Interfaith Iftar on Thursday March 21st 2024
Date:
Channel: Mirza Yawar Baig
File Size: 11.80MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
The speaker discusses the importance of fasting, which is a way to transform one's life and achieve great things. The speaker uses the phrase "will be there" to describe the value of fasting, including the ability to transform one's life and achieve great things. The speaker also discusses the importance of knowing and worshiping Allah and the potential for hope to transform one's life.AI Generated Transcript ©
May peace be upon all of you and
blessings.
I begin in the name of Allah,
the lord almighty,
our creator, maintainer, protector,
sustainer,
and I send salutations
upon his messenger, Muhammad, peace be upon him.
The ayat, the verses of the Quran, which
Sheikh Abdullah just recited,
this is what it means.
It says, all believers,
fasting is prescribed for you
as it was for those before you.
So perhaps you will become
muttaqoon,
mindful
of God, mindful of Allah.
Fast a prescribed number of days,
but whoever of you is ill or on
a journey,
then let them fast an equal number of
days after Ramadan.
For those who can only fast with extreme
difficulty,
compensation can be done by feeding a needy
person for everyday,
not fasting.
But whoever volunteers to give more, it is
better for them.
And to fast is better for you if
only you knew.
Ramadan is the month in which the Quran
was revealed
as a guide for humanity
with clear proofs of guidance
and the standard
to distinguish between right and wrong.
So whoever is present this month, let them
fast.
But whoever is ill or on a journey,
then let them fast an equal number of
days
after Ramadan.
Allah
intends ease for you, not hardship,
so that you may complete the prescribed period
and proclaim the greatness of Allah,
the greatness of God for guiding you, and
perhaps you will be grateful.
When my slaves ask you, oh, Muhammad,
peace be upon him,
about me,
I'm truly near them.
I respond
to one's prayer when they call upon me.
So let them obey me and believe in
me, perhaps
they would be guided
in the right way.
Once again,
welcome to all of you.
I'm absolutely delighted that we're able to gather
together
in a state of grace,
in a state of peace and harmony,
to remember God,
and to partake of
his blessings.
Ramadan comes to help us to reboot our
lives
and reset our moral compass.
During the hours of daylight,
from about an hour before dawn to sunset,
we don't eat, drink, or indulge in intimacy
with our with our spouses
for one reason only. And that is because
that is the command of Allah.
This gives us the touchstone,
the criterion,
the standard
of virtue and vice,
for good and evil.
It's not the thing in itself,
but whether it pleases God or not.
Good is what Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, the
Lord Almighty commanded and likes. And evil
is anything that goes
contrary to that.
No matter who else it pleases,
including and especially
ourselves.
This defines for us the very foundation of
fidelity
as being true to Allah, to God almighty,
from which arise all other aspects of fidelity,
which define us as human beings.
This blessed quality is called taqwa.
Ramadan comes to help us to inculcate taqwa
in our hearts.
Taqwa is the way of being where the
person keeps Allah
uppermost in his life and decides everything based
on whether it pleases Allah or not.
Ramadan comes with time to introspect
and an opportunity
to transform our lives.
It is an invitation to change our state
of being, which is based on predatory
capitalism with commercialism
as the driving force.
Our criteria
is to define development
as GDP and the number of billionaires,
the state of the wealthiest.
Islam invites us to restructure our society and
our thinking
with the criteria of distribution of wealth
and the condition of the weakest
as the standards
for development
and growth, with the consciousness
that those who have
are responsible
for those who don't.
The reality is that the strongest society and
economy is the one in which the number
of people who have buying power is the
greatest,
not one in which the wealthy are only
1%.
Ramadan gives us true perspective that this life
is only one stage in the continuum
that will take us
one day before our creator,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
It is on that day that final and
permanent success and failure
will be decided.
We recognize Allah,
the glorious and magnificent,
through his signs within ourselves and in creation.
I am, among other things, a wildlife photographer.
Have you ever seen a male
northern cardinal
perched on a rock
that is almost completely covered by snow
on the morning after the storm?
I could have wept out of thankfulness
for full color vision because I imagine that
picture in black and white.
When you next look out of the window
after a snowstorm,
please reflect on what Wilson Alwin Bentley,
his name was Snowflake Bentley,
18/65/1931.
What he discovered?
Bentley was a meteorologist and photographer who lived
in Jericho,
Vermont
and took detailed
photographs
of individual
snowflakes
and recorded
their structure for 40 years.
He discovered
that no 2 snowflakes
are alike.
The structure of every single snowflake is different.
Through Bentley's life of dedication, Allah
revealed his power as the creator.
The question I always ask myself is why?
Why did Allah have to create such incredible
variety?
What if he hadn't?
On this one little grain of sand on
the galactic beach
called Earth,
Allah created living beings
which have not even been counted yet, let
alone studied.
And we are busy destroying them.
Someone asked me if I believe in aliens.
I said, yes.
Not only do I believe in aliens, I
even know aliens.
And you know them too.
They're called insects.
The benefit of taqwa is that when we
make Allah
uppermost in our lives, Allah helps us in
ways that we cannot imagine.
When Allah is uppermost,
his
life his light drives out the darkness of
fear and anxiety and and depression and despair
from our hearts. And they are illuminated
with hope. Today, we have chosen to remove
the mention of god from our lives, and
then we wonder that depression and despair and
suicides
are in epidemic proportions.
It means and whoever has
which is what Ramadan comes to give us
is mindful of Allah. He,
God Almighty,
will make a way out of all difficulties
for him and he will provide them from
sources they could never imagine. And whoever puts
their trust in Allah,
Allah alone
is sufficient for him. This is the value
of taqwa, and this is why Allah blesses
us with Ramadan every year.
The question I ask myself and my Muslim
brothers and sisters is, did we enter Ramadan,
or did we allow Ramadan to enter us?
If we enter Ramadan,
then on the first of Shawwal, the next
month, we will exit Ramadan.
But if you allow the spirit of Ramadan
to enter us
to enter our hearts, then we will be
transformed.
The purpose of fasting is not simply to
fast.
We fast to transform
our lives.
In conclusion,
we thank
Allah for all his blessings.
The first of which is to know him
and recognize him and worship him and remember
that to him, we will all return.
And there,
on that day, we will not be asked
what happened.
We will be
asked, what did you do?
I want to conclude with Emily Dixon's wonderful
poem called hope.
Hope is the thing with feathers
that perches in the soul
and sings the tune without words
Thank you.
Thank you.