Mohammad Elshinawy – SatanS Algorithm
AI: Summary ©
Shaytan's use of shaytan can lead to feelings of the lack of focus, distrust, and fear, leading to feelings of the lack of focus, distrust, and fear. The importance of patient, deliberate, and deliberate shaytan development is emphasized, along with the use of devices to stay focused during a fight and the need to be mindless about hunting. The speakers stress the importance of praying for the future and helping others, particularly those in need.
AI: Summary ©
Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Brothers and sisters,
I have been reflecting on the hadith of
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam مَا مِن ثَلَاثَةٍ
فِي قَرْيَةٍ وَلَا بَدْوٍ لَا تُقَامُ فِيهِمُ الصَّلَاةِ
إِلَّا اسْتَحْوَذَ عَلَيْهِمُ الشَّيْطَانِ That there are never
three people in some city somewhere, or even
out in the open deserts that do not
establish the prayer together.
They don't get together to pray as a
group.
They don't get together and listen to the
Qur'an in prayer from one another, right?
Except that shaytan will be able, no brainer,
will be able to entrap them.
He said, the prescription, فَعَلَيْكُمْ بِالْجَمَاعَةِ So stick
together.
فَإِنَّمَا يَأْكُلُ الذِّئِبُ مِنَ الْغَنَمِ الْقَاصِيَةِ Because the
wolf only eats from the herd, the sheep
that strays.
The sheep that strays.
And you know that he ﷺ was the
most eloquent of human beings.
So there is something so profound about this.
I thought about the fact that, you know,
sheep are blessed creatures.
You know, they're fertile, they're peaceful, they're tranquil.
Those who deal with them wind up adopting
some of these good qualities.
But they're also incredibly easy targets.
They're incredibly vulnerable.
And that is why some of the early
Muslims used to say about the relationship between
man and shaytan, the wolf of man, right?
He used to say, I have seen that
the human being, this is the way I
envision it, has been hurled, tossed in the
middle between Allah عز و جل and between
the enemy of Allah, shaytan.
فَإِن تَوَلَّاهُ اللَّهُ لَمْ يَقْدِرْ عَلَيْهِ الشَّيْطَانِ If
Allah were to take him in, into his
sanctuary, into his protection, shaytan will never be
able to access him.
وَإِن تَرَكَهُ اللَّهُ And if Allah were to
leave him out, leave him in his vulnerability,
leave him as an open target, the shaytan
will devour him.
There's no contest.
There's no equivalency between a lamb, a sheep,
and between a wolf.
فَلَا تَظُنَّنَّ الْعَدُوَ غَلَبُ وَلَكِنَّ الْحَافِظَ أَعْرَضُ He
continued to say, so don't ever think the
enemy won.
The enemy of Allah can't win.
But at times what happens is Al-Hafidh,
the guardian, Allah, has turned away, has withheld
his protection.
Why did he withhold the protection?
Because you opted out of it.
You moved away from community.
You moved away from hearing the Quran.
You strayed from the system, from the fortress
that he set up for you to protect
you.
Once you stray, that is when the wolf
starts tracking you.
Right?
And he doesn't just jump on you when
you're six feet away from the herd.
He waits till you go a bit further
and further.
And then he starts tracking you, picking up
your scent, right?
Maybe even provoking you to go further in
panic, in fright, and sets up an ambush
for you, then suddenly attacks.
And likewise is Shaytan.
Very patient, very deliberate, very calculated.
Ibn Al-Qayyim, rahimahullah, he takes this further
and he says, the analogy, he says, وَمِن
كَيْدِهِ الْعَجِيبِ أَنَّهُ يُشَامْ مِن نَفْسٍ You know,
sort of the incredible deliberation, tactfulness, strategizing of
Shaytan is that he goes up to the
person and he takes a sniff, he picks
up your scent, right?
He takes a sniff of your soul.
What kind of person are you?
He does a personality test for you basically.
And he says, if he finds him the
lax type, the chill type, the lazy type,
right?
He will push him in that direction, the
path of least resistance, that's your type.
So I'll continue making you more and more
lax until you neglect the obligations.
And if you're the hardworking type, you're the
go-getter, you're the bulldozer, you're that person,
he'll push you to do more and more
of that until he drops you into innovation.
He doesn't care which way you go.
You're just not allowed to go here.
You're not allowed to stay marching straight to
Allah.
And the Qur'an captured this as well
by the way, that Shaytan said, لَأَقْعُدَنَّ لَهُمْ
صِرَاطَكَ الْمُسْتَقِيمِ I will lie in wait for
them.
I will sit to ambush them upon your...
I'm gonna straddle the path, I'm gonna send
you this way, send you that way, I
don't care which way I send you.
You just can't ride this path.
I will not let you ride this path
easily.
So, in essence, the Qur'an is being
very clear, and the Sunnah in its examples
about Shaytan is being very clear, that Shaytan
is an engineer.
Shaytan is a PhD in misleading you.
And by the way, I don't mean misleading
you as in you human beings.
You meaning you personally.
He studies you and continues studying you and
continues refining the strategy based on his study
of you.
He's endlessly at work.
He wants his second PhD, and his third,
and his fourth in you.
The Prophet ﷺ once said to the Sahaba,
to offset the suspicion they were going to
have, he said to them, be careful, إِنَّ
الشَّيْطَانَ يَجْرِي مِنِ إِبْنِ آدَى مَجْرَ الدَّمِ The
Shaytan flows through the blood pathways, the veins
of the human being.
He's always with you, he's flowing through you,
right?
He's reading you inside and out.
Non-stop.
You know when I thought about this idea
of like, he never exits.
He never checks out of the job.
And this is not to say, أعوذ بالله,
that technologists are all Shayateen or sort of
like devil worshippers or otherwise.
But I couldn't help it to be honest.
To remember, you know when the mobile phones
were coming out, the smartphones, and Steve Jobs,
the founder of Apple and the iPhone, all
of this.
He said, when he was pitching this to
the world, very famous, it's on record, that
I want this device one day to be
like the arm of the human being.
Another limb, inseparable from the human being.
And of course it is extremely useful.
But are you using it, or is it
using you, right?
Is it serving your needs, or are you
the one being served on a platter, to
the greed, right?
The technologists out there build their algorithm, and
that algorithm does have satanic ends.
There is sort of greed involved, there is
profit margins involved, knowingly or unknowingly, right?
This is how it's built.
You know, sometimes people say like, you know,
it's crazy how the algorithm like sort of,
I talk about something, and it just shows
up in my YouTube ads, or in my
newsfeed, or I talk about tires, there's a
Michelin or a Goodyear.
And by the way, there's no conspiracy here.
They told you they were doing this.
But where they lied was, I'm studying you,
so I can better serve you.
You know, I need to know where you
are, and what you're thinking, what you're talking
about, so the microphone is on.
And they know you're not gonna read the
license agreement.
You're just gonna hit download, you're gonna hit
accept, right?
You're gonna hit install.
But they're telling you, so I can serve
you.
So that when you look up a business
name, I don't give you the sushi spot
in Korea.
I give you one on Tillman Street.
So, that was the lie.
They are studying you to better customize how
they can draw your attention, to draw your
business, to make you their patron, their customer.
That's what they're doing.
And it's not just them listening to you.
They study you more than you study yourself.
This is the whole problem.
This is the satanic aspect here now.
Opens the door to be a perfect weapon
of shaytan, is that you're forgetful, and he's
mindful, and they're being sort of students of
you, studying you, so it's perfect for him.
He loves it.
You know, when you scroll, brothers and sisters,
these technologists have set up an ability to
see where you slow down in your scroll.
Which one really gives you pause?
Is it the woman dressed shamelessly and provocatively?
Or is it the ad?
Or is it sort of the gambling app,
right?
Which one is it?
Where you slow down is where I'm gonna
give you more of, right?
I just want to juxtapose that, put that
side by side with how much attention we
pay to our own behaviors, right?
Because these are what, this is how shaytan
basically, he doesn't strike sledgehammers at you, right?
He's tactful.
He chips away at your armor, and then
suddenly you have an invasion.
How carelessly do you use your device is
all I'm trying to say.
How much room did you open up for
it to become the easiest tool of shaytan
against you?
And I'll give you a few examples, or
some prompts.
I challenge you to think about them.
And none of us are perfect with this.
The first of them, have you ever asked
yourself, how much is too much?
Sometimes when people feel like, man, this is
really controlling my life, way too intrusive, way
too much time wasting.
What they do is they look at like
screen time app, my average is six hours
this week, so I did five hours, you
know?
And so I'm less than my average, so
I'm good.
That's a very superficial way to get engaged
with this battle.
Battle for your soul, battle for your akhira,
right?
Battle for your time, because time is life.
Imagine in the knowledge of Allah, you need
maximum three hours of screen time to survive
in the akhira.
And you said, alhamdulillah, I was at six,
now I'm at five.
But survival is three.
You can't just be thinking about it in
this haphazard way.
Also, when do you use it?
How strict are you on yourself about not
using it in the very few hours, the
most important hours to be invested in for
quality time with building relationships inside of your
home with your family?
You know, Neufeld, in his famous book, Hold
On To Your Kids, he said, I don't
believe this is a conspiracy theory.
He said, I don't believe that this was
intentionally done to sort of like abduct our
children.
He said, but if there were a system,
that were built to brainwash our children and
get them to think in a very specific
way about life in the world, I can't
imagine a better system than legally imposing them
to be out of our hands for 40
hours in five days.
Right?
The eight to three, or the seven to
three, in school every 40 hours.
That gives you what?
Eight hours a day they're out or more.
You have four hours with your kids, brothers
and sisters, after work.
On average, those are not even enough to
offset the eight hours.
So are we going to be mindless about
it?
Are we going to be distracted?
Are we just going to sort of lazily
keep grabbing the device?
It's very important to think about.
Even more important, your relationship with Allah SWT.
You know, when Uthman ibn Abi Al-As
came to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and
said to him, I can't keep my focus
in the salah.
Shaytan is always coming at me, harassing me.
I'm always losing touch.
You know what he said?
He said, ذاك شيطان يقال له خنزب That
is a devil whose name is Khinzab.
Meaning is a very specific devil who's specialized,
who's done a post-doctoral degree in what?
Specialized in distracting you from getting out of
your prayer, what you're supposed to get out
of your prayer.
He's focused on this.
So how ready are you to sort of
be protective of your prayer?
You know the heart brothers and sisters, it's
like the fan, you know the ceiling fans?
When you turn it off, when you stop
sort of like circulating around a certain subject,
revolving around a particular topic, it slows down
slowly, slowly, then it finally stops, right?
Likewise, if you're sort of scrolling on your
device and your mind is spinning, and you
slip it into your pocket right before Allahu
Akbar, do you think you'll get anything out
of your prayer?
You know, people have stopped.
And fellow imams tell me this all the
time, it's not just me, have stopped asking
about how to find khushu, focus and humility
and inspiration in the prayer.
People have gotten to the point where the
most common question now is, I keep losing
the count of the rak'ahs, I can't
even do math anymore.
Why?
Because we toggle so much on these devices,
that even when I put them away, my
mind is racing.
I have these racing thoughts, so I can't
even count the four anymore.
This is a huge deal.
In the masjid, brothers and sisters, like in
the masjid at least, in the masjid, like
if in the hospital of the hearts, the
house of Allah that was built for this
purpose, to replenish our recognition of Him, and
our relationship with Him, make it the exception,
not the rule that you bring your device
into this masjid, keep it in the car.
If you have to bring it, turn off
the notifications well before you get inside, a
few minutes before, and don't turn them back
on till you step outside.
I challenge you, if you cannot do that,
then you are the most desperate one needing
to do that.
You cannot resist the easiest of challenges just
because they're right in front of you.
You know there is an ayah, before I
sit down, brothers and sisters, where Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala says about people that are
going to hajj, people that are going to
umrah, يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ أَمَنُوا O you who
have believed, لَيَبْلُوَنَّكُمُ اللَّهُ بِشَيْءٍ مِّنَ الصَّيْدِ Allah
is testing you in a particular way, which
is the hunting game, the animals you would
hunt, right?
تَنَالُهُ رِمَاحُكُمْ وَأَيْدِيكُمْ That you can easily capture
with your spears and your hands.
Meaning look, you're gonna find animals right in
front of you in hajj and umrah.
But you know when you're in that state,
you can't hunt.
It's not allowed, right?
So they're gonna be right in front of
you.
Allah is testing you with them.
It's so easy.
You can literally just grab the pigeon.
Grab the wild animal and you got dinner
for the whole tribe.
Allah is testing you with these hunting game
animals that you can easily access.
It's not just about hajj and umrah, right?
Everything Allah puts in front of you that
you can easily access, He's testing you with.
And He gave you the tools to pass
this test.
He gave you a framework and a system.
The ayah continues to say, لِيَعْلَمَ اللَّهِ So
that Allah may know, may see from you
who fears Him.
Who truly fears Him before He meets Him.
بِالْغَيْبِ One brother in the masjid said, I
entered sheikh, I entered to make salah.
I'm praying salah.
And the person in front of me in
the row in front of me is flipping
through his feed.
And I saw a woman head to toe.
While in my prayer, my eye sort of
drifted to his screen, head to toe naked.
I saw of her what I have not
seen of my 30-year wife.
And I freaked out and I left the
prayer.
Because I didn't know was my prayer invalid
or not.
And he comes to the sheikh, he's asking,
you know, is it valid or not?
That's why he left the prayer.
He thought it was no point anyway.
I've never seen this before in the masjid.
But I don't want to make the most
extreme example.
Alhamdulillah, we're not doing that.
We're just texting.
Create barriers.
Prove to yourself you're not a captive of
it.
Of this mindless scrolling, this mindless usage.
That is what shaytan loves.
If you read the Qur'an, you read
the sunnah, النسيان والعجلة Forgetfulness and haste.
First thing in the morning.
To offset the plan of my day, first
thing I just get hijacked with the thoughts
of my scroll.
Whatever is there is going to sort of
hijack everything I had planned for that day.
All my productivity.
Last thing before I go to sleep at
night.
Mindlessly, forgetfully.
If he can get that, Allah built you
brothers and sisters for better than that.
That is when he can toy with you,
the shaytan.
And the device is like the perfect, the
perfect weapon for it.
أقول قولي هذا واستغفر الله العظيم لي ولكم
الحمد لله وحده والصلاة والسلام على من لا
نبي بعد أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله
وحده لا شريك له وأشهد أن محمدا عبده
ونبيه ورسوله Brothers and sisters, this was not
a sort of tirade against technology khutba.
This was just but an application for us
to remember that this is the true message
of the khutba.
Right?
The wider message of the khutba.
That if we are to study shaytan, study
shaytan's statements, study shaytan's qualities, just in the
Qur'an, just in the prophetic sunnah, it
is incredibly liberating.
Like it's amazing.
Like shaytan is tactful, it has his PhDs
I'm talking about.
But when you read the ayat, you read
the hadith, he's fully exposed.
We're so fortunate.
Right?
It's like someone who thinks no one's gonna
catch him and he's scheming and you're watching
him in HD on the surveillance camera.
Like it's futile for him.
If Allah takes you in, into his book,
into his deen, into his system, into the
community he told you to stay close to.
You know, I'll give you one example.
The greatest target of shaytan, right?
Is to convince you of something he's not
convinced of.
Which is, there's no hope in Allah SWT.
Right?
He is a hopeless cause.
But when he became arrogant, he still had
hope in Allah.
When he rejected to make sujood, prostrate to
Adam, he still said, Oh Allah, give me
some time.
He had hope that Allah would give him
some grace, some period, some extension.
Yet he comes to you and the first
thing he does and the greatest thing he
loves to do is tell you there's no
time, there's no chance, you can't do it.
You missed fajr this morning.
What's the point of praying dhuhr?
Right?
What's the point?
You already missed fajr.
Don't pray dhuhr.
And then he pushes it on.
You already missed two prayers.
What's the point of the third?
Right?
There's no point.
So when he tells you that and you're
close to the Qur'an, you're like, don't
try it.
I read Allah's book.
There's endless hope.
And he told me that you work against
hope, exposed.
The Prophet ﷺ said, with it I close,
that shaytan said to Allah, وَعِزَّتِكُ وَلَجَلَالِكُ I
swear by you.
لَا أَبْرَحُ أَغْوِي بْنِ آدَمَ مَا بَقِيَتْ أَرْوَاحُهُمْ
فِي أَجْسَادِهِمْ I swear, I will continue to
mislead the children of Adam, the human beings,
so long as their souls remain in their
bodies.
So Allah responded and said, وَعِزَّتِي وَجَلَالِكُ I
swear by my might and my majesty.
لَا أَزَالُ أَغْفِرْ لَهُمْ مَا اسْتَغْفَرُونِ I will
continue to forgive them so long as they
seek my forgiveness.
That's what Allah wants from you, and that's
what Shaytan wants from you.
Allah wants you to believe, I can't snap
out of these bad habits, fun or otherwise.
I can't start praying my five.
I can't get rid of my haste, my
forgetfulness, my mindlessness, my anger.
I can't be a part of rebuilding this
ummah.
May Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala teach us
from His great book, that which gives us
wisdom to traverse this life.
May Allah grant us the ability to understand
ourselves, and understand our enemies, and most important,
understand His greatness.
We ask Allah to forgive those that have
died, have mercy on our deceased, give dignity
to our ummah, and we ask Allah to
have a special mercy and compassion and healing
for our brother Abu Amir, the brother who
sells the vegetables outside out of his truck,
and helps with our security as well.
He is hospitalized and suffering from a serious
illness.
May Allah give him a full recovery, a
full recovery that leaves behind no traces of
illness.
May Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala also give
a full recovery to our sister Khalida, the
mother-in-law of our brother Tahir.
May Allah expiate their sins and raise their
ranks.
May Allah Azza wa Jal reward their family
members for what they're going through.
And may Allah give cure to all those
who are sick, and clear the debts of
all those in debt, and bring together the
hearts that are averse to one another in
these communities and in these ummahs.
Allahumma ameen.