Khalid Latif – Open Your Heart to the Allah’s Blessings in Ramadan
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AI: Transcript ©
In the name of Allah, the gracious, the
merciful,
all praise is due to Allah, the lord
of the universe, the master of the day
of judgment.
I bear witness and testimony to the oneness
of Allah,
to his magnificence,
his omnipotence,
his might, his glory,
to his being the creator and sustainer of
all things,
the giver of life,
the guider of hearts,
the master of the day of judgment.
And I bear witness to the fact that
Muhammad al Nai Abdulah
sallallahu alaihi wasallam
is his servant and final messenger.
May the peace and blessings of Allah be
upon him and upon all those who choose
to tread his path until the last day.
It is said that when the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam entered into this month of
Raja,
he would make a special dua
that was in relation to the coming month
of Ramadan.
The
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said that, oh Allah,
make blessed for us the month of Rajab
and Sha'ban.
Wa bali nah Ramadan and allow for us
to reach the month of Ramadan.
And this du'a is something that many of
us are gonna hear in the coming days
weeks in various gatherings. You'll see it posted
throughout social media, but you want to let
it start to anchor within you that you
and I
every single tomorrow
for the next weeks
are getting a day closer each day to
the month of Ramadan.
May Allah make us from amongst those who
reach and witness that blessed month
and take from it all of the benefits
that are rightfully for us to take.
They wanna utilize these days to get ready
for those days
and to be in a place where the
ideas to not just have information that is
given to us.
This is not the benefit of
in our tradition.
Knowing something in and of itself is not
necessarily
enough. You gotta act upon what you know.
And so if you consciously
are aware of the fact
that you are just weeks away from Ramadan,
What are you gonna do with that information
is a subjective
conversation.
If you know that it is a month
of blessing, it is a month of mercy,
it is a month of reflection,
it is a month that has within it
a day that is worth more than a
1000 months worth of worship.
May Allah make us from those who witness
and benefit from Laylatul Qadr.
If you know these things,
what are you gonna do in relation to
it?
In our tradition roots in them in a
deep connection
to Hikma, wisdom.
That you take what you know and you
act upon what you know. You just don't
throw it out there in conversations with people.
What's that gonna really do?
Even if you know something
and it is there in your base, the
Quran says, lima takulu malatafaroon.
Then why do you say that which you
don't do?
The idea of just putting information out for
the sake of information without you acting upon
it individually
is not what the Quran teaches us to
do. And the benefit can only be derived
by acting upon what it is that you
have in terms of beneficial
knowledge,
so you gotta get ready for Ramadan
from now.
It's your Ramadan.
It's not a joke.
It's not something that you say, well I'm
just gonna do it the way that I
did it before.
It shouldn't be the case because you should
not be the same as you were a
year prior to this day.
And you put it now into a frame
of what is
more broadly
tomorrow.
What you're getting ready for in terms of
not just worldly success, but the world that
comes after this. May Allah make us people
of Jannah.
Last week I talked about suhoor,
and somebody said to me is it really
that big of a deal to get up
and eat something before you start fasting?
Do you have in the hadith, the prophet
salallahu alaihi wa sallam, he says the saharoo,
have your suhoor, the predawn meal,
something before you start your fasting.
In alfis suhoorbaraka,
he says that indeed within the surhur there
is blessing, barakah.
But you want to be able to now
shift paradigms
inwardly,
not just on what you understand something to
be, but what it actually is.
And to think about what the blessing and
benefit is when you go through one opening
of something, how it opens that much more.
There are a lot of things that are
recommended practices, not from the faray. They're not
obligatory.
You don't have to do them,
but you want to transition now from burdensome
relationship with the divine to a relationship that's
rooted in a loving surrender and submission and
the recommendations
enhance.
If you wake up for sehul in the
morning, may Allah make us from those who
wake up for this pre morning meal.
If you wake up for that meal in
the morning, you are not just getting the
barakah that comes from even a sip of
water,
but you have now created the opportunity
for many different things to happen in that
blessed period of time.
When was the last time you woke up
before your fast to make the intention for
fasting?
Just think about it for yourself.
If you have fasted and rolled on before
this one, and you wake up in that
blessed portion of the night, not just making
a nia to fast, but a high niya,
a niya that has real Himma to it.
A one that says that my primary intention
is that this fast is for your sake,
you Allah, the day that's ahead of me.
But then nuancing it with secondary intentions
the lying, cheating, backbiting.
That the day that's ahead of me, I
affirm in this intention that I will stay
steadfast on my prayers, that I will be
committed to being in a place of prostration
to you at the times you have told
me to.
There's gonna be no slander, no vile talk,
no obscenities that come from my mouth.
A day of fasting that is going to
be rooted in freedom from complaints, and negativity,
and pessimism.
If you wake up for sirhur,
you can also make that intention
prior to the fast starting.
If you wake up for suhul, you can
engage in now what is just
even
a quick 2 rakas of prayer.
At a portion of the day that we
are taught that the angels are sent down
to see who is turning to the divine,
you wake up prior to the Fajr, you
don't have to pray Qiyam or Tuhajid the
way somebody else prays.
You know Surah Ikhlas and Surah Qathr,
bang out some rakas with just the shortest
chapters that you know. There's still barakah in
it.
You make du'a for those whose names only
you know.
Make dua for people who are beloved to
you that the rest of us don't know
their names.
When was the last time you woke up
in the middle of the night and made
Dua for my grandfather?
It's not that you're a bad person.
Why would you ever think about my grandfather?
Do you understand?
And all of this is an opening
that can come for the mother who struggled
for you, for the teacher who sacrificed for
you, for the friend who listened to you,
for the person who taught you how to
pray and the importance of it, not just
in your body, but with your heart.
If you wake up for sirhur,
you can do all of these things
in 5 minutes.
That's really all it takes.
And likely,
if you wake up for suhoor,
you're not gonna miss Fajr.
The 2 sunnahs of which the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam he says, that they are
worth the entire world and everything in it.
But that's only something that's going to be
incentivized for you if you believe in it.
If you believe that those 2 simple rakas
that can take you less than a minute
to perform,
they are worth the entire world, meaning every
mansion and every bank that is filled to
its brim and its vaults.
All of the riches and jewels that you
can imagine that this earth is filled with.
Every time you pray those 2 rakahs, the
adjar is greater in capacity
to what this entire world has and everything
in it.
That's why you gotta wake up for sirhul.
But in order to wake up for sirhul,
you have to have wakefulness in the heart
and think about it from within the hearts
paradigm, not from within what the world calls
you towards. We have everybody move up close.
We come in real close to make room
for people. If there's any carpet in front
of you, we'd appreciate it because the room
is gonna get filled up.
Thank you.
And how you see these things cannot just
be a product of mechanics that you have
experienced them year to year to year,
but they are within them spiritual secrets. They
are methods through which our God and His
messenger have taught us to harness contentment,
and you bring the presence of a heart
into it.
The preparation for those days require us to
understand that Ramadan is something that is not
now just simply rooted in the practice of
fasting in and of itself,
but you can prep for it in the
sense that within the month there is so
much that we can access
and so much that we have to be
conscious of that render difficulty for us to
do the acts that are open for us
to do by our invitations
acceptance.
You just got to be in a place
where you're willing to do it.
The month of Ramadan is about the Quran.
When you look in the Quran and it
talks about Ramadan,
it links it to the Quran.
And there's not a person you will meet
who calls themselves a Muslim.
Whether they have memorized the Quran in its
entirety, know every single one of its recitations,
or or they don't even know how to
read the Arabic.
You're not in a competition with anybody else.
It's just the me that I am today
is not afraid to meet the one I
can be tomorrow.
There's not a person on a spectrum of
engagement with the Quran
who cannot have a better relationship with the
Quran.
There's always something you can do to take
more from that text, to engage that text.
With Malib Affan radiAllahu anhu he would perform
1 khatm of the Quran in a day
in Ramadan.
There were companions of the Prophet who within
3 days would do an entire recitation of
the Quran.
Some would do it in a week's time.
Some would do it every 10 days.
You gotta build a relationship with the Quran
for yourself.
And you think about it in terms of
what again it means to you. How do
you see it, and how do you shift
the paradigm?
It's not a book that's meant to just
sit on the shelf, nor is it something
that's meant to be wrotely memorized.
Most of the companions were not kufas of
the Quran,
but they took what they learned from it
and had a willingness to actually say, there's
something this book can teach
me.
It actually has within it guiding principles. They
can give to me an understanding
of how it is that I meant to
live my life in this world.
And the text in and of itself, it
not challenges, but invites
to to contemplate,
to ponder, to reflect.
How can you reflect on something if you
don't read it?
How can you contemplate upon something if the
only time you engage it
is based off of somebody else telling you
what it says?
There's a benefit to listening to the text.
The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he would tell
his companions to recite the Quran to him,
and they would say, how can we recite
this book to you?
This book was revealed to you and you
want us to tell you what it says?
And the prophet says that he enjoys hearing
it being recited from other people.
There's a barakah in this. There's a blessing
in this, just simply hearing the recitation of
the Quran.
You gotta throw the excuses out the door,
you start to ready yourself from this day.
The
Quran
is a big part of Ramadan.
Pick it up and read it from now.
Don't be scared.
Don't be in a place where it's something
you just leave behind, or something that you
God forbid weaponized to hurt somebody else. That's
not the point of reading this book.
To become now
Sharia police that says why everybody else is
wrong and you're the only one that's right.
You read it from your heart.
A verse a day, 2 verses a day,
3 verses a day, you're good.
At a pace that makes sense for you,
everybody's relationship with the text can be better.
Doesn't mean the default that it's bad, but
it has mode of improvement.
As you're ready yourself for that month of
Ramadan,
you understand that it's a month that the
prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam is described as being
somebody who is more charitable and generous than
at any other time of the year.
He's already an individual who had generosity
as a part of His just
fixed character.
And in this month He was even more
so than in other times.
The act of giving is a spiritual act
in our tradition.
Your Sadaka, your Zagah is not meant to
be mindless that you write a check or
you push a button.
The goal of automating things that give ease
is fine, but you want to have presence
because you're giving to the beneficiary
not for their benefit alone, but you're giving
to the beneficiary
for the benefit of your heart.
Ibn Umar radiAllahu an, he's described in the
month of Ramadan that he would pray in
the nights of Ramadan
on his own in his house.
And then when the Masjid was empty, he
would go to the Masjid to pray after
the people left taking a flask of water
with him.
And Ibn Umar radiAllahu anhu'ma,
he says that or he is said to
when it was time to break fast, he
would purposely find people in need that he
could break his fast with.
And then if somebody who was poor, who
had no food came to ask him for
the food he was eating to break his
fast on,
He would give them willfully the food that
He was going to eat.
This is what the extent of giving is
in our tradition.
That you are in a place where you
don't just have it be something that you
hold over your sister or brother's head.
But there's a sense of knowing and awareness
of what the needs are of the person
sitting next to me that I'm praying with.
Many of you will pray 2 rakaz when
you walk into a masjid. Some will even
say during the Khutba, you got to pray
too.
And there's Hadith where the prophet makes a
man stand to pray too when he comes
in,
but the Hadith, they compliment that narration.
They give us context to it. Is it
the man that's made to stand is a
person who's in need?
And when the prophet makes him stand,
unwarranted attention that could create discomfort.
So he says, stand up and pray.
Everybody sees this man praying, and they see
that he's not doing okay.
And then they now have the capacity to
know that this is somebody that I could
support.
You bring people into your lives
that are not just sharing race, class, culture
with you,
but you embrace what it really means to
be part of a community.
And you know who it is that's actually
in need,
and then you engage in the spiritual act
of giving.
That's what Ramadan is about.
And I want you to think about these
things. What are you gonna do with the
Quran in Ramadan?
What are you gonna do in terms of
acts of charity, volunteerism
in Ramadan?
How are you gonna plan to be in
a place where you live the Hadith that
says even smiling is a sadaqah? And that's
where you don't let your hunger be something
that perpetuates
stress and irritation and anger because you didn't
plan right from this day, and you're too
exhausted to actually give salams to somebody.
You start to think now that I'm gonna
go to the place where everyone is breaking
fast.
And I'm gonna be there because people are
gonna need somebody who's kind and compassionate and
gentle
to welcome them
in, to encourage them to good deeds.
Ramadan is about charity.
Ramadan, in large part is about prayer,
du'a, salah,
and you build for yourself an opportunity to
have consistency
salallahu alayhi wasalam he is described
as a man that had routine.
It wasn't just spontaneity.
Today I'm gonna do this, and tomorrow I'm
gonna sleep at this time, and the next
day I'm gonna wake up at this time,
and maybe I'll eat now, and I'll drink
something later, and every day is different.
The hadith says
that his actions were called
consistent, but the word dima in Arabic that
denotes there's regularity.
When you talk about the early morning rain,
when it falls and it gives greenness to
the land, a gentle rain that's nourishing.
That's the word edema.
The Prophet's consistency was not in things that
created difficulty for his inward state at the
simple complacency of his external,
but there were things that he did routinely
that would allow for
these practices to be carried forward.
Why do you eat at the times that
you eat?
Why do you drink at the times that
you drink?
Why do most of us have no real
semblance of a solid sleep schedule?
All of these things fit in to our
spiritual
existence.
And the relationship we have with dunya,
You use
Ramadan
to now be in a place where that
consistency
establishes itself.
Especially in the performance of your prayers.
You get to a point in life where
you can say that, you know what, it's
not more important for me to be in
a place where I sleep through Fudger.
And you learn about yourself enough that if
you can flock to the masjids in the
night time of Ramadan, and you can go
20 rakas,
10 rakas, rakas, 11 rakas.
You can do that outside of the month
of Ramadan.
And you awaken a consciousness that says that
my ability to perform in this month is
attached to my doing of these things, and
I yield now intellectual understanding
that I am blessed to serve people food.
I am blessed to be in a place
where I prostrate.
I am blessed to do some of these
things in this month. Why would I not
do them outside of it as well?
And you
very much so consciously
start to establish routine.
That's what Ramadan starts to do.
And you have to be consistent with it
and you think about it.
I had a brother that came to me
the other day and he said that I'm
starting work. I'm working now. I've never had
Ramadan in work before.
And he said, I don't know how I'm
gonna be able to get to my job
at a certain time because I usually woke
up at a certain time as a student
during the Ramadan.
I said, well, what time would you go
to sleep? And he said, 1 o'clock in
the morning. And I said, what were you
doing till 1 AM? And he was like,
you know, it's Ramadan. I was like, what
were you really doing, man, till 1 AM?
He said, well, yeah. Maybe I was talking
and hanging out and these kinds of things.
You just have to be real with yourself.
The social aspect to it is part of
the recommendations.
Food for 1 is enough for 2, and
food for 2 is enough for 4. This
is truth
because the Messenger said it, sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
You don't want to plan poorly
so that you are seated alone,
breaking your fast.
You don't want to also be the reason
that the person that you are sitting next
to and you have been praying next to
every Friday for years
has no one to be inviting them to
break fast with because you never bothered to
learn who they were?
There is Barakah
in being in a place where you share
a meal with someone.
That's where the social aspect comes in. The
communal aspect.
You bring that structure in the routine to
the day,
Utilize the nights and ways that are meaningful.
Plan strategically
so that your heart leaves
filled with just love and positivity
at the end of the month.
And you go at a pace that makes
sense for you.
The last 10 nights of Ramadan are said
to be from the most auspicious of all
of these auspicious nights.
There are people in this community
who purposely take vacation from work in those
last 10 nights, because all they want to
do is seize the benefit of those nights.
There's some of us who do not get
the privilege of taking time off during Ramadan,
but you still have the opportunity
to plan within the course of your routine
what you are going to be doing
from this day until then.
As you plan
things that are immensely important,
You are hosting iftars in your homes, your
apartments,
inviting people. There's barakah in this to feed
the fasting person. You have to believe in
it. The prophet says that the reward for
the one who feeds the fasting person as
if he fasted himself.
But you take into consideration
that the idea is to not be an
inhibition
or an obstacle from an individual in their
pathway towards the divine.
Some of you will have the opportunity to
invite people into your home,
and you will then be in an amazing
place to encourage them. Many of them to
pray that Isham prayer for the first time
in congregation in their life.
And you can say, well, how is that
possible? Is there actually people who have never
prayed ISHA together in their life?
I guarantee to you that you are sitting
with people who no one has ever invited
them into a home and said, let's pray
together before you leave.
You don't want the routine of serving somebody
to be in a place where you are
honoring the rights of guests to the extent
that it becomes a distraction from your own
Ramadan.
The hospitality
other than our tradition is that when you
bring someone into your home, you serve them
at a minimum food that you are used
to eating yourself,
if not food that is a little bit
better than that.
The preparation of the day for the meal
at the night is not something that should
come at the sacrifice,
nor should the expectation
be that when you go into somebody's abode,
and they have fed you now that you
have anything less than gratitude to express.
That includes if you go to your local
masjid, you come to this center,
you see a volunteer, you see somebody who's
giving up time,
say good things to them,
encourage them,
Let them know that you appreciate
the fulfillment of this practice
that comes from the recommendation
of the best of creation,
salallahu alayhi wasalam,
who taught me and you
that feeding people who are fasting is good.
The ideal is from here
and to start to think from these days
how you will plan and utilize those to
the best of your ability.
Do not confine it now to a reality
that simply succumbs to things in a materialistic
world.
Understand that it is for you to take
in you alone
and the prioritization
of Ramadan,
whether you are engaged now in the practice
of Quranic
relationship building.
You are engaged in the practice of prayers,
qiyam, tahajjud,
your 5 daily salah,
whether you are engaged in acts of charity,
acts of remembrance,
acts of fasting,
you're gonna get out of it what you
put into it.
Why would you start getting ready for it
a month from now, a month and a
half from now?
It just comes down to recognizing
its meaning.
At this stage of life that I'm in,
what does this thing mean to me?
And all of these other things that I've
been taught in relation to it,
Do I believe them to be
actually spiritual exercises
that come back to the development of my
inner state?
Your prophet
got sad.
He had an entire year in his life
that was known as the year of grief,
the year of depression.
When he loses both his uncle and his
wife, Khadija Radiallahu Ta'ala Anaha, in the same
year. They say he was never the same
after that moment. It impacts in the loss
of a loved one.
To be in a place where you can
understand that the ideas to not be devoid
of human experience, but to be in a
place where contentment can coexist with all of
these things that we go through.
And, you got to start thinking about Ramadan
as a gift.
You have to be able to shift what
it is that you see it as from
this day, and give yourself a thought process
that embraces it for what it is.
And that shifting is an inward practice.
I'll give you an example
before I sit
for the second chutba.
We had a student from here who we
took for Umrah some years ago,
and we're in Medina.
And many of you have likely heard of
the prophetic traditions, the hadith,
about the tree that the prophet
used to lean against when he would give
the khutbah before the mimbr was
built. If you haven't heard of it, there
is a tree that the prophet used to
lean against
before the member was
built. And when the member is established, the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam, he
steps away from the tree and the Hadith
says that they can literally hear the tree
crying,
because the best of creation
wasn't leaning against it anymore.
And this young woman, she sat with me
one of the days that we were there
in Medina,
and she said, I don't really know if
I belong here.
That you all keep talking about this tree,
and I see all of these people standing
in front of the grave of the messenger
and in the
and the tears are just flowing out of
their eyes.
And she said, when I'm in the masjid,
I don't have any tears coming. When I
go to the hotel, I feel a little
bit remorse and sad. I wanna be back
there, but why are they crying and I'm
not?
Why am I not like this tree?
I said to her, you sound more like
the tree than anybody else
because the tree ain't cry when the prophet
was leaning against it. The tree cried when
it was away from the prophet.
And she said, I didn't see it that
way.
I said, that's what we're here for, to
help you see what it really is
and not what Shaitan wants you to see
it as.
Ramadan is a gift.
Have to see it that way.
You have to cut out the excuses and
tell yourself that there's any reason whatsoever
why you can't uniquely take from it everything
that is your right to take.
The goal is to not make it look
the way that it looks like for somebody
else. You gotta still study, you gotta still
go to work, you still gotta have responsibilities
honored.
But the starting point is going to be
from within here.
That you will hear chutba after chutba until
we get to there that's about prepping for
the month,
but the ability to act upon it and
the willingness to do so, not in a
way as if you are constrained by burden,
but you are compelled by real love
is gonna be based off of how you
see this thing in the first place.
Do you see it as a distraction?
Do you see it as heaviness?
Do you see it as something that you
can't participate in because you don't know how
to read the Arabic of the Quran? Because
you have to work at night?
Because you don't have the ability to fast,
you don't have wealth to give in charity,
are you gonna see it as everything that
it is?
And how there's still room for every single
one of us to take from it.
But it's based off of what it is
that we perceive it to be.
Allah will make us from amongst those who
understand what its actual meaning and purpose is
and not let any moment of these days
pass us by where we can ready ourselves
to take from that beautiful month everything that
we have capacity to.
Our intention is to provide an entire set
of programs and services as we always do
for Ramadan.
We hope that each one of you will
come
bring your loved ones, your family members.
It's the most majestic experience.
The ability to
break fast with you all and spend time
with you all and be here with you
all.
And as individuals, we can contribute now to
the collective experience.
If you can't get yourself ready for Ramadan
for your own sake, which is an important
reason to do it,
Get yourself ready for Ramadan so you bring
the best version of yourself for the rest
of us who are sitting here with you.
Get yourself ready for it, for the sake
of the people who love you more than
you might even know and willing to acknowledge.
The people who are your families, your friends,
your loved ones, the states that you bring
is something that will enhance the experience for
all of us.
You wanna be in a place where there's
continuity
and a recognition
that you will get out of it what
you put into it.
We will all be able to be in
a place where we truly benefit from this
coming month of Ramadan.
We begin this supplication in your name. You
Allah,
beseech you to send your choices salutations upon
your most beloved, salallahu
alayhi wasallam.
We ask that you shower your infinite mercy
upon this gathering, granting each and everyone who
is present here in and our loved ones,
only the best in this world and the
best in the next. We ask our love
that if all of us are meant to
be together only at this time, at this
place, whether we are young or old, male
or female, regardless of our race, our ethnicity,
our social class, our country of origin,
and
For individual hearts are meant to be in
the presence of all of their hearts that
are gathered here only at this time at
this place, then gather us all together again
in the best of places in the world
beyond this one. Increase us you Allah in
all
find find blessings in this month of Rajab,
in the coming month of Shaban,
and enable us you Rabbi to meet that
blessed month of Ramadan in the best of
states.
Make us those who take advantage of every
minute, of every hour, of every day that
you have given to us in these coming
weeks to meet that blessed gift in the
best way possible.
Help us in these days, you Allah, to
curtail our speaking of ill and obscenities towards
others.
Make us those who desire to be for
amongst those whose words are uplifting and bring
joy to the hearts of your creation.
Keep us from being those who lie and
break promises, cheat and gossip,
slander in any which way possible,
And help us you Allah to be in
a place
where we build a deeper relationship with your
Quran.
Make us from amongst those who understand its
deepest of meanings, most apparent in those that
are hidden.
Make us those who are not simply the
sayers of the words of that book, but
the ones who are the doers of the
word.
Grant us a character that is reflective of
the beauty that is your Quran.
Make us those You Allah who use these
days to build our routines in such a
way that we can stand even for brief
moments in the blessed parts of the nights
of Ramadan.
Help us in these days to make mental
notes of every name of every person that
we will be uttering prayers for in those
nights.
Within all of it, you're Ruby.
Help us to remember that all you want
from us is to try our best,
that we are not in a place where
our actions are for show,
That you look for reasons to accept from
us, you Allah.
In these days, help us to reach that
month and through it all, make it a
means through which we deepen in the recognition
of your presence,
the presence of your love, the presence of
your mercy.
Protect us always from hearts that are not
humble, tongues that are not wise, and eyes
that have forgotten how to cry. Forgive us
for our shortcomings and guide and bless us
all.