Wisdom of Luqman AS #6

Salam hamdulillah salat wa salam O Allah

Muhammad Rasul Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam,

Sera, Sera.

My dear brothers and sisters,

we are on the lessons from the class on the lessons from the life of Satan or

Satan or laquan alehissalaam. And we ask Allah subhanaw taala to help us to take and learn the lessons for which lots of handled Allah revealed his column. Last Roger mentioned these people is invaluable

in so that we learn lessons from them about how to live our life. And Allah subhanaw taala mentioned others in the Quran he mentioned drown on shuddha and hamano, Harun

Allah mentioned the

great

so called kings.

And the great so called conquerors, and so on, so forth of

have the history so that we learn lessons about what not to do. Right. So we have to learn both kinds of lessons, lessons about what to do, and lessons about what not to do.

Now,

I want to ask you a question. I want you to think about this, which is that think about how we teach history.

For example, we we have we call Alexander, Alexander the Great, right. And, of course, we Muslims being the world's greatest imitators, we simply imitate what people say. So everybody else says Alexander the Great. So we say Alexander the Great, we don't ask this question and say what was great about Alexander? Why must I refer to him as Alexander the Great in order to secondary atom to atom cassava, or keys were just

novella last minute allows.

Alexander alumnium.

But the point being, that this is how we seem to

we seem to lead our life

by just imitating people. And that's why

I remember I mean, I

remind you and myself, let us not do that let us live our lives in a way where we are.

We use our intelligence inshallah, and we lead our lives in a way which is beneficial for us. And it is beneficial for

those who are in, in our circle of influence, so our families, friends, and so on.

So why did what makes Alexander Alexander great life is if you take the

people

in the world, and they are overawed by violence, they're overawed by this super aggressive

macho male, masculine,

you know, model, right. And we call them the grid. Take Caesar the word Caesar, which comes from Julius Caesar's personal name. And then Augustus was the first Roman Emperor,

Julius Caesar

started, and that's why he was killed, because they wanted to preserve the

the democratic nature of the Roman

Empire at the time, but whatever it was, it was the beginnings of an empire.

So because Caesar had already conquered Gaul, and he had conquered,

the Romans were Italian. So you have a bunch of Italians who came out of Italy and then they conquered, you know, a whole lot of countries of Europe. He conquered conquered. Gaul, he conquered Germania.

He conquered, or he went into Britannia, into the British Isles, we didn't actually conquer that he came back out of there.

back to Rome. Now the point is that here is this man, one single person, Caesar, Caesar was killed because of all this. He tried to become an emperor, they didn't like it, and they finally managed to kill him and Augustus then took up the baton, in the name of Caesar. And then you know, avenging Caesar and then he made himself the dictator and the

The male, he was the first Roman Emperor. And that kingdom

of Rome lasted all the way until Mohammed alpha. The Ottoman

Sultan conquered Constantinople and made it Istanbul. And the king of Constantinople at that time was Constantine the 11th. So this is

Constantine the first build the city and Constantine and that in Constantine the first build a city in the fifth century, which is

which is 200 years before Russell was born. And

then Constantine the 11th was the last of the

of the of the great Roman ruler and by the time it came to Constantine, it wasn't very great. But he was the last Kaiser of Rome. He was the last Caesar of Rome. Although he was not in Rome he was in. He was now in almost in Asia, but

he was the last season Oh, no. Think about this. Guess what title? Mohammed Al Fatah, the first Sultan of not the first Sultan of the Ottoman was the first Sultan who conquered Constantinople when he conquered Constantinople, and he entered Constantinople as a conqueror. Guess what is the title that he gave himself. The title that he gave himself was Caesar of Rome.

He was a Turk.

He was a Turk.

There was no

concept of Turkey as a nation state, they were no nation states at the time, they were no nation states, Rome was the name of an empire. It was not a nation state. But think about this. And point I'm making is that these names that we have history are so powerful, that even when the

the person legitimately bearing that name, and that title because he's from, from that family, he is from our family, but he's from, from that, from that dynasty from that line, which was Constantine the 11th. He was the Caesar of Rome, when he's defeated when he and he died in battle, he died fighting, they never found his body. And

Mohammed Al Fatah took over as the as the Conqueror and Ruler of Constantinople and therefore, of the, of whatever the ram last remnant of the Byzantine or Roman

Empire. He doesn't call himself

osmani Sultan or Ottoman Sultan, he which he is, and he was to his subjects to the people who, who under his role, but he called himself Caesar of Rome. Now this macho model, if you take Julius Caesar, if you take Augustus, if you take all of those people, if you take Alexander the Great, what is great about them, right we extraor murder, we extraor mass murder, we extraor looting we and extraor invasion of other people's lands, think about the millions upon millions of people who have died by the sword of conquer or that conquer.

Think of the millions upon millions of people, especially the women and children who have died, or who have been enslaved or been raped or been who have been violated.

at the hands of the soldiers of this conquer or that conquer only to extraor and only to glorify this image of aggressive male macho ism. Now, Jamie, How much longer do we want to carry this on?

2000 years is not enough. If I count from, you know, Julius Caesar, down to our times 2000 years is not enough. 2000 years of history has not taught us anything.

And that's why they say that I think the most the tools, courts about history both neither of them in mind, which I really like one is nations which do not learn from their history are condemned to repeat it. Nations, which do not learn from their history are condemned to repeat it and this applies also to individuals. The second that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing.

I think these are

Two of the

two best quotes that I have, that I have ever heard concerning history. And the reason why we really should learn history and why we, we should take lessons from history. So this 2000 years of history has not taught us that this model

of kingship, the model of rulership, the model of success for the individual. Now, you might say, Well, you know, none of us listening to this are,

you know, are ever remotely going to become Caesars or rulers of nations, Allah knows best because this thing goes all over the world. I don't know who's listening, maybe some potential rulers of the world are also listening, I do hope you're listening because then it is your in your hand to change this model. But even if you're not a potential ruler of the world, it is in your hand individuals to change the model of your success, because our success also is based on the same model. It's not based on the model of a ruler and conquer

with an army, it is based on the Zim model of grab what you can get, irrespective of the cost to others.

As a result of your strategy of grab and take. Now that is a that's a strategy for our net remains round has gone but fell down yet remains the nature of Iran remains Cesar is dead, and has been dead for two years. But the concept of season

even if I convert that word into, into into the you know one of the English meanings of it, which is to seize right to season one who seizes

not one who gives. Now contrast this with the model of success that Allah Subhana Allah gave us in Islam, which deals with giving. What is the model of the MBs alayhi wa sallam? what is Caesar's? They take things from people did they? Did they swallow people's property? Did they kill people? Did they take away the land? And did they take away their dignity and they take away their lives? Did they do that? Or did they give you things?

Did they give you moral codes of life which if you had followed you would not be in the misery a mess that we are in today?

Did they give you a sense of accountability to Allah subhanaw taala which tells us that you cannot get away with what you are doing. No matter how powerful you think you are today and no matter how today's world ensures that you get away but you cannot get away. Because today's world is not in control today's world is subjected to the creator of the world. It is Allah subhana wa Jalla Jalla Jalla Allah who is in control and Allah subhanho wa Jalla Jalla. Delano is the one who will decide what happens to you and me when we meet him on the Day of Judgment. And that meeting with Allah subhanho wa Taala is completely and totally sudden.

There is no doubt about that. There's absolutely no doubt about that. There is no doubt about the fact that one day I will die. And there is no doubt about the fact that one day I will be resurrected before my Arab della della asked Allah subhanaw taala for his mercy and for his protection and for his forgiveness when I meet him general.

Our brothers sisters,

this is what we need to learn.

We need and that is the reason why we have these four lessons Monday through Thursday, Monday to Thursday, four lessons on we have the Four Tops, which is lack of the Almighty leaving Islam left and right now we are doing lessons from the lives of the Gambia and we are doing the life of Ibrahim Alayhi Salam and this one

which is the wisdom

lessons we are doing an every week so every day there is a lesson hamdulillah

do tune in same channel same everything else do tune in do

do come on and watch this live inshallah. And if you are not able to do that, of course eat later but the point is that

do take some time out and reflect on your own life. I reflect on my life and I'm requesting requesting you to reflect on your life. Because the time will come when this life will go.

Yes yesterday I heard about the passing of

We have another very dear friend of mine farrokh

who was a very good friend he was one of our regular Mussolini's in, you know Muslims in Hyderabad hmic. And very, very

wonderful person. May Allah subhanaw taala grant him janitor for those with Allah be ready, sir, please make dua for him I request to make the offer him how many people I mean, I have, quite literally, you know i,

from the time I came here to America, and this is now I think,

the seventh or eighth month that I've been here,

I think about almost

12 or 14 of my people I knew, personally, very good friends, some of them friends for over 50 years.

Some of them,

two of them, mentors of mine,

very different, they all died.

And they didn't all die together in this in this time, you know, over the periods of the month. The There are reports of their death that I got, and they did not die from COVID they died from other they died from other natural causes.

Think about Descente that how many reminders do I need to

do that one day, it is going to be somebody else who is going to be talking about my death and somebody's going to say

our big die is a draft for him and ask Allah to forgive him and Shall I hope somebody will do that. But saying that this is going to happen this is this there is no doubt about this fact.

And Allah is sending us a reminder after reminder.

Despite that, if we are not going to wake up and if you are not going to understand and realize and accept that I will be held accountable, then what do we have to do when and who do we have to blame?

Think about it, let us learn from history and velocity is not only for nations history is for individuals, it is not necessary. Don't think about oh, well, you know, my history is not coded, I am not a king, and so on so forth. Nobody wrote, wrote the you know,

the line, my line is in my family tree and so on Oh no, doesn't matter if we just look at our own lives.

Look at your own life and reflect on your life and sit down and say from my earliest childhood memory, what do I see myself doing?

Look at those incidents.

There's a whole thing called fractal theory.

Which, sometime we will do that, but you don't have to go to the chair, just sit down on a piece of paper, sit and write and say my earliest childhood memories, what do I see myself doing? What was I doing when I was a little, little child? And then say when I say what is your earliest memory, maybe when you are two years old or three years old? depending on how far back your memories and your memories and how old you are? Now go back and say, Well, you know, when I was two or three years old, what was I doing? Then? When I was five years old? What was I doing when I was seven years old? 10 years old, 12 years old? and so on and so forth until you come to your current age? And is you

you write down those incidents? Are you, you know, make little,

little drawings or something

to remind you of those incidents? And then you look at that whole chart and you say what does it teach me?

This chart to mine? What is it teaching me? What is the lesson that I'm getting about myself?

Look at it from an individual incident perspective and look at it also overall, as the as what is the pattern that is showing me? Is this a winning pattern? Or is this a losing pattern?

Am I looking at somebody who didn't just take advantage of opportunities, but a person who created those opportunities who went behind them who created there was no opportunity until this man or this woman got behind it? And then they actually create or not created an opportunity in a situation where others would have been sitting and lamenting a loss.

Right?

Is that what you are seeing? Or are you seeing the opposite of that? Which is somebody who is given life on a platter who's given life

you know, everything ready made and everything clear and yet that person instead of taking advantage of that instead of making use of that is losing that opportunity.

My brothers and sisters

really

think about

this and say what is my

my

What am I? What is it that I

need to be able to,

to, to accomplish? And what did I come into this world to do? Think about that and ask yourself, why did I come into this world to do to accomplish? Now, we are looking at the life of

adolescence from the wireless alumni, as I mentioned to Allah subhanaw taala began with the with the

dark kid, and with the advice and with the admiration, about being grateful to him jealous Allah. So Allah, Allah began with it and he

said, Oh, be grateful to Allah Subhana Allah.

And then he said, the one who is grateful is grateful for himself. And let us therefore be who are grateful. We looked at this whole issue of gratitude and gratitude, ask Allah subhanaw taala naked and means of blessing and, and reflection.

This is one of the things about being

in these places that people are so polite and so, so nice in everybody ways to you and everybody is sort of greet you.

Make us among people who are also polite like this. Now, how can we become grateful? Let us think about that. We're talking about the importance of gratitude, and I'm sure that that is clear inshallah. So now that we accept that we should be grateful, how can we be grateful? So let us think about that. Now you can be grateful by reflecting on the blessing and on what life would have been without it. Now, and that's pretty easy to do. If you take a few minutes each day, just reflect on what would it be like to be blind. Now what I suggest you do, and do this as an exercise, make this into a learning exercise for your family night, have some fun as well. But do it as a, you know if I

can use the term or coined the term serious fun, which is that you have fun doing it. But it's not just a time activity, you are not wiling away time you using that thing positively? To get some real life mileage out of it. Now, how can you?

How can you reflect on what does it feel like to be blind? Now, you might say, Well, you know, why should I reflect on that, because this is a tragic reality of the human condition that we are we become aware of a blessing, only after it is gone.

The Blessing we are enjoying it, but we are not grateful for it. May Allah protect us from ourselves. We do not give thanks for this blessing while we still have it, although we have it and we should be thankful to Allah subhanaw taala but we are not, we have become conscious of it only after it has gone. So let us not wait

for that. Let us simulate the thing of the blessing haven't gone. And then say, if I didn't have the thing, what would it feel like? And so therefore now when I have this blessing, what must I do? So what would it feel like to be blind, very simple, what you do is find someone to be your pet your partner, and physically do this exercise, please. I mean, I do I don't want you to just sit and imagine that physically put

a blindfold you put on the blindfold and do it well, don't don't cheat, because you will be cheating yourself. So put this blindfold you know, across your eyes in a way that you're completely blinded and then let your partner lead you on a tour.

So, wherever you are, whether you are inside your apartment, you can't leave the place or whether you are in the parking lot, whether you are in a garden or whether wherever you are, let your partner lead you by the hand and then the job of the partner is to explain to you what he or she is seeing.

So, do this as an exercise the job of the

party.

So, in this is an excerpt which which helps and serves both people. The job of the partner therefore is to become your eyes. So let the partner tell you what he or she is seeing.

You will be surprised Believe me to blow your mind. I do this exercise as a as a leadership exercise. 14 million.

Very, very powerful exercise is to lead somebody to lead him

With a blind person.

Now, when you are listening to this person speaking,

try to visualize what they are saying.

Try to visualize what they're saying. Also, try to use your other senses, your hearing, your sense of smell,

the sense of feeling.

Try to use those senses as well.

Do this exercise as far as

being being blind is concerned.

Similarly, you can do for everything else.

Being milled, for example, you can't speak. So then right?

I want to communicate something to somebody, how can I do that? I didn't say Incidentally, those of you who are interested in writing, people ask me, How can I be an author, you've written so many books, you can be an author by writing. There's no other way of being an author, how can I learn to ride a bicycle by riding a bicycle? So similarly, how can you be an author by writing and how can you write by putting in words what you are seeing? By holding a thing to say, I will not speak, I'm going to write. So right?

Being so this is you know, you're you're practicing being mean.

I know many of you have probably played this game dumpster rod,

where you just use sign language. And I'm not saying sign language as in the sign language that is the is the way of communicating for people who are unable to speak. Because that's, that's very advanced and sophisticated, and you can actually communicate words and so on, I'm saying sign language that people who are dumb without being dumb have to use.

So you get a sense of that, right? And similarly, take for example, what does it feel like to be lame? If you didn't have one leg, believe me, I spent one year like that. I

had a motorcycle accident. And I had a tie to ankle plaster for

two months, and after the, to the plaster of my leg, all the muscle had gone completely, had deteriorated, had completely finished. And my leg was a stick, it was like a ball with skin on it. And that skin was black. And it was the color. And it was the intended texture of the skin of a fish. It had scales because of dryness. And this was in the 80s. And I don't know either they didn't have the technology at the time or what but it was a horrible thing. So my leg had absolutely zero strength in it. It was as if my leg had been amputated. I really seriously believe that I was going to be

to be handicapped, you know, for for the rest of my life. And I spent one year on crutches.

I became quite quite expert at going up and down stairs with my with my crutches. So one year I spent with crutches.

So I know what is what it feels like not to have a leg

hamdulillah Al Hamdulillah hamdulillah in his infinite glory and mercy gave my leg back to me. I did that whole one year I did I did physiotherapy very regularly, you know, day after day, hour after hour, and I handle all the muscle came back and everything else and today I'm fine. Absolutely. But the point I'm making is that practice this. What does it feel like to not have a blessing

in

this, and you have different shapes and kinds in some cases, I'm sure many of you have seen and May Allah protect us from ourselves. How many of you have seen people peeking for hours out of garbage bins?

How many people have seen people picking food out food out of garbage bins? And for those of you who are living in America and so on, you might say oh, you know, but I'm in a I live in a rich country where you know where I fought when I first saw people taking food out of garbage bins was in Mayfair in New York.

There are poor people believe me there are poor people in the richest countries. I have seen

people begging for out of garbage bins in Saudi Arabia. I saw an old

movie she was Somali or something was being pulled out of a garbage bin in Saudi Arabia. Enjoyed

So just because you are living in a rich country, and just because Allah gave you some money, don't think that everybody is like you. They're not.

So what must you do now, I'm not saying you should go and pick that food out of the garbage bin and eat it and see what it feels like, really, you should do that. But I'm not saying you should do that. So don't do it.

But you can look for that.

Look for homeless people.

I was so shocked. I'm still shocked. In Seattle, when I first went to Seattle, I saw these people, there's homeless people. Seattle is a wet City. In any case, this is, you know, a core part of the world. And this is this was in December, so it was cold.

It was very cold.

And despite that, homeless people, all wrapped up and bundled in all kinds of whatever clothes they can find, with whatever meager possessions they have in a in a shopping cart.

Sitting and sleeping, sitting because there's no place to lay down, sitting in doorways. In in the little alcove, as you enter a shop with a little thing, sitting and sitting and sleeping there. In the summer, they sleep on the sleeping parks, and so on and so forth. Of course, there's a whole theory about how many people tell me all you know about homeless people, they really don't want a home, if you give them a house, they will leave it and they will go away and so on and so forth. People say the same thing about the Aboriginal people in the in Australia. wallarah I don't know. But I'm saying without even going into all that.

Ask yourself, how would you like to be homeless?

How would you like to be homeless? Believe me, for Allah subhanaw taala. To do that.

It doesn't take time.

It does not take time. This COVID

induced economic slump,

created people who were giving zaka socket into people who started receiving Zakat for other people.

Right, they didn't expect not in their wildest dreams did they expect that they would see a time when they would be eligible to receive Zakat, and they would, they would no matter how much they hated that, they would have to receive Zakat, and they would have to live sadaqa have somebody else

when they had the money and so on and so on. Maybe they even said oh, I will never do that. And you know, I would rather die than live on all of these things. You realize, what you are saying and you know, whether that is something which is actually which in which will happen, which is feasible or not.

So, take your children, take your children and show them

these signs and sites of poverty, abject poverty, homeless people, people who are who are scrounging around in garbage bins for food. And I'm not going to tell you what I think you should then do thereafter. I mean, if that is not clear to you, that may Allah protect you from yourself. But the point I'm making is that seriously, do this as an exercise.

Do this as an exercise, look at what Allah has given you from the eyes of somebody who does not have it. And from your own eyes, put yourself in a situation where you are deprived of that.

And then you see what life looks like, you know, we used to do this

when I used to teach st I still do what not that particular in that particular area

where I teach leadership

and we teach what we what is called Outdoor Leadership, we use the outdoors to create to simulate Leadership Challenge situations and we teach people so what we used to do was we would start in Bombay in those days, it is because Bombay, Mumbai

and the task was to get from Mumbai to Pune it

was to call buena buena was poorer so Bombay to poorer, so Mumbai to play, and we didn't have the big highway and so on none of that was there. So, what we will do and we are now looking at corporate executives, because from my consulting

corporations, so we we did this with the one of the competition we did that was with the RPG group. So, the point the thing what we will do is we start with

a group of

students who are corporate executives, many of them quite senior. So you had these people who are, you know, General Managers

In a couple of cases, we even had vice presidents because they said we I want to be part of my teams, no problem, please come, you will understand what it means. And of course, lots of middle managers and first time managers. So we had all of them, we would form them

into,

form them into into pairs, say, because we didn't want to leave somebody or complete Delos obviously, over here, you, you and your partner.

And then in Mumbai, we would ask them to empty their pockets. Now remember, this is all being done completely. The people don't know what's going on, they don't they have not been told anything. So they come to the, to the to the assembly place where they are going to assemble, to go to the actual site of the Outdoor Leadership course. So all their luggage and everything else is of course taken away, and it's going to be shipped to them. And then we say to them, alright, Tom, empty your pockets, and we give each of them a big envelope, we say put everything in your pockets into the envelope and seal it, put your name on it. And everything means everything, your wallet, including

your wallet, including your credit cards, including all the money you have, like everything, whatever. If you have a pen use that pen goes into that. Now this was this was in the

in the 80s. So there were no cell phones. Otherwise, we would have done that as well put your cell phone that everything put into this packet and the packet is sealed. And then we say now find yourself, this is the route. This is the place the address in Puna. Remember, no GPS is we didn't have GPS in those days.

Here is the address important. Get yourself to that place.

You know, it's

it's absolutely sometimes I laugh when I recollect the expressions on the faces of some of these people. Because literally here is a is a is a

senior executive in a large corporation and I have been there, I was a general manager in a very large plantation company.

And I knew so I know what it means to be a senior manager in large corporation, you have a lot of resources, your people do everything you want, you have at a personal level seven job driving drivers, your cars and not one multiple. And at an official level, you've got a secretary who's trained who knows everything, literally she or he reads your mind. And does things before you can even imagine. Before you can even think of that, right, and so on and so forth. Plus, you have all sorts of contacts and whatnot. Now, for somebody like that,

for everything to be taken from them, it's literally except the shirt on their back. And the task is get from mommy to Cora,

the shark on their faces,

they would be shocked, some of them would be angry.

And I would tell the no problem. If you don't want to do this exercise, please let me know I give back.

Not going to change the exercise for anyone. And if you don't want to, we're not forcing you, if you don't want to be part of the exercise, please take everything and you can go home and you are not part of this whole leadership course. But if you want to be part of the exercise, then you have to participate, you must participate.

Of course everyone I mean, after they got you know they got over the initial shock and so on, then people would take a very positive view of that they would have they would say, well, we're gonna have fun not bad, believe me.

After the exercise, when many of them then what did they do? Well, you know, they

the tub rides on, on trucks, most of them they did that the thumb ride on a truck going towards the highway. So they took a ride on the truck when going to pull a and they got themselves there. And then we will do the debrief and you will say What did it feel like?

And believe me, some of them having to saw the language that I are. I don't want to repeat that here. I mean, that's when some of the real anger came out

of that was directed at me, initially, you are the cause of this until they realize what it is that I was teaching them and then they would literally there were people who would come and touch my feet and say you are our Guru. And you are the person who taught us taught me the meaning of life.

We learn when we are deprived. So I've given you now three four exercises to do when I'm going to end this class now.

Remember what remember what are we focusing on how to be

grateful to Allah sugar

and I've given you three or four exercises to think about that and say how can I be grateful to Alice Renata,

I wish you all the best balance rantala grant you

the understanding and learning of this and continue next Allah. Allah Allah Allah Allah. Allah Allah He was a freshman in Morocco takahara mina al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa