Khalid Latif – Pursuing the Higher Self The Book of Assistance #27
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So people wanna pull up the text.
We're looking at the book of assistance.
You can just Google, pull up on your
phone, your laptop,
the book of assistance PDF.
It's by Muhammad Haddad, and
we are on
the 9th chapter which is on reflection, fiqh,
which we're gonna finish up today.
And this is the last part
in a series of subsections where Mohammed Hadad
has been talking about
the concept of having a weird,
like a daily litany recitation of Quran,
the acquisition of knowledge, essentially,
the idea that you bring structure to your
routine
as a mechanism for increasing Barakah. Right? If
we were to give a definition
to Barakah,
it's essentially the ability to do more with
less.
And so where you can do more with
your time, you get more out of eating
less food, out of sleeping less,
and you think about how people have a
certain capacity or magnitude
to just accomplish some of the things that
they accomplish,
well, that's what Barakah is. Right?
And that's one of the key parts to
this, that the implementation
of some of the things that Imam Al
Hadad is suggesting here
are to be able to now bring
more
in pursuit of just inward growth,
but
in that process also yield these other things.
Right? Increased
blessing. If you ever feel very overwhelmed, there's
always so much to do,
then there's
quite often just a sense that I don't
have enough time in the day or on
the other end of it that
I just don't know what to do with
myself right now. Right? There's a day where
there's not work. There's a day where there's
just emptiness to the routine that I have.
What do I fill it with? You know,
and both
extremes can yield a lot of inward agitation.
For those who it's your first time with
us, this text is a text on spirituality.
Right? If we were to define
spirituality,
it's essentially the mechanism through which we ascertain
meaning from the environment we find ourselves in.
Right? How do I take from everything that's
around me to not just see things
simplistically,
but to see them as signposts that they
give to us now depth
that goes beyond what is most apparent.
And where and how this becomes a very
critical thing because we have a religion that
has ritual, but the challenge can come up
quite easily that it becomes
overtly ritualized.
That the idea is that the ritual
becomes the ends rather than a means to
something.
You know? So think about, for example,
somebody whose fudge or prayer really impacts them.
Impacts them. We're not judging people. The whole
idea is to think within myself.
If I prayed Fajr every day for the
last 10, 20 years of my life,
If I've gone to Jummah every Friday for
however many years,
I've observed Ramadan for however many years,
I give my zakah. I go for a
hajj.
I do the actions in and of themselves.
Would you think that somebody who does those
things,
they would lie very easily to people
or that they would gossip?
Right? My son just walked up here. You
probably see both my kids come in and
out in some point or the other.
If my prayer is doing for me what
it intends to do inwardly, not outwardly, but
inwardly,
do you think I would just be quick
to yell at my
child? Do you understand what I'm saying?
The transformative
nature of ritual and practice is not something
that can't be yielded
by just engaging in the practice mindlessly,
but if you engage it with a sense
of what it's supposed to actually yield. Right?
The fast,
so that perhaps you might attain taqwa. It's
one of the verses where Allah is telling
you, here's the act and and here's what
it's supposed to do for you. Do you
get what I mean?
The salah is meant to be a protection
from
and munkar, the Quran says.
So if I'm performing my salah,
but I'm still engaged in all kinds of
acts that are deeply problematic.
Right? I sit here with you and we
have a fun time. I don't know if
this is fun or not, but let's just
say fun is the word we use to
qualify it. Then we have iftar, we pray
together,
and God forbid, I go upstairs and I
just yell at my son and my daughter.
Do you see the problem that's there?
The challenge can come up. I'm praying with
my body, but I'm not praying with my
heart.
Or I'm not in a place where I'm
even thinking about the presence of my inner
self in the midst of all these things.
When you live in a society that teaches
you to look at yourself but not for
yourself.
And decisions quite often consciously or unconsciously are
not made from the higher self. Right? If
I stood up literally my higher self is
where my heart and my mind is. My
lower self is where my stomach and sexual
organs are.
Quite often, the pursuit is the simple satiation
of the lower self and not the appeal
of the higher self.
And so where we have multiple dimensions to
our tradition that is not just Islam
beyond the name of the religion, but Islam
in terms of practice.
You have then iman at a second dimension
which is theology,
faith,
our aqeeda.
You have then 3rd what is ahsan,
a lot of what we're talking about here
that brings now a third dimension that adds
depth and volume. That's how you can understand
the beauty of certain things.
And then all of it gets encapsulated in
time.
Right? That we exist in a frame of
reality
that is bound by time and that time
is not something that is infinite.
If anything,
this world has an end. We have eternal
existence.
Even though we're created beings,
we are meant to be existing forever. Right?
May Allah make us people of Jannah.
But fundamental
to this is this idea that at this
juncture
in my life, whether I converted to Islam
or not, whether I was born into Islam
or not,
regardless of where
I am in terms of religiosity,
observance of faith, even thinking deeply upon
theological concepts.
The juncture that each of us find ourselves
in is not the same as when my
7 year old comes here and he has
the faculties of a 7 year old.
His capacity is of a 7 year old.
What the world sometimes seeks to do in
a consumer driven society
is mute certain innate qualities that we have
that just as you have physical maturation.
Right? My 7 year old son is gonna
one day either look like this or look
like his mother or blend of 2. Let's
hope he looks like his mom.
But he's not gonna eat the same food
as when he was 7 months old as
when he's 7 years old.
And potentially when he's 17 or 27 or
37,
some of that will change also.
His ability to express emotionally changes. If you've
ever been around a 7 month
old, they can't do anything but cry. So
when you have children in your life, may
Allah bless you with amazing children if you
want to have children. When you have a
child, there's gonna be no shortage of people
who come in your face when your child
is crying and they're going to say, you
know, hey, your baby is crying. And you're
like, thanks. I didn't know my baby is
crying. Maybe they're hungry, maybe they're sleepy. I
didn't know you spoke baby. Thanks for letting
me know.
The only way that the child can express
is going to be through the mechanism of
expression that they're endowed with at that time.
But their ability to express emotions is going
to change from the time they're 7 months
to 7 years to 17 to 27.
They're just organic
development there.
Mental capacity changes also. The ability to just
understand
and comprehend and fathom
becomes quite distinct.
These things have
evolution to them
just as we grow in age. Right?
You don't eat the same food as when
you were 2 months old,
your spiritual self,
it also has evolution to it.
The idea with a text like this is
to become both aware
of where that evolution is going so that
you're not experiencing a Ramadan for example and
at the end of it you feel amazing
and spiritually
intoxicated and you're doing all kinds of things
you weren't doing, but since you didn't think
about what was actually yielding it, it's easy
to just go back to what it was
before the month.
Do you get what I mean?
But also,
the idea is to become conscious of what's
happening as well as what's not really happening.
That this thing that I bought, it actually
doesn't make me as happy as the commercial
thought that it would make me happy.
This device,
this
apparel,
this car, whatever it is, it's it's got
a limit to contentment
because it's not built to make contentment happen,
it's built to just give complacency.
It's built to make you dissatisfied
with what you have so that you go
and buy the new version of it.
So what this does is it tells us,
hey, this is where you actually can yield
contentment from.
And that you haven't understand that contentment can
coexist with sadness, contentment can coexist with grief.
The prophet alaihi salaam was the most balanced
of individuals.
He still cried when his son died. He
still cried when his wife passed away. He
still cried when his uncle Abu Talib Tala
died. There's so much that's going on there
that still can happen
with
a sense of balance. Do you get what
I mean?
The only way that this works though is
that if you actually practice
on what the text is telling you to
practice on. Because Ihsan
is not something that's remotely memorized.
The way that you can memorize
books of fiqh, You can memorize the do's
and don'ts. You can memorize articles of faith.
My son, when he was 3, he knew
Surah Ikhlas, Masha'Allah.
My daughter, she knew it also. My son
and my daughter look different in their personalities.
So my son when he's 3 years old,
he's just reciting it again and again and
again
all over the place. But if you ask
him, what does it mean? I'm not gonna
tell you what it means because he's 3
years old. Right?
Do you get what I'm saying?
But you can just memorize
and that can be seen as an ends.
There's certain things you can only understand experientially.
There's certain things you can only understand when
you tap into all of your organs of
sensory perception
that you begin to actually
experience food through its smell
consciously.
You begin to actually experience food not through
just the hands that are touching it as
you eat it but through the hands that
cooked it, where they made with hands that
love you, were they made with hands that
just see you as a dollar sign, and
then you can start to taste the difference
by what it yields for you after you've
eaten it.
Your sensory perception
takes in all of it and then your
heart synthesizes
it.
And then through the experience, you could say
that, you know what?
It tastes a lot different
when I'm eating food with my brothers and
sisters
versus when I eat food in a state
of hecticness
at the end of a busy work day.
What it does to me as I eat
in a gathering, then Inshallah the angels are
descending upon versus a gathering that is only
filled with how do we take more from
people who already have less than
us. What the food will do in terms
of nourishing your spiritual self, the experience is
going to tell you a little bit different.
Do you get what I mean?
This is what this text offers to its
reader.
The idea to experience the world but experience
it not just as a body but as
a soul and as a heart.
To not just experience it in terms of
what is it that it offers to me,
but in addition
to what is it that I can give
back while I'm in my time here.
That I can reprioritize
and I can think about this in proportionality
to what comes after this world.
We've gone through 9 chapters. They're quite easily
digestible. If you missed any of them, you
can go find all the stuff on our
podcast, YouTube channel, and just engage in it
as a exercise
that sees how the topics blend together,
and make a firm commitment that says that
I'm gonna do my best
to actually
implement some of what this is at a
pace that makes sense. So this entire chapter
has been about reflection, fickle.
And we're at a point now where the
topics that he's told us to reflect upon,
they're gonna take a pause with specificity
and then he's gonna go into a couple
of other things before the 10th chapter which
is on the Quran and Sunnah.
I want you to think about this also
because it's gonna be important to understand.
He's talking about reflection
before he's going to talk about the importance
of the Quran and the sunnah.
And if we don't get to that chapter,
we wanna think about this as another mechanism
of reflection.
Zari talked about reflecting upon Allah and the
magnificence of Allah through just the creation, the
ability of the divine, magnificence of Allah through
just the creation,
the ability of the divine, through just looking
at how marvelous things are around you. Reflect
even on yourself and look at how
uniquely
amazing it is the way you've been built.
Reflect on the favors that you have been
given from the divine and utilizing gratitude,
reflecting
on the hereafter,
reflecting on death, so many things.
I want you to take a pause and
then we'll go back to the text because
I want you to understand
now
in this way
because he's saying it's important enough that in
your
your daily practice, you do this in a
24 hour period. He says for an hour
or a few hours, there's reflection,
fiqr, contemplation upon something.
Why do you think he talks about it
before he talks on the chapter on the
Quran and the sunnah?
I want you to just turn to the
person next to you and answer this question.
If you've never been here before,
don't only talk if you feel like you're
saying the right thing.
Don't keep yourself from saying what you might
feel is the wrong thing.
When someone is speaking, just engage in empathetic
listening, not a listening to respond, but a
listening to understand
so we can grow from each other's perspectives.
Right? As a gathering, what we offer is
viewpoints not opinions.
There's a difference between things.
Quite often within religion especially this religion,
the terminology of opinion
gets understood from the standpoint of absolutes
And we want to be able to understand
it from the standpoint of vantage points that
can help us to think a little bit
bigger
and delve into these things that Allah built
us with unique from the rest of creation.
If God wanted me to be a dog,
he would have made me a dog. If
he wanted me to be a cow, he
would have made me a cow. The Quran
says you could be like a cow,
because all you do is eat and sleep
and have *.
But you've been given.
It makes you different from the cow.
Do you see what I mean?
So let's think about this just to get
our energy going and our mind going. Why
do you think Imam Al Haddad
talks about the importance of reflection
before he tells the reader to think about
the Quran and sunnah
as a mechanism for spiritual growth. You turn
to the person next to you and then
we'll come back and discuss. Go
ahead.
Okay.
So what did we come up with?
Why do you think?
What's like the wisdom of talking about reflection
before
you talk about following the Quran and the
Sunnah?
Yeah. I guess you have to press reflect
Okay. Great. What else?
Yeah.
Okay.
Other thoughts?
Yeah. We were kind of having a debate
about, like,
even if we reflect, like, do we necessarily
have to know the purpose of what it's
prescribed? Like, maybe God just says to do
it and then we do it. So, like,
we're kind of feeling like like at what
to what extent is, like,
do we have to know
why things are why things are what they
are?
What's the point of reflection?
Or what what are some of the points
to why we would reflect?
What's the whole point to it?
Yeah. It's
like a prerequisite for spiritual growth.
But what is it doing?
Like, when you're reflecting right now do you
know what I mean?
If I went to the gym this morning.
Right? And I'm,
like, the hugest person you've ever met in
your life. If I've been to the gym
this morning,
does the benefits of exercise
only transpire when you're physically exercising?
No. Right? Like, I go to the gym
and then Khaled who's not here today,
he and I are at the office and
my wife, like I said to you last
week, said, hey, can you go and help
me pick up a couch?
And then when we got to the place,
she has this little, like, shopping cart thing
and there's a giant couch.
And for some reason,
just thought the couch would fit into the
shopping cart, which clearly would not.
So Colin and I have to carry a
couch
from
inside of Stuyvesant Town
all the way to 23rd Street and Third
Avenue
and get it into the front door, an
elevator, and upstairs
all before the halukkah starts last Monday. Right?
So the physical exercise that I do every
day,
the stretching that he does regularly,
is it gonna only benefit me when I'm
doing it or is it gonna serve a
purpose
at both expected and unexpected times?
Do you get what I mean?
Right?
So
what's, like, the point of the engagement
of this
as an exercise?
What are some of the places that you
can see it
potentially benefiting
when you're not engaged in it deliberately?
Yeah.
From,
our side is that,
reflection
that allows
to see the defects or the scratches on
my heart.
And
then he goes into the Quran
and that reflection and a mental
But think about what is it strengthening
for you?
What is it before you apply it to
something,
The recognition of all of these things which
are very valid.
The way lifting a physical weight is going
to strengthen
the muscle that you are exercising at that
time.
What is reflection
strengthening for you?
Yeah.
Something that strengthens for me personally is
So what do you need to recognize
that?
Awareness.
Awareness. Yeah. Awareness. Right?
So one of the things that it's strengthening
for you is presence,
awareness. Right?
It's inculcating now a strengthening
of this.
If you walk up and down the stairs,
every place you go
is going to strengthen certain muscles in your
leg. Right? If your job has you seated
all the time, it's going to have an
impact on your posture and on your neck.
Right? There's things that have,
like, indirect direct impact on us.
Some things are involuntarily done or unconsciously
and they're impacting just our physical being and
the rest of us and some things can
be done consciously.
So I'm consciously
reflecting on something. Right? If I'm deliberately
bringing myself to a place of gratitude
to
understand and see all the things around me
that quite often escape me. Right? My kids
and I, we went to watch
the new Spiderman movie the other day and
we walked to a movie theater on second
Avenue and then we walked home a different
way And then we're seeing our apartment from
a different vantage point than we normally do,
and then I noticed and my daughter noticed,
like or my son and I noticed one
of the kids noticed and I noticed that
there is these pillars
that come out above
the store that's right next to us on
the corner of 24th and Third and then
the apartment building
juts out over it. I've lived here since
2008.
I've never seen that before.
And one of my kids was like, I've
never seen that before, Baba. Do you see
that? And I was like, oh, yeah. I've
never seen it. The other kid was like,
I knew about it. I was like, yes.
You always know. You know everything. It's great.
Right?
But what it's doing is it's creating an
opportunity
to now when you need presence,
you strengthen the muscle that allows in moments
where it's easy
to be devoid of presence to have presence.
Because when I'm sitting down and I'm writing
in a notebook,
why do I love my mother?
And then I actually answer the question,
who am I grateful for that I've never
said thank you to before?
And then I make myself vulnerable and I
answer the question and I just write. I'm
focused in a way that I'm not ever
focused before. The tears are dripping off. My
mind is just in the exercise.
All the other distractions are away.
So what you're doing is you're building that
strength and that capacity.
Does that make sense?
Can you imagine how different it would be
if you follow the Quran and the sunnah
with that kind of focus?
That there was actually presence in the action.
Do you know what I mean? The way
that, like, the water tastes after a long
day of fasting.
Try to fast in these days
of. Right? It's very different than fasting in
Ramadan.
You know, not a 1,000 people at the
IC breaking fast together, but I'm just sitting
by myself on a random Tuesday, Wednesday night,
and I'm just eating alone. Nobody else is
fasting. This is hard. Shaitan's Westwood says there,
it's hard. It's different. Good. That's how you
learn about yourself. It's experiential knowledge.
But you start to then think within that
when you
sip that water at the end of the
fast.
You eat that date and you can fast
on these days. If you've been Muslim longer
than 3 years, you were fasting in these
days some years ago. Right? The cycle changes
seasonally
in comparison to the Gregorian calendar. So you've
already fasted on this day some years ago
in terms of the time. The environment was
just different, but you could do it in
the physicality of it. I'm saying when you
taste that date and you drink that water,
everything is just experienced differently.
So when you're engaging in these practices, which
you're also building
is that mental muscle,
that focus of your heart so that later
on when you're walking down the street,
you actually have presence and it doesn't take
you. Like me, I've lived in this building
since 2,008.
It's 2023.
How have I never seen something that's in
the building that I live in for this
many years? Do you get what I mean?
Right?
And that's what these exercises do.
And just think, like, it's just a sunnah,
doesn't ever even come out of my mouth
because I'm experiencing the performance
of this prophetic practice with presence.
I'm experiencing the recitation of Quran and the
actualization
of a verse of Quran with presence.
It's not just the form, but the heart
is also there. The mind is there. All
of the sensory organs are there. Does it
mean every single time has to be that
way?
No.
But more of it can be like that,
and then the sweetness of it is experienced
a little bit different. Do you get what
I mean? What what do you think?
Any thoughts on what I'm saying?
If you can't incentivize
for yourself
what is the gain from it, then you're
not gonna do it.
And last week when I asked people how
has it been for those of you who
have been engaged in this practice of reflection
of fiqh,
most people said we didn't even try it
yet.
We've been talking about it for weeks,
you know,
and even embedded in that is an opportunity
to reflect. Why am I not doing it?
Do you get what I'm saying?
Shaitan doesn't want you to have presence in
the act.
This is where moments
are magnificent in our tradition and Allah just
looks for moments to accept from us.
The moment is rooted in the presence of
the inward.
If you just bring the presence to the
act, it becomes
categorically different
in terms of what it yields for both
the practitioner
as well as the beneficiary
of the action. Do you get what I
mean? What's the difference between giving zagat mindlessly
and just writing a check and pushing a
button and you're not even aware of what
you're doing? It's not that easier is sometimes
better. Right? There's all kinds of things that
can gain to you residual benefit that you
might not be aware of, but when you
can automate a donation for example, then you
don't even know what's happening.
Part of the exercise is the actual part
of the exercise. That's why
one of the opinions
traditionally
other than, like, the more modern opinion that
you can give zagat to an institution,
but traditionally is the god necessitated
a transference of ownership.
Right?
We have that engagement. It's very different. Do
you know what I mean?
Do you do you hear what I'm saying?
Does that make sense?
So
not doing things on a default
the default is not always better.
Right?
Like, having the presence in the act sometimes
becomes important.
Most of us are just taught to do
it to do it,
but not taught to do it with all
of us doing it. Do you know what
I mean?
So we're not taught, like, why
we're praying this not from the spirit of
the law, but with a sense of, like,
this is how you
pray with your heart.
This is how you make dua from your
heart. Do you get what I mean? And
the Hadith talks about it. The dua that's
not accepted is what? The one that comes
from a heart that's not attentive. This is
what the hadith says, you know.
So why? Because, like,
it's not from the tongue, it's from the
heart. So if the heart is not present,
then the heart is not present. Does this
make sense?
Okay. Let's go back to the text
where if you're in the PDF
that pops up first,
page 34,
which is like
a few pages into the 9th chapter
on reflection on fiqh.
Says, Were we to allow ourselves to pursue
the various channels of reflection
we would have to forego the brevity which
we intended.
Can somebody read from there?
Does anybody have it?
Yeah. You wanna read?
Keep going. You should, with each kind of
reflection,
bring to mind those verses, have these, and
other
No one ever became enamored of this without
fooling into the abysses of negation.
And the
Okay.
So let's take a pause here.
1, he's saying there's no limit to what
you can reflect upon.
Right? So you can engage in it in
various facets of reflection.
The things that he gave to us, you
can see why there's purpose to it,
but you wanna also take time to reflect
on the things that make sense for you
to be reflecting upon
that allow for you to bring more meaning
and intention
and awareness
and consciousness
to the different parts of your life.
You can Google
like what should I reflect upon.
You can Google
questions to reflect upon. You can Google
questions to contemplate, to meditate, any kind of
things. Right? We're not the only people who
do this. We don't own contemplated practice but
it's a deep part of our tradition.
But if you've never done it, there's people
who have done this for centuries
and you can just take from them what
it is that works.
You start to think and just engage in
a regular practice, regular exercise.
Get a notebook
and don't think that it's limited
so every single day you don't have to
sit and reflect on that what am I
grateful for.
Right?
If it's going to kinda make things a
little bit
kinda mechanical.
This is why, like, we fast some days,
we don't fast certain days
so that you still have a relationship
to fasting
that allows for some of the days to
be a little easier, a little bit more
difficult.
Right? You can change it up a little
bit sometimes. Do you get what I mean?
But the exercise
itself necessitates understanding
that there's so many things you can reflect
upon.
Start to gauge it by
recognizing that it's not just the same thing
again and again and again. Do you see
what I mean?
And where Imam Al Haddad brings to mind
Quran, Hadith,
like stories of individuals,
you start to see how these things are
brought into relation
with what it is that you know.
Right? So there's not
quantified
aspects to this. It's not that I don't
know so much Quran.
If you only know Surah Khlas,
it's a third of the Quran and its
weight and its value,
its
its impact.
Right? And you can distill this. Our teachers
tell us, for example,
the chapter talks very deeply about theology.
It gives us an understanding of who God
is. And foundational theology
to be Muslim
is rooted in 3 kind of parameters.
Monotheism,
you gotta believe in 1 God to be
Muslim. Somebody says I'm Muslim, I don't believe
in god. I'm Muslim but I believe in
more than one god. Well, that's out of
the categorical definition of what it means to
be Muslim. The finality of prophethood and the
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon.
Right? And afterlife. These are 3 foundational theologies.
Belief in Allah is 1 third of those
things.
Surahlas
is about
that
aspect of theology.
Does it make sense?
Right?
You have so much that's there. Imam Shafi
says, if all someone knew of the Quran
was that
would suffice
them. So you just think about it. You
reflect upon it.
These different frames. What does Surat Al Asr?
What does Surat Al Atras?
Like, tell me about these different things that
Imam Al Hadad is talking to me about?
How do I understand death through Surat Al
Asar? How do I understand the hereafter through?
How do I understand these different things through
these different, like, things that I know? Do
you get what I mean? And don't overwhelm
yourself by saying I don't know all of
it. Like, you work within the parameters of
what you do know and then you start
to say, hey. Maybe learning more hadith, maybe
learning more Quran would just give me more
of a base through which I can understand
things with more facets and get more meaning
from it. Do you do you see what
I mean?
But the main part of it that we
wanna think about is the part where he
is now saying,
if you're going to reflect,
don't go past this boundary of reflection.
Where the prophet alayhis salaam even admonishes and
counsels
his companions and the rest of us, that
when you're reflecting upon Allah,
don't reflect too deeply
upon the essence of who the divine is
because they can create an opportunity
that is going to actually have a negative
impact rather than a beneficial.
What does this mean, for example?
Right? Like, when you sit in gatherings with
people that are interfaith or multifaith.
I do a lot of interfaith work
and everyday people too. I've sat down with
people like the pope and the Dalai Lama.
They're nice people,
but in understanding what differs, if somebody says
to you in like a Islam 101
or you memorize these sound bite
tidbits of religion
that tell you that this is, like, how
we respond to certain questions and things.
And somebody says to you, is the God
of Islam the same God as the God
of Christianity?
The same god as the god of Judaism.
Well, in our religion, like, yes. Islam sees
itself as a continuity
to
various
religions,
texts, testaments.
There's an old testament,
a new testament,
a final testament. That's what we claim we
have. You see?
But if we were to now think about
it in terms of the details,
the essential understanding of God in Islam
is different from the essential understanding of God
and Christianity,
for example.
Does that make sense?
We don't believe
in
God being a male
God,
let alone a white man that is god.
And that's not to knock anybody's beliefs,
but the essential understanding of who God is
is different.
Do you see what I mean?
It's not the same. You don't have to
pretend like it's the same because it's very
different.
In Islam,
you read.
Right?
And it tells us
that Allah does not slumber.
It gives us so much insight into who
the divine is.
This is where there's essential difference from other
theologies.
We don't have an understanding of god that
is rooted in a god that sleeps or
a god that rests or a god that
eats or a god that dies.
You can understand this without
mocking anybody's beliefs.
That's not what Islam teaches its practitioner.
It does not teach its practitioner
to
take in arrogance in any form. Even a
mustard seed worth of arrogance and Adam's weight
of arrogance
becomes a preventative
mechanism
for entrance into Jannah.
Do you understand?
So thinking about it on the individualized
level,
Muhammad Hadad
is telling us, the prophet alayhi salam is
telling us,
there's certain things that we just are not
going to be able to understand about who
Allah is.
How can you fundamentally
know what it means to create something from
nothing?
And the way that that is done.
Says the Quran,
be and it is.
When you start to get into,
like, the details of things that necessitate a
mental prostration
in order to be able to yield
to an idea that says I've been given
the capacity to to comprehend
but it also has a limit
because Allah is Al Aleem,
that's not me.
I'm not the all knowing.
Allah is Al Hakim,
He is the most wise, not me.
I don't have the capacity
to understand and comprehend
all of it.
So where the religion exists in a few
different frames of understanding,
not just to
rational and irrational,
it makes sense or it does not make
sense to me,
Islamic theology
is rooted
and necessitates
embracing
what is super rational.
I don't have to understand it in order
for it to be true.
Does that make sense?
What I like for us to do is
take a minute
and just engage on this point.
Right?
That gives us an insight more so into
who it is that we are
in relation to who it is that our
creator is. Because it's a negative knowledge of
god that we
have of our understanding of Allah. We know
who Allah is by understanding
what he is not.
This is Kareem, by the way. You wanna
say,
Kareem made some
of his famous Nutella cookies.
There's a tray of them. It's not enough
for everybody,
but just to let you know that they're
there.
And first come, first serve.
But, Marcela,
that tray of Nutella cookies
is made by chef Kareem.
They also have nuts in it, so if
anybody's allergic to nuts.
They also have nuts if you're allergic to
nuts. Yeah. Thank you for letting us know.
Great.
I forgot what we were talking about.
What are we talking about? Yeah. So on
this point,
right,
religions
are about theology.
Do you know?
The example that comes to mind quite often
is when people ask me like, well, what's
the difference?
You know, it comes up quite often for
example, when people wanna marry somebody from a
different walk of life. You can't control who
you fall in love with. It doesn't mean
you have to deny that you love somebody,
but when it comes down to it and
somebody
says, well, what's really the difference? Right?
They're a good person.
I'm a good person. Yeah. You're good. Like,
that's not what makes religions different from each
other. What makes religions different from each other
are the theologies.
That's what makes religion different from another religion.
No religion
matches up with another religion a 100%
on its theology,
if it did, then it would be the
same religion fundamentally.
Right?
Then the theology is what informs authority, what
informs practice, what informs the why we do
what we do fundamentally.
And so here, Imam Al Hadad is saying
that there's going to be
a place
where your reflective capacity
is also not going to be able to
yield you
what is going to be fully comprehensible
of who the divine is.
Allah's mercy,
you can understand mercy through just how mercy
kind of is understood.
Right? You can understand kindness,
softness.
My 7 year old just told you
watch out. There might be something you're allergic
to in it. Right?
How cute is that? Do you know what
I mean? But also how sweet is it?
How generous is it? Literally, he's being Kareem.
That's what his name is.
Allah is more Kareem than that.
You can't even imagine how kareem Allah is.
There's no way of knowing.
And if someone was to tell you, well
I need it to understand
in some kind of just tangible
form,
It's beyond your ability to know,
beyond your ability to rationalize.
That's where the super rational is what you
submit yourself to also.
That I am built the way that I
am built. There's opportunities for me to have
entry points into it to understand
from fundamentally what I experience.
I love my kids so much
and the love that they have for me
are things that are so real. It gives
me courage. I'm so in love with their
mother.
I love each of you.
I feel the love that I get from
many of you.
Right? It doesn't mean that some of you
don't love me, but I don't know some
of you. Some of you is the first
time I met. I'm not gonna be full
of myself and be like, everybody loves me,
but I know some of you love me
and I know some of you know that
I love you too.
And those experiences,
what the poets say, become the mechanism to
be able to begin to fathom. What does
it mean then to have the love of
al wudud,
the source of all love?
That Allah loves you not because of who
you are, but because of who he is.
And how can you fathom that? You just
get an entry point to it and then
you recognize that there's just certain things that
I just don't know. And the danger that
comes in is that our religion does not
anthropomorphize
God in any capacity.
In any capacity
doesn't just mean when the verse talks about
a throne of God
that you create
now limits where there's meant to be no
limits.
But also,
for example,
anthropomorphizing
god based off of human interactions
that don't honor the rights that we're supposed
to honor.
So if you have parents or elders in
your life that do not treat you with
kindness,
Do not anthropomorphize
god in any way, shape, or form.
That the absence of love
or the presence of certain negatives
does not now inform who Allah is.
Does that make sense?
Does it?
Because it's really important.
A lot of our perspective of the divine
comes from places where unconsciously
we take from human interactions
that are not meant to be anything other
than understanding
that this is not
who represents god to us.
Do you hear what I mean?
So the way that somebody
fails to smile at you or only points
out your flaws
or tells you why everything that you do
is wrong
or only works in the parameters
of black and white can only see through
what is followed in haram.
Right? Literally, the hadith
says that when the prayers are presented and
there's inadequacies
in the fard of the prayers.
And the angels, they tell Allah that they
didn't do everything they were supposed to do.
He doesn't say, okay. We only start and
stop with what is black and white.
He says go and see if they did
anything extra.
That's like the love and mercy of your
creator.
He's telling you. His messenger is telling you
who he is.
It becomes hard because when people don't treat
us well,
we then take it as a mechanism of
shaping of what must God think of me
in this way.
Right? There's no anthropomorphizing
of Allah in our tradition.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense?
What I'd like you to do is just
turn to the person next to you. What
are you taking away from this?
Why is it an important part of us
in our relationship to the divine?
Right?
Think about it. Because a lot of books
of theology,
they're written just to disprove
other people's theologies.
And you can see it manifest if you
delve deep into religious study
or religious
experience, when people get zealous
in their
religiosity,
right,
not righteous but self righteous,
And there's a difference in the 2.
It gets to a place where conversations
that are not
really had if you don't exist at a
certain academic level
start to be had and
the ability don't even know half
the time what you're talking about. Do you
know what I mean? You don't even know
half the time what you're talking about. Do
you know what I mean?
Like, fundamentally,
most people, they're just parroting somebody else's words.
Do you know?
And the idea
of is
that of total unity, that of total oneness,
and it becomes,
avenue for many people to actually become divided.
Right? That's the trick that Shaitan plays on
people. Do you know what I mean?
Though he does not tolerate
divisiveness in any capacity.
It is the absolute form of oneness.
You get what I'm saying?
You wanna think why is this integral
to my understanding
of Allah.
Right? So if you turn to the person
next to you, what are some of the
things you're taking away from it? What is
it bringing up? And then we'll come back
and talk
for a few minutes. Go ahead. Okay.
Let's come back.
Any thoughts? Any takeaways on this?
What you wanna do if you've never done
before.
Right? There's a lot of classes that you
can access online right now.
Seekers guidance,
Sheikh Faraz Rabani. They have a lot of
courses.
The Macassid Seminary
in Allentown, Pennsylvania
will have some.
There's other resources that you can engage.
One of the foundational
texts on theology
that gets studied across
kind of theological schools within, like, the Sunni
tradition of Islam,
is of Imam Tahaawi,
Rahmullah.
Sheikh Hamza Yousef did
a translation of
it with some, like, notes
to it,
some years ago.
It's, like, got a green cover. It's pretty
easy, accessible.
There's a text called Al Fik Al Akba
that was authored by,
Imam Abu Hanifa,
is the greater fiqh. It's a book on
theology,
and there's also translations that have been done
of it. Mutti Abrahaman and Bin Yusuf,
was a really great scholar, Moshe la.
He translated
also with commentary on it. You can find
it. It's something I'd recommend if you haven't
just at your own pace.
Like you can take a class structured.
It creates an opportunity,
but theology is like the essence of religion.
You know? Because you're not just praying, you're
praying to God.
Do you know what I mean? And they're
2 different things. Right? And a lot of
us we pray,
but we're not praying to God
always. You know, we're not making Dua to
God. We're just making Dua.
Does that make sense?
Come down in a little bit. Okay?
Sorry.
Important things.
And it makes it that much more robust.
Right?
Because there's a difference
between,
like, living a life
in pursuit of dunya,
living a life in pursuit of jannah,
living a life in avoidance of jahannam,
or living a life that is just
longing to meet the creator of all of
these things,
you know,
and to have an appeal. When the prophet
passes from this world, the angels,
they ask the prophets before they
are
taken, like, do they wanna go? That's different.
Like, we don't get asked. We're just taken.
Right? Now I'll make the best of our
deeds the last of our deeds. It's very
real. You know? It can happen anytime.
I went to 2 weddings this weekend
for NYU
alumni.
It's really nice gatherings.
Saturday, I was in Albany. I drove my
sister's car.
I walked in. I saw all these faces
of people I haven't seen in a long
time. And it's a wedding. It's a Mubadah
gathering. And
I cry at everything. So I started crying
as soon as I started the hukbang
and very happy, everything's great,
close to the GW bridge
and I'm gonna turn to get off and
a woman from the 3rd lane over drove
into the car.
Right? If she had been a second off,
she would have driven right into, like, the
door and the window would have shattered in
my face.
Right? If it could have been anything different.
Do Do you know what I mean? But
just like that, very I might not be
sitting in front of you. It's not a
morbid thought. It's a real thought. Do you
do you understand what I'm saying? Right?
But the idea with the prophets
are that they're asked before they're taken. The
prophet, alayhis salam,
is asked as he's taking his last breaths
in his home where he's buried.
He says, marafikal Allah,
I wanna be with the highest companion.
Right?
He wants to be with his God.
He doesn't say take me to Jannah. You
know? He doesn't say he just wants to
be with Allah.
Do you see what I mean?
Religion is very different
when it actually starts to become about God
and the theology.
Conviction is really important in Islam.
And you've heard me say it before and
I'll say it again.
Islam is not an inherited religion.
You can be born into it and it's
patrilineal
in that sense the way Judaism is matrilineal,
but fundamentally
the theology
necessitates
recognizing it as being a discursive theology.
Like, you have to be able to know,
like, why you practice Islam
and the practice of it isn't that I
pray because my mother told me to pray
this way or I dress because my father
told me to dress this way. This is
why it's okay to disobey your parents when
they tell you to do haram
or that they keep you from doing a
fard
because
you are not a worshiper of your parents.
You're a worshiper of God.
Do you get what I mean?
Right? And if you believe
that your parents are the ultimate authority and
not Allah, then that's a problem. Do you
see what I'm saying? Right? So the conviction
has to be there. You know? The advantage
of being in community where there's people that
have shared life experiences
and you can
be understood
when you're quite often the only one that's
like you in certain spaces for a good
chunk of your day or even where there's
just generational gaps and religion is practiced differently,
then you take it as an inroad as
you start to get settled
to then understand the foundational
elements
of the religion
and that Islam is not a sociological
identity variable.
Right? It's not built in that way
that creates out groups and in groups
sociologically,
but it's a
theology that has to be explained
and it's embedded in our tradition. So when
you pass and you're in the grave, you
may Allah grant us ease and make it
a place of life for us. The angels
will come and they're gonna ask you, who
is your God? Who is your Lord?
Right?
These are the questions that are asked of
everybody.
Who is your?
What is your?
Who is your?
And part of this is about the embrace
of the theology.
You see?
And the journey can have oscillation
as you're trying to come into understanding of
certain things. It's much easier to understand it
when you're not taking life
and then making sense of who Allah is
through your life experience
versus you try to understand who Allah is
and then make sense of your life experience
through an understanding of who Allah is, not
the other way around. Do you get what
I mean?
So
engage in, like, a structured mode of learning
around creed,
theology.
Right?
You can take these classes, sit with somebody
who can help to give you an insight.
Go and listen to some lectures on the.
It's gonna tell you a lot about what
our theology is of who Allah is to
us. Not just the translation,
but the actual
of
it. They're drawing and extrapolating
understanding from the text. Do you know?
And then it can give you,
opportunity
to break away. Why is this important? Because
there's a paradox to decision making that when
you don't make a choice, you've essentially chosen.
And when you live in a white supremacist
society,
you are unconsciously
bombarded
by or unconsciously
impacted rather by what you are bombarded by
in terms of imagery.
Our God
tells
us there's not anything that's like a likeness
to him so anything that you understand Allah
to be you know that he is other
than that.
But when you walk literally through the streets
of America
every church
has iconography
in
it, and you are
exposed to not a grammatically
masculine god,
which is the god of the Quran,
but
you are exposed
to a defined
male
god.
That's why a lot of us believe in
a god that's an angry old man in
the sky.
Do you understand?
And does it help the case
that most religions
are just boys clubs.
Right?
Because it now just permeates in our consciousness.
There's not anything that's like a likeness
to
Allah
means that there's not a gender
Right? So you gotta, like, engage
in an understanding
at a base level,
read through a text. Right? There are 3
broader theological
schools
within Sunni Islam, the
Ashari, the Maturity,
and the Aatari
creeds,
And they can be seen as making up
an entire
robust system
of theological
understanding.
The the way there's a Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi,
Hanbali school of legal thought. And there's text
that go hand in hand with each of
these. You have respect for them
and not engage in talk
where you start to talk it down upon
anybody who practices
in one way or learns in one way
or the other. Right?
But if you haven't ever done it, it's
something that you should do at this point.
You get the books
and you read through them
and you engage within
the parameters of seeing, like, it's just gonna
enhance my experience with the ritual and the
practice. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Okay. Let's keep going in the text.
Just as a reminder to people,
we
are gonna have a far after Maghreb,
so please stick around. A few people went
downstairs
to bring the food up. If you leave
a little early, which is fine too, next
Monday, we won't be here.
We're gonna be at the IC,
like, 99%.
Sheikh Amar Shukri
is gonna be doing a talk, and we'll
have Iftar still. We'll keep the building open.
We'll either be in the prayer room or
the 5th floor where we do Jummah,
but just keep that in mind.
We'll still have a thar, and then we're
gonna do a thar for the day of
Arafa,
9th of
on Tuesday.
And we'll have
Eid in Washington Square Park and then brunch
inside on Wednesday.
All the details, if they haven't been sent
out, will be sent out
tonight. Sheikh Fayaz,
for those of you who follow, Sheikh
Fayaz in our Shia community
will be doing everything a day later. Right?
So they'll have iftar for the day of
on Wednesday
and Eid prayers on Thursday.
I'm more than welcome to join and get
another dinner on Wednesday night and have another
brunch on Thursday morning.
We can't fast on the day of Eid,
so
no,
like, kinda double dipping on the fasting.
But come and eat and enjoy the food
if you'd like.
Make special dua for,
you know, people who are cooking the meals
for us right now for a as well
if you can.
You know, Allah increase them and bless them.
Let's continue with that last paragraph, the aim
and spirit
of.
Is the plural of.
Right? So anybody wanna continue
on?
The aim and spirit of.
Who can read for us?
Yes.
Great. So
what is Imam Al Hadad saying here? Right?
He's giving you now
also
qualities,
metrics,
characteristics
of what's like the point of all of
this.
Right? So the aim and spirit of our
rod is presence with Allah.
Aim for it. You will reach it only
if you travel the road that leads to
it, which is performing the external activities
and striving to be present with Allah during
them. So what does this mean?
You can't gain the benefit of the act
without doing the acts that will yield
what it is
that comes only from the completion of the
act.
Right? You want the taqwa from fasting,
then you have to fast in order to
potentially gain the taqwa.
So there can't be, like, an elementary understanding
of ritual and practice.
The physical
aspects of ritual
are in and of themselves,
not the goal, but there's metaphysical
implications.
So don't think about this in terms of,
well, I'm not a bad person if I
don't pray.
No. You're not a bad person,
but you can't gain what you can only
gain from praying your prayers
without praying your prayers.
And you have to shift the paradigm
on what these things are about.
So
they're not an eitheror but a bothand.
Even if we looked at it purely through
the practice of fiqh,
right, the exercise
is necessary
in order to yield
what
comes
only through the performance of the exercise,
and the way that the exercise is done
is with this intention, this recognition,
and intention ality is something that's really important.
That's why Mia
is at the beginning of the book, not
in the middle or the end of the
book. Right?
He starts with,
certitude
in chapter 1, and then he goes into
Nia, intention. You know why you're doing what
you're doing before you set out to do
it.
If I do physical exercise
with the intention of vanity
or the intention of wellness,
the manifestation
is still the same. Right?
You're still doing the same physical exercise.
Zawad the hadith,
that actions are by their intentions,
gives, like, the example that
whosoever
made hijrah for Allah and their messenger,
then they made hijrah for Allah and his
messenger.
And whosoever
made hijrah
in order to marry a woman, they made
hijrah to marry the woman.
They all made Hijra at the end of
the day.
They all went from point a to point
b.
It looks exactly the same.
What's different is the motivation behind it. Do
you get what I mean?
So this isn't a religion that's about mindfulness
in the sake of just mindfulness.
Taqwa
is rooted in consciousness
qualified
by the presence of Allah.
There's an ethical imperative
that breaks away from relativism.
There's no moral relativism in the practice of
Islam. There can be ethics that are situational,
but you and I are not the determiners
of what is far than what is haram.
Allah is the one that determines what is
far than haram.
So you can go into the spirit of
the law, you can try to understand, well,
why can't I eat pork? But at its
base, you can't eat pork because the law
said don't eat pork.
That's just what it is. He is the
law giver
as well as the lawmaker.
That's how it fundamentally
functions. Do you get what I mean?
The intention
rooted in all of this
is that you are seeking to build presence
with Allah.
He
says that your goal is to not
find beauty, to find love.
That's not the goal. The goal is to
not seek
love, to seek beauty.
The goal is to seek everything within yourself
that you have built up as an obstacle
in relation to it.
What makes it hard
to feel the presence of Allah?
What makes it hard to feel the presence
of Allah's mercy, of Allah's love?
What gets in the way?
Because it's there.
Right?
In the midst of everything where someone says,
has god left me? Right? Why am I
not marrying the person that I want to
marry? Yeah. It's hard, man. It's not something
to undermine. It's not easy. Your pain is
subjective. May Allah grant you relief.
But like who's feeding you still during the
time of all of this?
Where is your provision coming from? It didn't
stop.
What becomes the vision modifier?
And so the intentionality
here is in this. Right? Mamal Hadad is
saying
that
your pursuit of this,
the aim and spirit of awrad
is presence
with Allah,
You're feeling like that intimacy with the divine
because everything in this religion goes back to
God,
like everything,
and you can choose to have it go
back elsewhere.
Does that make sense?
He's also now summarizing
this entire 4 chapter section
on the weird.
So he's wrapping it up. Here's what a
weird is and then here's the subsections.
In the weird, you have to have a
daily recitation of Quran.
You gotta engage in regular acquisition of the
idem, of knowledge.
You have to have regular practice of.
You have to have in a 24 hour
period
at least 1 if not few hours of
reflection.
And now he's saying the whole thing, the
whole point of these
are so that you have presence
with Allah.
And that intention has to be there.
I can exercise with the intention of vanity.
I can exercise with the intention of wellness.
They're 2
different motivations.
Do you understand?
I can seek to increase in presence
and mindfulness
so that I can take advantage
of a overtly mindless
human population.
When you are not aware of what you
think,
I can get you to think about whatever
you want to think about
or what I want you to think about
and let you believe that it's what you
wanna think about.
You might think that you dress the way
you want to dress
or you might eat the foods you want
to eat or you might spend time the
way you want to spend time,
there are people who are overtly mindful
that are sitting in gatherings
saying,
how can we
shape commercials,
advertising,
all of this
to get them to think that they're making
their own choices,
but we are getting them to make the
choices we want them to make that takes
money from their pocket and puts it into
our pockets.
You don't have a belief in an afterlife
and this world is everything that it is.
Why wouldn't I seek to get as much
of the dunya? And why would I care
how much of what I take from you
really does to you that you kill yourself
in pursuit of money that you're spending on
things that don't even give you real contentment.
In present with Allah,
you can say, I'm so happy
that Allah
gave me these beautiful people to sit with.
And I can just find an air of
recognition
of just bounty and through it. Right?
I bring the structure to the routine
that it yields an intentionality
that presence now is not something I use
to manipulate those that don't have presence,
but presence is a source of benefit. It's
a source of good. Does that make sense?
And the performing of the external activities
and striving to be present
with God during them.
When you persevere
in this,
you become immersed in the lights of proximity
and the sciences of noses emanate upon you
at which your heart becomes wholly intent on
Allah
and presence becomes
its nature and well established quality.
Why do I want this?
Why would somebody want this?
Why is it something
that I want to strive for
to have this
awareness,
this presence?
It's an important question that you have to
answer for yourself.
You turn to the person next to you
in just this part,
these lines,
when you persevere
in this, you become immersed in the lights
of proximity
and the sciences of gnosis emanate upon you.
Madhava
comes to you. What is Madhava? The day
of Adhava is upon us, right? There's a
lot of different ways that the word
knowing gets translated into Arabic, or from Arabic
we translate.
Is knowledge.
Is comprehension.
Right? So if I ask my kid 2
plus 2 equals 4. Do you know it?
They know it. If I say, do you
understand
that 2 plus 2 equals 4?
It's It's not just anim, it's fam. Right?
That's a difference in terms of understanding.
When the Quran says so
that you know one another, that's why we
made you into nations and tribes,
It's an intimate knowledge, an experiential knowledge. That's
what Madhafah is. The day of Adhafah, you
just stand on the plane of Adhafah
and you're standing making dua to Allah. So
you're building now contentment
through your knowing of the divine.
Which your heart becomes wholly intent on the
law and presence becomes
its nature and well established quality.
Why?
Why do I need this?
Why is this something that I should have
as a goal?
Then ask the people and talk to the
people around you, and they will come back
and discuss. But actually discuss this.
Right?
Other times, when we're saying break and discuss
whatever, you can talk about whatever you want
to.
Overcome,
engage,
do the tawad.
So what's was says out?
Why does my heart need this?
Because that's the thing with all of this.
The contentment of the heart is rooted in
Ma'arifah. Why? Just think about it.
Why does my heart need
this presence?
Why does the world
need people who have this presence?
Why is this something
that has to be an objective
of Muslims who practice Islam?
Just talk to the people around you and
then we'll come back and discuss. Go ahead.
Okay.
So what are we talking about?
What's coming up for people?
Why is this something that I need?
The end result of this this presence.
Or you could say, we don't need it,
and,
like, why do you not need it?
Why would this be beneficial?
What did you talk about?
Yeah.
But why do I want my heart to
be present with the love?
Do you know what I mean?
Not like just presence in the recitation
or, you know, like we're sitting here and
some of you are focused on me and
I'm focused on you when you're
talking and some of us are, like, you
know, taking in all other kind of stimuli
and there's other stuff going on. Right? It's
not a good or bad. This is the
thing.
But
why do I need presence
with Allah
or the presence
of Allah, like a recognition of it, why
is that something, that proximity that he's talking
about, what's the benefit of that?
Yeah.
What would you mean? Because it's gonna last
longer.
What's gonna last longer? Our connection will it's
not gonna play easily. Nothing's gonna sort of
like.
But why do you need it? What's what
will that do for you?
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. What else?
They can,
feel the pleasure of paradise in this world.
So,
so let
our hearts go to that degree
where we meet a lot in public setting
before it has to. Yeah. Amazing. Right? And
what's going on there when that happens? What
were you gonna say?
And you think. Right? There's
different parts to this.
The prophet
not only knows who Allah is to him.
Right? So that's one thing. Just because you
know something
doesn't mean that you are present in that
knowing.
Right? It doesn't assume that.
Right? But not only does he know who
his god is,
but he also then has a presence with
that god
both in a recognition
of Allah's presence
but also in his heart
is that aspect of Madhifah.
There's that intimate knowing.
And then just think about, like, how he
lives his life.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, you're not any
isolated part, but every part of his life,
Like, how does he
do things?
Kind, generous,
compassionate, just,
equitable,
anti racist,
anti every form of hatred and bigotry.
It's informed
through that presence.
Right? You can't have that presence and be
a jerk.
You can't.
You can't have that presence
and be in a place
where
you
miss
treat. You can be in a place
where you still deal with difficulty.
You can be in a place where you're
still trying to understand and comprehend. Turns to
Allah and says, you know, have you forsaken
me? Aisha radiAllahu ta'ala Anha asks him what
is the most difficult
day in your life? And he doesn't say,
yeah, Aisha, we don't complain. He said, Taif
was the hardest day in his life.
But there's still presence that's there. The presence
that comes when revelation
has a gap for some years, the prophet
thinks he did something.
He doesn't say you people did something and
now there's no revelation.
He thinks I did something and now there's
no revelation.
Do you see the difference?
And then you're able to find, like, meaning
in things.
You know the prophet, he has a daughter
by the name of Zaynab.
Zaynab bint Muhammad
is the eldest daughter of the prophet
born to him from Khatija radiAllahu ta'ala Anha.
Zaynab Bint Mohammed has a beautiful love story
with a man by the name of Abil
As.
And before the prophet is a prophet,
Zaynab,
she shows
that she feels a certain way towards Abu
As, and Abu As demonstrates this too. When
you're in love with somebody, you have attentiveness.
This is what these next paragraphs are gonna
talk about, about how when you really love,
you can't do anything other than be attentive
because you just wanna listen to everything the
one that you love has to say.
And there's a long kinda story that goes
into this.
Maybe there's a benefit in sharing it, so
why not? So Zaynab bin Mohammed,
she shows that she likes
Abil As.
Abil As once comes now to the prophet
alayhi salam and says that
I want to marry your daughter.
And the prophet doesn't say I already know
that she likes you and you like her,
but he says,
I have to ask her what she thinks.
It's not a religion where just because you
are the father you get to just decide
what the daughter does.
The prophet of God goes and asks his
daughter even where he already knows the answer.
He says, Abu Az has asked for your
hand in marriage, what do you think?
And the hadith says that she just simply
smiles, she blushes, she lowers her face.
The prophet already knew.
They get married to each other.
Then
the prophet, at some point, gets wahi, revelation.
And he is now a prophet of God,
and these 2 are already married to each
other. And Zanaab tells her husband, Abbas,
that my father
has been
made
a prophet and the last prophet to all
of mankind,
and I'm now Muslim.
Would you become Muslim too?
And Abu'l A says
I can't become Muslim like this.
The people will say
I only
became Muslim
because my wife was the daughter of Mohammed.
And Zannib says I'm still with you.
They're still together.
The prophet then makes hijra to Medina,
And everybody is going to Medina.
And Zanaab comes to her father, who is
the prophet,
and says,
let me stay in Mecca.
The prophet,
who knows what it means to love someone
because he love Khadija
so
much. He doesn't say I'm the messenger of
God.
You're gonna turn away from me,
but he says, be with the one that
you love.
Stay with your family.
The battle of Badr happens,
Zayneb sees Abelas putting on his armor,
what are you doing?
I am of Quresh.
I have to go and be with the
Quresh.
Zannah
sees her husband go to fight in a
battle against her father,
makes dua, you Allah, give victory to my
father, but let my husband come home safe.
He's a prisoner of war. We win bother,
if you don't know that.
And the Meccans are told that if you
want to exchange the freedom of these captives,
bring something for them. So they tell people
in Mecca, and Zaynab looks through her home,
and she finds a necklace that belongs to
her mother, Khateja
She gives it to the emissary.
He goes to Medina. It goes from hand
to hand to hand until it comes in
the hands of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam. He sees the necklace.
The hadith says he looks at it, he
takes
scent of it, he knows that it's Khadija's
necklace.
That's what love does.
That's what presence does.
He says to his companions
that this is Khadija's necklace,
are you okay if I give it back?
And are you okay
if I send it home with Abil As?
And they say, Yes, of course, the messenger
of God.
Why would you want to have anything less
than that?
And to end the story, so that it's
not just stops there,
the prophet gets revelation and he tells that,
Allah has told me that no longer can
the mumin and the mushrik be married to
each other.
It's okay, can you send my daughter home?
But Oz goes back with the necklace and
gives it to Zana.
He says, we are going now. And she
she says, are you leaving again? And he
says, I'm not the one that's leaving.
You're leaving.
Your father
has said that you have to go home.
We can't be married anymore. He said that's
what god told him.
Zanaab is pregnant at this time. This is
all Nasira.
When she departs
the Mus'egeen
they know she is the daughter of Muhammad
and they just lost Badr.
They say, we're not gonna let the daughter
of Mohammed just leave.
They strike this pregnant woman
and she falls on the ground
and she experiences a miscarriage.
The seerah was what makes the Quran
real.
Zainab goes back to
her husband's home,
stays there for some time for her former
husband,
and then again departs.
And now she's in Medina
and does not marry anybody for 6 years.
Zayd bin Haditha,
he along with some others are at a
point now 6 years later when when caravans
are coming, they are stopping the caravans.
Abu As is in a caravan. Zayd bin
Khalifa stops the caravan.
Abu As leaves from the caravan with nothing.
He's now in Medina, at the outskirts of
Medina.
Nobody is going to do anything for this
man. Medina is not close to Mecca. He's
not down the street.
He's gotta figure out what do I do
in a sea of people who don't want
to do anything for me.
But he knows that the love of Zanaab
is true and real.
So he goes to Zanaab
and he knocks on the door and she's
elated,
he's Muslim, and he's like, I'm not Muslim.
I need your protection.
And she says, father of my children,
you have my protection.
They pray,
the Muslims,
the next day,
and then at the end of the prayer
Zainab says
that Abu'as is under my protection. He's free.
The prophet
reiterates
asking what she's saying
and then says, you heard it, Abalaas is
under her protection.
Some days pass and he's getting ready to
go back to Mecca.
And Zainab says, would you become Muslim?
And he says, not like this.
I can't.
What will the people say?
He leaves and goes to Mecca,
and he stands in the city
of Mecca
publicly
and says, do I owe anybody anything?
Any debts?
Some people come and say, you don't owe
me anything,
and some people say, you owe me something,
and he settles the debts. And once it's
done he says,
anybody else, do I owe you anything?
I say no.
And he says, then know this.
I bear witness and testify
that there is nothing worthy of worship except
Allah, and I bear witness and testify
that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.
And he goes back to Medina
and he now
tells his wife that I'm Muslim.
She did not lose hope in it, even
for a minute.
They spend 1 year together in this way,
and then Zana passes.
And then shortly thereafter,
Abu'laz passes. And this is common. Even if
you have elder people who they're so in
love with their beloved,
that when one passes,
typically,
shortly thereafter the other passes. Because the heart
can't live without the one that it loves.
That's what love can do for you. Do
you understand?
It makes you acutely aware.
The presence of the prophet,
the presence of the divine,
he knows how to interact with his daughter.
The presence that he has
allows for there to be meaning in a
simple necklace
that comes into his palm
of his beloved who passed
prior to them being in Medina.
That's why you wanna have that presence.
It makes things that sometimes seem so futile,
actually things that are so
abundant with meaning.
It doesn't necessitate
then chasing after what people believe
money, wealth,
houses,
cars, whatever else that that's what I'm gonna
chase after. No. Just what I have in
front of me, that's all that I really
need.
All I need is you.
All I need is the gift of, like,
a good friend.
All I need is this simple stuff that
I have, not so much more.
That's what the presence does. Do you understand?
Does that make sense?
And as Imam Al Hadad, he continues,
he gives a depiction that you don't want
to be confused.
This is not telling us in the end
of this paragraph
that you just forget about people because the
prophet who was
so aware and full of presence of the
divine
and aware of the proximity of the divine,
he didn't do anything other than for 23
years
help people and serve people and be there
for people.
Just to finish the chapter,
beware of leaving a withered for fear of
not being able to persevere in it for
this is foolishness.
What does it mean?
Don't let shakedown get in your head. It's
stupid to say I'm not gonna do it
because I won't be able to get it
done or I won't be able to have
consistency
in it. You start some place.
A minute is better than nothing. This is
not a practice that says if I can't
do it this much, then I shouldn't do
it at all. If you can read one
verse of the Quran,
don't say it's only one verse, then just
say I'm reading the verse of it and
that's it, and work within your capacity.
Beware of leaving aware for fear of not
being able to to persevere in it for
this is foolishness.
You should not do in each period of
time whatever happens to suit your energy and
free
time. On the contrary,
you should have a minimum that you perform
which you can add to whenever you feel
energetic,
but never fall below
when you feel lazy.
Meaning what?
Read one verse every day.
If a second day or a week from
now or a month from now you can
read 2, great, but always read at least
1. If you can read a page,
amazing. You're not in competition with the person
sitting next to you. It's just you taking
on you. So the I that is me
is not afraid to meet the one I
can potentially become tomorrow. You go at a
pace that makes sense. Does that make sense?
So there is a floor.
This is what I know I have capacity
to do
every single day.
What is a verse of the Quran?
Alhamdulillahi
rubilalameen.
That's all you gotta do if you're doing
1 verse a day. The shortest verse of
the Quran says what? From another. That's
it. It's mentioned in Hanafi fiqh books because
when you are learning the fara'id, and the
wajibat,
and the sunnas of prayer, the fara'id in
the Hanafi school does not require you
to know Fatiha from day 1. You just
recite the shortest verse in the Hanafi school.
That's the obligatory.
Is that how you should pray? No. But
if somebody's new to Islam and Islam becomes
now in there,
like, lifestyle,
the next prayer is fuddered upon them. They're
gonna go from one step to the next.
This is why if you don't know your
fick, you should come to our Wednesday night
class where we talk about this.
Because there's a difference in knowing versus teaching
how to.
We make it really hard for a lot
of people when we're giving them the end
product
rather than the philosophy on education
that yields for them phases. That's not just
if you're a convert, but if you're just
revisiting your relationship with prayer. You didn't pray
for many days, you don't know how to
pray, and now it's there. There is legally
excusable reasons
as to why you might only do what's
obligatory
as you're learning what's and
you're learning what's recommended. Does that make sense?
But you gotta start somewhere. So start with
some part to it. And then he says,
know that hastening to acts of goodness,
being careful with acts of worship, and persevering
in obedience,
constitute
the ways of the the way of prophets
and the saints, meaning the odiya,
both at the beginning and end of their
affair, meaning that from day 1 till the
last day,
that they're doing what they can get done,
that this is the world of exertion.
As you get older it doesn't mean that
you do less, and and as you're younger,
you don't wait to do what you can
today until tomorrow.
There's a lot of people who have a
lot of regret around Hajj these days because
Hajj for Americans is not as easy as
it was before and they're kicking themselves saying
that I wish I had just gone when
I had the ability to go. Now I
gotta go with this wonky system and I
don't have the privilege that I had that
the rest of the world did not have.
So learn from it. Why are you waiting
on other things that you can do today
till tomorrow? What if tomorrow doesn't come? What
if the woman drove into me instead of
the fender of the car? What would I
do?
And you can say don't think like that,
but that's exactly the way you have to
think.
So that there's a value to every minute.
So I'm not going to sit and waste
time arguing over silly things with my beloveds.
But when I leave I say I love
you, when they go to bed I say
I love you, when we wake up we
say we love each other.
Right?
Right? Because you don't know,
and you have to think about it that
way.
So know that they hastening to acts of
goodness.
This is the way of the prophets of
the saints
both in the beginning and end of their
affair
for they are the creatures with the most
knowledge of God. It doesn't say that they
have
all of the knowledge. It doesn't say that
they have absolute knowledge. It says they have
the most and language is important,
meaning that there's still things that one can
know.
The most knowledge of God and it is
therefore not surprising that they are the most
worshipful,
obedient, and fearful of him, a zohjal.
That it translates that is
just gonna bring you to do good things.
It's gonna get you to be in places
where you're not self serving, but you're serving
a lot through service of his creation.
The attentiveness of a servant is equal to
his love for his Lord.
Love is consequent upon knowledge. In as much
as God's servant grows more knowledgeable of him,
so also shall he love him more and
worship him more
awed
and following passions to have awed and keep
to acts of worship,
strive to give your Lord an hour at
the end of the day when you occupy
yourself with glorifying him, asking forgiveness,
and other kinds of devotions.
It's been related that Allah the exalted has
said, son of Adam, give me an hour
at the beginning of your day and an
hour at its end, and I will take
charge for you of all that is in
between.
It's also been related that the record of
a servant is shown to God at the
end of each day.
And if at its beginning and end there
is goodness,
Allah
says to the angel,
erase what is in between.
This is Allah's graciousness to us and all
people,
but most people are not thankful.
I'm gonna ask my kids to pass out
dates. Can you pass out dates to everybody?
Maghrib is coming in right now. So if
you're fasting, break your fast on the date.
But so that we don't leave it
just with me throwing words at you,
talk to the people next to you. What
are you taking away from the conversation?
And we'll wrap up in, like, 3 minutes,
but you wanna take away concrete takeaways.
What is it bringing up for you? Let
yourself be comfortable with your vulnerability,
and let the person that's talking to you
see that you actually want to hear what
they're saying.
We'll come back and wrap up, and then
we'll pray Maghrib and we'll have Iftar Inshallah.
So just the takeaways and then we'll come
back and discuss. Go ahead.
Okay.
What are some of the things we're taking
away from tonight?
Anybody?
Maybe a few people before we wrap up.
Yeah.
Reflection will increase presence and awareness. Amazing.
Right? It's a simple religion.
Allah built this in ways they're not so
hard to understand.
You just have to, like,
think about it and then
do something with what it is that you
learn about yourself.
Reflection will increase in presence and awareness.
Other thoughts? Other takeaways?
Presence will increase
in contentment and meaning.
And presence will increase in contentment and meaningfulness.
Right? Do you see how what we're saying
has substance to it? It's not a slogan.
It's not a copy and paste thing that
you just mindlessly read on devices that are
purposely built for mindlessness.
Right? The way you're saying it is different
than how you might read it. So you
have to take it and then let it
actually resonate
and say, wow. These things make sense.
So now what do I do with this
information?
What else? What are other things that we
can take away?
And even if it's just these 2, these
are amazing things to realize. Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right? It becomes harder to deny responsibilities,
you know, fulfillment of things. The prophet alaihis
salam was the hardest worker outside of his
house,
but he was also the kindest person inside
of his house.
He didn't exert a dynamic of saying what
are your rights
over me in the sense of what do
you owe me,
but how is it that I serve you
in doing what he did outward of the
house? Inside, he still comes in and he
gets things done,
And that's where there's this balance that comes
from this presence. Right?
Other thoughts?
Yeah.
The attentiveness
a servant has
is equal to the love that he has
for.
Yeah. About saints.
The attentiveness
that the servant had,
it
creates
kind of an equality from for the love
of Allah. There's like a directly proportional relationship
there. Right?
That attentiveness
helps to yield love.
Love helps to yield attentiveness. Right? But you
know these things. It's not to be crass
in our description.
If you've ever been in love with somebody,
right, use somebody like you, like, think about
the first person you ever had a crush
on in your life. Do you know what
I mean? And if you're like, I've never
done that. You're lying. It's not possible. And
every single time this person would come into
interaction, are they looking at me? Are they
not? Right? The number of Muslim kids that
I sit and talk to and adults, and
they'll sit in the chair with me like,
man, this girl said salaam to me. You
think she wants to marry me? I'm like,
no.
She does not want to marry you. She
just said salaam to you. That's all she
did. What is wrong with you? Right?
But that's what happens when you're overtly, like,
attentive and awake.
Everything that the one your heart is attached
to is something that you're, like, trying to
find meaning from. Do you know? That's where
they're all connected to each other. Do you
get what I'm saying? Does that make sense?
Right?
And, yes, just if somebody says hi to
you, it doesn't mean that they want to
be the parent of your children. The two
things don't go hand in hand with each
other. You know?
Yeah. Go ahead.
So beautiful. Right? So beautiful. Because you would
think that
normally,
any
That's why you have to know the Sira.
Right? They're not stories
only,
but it makes the Quran concrete,
and it makes it hard for somebody to
say that, well, my culture this or my
grandfather this or your mother this. Right?
Like, you can't be racist
if you see the way the prophet lived
the Quran. The 2 can't go hand in
hand with each other.
Right? There's no there's no fundamental way.
How can somebody validate that type of behavior
when they read and understand
the life of the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam. You see what I mean? How
can you validate, like, only interacting with people
who come from the same race, the same
culture, the same social class or looking with
disdain in people who have less than you.
Do you get what I mean? Right? And
it's a beautiful story. And the other thing
is also you can just read these stories
and they're beautiful
and it can impact your heart. Right? It
can remind you, like, why am I Muslim
in the first place? You know? You go
back to the early generations
not in a puritanical
sense, but in a sense that allows for
vitality
and rejuvenation of your inside. Does that make
sense?
Okay. Let's take a pause here.
Next Monday, we're gonna likely not be here
unless something changes,
which might. I might ask Sheikh Hamar if
he wants to join us on Tuesday on
the day of Arafah,
but I don't know if that's what I'm
gonna do. I'm just saying this out loud
so people know. So look at the emails,
like, check social media,
but we'll let people know. But more likely
than not, we'll be there on Monday night
because that's what he and I had agreed
to. On Tuesday,
I'm gonna do a halukkah
probably around 6 or 6:30.
A big part of it is just gonna
be making dua.
Right? The the prophet
he says that, like, the best of duas
are on the are the duas of Arafa.
You know what I mean? That's what you
wanna do. We're in.
These days are the best days to do
good deeds, which also means don't do bad
things on these days.
If you don't regularly pray your prayers, try
your best to pray your prayers. Do the
If
you struggle with doing all 5, like, try
to do as many as you can.
These aren't days to be mean to people.
These aren't days to gossip. They're not days
to backbite.
And start to think from this day what
are the duas that I wanna make on
the day of Arafah.
Right? You remember how we made du'a at
the Qiyam
in Ramadan?
I don't know if that's what we're gonna
do
on Tuesday, but there's a chance. And if
you remember, for those who were there, there's
parts of the time when we make duas
together as a community. We can just make
whatever duas that you want.
It's not a time where you want to
just be kinda fully scripted. You just wanna
get your heart ready. If you get fast
in these days, it's recommended to fast the
1st 9 days. But definitely, if you have
the physical capacity to fast, fast on the
9th of Dhurija,
which will be next Tuesday, a week from
tomorrow,
and it'll allow us to reach it and
benefit from it. It's not like any other
day.
I went for Hajj the first time in
2,005.
It was in the 1st months that I
started working here, and I was fully volunteer.
And I'm so happy that I went for
Hajj that
that year. All I asked a lot to
do was put butter cut in this,
and I can still remember standing on the
plane of Arafat.
It's not something you can forget.
If I'm ever blessed to be there with
you, I will show you where I stood
in the year 2,005
because I remember not only the exact spot,
but what the person standing next to me
and behind me looked
like because it's a moment you can't forget.
If you have the means to go for
Hajj,
go for Hajj. It's the only pillar that
we're taught in the Quran
with this condition. The other prayers and pillars
have the same things. If you can't give
zakah, you don't give zakah. If you can't
fast, you don't fast. If you can't pray
fully
with your body, you pray with as much
as you can. If your body doesn't move,
you move your eyes. If you can't do
that, you pray with your consciousness. You can't
pray with your consciousness, you just don't pray.
But Hajj is the only thing that Allah
says if you have the means to do
explicitly,
which means there's some people who will not
have the means to do it. That's not
each one of us. Some of us have
the means and you're choosing not to go.
You can't do that.
So think about it for next year as
best as you can,
and allow for yourself to then experience these
things.
What kind of practice is this that you
just have to do it once and then
it's gonna be that transformation. Do you get
what I mean? But while we're here, these
are days we can still take advantage of.