Maryam Amir – Softening Your Heart
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AI: Transcript ©
In critical race theory for urban high school students of color.
Currently, she's pursuing a second bachelor's degree in Islamic
studies through al Asmaa University. Mariam has memorized
them and is a second degree black belt in Taekwondo. She travels to
work with different communities on topics related to spiritual
connection, social issues and women study. She lectures with
hexa Institute and writes for virtualmas.com and anjoma.com now
introducing Maria Marie. You
when I was first coming to make a particular job, I started by
asking Allah with like, all my heart, like, oh, Allah, give me
this. And I would beg Allah, and I would cry. But in that process, as
I was making that dua, in my heart, the whole time, I was
thinking, Allah going to answer me. Why would Allah answer this
dua when he knows how badly I want it? Why would he give this to me
when he knows how much I want it, he's going to give me the opposite
of what I'm asking for? Have any of you thought that when you've
made dua? It took me some time to process that Allah tells us I am
as my servant thinks I am. So when I'm making dua, I'm like, oh,
Allah, answer my dua. And in my heart, I'm thinking about him, in
the stingy, in this, in this way that he wants to come out and get
me. I'm thinking about him like that. So why would he answer all
of that pain and effort and in my heart the whole time thinking he's
never going to respond to me? Allah SWT tells us, make do, add
to
me. I will respond to you. He tells us that he doesn't say, I
will respond the opposite. He says, I will respond to you. Now
sometimes, when we make dua,
the opposite does happen, and we wonder, why are we being tested in
this way? Sometimes something happens and we think, as is Allah
mad at me, am I cursed? And it's hard for our hearts to remember
who Allah is, and it takes time for us to shift the perspective
that we have and the way that we look at what's happening in our
lives, to focus on the mercy of Allah and His wisdom and the
things that happen in our lives, softening our hearts and hardship
is difficult at times, because sometimes we might feel resentful.
Other times we feel like there's no one who will understand about
Allah. And so we come back to him even closer today, Inshallah,
we're going to talk about three points and how we can establish
this connection with him in a way that will help our hearts feel
alive, and in a way that will help us feel Allah sometimes love for
us, even when we're going through some of the most difficult things
in our lives. When you're reciting Quran today, we already had a
Quran session earlier, and I described the fifth differences of
opinion on women reciting I'm planning to recite today, because
when you recite the Quran, it is totally different from just making
a statement that's very important for my personal Imam, and I think
it's very important for our Imam, collectively as an ummah, to
reconnect with the Quran. If you have a film question about this,
feel free to talk to me afterwards. And shall we went to a
discussion about it in the earlier session. But let's look at the
three points. The first one is
when we're looking at the hereafter, when we're looking at
death having hope,
when you hear about death, when you think about the reality of the
fact that we're all going to pass away, it's terrifying. It's very
scary.
But
when you look at it in a way, when you're alive, you're hoping to
meet Allah, so you're working towards that that perspective is
the difference between having hope in meeting him and making
decisions that doesn't reflect that hope. I'm going to give you
three beautiful stories of people when sha Allah hoped to meet
Allah. The first one is of a child and my mom, when she was in like
middle school, her sister had a friend who was in, excuse me, her
friend had a sister who was in elementary school and she had
cancer, and she was passing away, and she was on her deathbed in the
hospital. And she's surrounded by her family, her parents, and she
says to them, mom and dad,
who are this who are these people who've come into the room? She saw
a man and a woman, and she said, there's such a beautiful man and
such a beautiful woman in my room. Do you see them? And they didn't
see them. And she said, they brought me the most beautiful
white dress I've ever seen. Do you.
See the beautiful white dress that they're holding,
and their parents couldn't her parents couldn't see that at all.
And she's talking about these beautiful people and this
beautiful white dress, and then she passes away. I cannot imagine
the pain of losing a child. I pray to Allah to bless all of the
parents who've lost their children and make it easy on them and to
bless those children with the highest paradise,
I can only imagine the comfort that those parents may have felt
when they heard her singing the statement, because when we're
looking at this, what are you thinking? Are you thinking angels?
Are you thinking the comfort that comes with maybe, Inshallah, the
shroud for her soul, just this white, beautiful garment.
When I was in Egypt, there was a sister I met in the masjid. I had
gone to ask a sheik if he could teach myself and a group of us,
and the sheik said that he was too busy and he couldn't teach us. And
I was pretty disappointed, because I specifically wanted to study
from him. And the sister saw me in the masjid, and she asked me what
I had asked. And then she said, subhanAllah, you came to this
message seeking this and I am starting a tafsir class. And here
are all of the books of tafsir that I have that you can borrow.
And she told me that her name was Asmaa self. And
then when the Egyptian revolution happened,
her husband was hurt, and she went to the hospital with him, and from
the floor, she was on the phone, I think the fourth floor of the
hospital,
a sniper shot her in the back and she passed away. May Allah have
mercy on her and raise her ranks and accept her as a martyr.
She's in the hospital with her back facing the window,
but when I saw a picture of her when she was shrouded in the
garments which honestly shouldn't have been shared on social media,
but I will say that what I saw from her picture was literally the
biggest smile on her face. She literally looked like she was
smiling, a huge smile on her face. And I saw that, and I thought this
was somebody who lived this moment. She lived for this moment.
She knew where she wanted to be, and her life reflected that, that
hope in Allah Spano,
and there's a friend of mine who was very close to her grandfather.
Her grandfather was very kind, very generous, always giving,
always smiling, so loving to everybody, no matter what.
And subhanAllah, after he passed away, we all have mercy on him.
She had a dream that she was in a house, and these two doors opened,
and all of a sudden she sees she told me she can't even describe
what she saw, just garden. It just just the most beautiful sight
she's ever seen. And when she saw this beautiful sight, she said she
saw her grandfather, and he's telling her, come join me. And
she's thinking in the dream, well, if I join him, does that mean that
I have to die? Does it mean I'll have to leave everything. And she
said that she heard suddenly these voices in the dream that sounded
like something she can never describe. She think. She thinks it
might have been like the sound of angels in her dream. And she said
the second she heard that she wanted to leave everything behind,
that unit was enough, that in and of itself, was enough for her to
want to just enter those doors, and then she tried to enter in the
dream. And then there was a voice that called out and said, it's not
your time
now. But we hear of these people, and we see these examples of
people who really have lived and who've passed away. They come in
dreams we see like moments of them. And when you hear stories
like that are real people. Do you feel like kind of like a chill
goes through your body? You got goosebumps, your heart feels a
little bit stronger. These are small examples that Allah gives us
to make it hopeful for us, that you might know someone you love
who's no longer here with us. You might know someone who's passed
away, but we pray that Inshallah, they will be in the people that we
meet inshallah in paradise, when you are looking to soften your
heart in the middle of something difficult, think About what Allah
tells us about the angels.
Allah,
achmi,
seven
Jackie, these are angels who Allah ordered to be holding the house of
Allah. And you know what they do, constantly. This verb in Arabic
means it happens, constantly, constantly asking Allah to forgive
the believers. You constantly asking Allah, excuse me, to
forgive the believers. Sara.
You said that if just one angel asked for forgiveness for all of
the believers, it would be enough for all of the believers to be
forgiven.
This entire group of angels, on a regular basis, different ones, are
constantly praying to Allah for you to be forgiven. So much so, as
one scholar said, that when you're asleep, the angels are asking for
Allah's forgiveness for you. And this verse doesn't say the
believers who've never made mistakes or the believers who
don't sin. It's you, the believers who are struggling, who are
trying, and who are made fun of because of their religion and who
are struggling to be Muslim. You if one of them made dua for you to
be forgiven, all of the Muslims would be forgiven, Sahib and Juba
says, so what about an entire group? And Allah orders angels.
They don't act unless ALLAH orders it. So your Merciful Lord has
ordered for angels to constantly be asking for your forgiveness,
even when we forget to ask for Allah's forgiveness. That's how
merciful he is. And when we're looking to soften our heart,
here's one activity to do when you open the Quran
every single day and make it a point to open the Quran, it
doesn't have to be for half an hour. It can be which be amazing,
but it can just be a specific amount. You choose one verse, one
page and a language you understand, so that you understand
the words of Allah's kanuatala. Make it simple, something you're
going to do every single day. Make that decision for your life. And
when you go to a verse that talks about paradise, I'd like you to do
this. Please do me a favor and close your eyes. Think about the
person who is the most beloved to you? Maybe this person is a
grandfather or a parent who has passed away. Maybe this person is
a friend. Maybe this person is here right now, and you can't
imagine living your life without
them. And all of a sudden, you're in Paradise, and you look around
and you see that there are rivers, and you see that there are
palaces, and you see that there are flowers, and you're blown
away, and you're just standing there, and all of a sudden someone
comes from behind you, and they put their hands on your eyes, and
you're feeling their hands like, Who is this?
And then you turn around and you see the person that you've missed
for so long. You see that person that you couldn't live your life
without, the person who means the most to you. When you're reading
the verses of paradise, think of that person in that moment. What
is it like when you're suddenly there and you see the person you
love more than anyone else, and Insha Allah, you'll be with them
forever? What is it like on the other side when you read verses of
help and how terrifying that sounds. God forbid, may Allah
protect us from being of those people and everyone that we love.
How does that affect you emotionally, so that we're not
just reading the verses and we're skimming through them, but you're
choosing every single day to shift your perspective in the way that
you look at Allah, that you choose to understand his words and the
way that it implements into your life. That's the first piece, the
way, the perspective that we have about the hereafter,
and particularly, excuse me, finally, on this point,
think about the way that you wish your end would be. Inshallah, may
Allah bless everybody in this room to live over 100 with lots of
health and strength and energy and with all of our loved ones, and
never have any losses and lots of ease in life. I mean, now that
happens Inshallah, how would you like to pass?
Think about the way that you would like your end to be, and ask Allah
every single day for that ending. One sister that I know of
her family told a story of her constantly praying to die in
Medina. And they didn't live in Medina. They live in Saudi Arabia,
but they went for Amra, and she passed away in Medina, and she had
made a dog constantly through her life. So choose how you want to
live your life so that it's reflected in your end Inshallah,
and in that moment, remember all of those times that you did that,
that you've given up something for the sake of Allah, SWT, it's worth
it for that time.
So having purpose in the way that we live and thinking about the
hereafter and that perspective. The second point is gratitude.
Allah gives and gives and gives. And there's so many examples,
small examples of this. There is a sister who wrote a book. Her name
is speder literary. She wrote a beautiful book that gives examples
of
like these amazing moments, and one of them is that she had been
in touch with a sister who she'd lost touch with. And when she was
in touch with this person, she had gotten medicine for a family that
was sick, and this particular sister was the only one who had
that medicine, so she lost touch for a number of years. And this
sister, RIFA.
Return, and they reconnected. And that sister had given the
medicine, asked about that family and hey, do they need more
medication? And my friend said, Hey, I love bless her. She a she
was like, you know, I haven't talked to them in a while, like
she's she couldn't even remember what she was talking about. And
then a week later, that same family contacted her and asked
frantically, because their father was in a coma,
and she they asked her, Can you please ask that friend for that
same medication, because they couldn't get that medication. And
like thinking about this, she hasn't been in touch with this
person for years. Had they contacted her a week past, she
wouldn't have been able to reach this person. She had no idea how
to contact her, but Allah willed for this person to contact my
friend in this moment so that he could protect and bless and ease
and a family that needed it a week later, like Allah knows what's
going to happen when we don't and he gives us these gifts. This Hib
hip is a gift. It's a gift that you get out of nowhere. You didn't
even work for it. Allah SWT blesses you with it. He's so
loving that he gives us these, these gifts. There was a blind
woman who was 92 years old. She lost her husband of 70 years, and
she was taken to a nursing home. And they're showing her around the
room, and they're telling her, you know, this is where we have the
couch, this is where we have the bed. She's like, I love it. I
already love it. You know, we haven't even, like, brought you to
feel the arrangement of the room yet, and she said, I chose to love
it before I even got into the room, because it's all about the
mindset that you have. And when you have an attitude of gratitude,
it changes the way that blessings are in your life. Allah tells us
that when you are grateful, he will increase you. And increase
means in so many different things, because what I need is different
from what you need, and what you need is different one you need.
And so Allah, subhana knows that, and when you're grateful for what
you have, he gives and increases and increases. And subhanAllah,
can I tell you something that just is so merciful from him, the
prophet Salazar told us about
parents who go to Paradise and their children are not there, and
then they're like, where are our kids? And Allah, out of His mercy,
he brings their kids into paradise for them,
because
they don't they can't imagine what paradise is like without their
children. And then the Prophet recited the ayat
walabiana,
be him
should have been. Luria took him
in the beginning, I made a mistake. And then a story at a
home. What?
Snake
and
she those who believe and their children who follow me, man, um,
on.
I can't translate this exactly, but the point is that Allah brings
them together in Paradise, and it doesn't take away from their
deeds. So saraidi and jubir, he talks about a myth, goes into
Paradise, and he's like, My Lord, where is my dad?
Where's my grandpa? Where is my wife? Where is my son? Where is my
daughter? Where are my kids? This is not the order that it goes in.
He's like, where's my family? And then it's told to him, Well, they
didn't work as hard as you did. So you know, your deeds are not that
same level. And then
subhabalahi says, I worked for myself and for them.
And then Allah brings them into paradise.
And these are little children, and these are adult children. This is
you can look in ur Tubi, in tobori, in bellawi, in tafsero,
kibira imarazi. There are so many narrations like this about these
verses where Allah, Imam arazi, says this, you know, person in
Jannah is enjoying something about Jannah, and then suddenly they
remember, my family isn't here, my kids aren't here.
And so because of that sadness that that person feels, Allah
doesn't want them to feel sad. And so because of that, Allah brings
their family to them. This is kids for their parents, parents for
their kids. How merciful is Allah? We don't deserve that. He doesn't
have a love for you, so let him parents you feel sad like anyone
who's a parent, like, you can't imagine living without your kids,
anyone who's a kid who loves their parents. You can't imagine living
without your parents or your spouse or your loved ones. Like,
how merciful is Allah SWT, bless us with that. Amen.
So when you look at gratitude, how do you inculcate that in your
life, so that you have this look of Allah, that's one of hope and
one of love and one of gratitude and one of fear, of course,
because we're afraid of displacing him, and so we don't want to do
the wrong thing, because we want his pledge. But at the same time,
we don't be so merciful. So when we make a mistake, he forgives us.
How.
You inculcate that two things. Number one, sit once a week for
just three minutes. Set a timer on your phone once a week and say
Alhamdulillah,
and think about what you're thanking Allah for in every single
time you say Alhamdulillah. Help that seep into your heart. The
other day, I always got in a major accident, very blessed with two
young children, and I couldn't that, God forbid, like I literally
felt like there were angels protecting our car, because it
was, it could have been so close, and the last second, Allah
protected us from hitting them. My kids looked upon us like
Alhamdulillah. So psychologists talk about, if you spend every
single day, at the end of the day, just writing down three particular
things to be grateful for, it changes the way that your brain
neurons are formed. It's an attitude of gratitude. It's a
lifestyle. And Allah tells us when we have that attitude and that
lifestyle, he increases us in it. Secondly, when we recognize all
that Allah has given us, we also realize how undeserving we are,
how many shortcomings we have. So we say, we say Alhamdulillah, and
then we say a few Allah, and we ask Allah for forgiveness. And in
every single one of those, we think of something wrong that
we've done, and we engage our entire hearts and ask Allah to
forgive us. And the Prophet Sallam told us that the one who's
constantly making istal far. He will open away Allah, SWT will
open away from this person, from every stress, from every type of
distress, he will open away for the risk to be from places they
don't expect. So constantly, constantly, constantly thanking
Allah for the blessings and asking for His forgiveness. We know
halahi Salam talks about to his people
ask for forgiveness. He will rain down upon the blessings. And he
talks about specific blessings, huge supplement. And finally, the
last point
is, look for a blessing, even in the hardship. Obviously, we can't
tell the wisdom in things all the time, and some things are beyond
our ability to even think back. But Allah tells us an ayah that's
probably everyone is familiar with, or most of you. What do you
think comes to your mind right
away? Yes, exactly. Say it,
exactly with hardship. Comes east with it, comes east, not after it,
and not before it, with it. So even in the hardship, I'll give
you one example. I didn't want to go to San Jose State as my
undergrad, but I did because of particular reason. My husband
didn't want to come to UCI for his undergrad, but he did. And out of
that blessing, hamdullah, we met friends. We Alhamdulillah, in
education, all those blessings, but the biggest blessing was
Alhamdulillah. We had each other. Alhamdulillah. That's where we
met, through msasham years, Alhamdulillah. And in that
hardship of just making those decisions, even though they were
not necessarily in our control, we made for a reason. Allah brought
something more long, lasting and better than we could have ever
imagined. Sometimes he will something for you, so that in this
moment, it may not be the best thing that you think is not the
best thing, but he knows what's going to happen for you. He knows
your future, and so he knows that this is the best thing for you,
and it's accepting that even in that hardship, Allah subhanaw
taala knows something that I don't, and that doesn't mean it's
always the case for us. Like the loss of a loved one, we don't
understand that. We just ask Allah to make it easy on us and to make
it easy on the people who've lost loved ones. And I'm not saying to
look for wisdom in that until you're ready for that. Allah knows
what that's like, but maybe it's solely so that inshaAllah,
regardless of how difficult your life was, inshaAllah, you'll be
rejoined in the highest paradise. How do we inculcate that
particular quality thinking about the Prophet salallahu, alayhi, wa
sallam, and how much he has gone from in his life, the Prophet saw
them lost every single one of his children except the one during his
lifetime. The Prophet SAW lost his best friend in this part of
Khadija at the same time as losing her father, his father figure, Abu
Talib. There is so much hardship in life, in the Prophet,
salallahu, alayhi wa sallam, and yet, constantly the Prophet saw
some turned back to Allah because you recognize that his lord is a
Hakim, and there's wisdom the Prophet saw them. Was the
Prophet's voice of them. So us, every single day, spend some time
sending Salawat, and it just looks like walking to your car and
sending silhouettes. Whenever you send silhouette to the Prophet
sallallahu, sallam, whenever you send some lines upon him, the
prophet Allah blesses you 10 times, raises your degrees. 10
times, forgives you. 10 times gives you rewards certain times,
manifold, manifold and manifold. And inshola, the Prophet saw them,
will know you by name, because your Salam is given to him by
name, Allah musallivasan.
We ask Allah SWT to be of the people who he loves and who he
chooses. Please forgive me. We have a flight to catch, so we're
gonna run. If you have any questions or anything else, please
feel free to contact me on Facebook or on Instagram.
Inshallah, I would love to connect with you there panic alone. Will
be happy to win excellent while they come.