of whole
goodwill
towards just
this last category people,
just like everybody.
How do you start to build
that sense of connectivity?
Because it's hard. Right?
The prophet if
you come to our Wednesday sera class, we're
at a point now where there's public
calling to Islam.
Literally, there's hadith that we've been looking at
where the prophet
is in a marketplace at the outskirts of
Mecca. Because if he starts to preach in
the vicinity of the Kaaba, his people are
getting beaten and abused, like, physically. Right?
Gets beaten when he reads the Quran out
loud for the first time. Abu Bakr he
gets beaten so hard. He gets rendered unconscious.
They think he dies.
And his tribesmen tell the tribespeople of the
ones who attacked him that if he doesn't
get up, we're gonna come after the guy
who did this to him and take his
life.
That's what was happening at the vicinity of
the Kaaba.
So he goes to the outer markets
so that there's not that much potential for
abuse.
And there's people who are asking people, who
is this man walking from person to person?
And they'll say, that's Mohammed, the son of
Abdullah. He's teaching us about this new religion.
And they say, who's the person that's following
him?
They say, that's his uncle.
He's telling everybody his nephew's insane.
Abu Lahab, there's narrations
where he and his wife, Jamil, they would
throw garbage at the prophet. Abu Lahab had
a bag of rocks. He would throw stones
at the back of the prophet's head, like,
as he is speaking. Right? He's hurting him.
But in the hadith,
you don't see the prophet pick up some
stones and throw it back at Abu Lahab.
You don't see him throwing dirt back at
Abu Lahab.
It's not just because of the understanding
of the right that Abu Lahab has over
him,
but also how the prophet relates to all
of the people around him. In this first
phase of propagation
of public dawah, if the prophet picked up
dirt and threw it back at somebody who's
considered one of the leaders of the tribes,
do you think those people would say, well,
he must be telling us like a good
religion?
Look at how calm and composed and patient
he is. Do you get what I mean?
He has to know in the broader sense
of how things are gonna be received
from people is not easy. It's tough.
So in this sense of now how we
relate to this 5th category,
the idea isn't just how do you and
I speak to each other and I give
you nasiha at that simplistic understanding of nasiha.
That's just advice that points out what you
do that's wrong. That's not what this hadith
is saying.
But how do I bring the fullest sense
of me to you
so that I can go through all the
heaviness and difficulty?
Nobody's saying you turn into somebody's doormat,
but still on your own terms, you are
engaging people
with a sense of
what is the best mode of conduct in
the moment.
Because there are hadith where the prophet hears
companions being racist to each other, and he
gets angry with them.
There are hadith where the prophet sees
people abusing people, and he gets angry with
them.
It's not that those things don't happen.
But bringing the fullest version of ourself to
an interaction
necessitates understanding,
well, how do I keep myself full
as opposed to running on empty for the
most part?
And that's what then makes it harder for
me to the eye that I'd like to
be in the context
of
where I interact with people, those who are
familiar and those who are unfamiliar.
I'm able to make decisions consciously
that enable me to then treat people the
same. And think just think about it.
Not in a self deprecating mode but reflective.
Are there some people that you treat better
than others?
Not like people who annoy you,
who are clearly on the wrong side of
things, Not people who claim neutrality
or that things are complicated when there is
no complications.
Right? Wrong is wrong.
I'm just saying day to day.
Are there people you walk into
a Musala
that you are smiling at a little bit
more than others?
Are there people that you find more comfort
around? These are not good or bad things,
but in being able to break down why.
What is it that then by extension limits
me
from
being something for somebody
who I don't share these things with?
How can I have this full
goodwill
towards just people of backgrounds that are different
from my own
if I'm not thinking about why it is
that I connect to people in the ways
that I do in the first place? Do
you get what I mean?
Do you get angry only about certain causes
but not others?
Like, why?
Is it possible to be angered by everything?
I mean, yeah, fundamentally,
you could be. Right? Like do you intellectualize
certain that's not saying, like, who do I
get up and do things for? That's a
different step.
Right? In some places, you can't do anything
other than hate it with your heart. That's
why the hadith says this. But why do
I hate certain things and not other things?
Why do I love certain things and not
other things?
Why do I look down or look up
at people? Like, why is it not even
about condescension?
Why is there admiration towards some but not
towards others?
And then in the midst of it also
is
what our tradition tells us
that you're gonna have to deal with I'm
gonna have to deal with
a big part of our inability
of loving fully outwardly
is that we don't like ourselves so much.
Self care, wellness,
self esteem,
self perception,
these things bleed into
how we relate to everything.
You do something wrong,
you think you aren't allowed to make dua
anymore.
I did this haram thing,
I shouldn't be, like, praying.
Like, why would Allah forgive me? How is
that showing nasiha
to Allah?
Like, good conduct. You have no idea who
God is then.
And you take that same principle and same
marker towards, like, this last category
that we're talking about.
Where
fundamentally, what gets misconstrued
are some of the things that we're
wholly bringing. The way you bring
that inability to forgive yourself to your prayer,
what's the clutter you're bringing
to your relationships
that are just with people day to day?
That person would never wanna talk to me.
Like, I should never talk to somebody like
that. What are you talking about? Like in
both instances,
there's some aspect of, like, flawed perspective that's
there. Right? Self esteem, if we define it,
is how I see myself and in turn
how I treat myself through how I see
myself.
If you don't know why you treat you
a certain way,
how are you going to be able to
decide why you treat other people a certain
way?
You need to be able to understand what
you bring of yourself into that. Do you
get what I mean?
Does that make sense?
So what I like for us to do,
we just take a few minutes as people
are trickling in. You can turn to the
person next to you, share some names.
What do you think so far of what
we're talking about?
Because we get out of this conversation at
a very, like, surface level.
You're Muslim. You gotta treat people well and
nicely. And there's nothing specific to this that
transforms anything. Do you know?
Fundamentally,
right, there is going to be
seas of people
that are going to stand on the day
of judgment,
and they're going to say,
Khaled either honored my rights or did not
honor my rights.
Each one of you
is going to be able to make that
claim against me
or for me, shall he make it for
me.
But this is what happens as you grow
older. It's not about kind of infamy and
notoriety and these kinds of things.
Those guys on one side of the street
are not the ones you necessarily have to
think about in that regard,
but the people
that you stand with every day of your
life.
As much as I might worry about what
you're gonna say about me, what's my son
gonna say about me? What's my daughter gonna
say about me? What's my wife gonna say
about me? My parents, what are they gonna
say about me?
Interjects now a realm of positivity
in the way that we relate to all
of this, but not in a place that
we become somebody's doormat,
but we still control the presence of ourself
in that relationship.
Do you get what I mean?
So you gotta know what's going on with
you
before you can know why it is that
you are bringing certain things to other people.
You don't like the way your boss treats
you during the day, that's not a right
for you then to just take it out
on your kid when you get home.
You had like a tough interaction with somebody
someplace
that doesn't mean unhealthy
expressions of
emotions make sense.
This is why nasiha is such a big
part of all of this
because it's also not gonna work if you
don't take feedback from somebody or advice from
someone. It says you're not being who you
should be,
But I can gauge from my interactions with
people,
like, who is the eye that I am
right now?
And is that really where it is that
I want to be?
Am I gonna be in a place where
this category,
the
am of society,
they're gonna be in a place. They're not
the Iyamma, so they're everybody else.
What is it that they will say of
me in the ways that I interacted with
them?
The people who match me in skin color,
the people who match me in gender, the
people who match me in age, who match
me in profession, who match me in degree
acquisition,
who match me a level of religiosity
and practice,
if that's like a measurable thing. Right? Like,
what is that
part of what I'm bringing to my day?
And
on whose term am I defining?
Like, who I'm interacting with and in the
ways that I'm interacting with them versus
I'm not on my own terms. Like, where
do my own terms come in
or the previous categories,
Allah, his book, his messenger.
How does that define and dictate the way
I relate
to the people around me? So we just
turn the people next to us for a
few minutes. Like, what are we taking away
from this so far? What's it bringing up
for us in relation to this last category
in the hadith? And then we'll come back
and discuss, but go ahead. And if you
don't know the names of the people sitting
next to you, just share your names first.
There you go.
How's it going?
If I move this one, will it bother
you? What? If I move this, will it
bother you?
Okay.
So what are some of the things we're
talking about?
What did we discuss?
Yeah.
The store. Mind your business. You're in class.
Mind your business. You know, somebody mind your
business. Doesn't matter who it is, who you're
talking to. You just, you know,
closely, you know, shut out. Just keep just
keep it going. And, you know, this had
to get this space and say, like, no.
Like, that's not true at all because, you
know, you're not just an isolated,
you know, being or whatnot. You're actually part
of an entire environment. You know, you have
to, like, you know, everything that you do,
you know, everything that you touch and, it
actually impacts the world around you.
Little
interact with them.
Amazing. Other thoughts?
Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about the difference
between responding and reacting. And so often, like,
we'll receive
reactions from
people, you know, which are a reflection
a reflection of trauma, a reflection of childhood,
other, like, relations
with other people.
And what is it that we desire? Like,
if we desire, like,
be received with grace and compassion.
Right? Like, even when it
can hurt to receive people's reactions.
Like,
if we truly want to receive grace and
compassion, we need to show it even when
it's painful at times. You and I have
kinda talked about this a little bit, but,
yeah, having some kind of fortitude. Right? And
what and we had talked a little bit
about taking care of ourselves. Right? And that
fortitude
come taking care of yourself, that that spiritual
fitness and wellness,
and kindness and relationship with yourself
and knowing yourself. Because the more you know
yourself,
your reaction can't throw me off as much
from,
me being able to show grace and compassion
when maybe you don't have
the tools
or,
the facility to show it in that moment.
Yeah. And you think about this in the
prism of,
right, that we commonly translate as advice.
Has anybody given you advice when you just
never asked them for advice? You're like, shut
up, man. I don't want your advice. Do
you know?
The advice is not just empty words
thrown at random.
It's gotta be, like, the right time
and the right place
for the giving and receiving of it.
It's fundamentally like the same idea.
You're not just kind of this
uniform
kinda,
you know, static individual.
If you were meant to be a robot,
you would be a robot. Right? If a
lot of wines, you'd be a tree, like,
he would've made you a tree. He made
you a human, and that means that you're
gonna have varied states of self
in relation to everything that's happening outwardly and
inwardly.
But the same as being
something that's not just like, well, don't do
this or do that or don't do that,
and you're just a nag to people,
or you're elevating yourself by denigrating somebody else
because there's no sensibility
of the situation and what you're bringing it
to.
So to the
choice that you are actively making and how
you respond
to something and what you're bringing of yourself
has to be aware of, like, the circumstance,
the situation,
the context, the people involved,
but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. It's
just you're bringing presence to it. Do you
get what I mean?
Right? How many times do people get turned
away because there's no real sense of how
someone will receive the advice?
Do you know?
And what's the appropriate response in just how
we interact with someone more broadly
can parallel
the same idea.
So when the companion learns from the prophet
alaihi salam, this is he becomes Muslim,
Like, he says, teach me something, and the
prophet says, when you hear someone sneeze, say,
this is a right they have over you,
and then they stand to pray. And in
the course of the prayer somebody sneezes
and this person says, You hamakkulah, out loud
and the companions look at him. You're not
supposed to talk out loud in prayer. Right?
When you're praying next to somebody, do you
have a conversation in the middle of the
prayer? No. You're not talking to them. Do
you know?
And he gets upset, and
they're staring at him, and he talks out
loud again.
Why are you staring at me?
And the hadith says they start to, like,
hit the inner part of their thighs to
get him to understand he shouldn't talk. He
gets it, but he doesn't feel so good.
At the end of that,
the prophet comes
and says to him
what he says. He precedes it by saying,
I swear to Allah that Muhammad is the
best of teachers.
He did not revile me or repudiate me
or scold me. He simply said to me
that in the course of this prayer of
ours, we're reciting the words of Allah. It's
not appropriate to mix them with anything else.
Both of them got him to understand
that he shouldn't talk when he prays, but
one made him feel terrible
and the other
made him feel that he could still have
a relationship with god.
But when you look at hadith, you want
to not just see what's being said, but
also what's not being
said. Does the prophet tell this companion,
those guys are idiots. You should only listen
to me.
No. He doesn't.
Does he have to defame them in order
for him to have a sense of who
he is be brought into the conversation?
Do you know?
No.
Like, the hadith does not say, you know,
I can't believe you talked to them. Why
didn't you just come and talk to me?
Or, like, you shouldn't listen to those guys.
You know, religious people, they're always, like, make
a mess of things. Do you know what
I mean?
It doesn't interject itself in that way
because he still has a responsibility
to everybody involved and is teaching everybody something
in that moment. Do you do you see
what I'm saying? Right? What else did we
discuss? What else did we talk about? Yeah.
When the last brother was talking, I was
thinking
in terms of limitations
that the more that we know our own
limitations, the more the more we understand a
lot from each other and then the more
we are able to exercise compassion, self compassion,
and compassion toward others.
They were talking and I think generalization is
just the the way that our brain is
wired. Our brain generalizes things to process information
easier, but we have to be aware of
that limitation and question our biases and our,
prejudices
in order to achieve,
yeah, what we
what Uma has over us. Yeah. And limitations
also from the standpoint just of overall wellness.
Right? Like, if I am exhausted
and I know I have this much energy
to put up with somebody's nonsense.
Do you know what I mean?
Then don't go put yourself in a place
filled with people who are gonna throw nonsense
at you.
You need to, like, take some time to
breathe and take some time to breathe. It's
okay to rest sometimes and replenish.
But if you're running on empty and then
you put yourself in a place that you
know is gonna knock you down, then you're
not aware consciously
of your own limitations.
It's when the prophet
tells people who say, I'm just gonna fast
all the time. I'm just gonna stay up
at night and pray. And he says, I
sleep,
I eat,
Meaning, like, you're not better at this than
I am.
And he says, yourselves have a right over
you.
So you can pay attention to things that
give you indication
that where your thoughts take you are not
necessarily
gonna always be what is reality,
but that then determines
how you choose to act and not act
with people. And quite often,
how you see others and in turn treat
others is not a reflection necessarily of who
they are, but it's telling you a little
bit about yourself.
If you don't understand limitations,
you're just gonna put yourself in places where
you feel bad and terrible in a capitalistic
society
that says, like, you don't take days off.
You're supposed to work much more than you
signed up for.
Money is everything. Affluence is everything.
Like, kill yourself in pursuit of something that
somebody else is gonna enjoy after you die,
or you just sometimes go and sit. Right?
Some of you came with us to the
park on Saturday.
Right?
Wasn't it nice?
You sat outside in the sun. You know
what I mean? We talked about stuff, walked
around in the grass,
and it was nice just to, like, be
outside,
you know? And there's people that talked to
me afterwards that said, I needed this so
badly.
Right? And I'm happy that they got that,
but, like, why?
Why?
Why are you running yourself into the ground
that you had to sit in the sun
for 20 minutes? Like, to to to you
know what I mean? Don't do that to
yourself.
And embedded in this hadith is the way
you relate to these 5 categories,
meaning it's also teaching you how you relate
to yourself
and what it is that you do for
yourself and treat yourself because you're the common
denominator
in every single one of the categories.
Your relationship to Allah, your relationship
to Allah's book, your relationship to Allah's
messenger,
your relationship to the leaders,
your relationship to the common people.
You are what is the constant in all
of it. If you don't know you, that
still doesn't mean that you didn't bring you
to everything that you were doing. Do you
know?
And so
I love, like, people in this community. And
when somebody says to me, man, I needed
this. I was just, like, at my wit's
end. Why are you letting yourself get to
your wit's end?
Why do you always have to fall down
in order to then realize that you gotta
do things to keep yourself upright?
And then
the other part to this that the hadith
is telling us is that you gotta know
then that people are running on empty.
So what are you doing to help build
for them and take care of them and
provide for them and support
them.
They can start with something as simple that
you take ethics from the prophetic tradition
that you greet people that you know and
people that you don't know.
The best amongst you are the ones who
do that.
But there's gonna be people who come to
this gathering
right now. There's, like, a good number of
in this room. Nobody will have said salaam
to them.
How's that possible?
Just realistically thinking about it. Do you know
what I mean?
When you see these videos of people in
Mecca and Medina, they're standing like as the
mobs come in and they're passing dates out
and they're passing this out and that out.
What if everybody did that?
It only stands out because somehow
how being generous is the rarity and not
the norm.
Why is it not the norm?
Because the prophetic example, right,
the prophet
he was the most generous of people.
So where does that move away?
And these are kind of things you wanna
think to build up these blocks.
The same nonsense that tells you that you
can only have someone
of your wealth and your race and your
culture
in your home eating a meal
is the same thing that also says
somebody else should be the one that's bringing
water to somebody.
Somebody else should be the one that's eating
last.
Somebody else should be the one that gives
up their seat on the bus. No, man.
It should be you.
Unless you're tired and exhausted,
and then take a seat. Don't hate on
yourself. But the norm isn't that we're in
that state constantly
for beneficial reasons.
If you got tired, like, great. Like, we
took people on Umrah. They came back from
Umrah, and they slept for 3 days
because they didn't sleep. There's people who took
days off after Eid and Ramadan
because they tired themselves out.
But if you're exhausted because you're chasing after
things that give you complacency,
then they're gonna build up the obstacles
inwardly. They keep you from seizing openings. I
left my office walking out, and the guy
worked in office said I bought you these
flowers.
Why did he buy me flowers?
Do you have to do it? Did I
ever say to him, you know what? It'd
be really nice if you got me some
flowers sometime, man.
No.
But he just went out of his way,
and he said, this is for you.
That's very nice.
Right?
I didn't get upset with him or agitated.
He gave me these gross flowers
or, like, you know, like, maybe he just
doesn't want, like, to take stuff and it's
like, the assumptions don't come in. Right? And
this is Quran. Right?
That is the reward for Hassan, anything other
than Hassan. Like, beauty just perpetuates beauty.
Goodness perpetuates
goodness. You don't need somebody's permission
to go out there and share your light
with people, but you have to have real
conversations
on what it is that's actually extinguishing or
diminishing light isn't that you're a bad person.
It's just that you don't take care of
yourself.
You're running on empty constantly.
You're numbing and desensitizing
as opposed to healing.
And then when you're in a place of
pain, like, the pain is going to be
present
in the situation that comes up in front
of you.
And that's where the second part of what
I said is important to understand in the
context of this part of the hadith.
Everybody's got crap going on in their lives.
So don't be terrible and push people away.
Be kind. Be nice. Be generous.
Make justifications
and excuses for people.
Not to the point where
you tolerate
behavior
or you expect toleration of behavior that crosses
boundaries.
But this is also embedded within this hadith.
If you do not have self awareness and
self consciousness,
you're gonna be in a place where you
push away the wrong people and you embrace
the, you push away the the right people
and you embrace the wrong people.
Don't make excuses for people's abuse or mistreatment.
That's not something that you should do, and
it's not an easy thing.
Why there's high rates of recidivism? Right? I
work with a lot of survivors of abuse.
We work with a lot of different people.
We go on this park, and people will
say all kinds of things about Washington Square
Park. There's Muslim guys that sell drugs in
the park. They do. I know because I
walk up to them sometime. They're like, mom,
is that you? Literally, they've said, you know,
we'll send it. You only have to pay
for delivery. And I'm like, no. It's okay.
Like, I don't want any of it.
And then when we have a conversation, I'm
like, why are you doing this, man?
And they say, nobody hires us for anything.
We don't know how to do anything else.
I still have to feed my kids
and what, Umma?
What's the advantage of having 6,000 people for
an Eid prayer in Washington Square Park
if we're not building something for that guy
to have a solid reentry back into society.
To him, there's to
this category of people also.
What keeps me from thinking about people
that I share space within these ways?
The survivor of abuse goes quite often back
to their abuser
because there's not supportive community set up for
them.
Nasihah,
if you read in books of fic,
gets categorized
as communal obligation by some people.
That somebody's gotta be the one who's bringing
the advice into the picture.
Because what if nobody did it? And nobody
admonished anybody or said anything. That's the whole
point of a prophet coming with a book.
He didn't come because everything was great in
Mecca. He came because people were burning their
daughters alive. He came because people created stratified
society
based off of class and race.
They were extremely
racist and sexist in Meccan society.
There was no boundaries
because of an absence of accountability.
The whole thing comes to tell you how
to improve as a person. How can you
say that the religion doesn't have room for
somebody to come and give you advice?
One of the most important things is that
we have to think really deeply about how
we connect to people just broadly,
not just the ones that we get along
with, not just the ones that we enjoy
eating a meal with, not just the ones
that we look for to extend greetings of
peace to, but the guy who says to
me that nobody else will hire me,
I have to still feed my family,
we're not honoring the rights that he has
over us.
All of us. That's what communal obligation is.
When nobody gets it done, the entire community
bears responsibility
for it. Do you see what I mean?
That's why we have to think about things
a little differently in terms of institutional development,
in terms of building spaces, in terms of
building shelters, and building
clinics? What's the advantage of you having multiple
homes that you own? What's the advantage of
you having 7 digits of savings or 6
digits of savings where there's literally a guy
who prays with you, and he has to
sell weed in order to feed his kids
because you're not creating the systems that understand
he exists.
And then Shaitan distracts us through an absence
of wellness. So the biggest challenges we have
come from now
core beliefs that are structured
in the aftermath of colonization
and imperialism
and slavery
that we feel we're only good if we
have it the way whiteness tells us we
should have it.
This religion
teaches us through a prophet who treated
the pauper and the king exactly the same.
Isa, alaihis salaam, in the hadith,
he asked people
if the gold, the silver, and the copper
coin
means something different to them. Each of those
3 coins, gold, silver, and copper, and they
say, yes, of course. And he says, they're
all the same to me.
And when you can bring that into how
you relate to people
and how you connect to people and how
you let people connect to you and let
people be there for you,
the word changes substantially.
This 5th category
is going to not be the one we
come into interaction with the most
in that sense because everything we do goes
back to god in this religion.
But if we're thinking about in terms of
tangibility,
most of your day is going to be
spent interacting with just people in the worldly
sense of how you interact with things. Right?
And think about in New York City. You
choose to live in New York City. You
don't live in other parts of the country.
We went on this retreat to New Mexico.
How many of you went to New Mexico
with us last time?
Yeah. Habir
and Amani went. The rest of you will
come at some point. It's amazing. This town
that we were in, Adar Islam,
700 people are, like, residents of this town.
Right?
700 people.
That's less people than we get for Jumon
Fridays.
Are the population
of this town,
Meaning, they're not bumping into so many people
all the time.
But you live in a city where at
any given time, on a given street, there's
700 people in a given building.
You're gonna run into
doorman
that open doors for you. You're gonna run
into, like, people who are baristas at the
cafes that you're in. There's
places open till 2, 3 o'clock in the
morning. Mean, there's gonna always be people around
you.
And you have accountability
based off of how you treat people.
And you also have accountability
not necessarily on how you let someone treat
you. We are not responsible for things we
are coerced to or forced into.
Abuse is always wrong, and it doesn't take
2 people to create that dynamic.
But barring situations of abuse and oppression,
in most interactions,
there's 2 people that create a dynamic.
You have to think about what you bring
into the creation of that dynamic,
but the way we are treated aside,
how we tolerate
others treating people around us.
You cannot be a guy who lets other
guys mistreat women.
And if you have to think about that
in a selfish mode, what will you say
to god?
Fundamentally,
you cannot be a woman who lets women
also get mistreated.
And somebody would say, well, aren't there men
who get mistreated too? Yes. There are.
But the
proportionality
of women to men is much higher.
That's just fact.
You can't be in a place where you
tolerate
certain things,
the absence of certain things. You gotta be
bold enough and that's why Nasija
has a root in positivity,
of compassion, love, sincerity
to turn to people like the ones you're
sitting with now and saying, hey, man.
Colleges told us about this guy who's in
the park. The goal is not that you
go look for him and set up a
GoFundMe for him or give him, like, a
meal. Right? You're thinking about it too simplistically.
The goal is to acknowledge his existence.
You're exposed to his narrative
and then turn to the people around you
and say, what do we build institutionally
to help people that are in this situation?
I'm smart enough to create a venture that
has jobs attached to it. Let me be
smart about who I hire and what it
is that I'm creating in terms of positions
for people. Do you get what I mean?
And you can embed all of this into
this hadith.
And you can see a connection
that brings you to this 5th category because
you start. Right?
They say, oh messenger of god, to who?
To Allah,
Allah, to his book,
to his messenger,
to the Ayemah of the Muslims,
and then you get.
So if there's this sequential understanding, right, like,
when you have hadith and words are linked
together, they're not at random. There's a connectivity
that's there just like in the Quran.
So if you can bring a sense of
sincere goodwill to your relationship with god
and then you trickle it down to these
other categories,
how would you not then have good conduct
to god's creation?
You see?
And that starting point becomes imperative to get
to this ending point.
So we don't wanna belabor the idea, but
you get the idea. Right?
The last thing we wanna talk about
as we get now into like, Maghrib will
be in 10 minutes. Right? So we wanna
talk with just about, like, Nasihah
itself, like, the idea of advice,
counsel, admonition.
This is a big part of Islam as
a religion.
You have to have people
who are able to give you advice
and advise you, not make your decisions for
you. Right?
Nobody can make your choices for you. At
some point, you have to grow up in
the prism of accountability
that says I will be accountable for what
I do and what I don't do.
But in this prism of Nasihah
now, advice is not just I'm gonna throw
things at random at people, but there's 2
parts to it. The giving and the receiving.
And it's really hard for us sometimes
to take advice
or to take feedback
even when somebody says it to us in
the worst possible way. You still gotta be
in a place where you're able to
say, like, is this something
that I can actually
yield some type of growth through?
A category of giving advice,
the quality of it
is that you have to really love the
person you're giving the advice to
because it has to be for their benefit,
not to tweak your ego.
You can run around through masjids
and pull on, like, people's scarves because air
is coming out or tell people, like, you're
not standing this way or your pants shouldn't
be like this and that, and you could
do that with love,
but there's a good chance that people are
just elevating themselves by denigrating somebody else. That's
the worst way to feel good about yourself
by making somebody feel bad. Right? And when
people don't know how to heal, this is
why you get parents that take stuff out
on kids in ways that don't make sense.
Children's hearts take in adult emotions that they
should never take in, but some place it
has to be kinda cut off. So under
the guise of advice, you're just mocking somebody.
Right? Well, you don't do this right or
you don't do that right.
Where did this turn into an argument or
a fight? So you wanna give advice to
someone, it's gotta come from that place of
good intention.
But the receiving
part of the advice is what we want
to really focus on. Do you know what
I mean? So I'd love for you to
do is turn to the person's next to
you.
What is it that makes it easier for
you to take somebody's advice?
Like, what are things that allow for you
to be open to someone's feedback, even their
criticism
rooted in advice?
And understanding if we can extrapolate
some kind of principles here, it'll probably help
a lot of us. Right?
Because we wanna have a heart that's soft
and a heart that's soft, that's lean in
our tradition, a light heart is a heart
that's willing to take advice and counsel and
not just push back on it and argue
and fight. Does that make sense?
So what are some of the things that
you
can take an awareness of yourself
that, like, this is, like,
something that helps me to take advice?
And you could just have a realization. It's
like, nobody has the ability to tell me
anything. I'm gonna tell you because I love
you. Take my advice. Right? That's terrible.
You're setting yourself up for a slippery slope
and shaitan's got you.
Because how is their growth if there's nothing
to improve upon?
And if there's nobody other than you that
you rely upon for advice and counsel,
that's not good, man. Like, that doesn't make
sense. The prophet didn't know what to do
on certain occasions.
He asks people, like, what he should do.
That's there in the hadith.
So
how how can you and I be better
at taking advice? What makes it hard? Maybe
this is a better starting point. What makes
it difficult to take advice? If we could
talk about that for a couple minutes, and
then we'll come back and discuss. But go
ahead.
Okay.
So what are some of the things
what makes it hard to take advice
or to give advice or whatever you talked
about? I don't remember what I asked. Yeah.
What do we discuss?
Smog ribs in 5 minutes just so you
know if anyone's fasting
so you don't break your fast early.
What do we discuss?
Yeah. Your relation to the thing that you're
getting advice on. So if it's something that's
already coming from a place of vulnerability or
something that you're, like, fundamentally feeling a little
bit shakier on, if someone's trying to give
you advice on something. It kind
of doubles down on whatever that is because
they're not only exposing it, but then they're
trying to kind of, like, navigate it in
a way that you're not sure how you're
navigating it.
Yeah.
I like to give the example when I
got married.
My wife and I had, like, a open
wedding ceremony,
and anyone could come that wanted to. And
there's thousands of people that showed up.
We did it at the 96th Street Masjid.
And that day, they had 6 jamaz for
Assur because the number of people that showed
up.
And it was great. It was amazing. A
lot of well wishers. People just wanted to
be there. They were there. And then a
month into our marriage, my wife told me
that I don't have any friends.
And I said, what do you mean? There
was thousands of people at our wedding. And
she said, you don't have friends.
Like, you don't invest time into relationships. You
don't have deep relationships.
And no part of me wanted to hear
it. I pushed back on it immensely to
my detriment.
And through most of my twenties, my self
care was also terrible,
and I felt more alone than I've ever
felt in my life,
creating, like, conundrums
inwardly saying, I have to be there for
others. I can't let anyone be there for
me.
And
it just didn't make any sense in addition
to so much other things that she wasn't
telling me vindictively.
But from a place of care,
I just was pushing back against it. You
know? What else what else did we discuss?
Yeah.
I think Jason or Jason.
What's your name? Shannon. Shannon.
We were talking about
advice, and Shannon said something about the delivery.
And I thought that was very succinct because
how the advice is delivered makes a huge
impact. What are you talking about this? I
talked about, like,
salty. Yeah. Yeah. So echoing on the delivery
and nothing. Just coming from a place of
not making a big show
and fanfare of the advice speaks to the
intention. And something that resonated with me was,
being understood.
So making sure that the advice giver understands
the one who is to receive the advice
and is intentional or kind in the delivery.
Amazing.
Right? Who are these people for you? And
you can't say they don't exist. You're lying.
They do exist,
but you're not bringing them into your life
for what reason.
Do you know? I shouldn't have to get
married to someone that I'm deeply in love
with for there to be somebody who's able
to tell me when I'm being an idiot.
Do you know what I mean? That cannot
be the solution to all of this.
That for however many years, I put myself
through real
terrible
experiences
in terms of self care, wellness, etcetera,
because nobody was there that was telling me,
but I wasn't actively
bringing these people into my life. Right? As
you build these characteristics, then you say, like,
who are these people that I can go
to? I'm not imposing myself on anyone, I
just need someone that's gonna help me get
better. Any other thoughts on this? What else
did we discuss?
Yeah.
I guess it's very hard to accept accountability.
Like, self accountability is not
responsible for something you're doing wrong. That's like
because you have to come to that realization,
and it's really hard to be able to
accept that.
Yeah. And just think about this from the
standpoint
of what you know about Islam.
Right? The whole religion is based on accountability.
That's why a lot of people don't like
being Muslim.
Because in other religions, you can just claim
one thing, and then you're given salvation.
You know? It's a green light to go
do whatever mess you want to. Do you
know what I mean? This religion,
our God says, do what you want, but
I'm gonna ask you about it,
and you have to be in this place.
So at a baseline,
Shaitan is gonna get you at a foundational
level.
Rather than embracing accountability
as a mode for spiritual elevation,
he's gonna make you walk on eggshells
around responsibility.
You did do what you did to that
girl.
Doesn't matter what your friends told you, you
did it.
You have to come to a place of
recognition
that that nonsense came from you.
You were in a place where you mistreated
your mother.
You did.
You didn't do right by the person that
was entrusting something within you.
If you don't have accountability
here,
accounts still are going to be taken when
you stand in front of god.
Does that make sense?
And this whole idea of not bettering oneself,
this is the opposite of arrogance
because confidence is rooted in me being able
to recognize with gratitude
my god given spiritual gifts as well as
my non strengths.
Arrogance just has me see weakness in the
world around me. Confidence enables me to see
I can have a default state of being
good, but a good person can always be
better. Shaitan is gonna get you to not
think that there's anything to improve upon, and
then there's nothing to be better by.
All of it goes down to the most
simplistic levels of vulnerability.
So you surround yourself with good hearts. You
surround yourself with people. You're willing to take
their advice.
Somebody who tells you you do everything right
or validates the wrong that you do, that
person is not thinking out of your best
interest.
There's a young woman who came to me
and she said, can you go tell my
friend, I get really worried about her that
she
drinks a lot, goes to the club a
lot. I don't know what some guy's gonna
do to her one night. I said, yeah.
Of course, I'll talk to her. What did
she say when you told her this? And
she said, I didn't tell her anything. I
said, okay. Why? I was trying to think
about this strategically,
and she said, I don't want her to
get upset with me.
And so, well, that's not a good enough
reason.
If you had said she won't listen to
me or she won't hear what I have
to say,
but you don't want somebody to be mad
at you, That's why you're letting them do
something that's dangerous to themselves.
And then I ended up talking to the
girl anyway.
But
in order to allow for ourselves
to have people like that in our lives,
you gotta also think what you're bringing to
the relationships that you're blessed with. Do you
know? That isn't you're just talking off the
top of your head
to alleviate your own anxiety that you don't
know what to do for someone, but you
validate their feelings,
help guide them to a place of decision
making. But if they're being an idiot, you
gotta be able to sometimes be in a
place where somebody tells you you're an idiot
or that you can tell someone because you
care about them enough that, hey. You're being
an idiot too. Do you get what I
mean? Right? And so it's gotta be something
proactive. You don't have these people to give
you advice that are not just about
things. This is the last thing I'm gonna
say, and then we'll call the Adan.
You gotta have people who give you advice
that also have the mindset of
the existing.
Because if people don't have that as a
presence in their advice, they're still limited
from the standpoint of what they're offering to
you that's going to be purely in terms
of what is in the here and not
what comes later.
So you might have to do things that
are better for you later that are not
going to be good for you right now.
And some people might tell you that do
this because they're thinking from their scope. Like,
when I talk to someone from a different
religion, I don't have to mock their beliefs,
but their understanding of a prophet is not
the same as my understanding of a prophet.
Their understanding of god is not the same
as my understanding of god. Their understanding of
certain ethics then are not the same.
And so somebody that you take advice from
that also is aware that there's a world
beyond this one
isn't just telling you what you want to
hear, but is able to tell you what
you need to hear. Does that make sense?
Okay. So we're gonna break for Maghrib.
We're gonna have a star after. On Mondays
Thursdays, we're doing potluck Iftars, so feel free
to bring stuff with you, but we have
some food as well, and stick around for
it. Right? There's a good number of us
here. It'd be great if people spent, like,
10, 20 minutes together
meaningfully having food. There's in this. Right? You
feel overwhelmed at times. The companions come to
the prophet and say we eat, but we
don't feel full. And the prophet says perhaps
you eat separately,
and they say yes. And he says eat
together and mention the name of Allah over
what you eat, you will feel more full,
you know? So there's barakah in eating together,
just learn each other's names, spend some time
in each other's companies, suhba,
and it'll help to connect us more and
then some of the things we talk about
won't just be, like, conjecture.
If you know people deeply here, then you'll
know who you can build for the guy
in the park that nobody's creating jobs for
him.
Right? You can't build with somebody that you
don't know. Do you get what I mean?
So stick around for the Iftar, and then
maybe in the middle of it, we'll tell
people what's happening for the rest of the
week Inshallah.
And people just move the chairs against the
wall.
We'll call the Adan from Maghrib. You wanna
call the Adan?
Yeah.
Question.
Well, let me turn
this off. Yeah.