Morad Awad – Better NOT to Know
AI: Summary ©
The importance of acknowledging the secret of Islam and sharing information is discussed, as well as the complexities of the brain and the potential consequences of revealing one's secret. The speakers stress the importance of privacy and striving to establish a balance between one's hearts and public image, as well as avoiding overestimating one's shortcomings and fixing one's insides to avoid future problems. They also emphasize the need to correct gaps in one's storylines and avoid regret and fear of falling into sin. forgiveness and guidance on finding a way to avoid regret and fear are also mentioned.
AI: Summary ©
We start by praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
and sending our peace and blessings to our
noble and beloved prophet, Muhammad
alaihis salatu wa salam.
And I remind myself and yourselves with a
reminder
that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reminded us in
the Quran when he said,
All you who believe, fear Allah the way
you should be feared and do not die
except in the state of complete submission to
him. We ask Allah to die in the
state, to be resurrected in the state, and
to live our lives in the state.
Brothers and sisters in Islam,
recently I was
reading a story
that was based on
a short skit
that was not in English language. It was
in a different language.
But it was a story of a family
that was sitting
together
on a vacation where they don't normally get
together.
You know, sometimes,
the parents
got older, the kids got older, they moved
on, they live in different places,
but they all somehow
met up in this one vacation place.
Elderly father and mother,
they
and they were all sitting together having fun
in a joyful time.
Until one of them came up with an
idea
and said, hey, we haven't linked up for
a very long time.
So how about we play this game?
Said, okay. What's the game?
So do you see this table?
This coffee table in front of us?
We all put,
we unlock our phones,
and we just put them there on the
table.
And any message,
any notification,
any phone call that's received
has to be public so long as we're
here sitting together.
It has to be in front
of all of us.
If it's a phone call, it has to
be on speaker. If it's a message
on any of the social media platforms or
an SMS, it has to be read to
everyone. And if
notification,
a video recommendation,
anything
has to be shared
to everyone,
and they moved on.
At first,
it was funny.
Some silly things they learned about each other.
After an hour or so, things started to
get a bit uncomfortable
when they found out
what the other
was up to.
And within
a few hours,
this family that was having
a joyful time
spending together,
now became a miserable time with no trust
whatsoever.
The father
was planning
to have a vacation
without the mother.
The mother
was always complaining to her friends
about her husband's newly developed habits,
as they became elderly.
1
of their children, the son,
received a message from his secretary
that his wife didn't feel too comfortable with.
Their daughter
also
did something
that was not so
good,
and things just kept piling up. And you
can imagine
where it went.
SubhanAllah.
As
the matter as the story translated
and came
to this
end result,
I think the the
the skit zooms back to the beginning of
the story.
And their son
said, I don't think this game is a
good idea.
The wife asked, why didn't you want to
play this game? He said, you know, we
all have
secrets
And some of them,
if exposed,
can be
very harmful
and shameful.
And then, he picked up the phone
and he told his wife, you know this,
this thing became like our black box.
It has every
inner secret. You know, the black box on
a plane
that that, you know, no matter what happens
to the plane, this box stays intact
and it records everything that happened in the
plane.
He said, this phone in some senses became
like
our black box
that gathers all of our
deepest,
darkest secrets.
Although this story
may give you the impression that I'm going
to speak about technology, but
this on the complete contrary is going to
be nothing about technology.
But about
secrecy,
and about
privacy
and about
our own
and what we keep inside them,
our
or our inner egos
is something
that Allah
swore by in the Quran
in a fashion that he did not swear
by anything. Allah swore in Surat al Shams,
8 times and then he said,
SubhanAllah.
And Allah swore by this nafs and the
one that made it.
And the one
and was guided to the best of it,
and the worst of it.
The ego
or the nafs
is a very, very complex
jungle of information.
Emotions,
desires,
tendencies,
attractions.
If someone were to jump in the brain
and there were like scientific,
like,
you know, studies that were done where people
tried to get into the brain of others
and whatnot. I remember there's a Polish scientist
that tried to do that and he pulled
out because this brain is so complex.
It's so complex,
one
of us,
no matter how big our brains are, can
never comprehend the brain of someone else.
And even more so,
the combination
of the mind
of the nafs, the ego
and the heart, when they come together, this
conglomerate
is almost impossible to comprehend or be replicable.
There's no 2 that are the same.
You need to combine them together. SubhanAllah.
Brothers and sisters, we all,
just like the characters in the story that
I mentioned in the beginning,
we all have a character
or a public display for ourselves.
What we would like people to think of
us.
A mask,
for lack of better words. Something
we cover ourselves with
that does not reflect
the reality of the situation when you factor
in the state of the heart
and the mind and the nafs.
They're not too realistic, but
it can reflect reality
based on certain factors.
Some of these factors, for example, like being
true to oneself.
When someone is true to one's to their
own self,
when they're honest with their own self,
their inside becomes closer to their outside.
Another factor that affects it is
concealing
our own sins and shortcomings.
When a person conceals their sin,
they
maintain a way back. They maintain
an undemeaning way
for themselves to stay steadfast on the deen.
Keeping their image in front of the public
preserved so that they have a way back,
a way for rectification. But when a person
exposes
and does not conceal their own sins and
their own shortcomings and makes it a public
affair, it
makes
their reality,
harder
to
it makes it more difficult
for the inside
and their outside image
to come to terms with themselves.
Another is being
yourself in the sense that your some people,
you know, suppress
certain habits that they have.
Every one of us
has habits.
We may
speak a certain way, act a certain way,
do certain things that we won't do
in public.
But
that
only makes
the reality
of us
farther away
from
the image that we have painted for ourselves
in public.
And there are many factors as well.
But a person
needs to always be
alert with their own and
careful
to not become happy
with their public image, and what they are
perceived to be by others. Could be complimented
day and night. Your mom, your dad, your
siblings, your friends. Oh
you're great, you're amazing. And it might actually
get to a person where they actually believe
the compliments
that are giving given to them and ascribed
to them.
When was given all the wealth,
what
did those people of the elim tell him?
He said,
The people
around Quran said,
Don't be so happy. Allah does not like
people that are happy with all their compliments.
Allah doesn't like that.
Another
issue that I want to allude to and
I'm leading to something Is
the desire
to know the secrets of others is also
deeply ingrained into the egos, the of people.
The same way people like to be praised
for things that they did not do, and
like to be complimented to reaffirm
their public image
that is
opposing
to their inner image and their true inner
self.
People also like to pick on
the shortcomings
of others.
They want to know
what their secrets are,
what their sins are, what their shortcomings are,
what they made tell before.
And it's actually none of their business.
But you sit down and some people take
advantage of the privacy
of the trust that exists or of the
the the the weakness of the person in
front of them or the brokenness
of the person and and try to elicit
from them
their shortcomings and their sins and their deepest
secrets.
When in fact, this is
perhaps one of the worst things to do
to someone.
If you ever want for them and you
want them to come back to Allah.
So the scale
that our deen places for this
is
it consists of 2 things, 2 matters.
There's a scale. The first
side of it
is that Islam
commands us to constantly strive to establish the
balance between
our hearts and
and our public image.
This is where we are
and this is where our hearts are.
The closer they are together,
the more honest we are
in our deen, in our faith, in our
iman.
The farther they are
from each other,
the farther we are from our deen, our
faith, our iman.
Hence, making it more difficult,
most difficult for people like myself,
who can be perceived
as okay, a public a figure and so
on, or has a high expectancy. So the
person needs to rectify more, but we all
are looked up to in some way, form
or fashion, whether it be amongst our friends,
by our children,
by our siblings. We pray. We have so
many family members, relatives, friends that don't pray.
We're always looked as the one who is
faithful
who steadfast, who's clinging on to the deen.
So we
There's so much of a burden on us.
But we have to constantly strive to make
this gap
smaller and smaller until there is no gap
whatsoever.
And whomever,
whomever makes Allah
the only one they strive to please,
and the only one they care for,
they will succeed.
And those
who strive to please the public
and the people around them,
and the only thing they care for is
what people think, or what people say, or
what people do to them,
then those are the farthest away from this
this coming together of both the public and
the inner image.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran,
And as for the one
who fears their status,
by who?
By Allah.
Not amongst their people.
All they care about,
all they fear,
all they
stress for and stress over is them
standing before
Allah That's it.
And
in order to do so, Allah
then tells us
what they did, the process
they partook in in order
to
to express this feeling of fear, like, okay.
They feared their They
feared their status And Allah. So what did
they do?
And they kept their nafs, their egos under
control.
So the one that keeps themselves under control
is the one that is truly striving.
The second is
that a person
should strive to conceal
their own shortcomings and not
expose them, let alone be proud of them.
So many times
we find
brothers and
sisters rather than going
to
Allah
and resorting to Allah
first,
complaining to Allah
first, expressing their brokenness to Allah
first. They go to their friends,
they go to their family, they go to
their spouses, they go to the counselors, they
go to this. We run
to everything besides Allah
And we hasten
to do one thing,
express our shortcomings.
I need to let it out.
I need to spill my heart out.
If we do not feel comfortable spilling our
hearts to Allah,
then this is truly an issue with our
faith in our iman.
Either we don't know Allah, and we don't
know who Allah is,
or our connection with Allah is skewed, is
flawed.
If the first thing we think of the
moment we fall into a sin is,
I need to talks to somebody.
That's a huge issue.
A person
should say, Alhamdulillah, you Allah, I performed this
sin in secret
and nobody knew knows about it. You Allah,
conceal it.
You Allah, you know what's inside of me.
You Allah, you know
you created me from nothing.
And you know what my nafs pulls me
to.
That is the true form of tawbah.
And then,
rather than going and expressing and exposing and
and spilling their hearts as they say,
they spill it to Allah
Because
by doing the opposite,
a person
can fall into so much.
They can convince themselves that this sin is
part of them.
That this weakness is ingrained in them, that
they will never overcome it. And if
because they there the others already know about
it.
And sometimes people,
and I sit down and people speak to
me and we talk and they express and
they they say this and that.
After a time, they they make dawba they
want to change but they know, oh, I
told this person about my shortcomings before. This
person knows what I've been through. This person
And then they they start shying away from
that person.
They start not talking to that person.
So it affects
their relationship that they have with others as
well.
So brothers and sisters, a person
should
make their first avenue and their first address.
1, falling into a sin. 1, having a
shortcoming Allah before
anyone else.
And it is truly a sickness
to look at the faults of others
and to dig in to the faults of
others.
We're going to elaborate a little bit more
on this point in the second
After speaking about our
our egos,
and fixing
our insides,
it's also important
to point out something
that many people mistake in the
the introspective
process
of rectifying them their and looking inside of
them.
As some people do this very
aggressively,
and by
doing this
or
by judging yourself and being stern on your
own
and finding the problems within your own heart.
By doing so too much,
a person can cause more problems than good.
How so?
When a person is striving
to fix themselves,
some of the they said,
you a per one needs to be so
delicate,
and soft,
and easy going.
Just as the surgeon, when a doctor is
trying to extract
a diseased limb from the body,
or a diseased piece of flesh, they take
that piece of flesh out and they don't
take anything more than it. Because they may
take something that is fully functioning.
That is good.
So they're very easy with it,
and they take it out.
Likewise, when a person
sets off on the journey of introspection and
fixing the nuffs, they have to be very
easy and not aggressive
because
it
may
be problematic.
And it may
bog them down and hold them down.
Sheikh Al Islam,
he said that
Sheikh Al Islam,
He said
that the nafs is like, you know, there's
these holes, he there's a
interesting word that he used. I had to
search for its meeting.
But it's basically,
a big hole where where all the sanitation
and the garbage and everything, everything goes to
in a village or in a town,
and it just pours into.
Said, sometimes,
in some senses, the nafs is some similar
to this.
Said, if you want to start cleaning it,
you're going to keep digging in more and
more and more. And even when you think
you finished, you might expose things that you
never knew you had that lie beneath it.
So he said,
sometimes it's better to find a way
to cover it
and and walk over it,
if it's possible,
or clean from it whatever is protruding
and affecting
the outside,
and keep and cover whatever is within with
what is good.
So that you're capable of walking without being
disturbed by what's inside of it, or being
affected by its smells.
It's an interesting analogy, Wallahi.
And what he means is that
covering it enough to walk over it so
that it doesn't dirty your garments. It doesn't
affect you. Our nafsif, we learn
how to deal with a sickness, a disease
that lies within it,
to a point that we are capable of
doing something without this disease affecting us,
then we are good.
Over exaggerating the nafs is
is not
over exaggerating
the purification
will lead
to weakness in
or it might lead to a person giving
up on themselves.
The smart person
is the one that thinks
of their own shortcomings
to the extent
that leads them to fixing it and finding
a solution for it. But nothing more than
that.
We reflect
on our nafs. We purify our nafs
to the point
that leads us to fixing it.
But not to the extent that it paralyzes
us
from seeing
the hope or the light at the end
of the tunnel.
And I see this so much
amongst our young brothers and sisters today.
I
don't know in my heart.
So point where?
Brother, where have you been? I've been away.
Allah, I'm
I'm so bad. I'm just
No.
Why? And then, I dig in even deeper
and find out that, subhanallah,
the person is just being very stern on
themselves to the point
that it became problematic.
We introspect.
We fix our nafs. We
do to the point
that we're capable of fixing it,
and we're rectifying it, and changing it. But
the moment it starts paralyzing us, we stop.
Brothers and sisters,
what past will not come back.
And regret
that Allah
loves. The regret The type of regret that
Allah
loves towards a shortcoming or towards a sin
is the regret that fuels us to do
more good in the future.
Anything beyond it, Allah does not love that
type of regret.
In the fear
for sin
and falling into sin that Allah loves, that
fear of falling into sin that Allah loves,
is the fear that leads us to being
humble
and having humility.
Not the fear that makes us run away
from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
The moment
we see that fear of Allah making us
stop praying,
making us get away from good people, making
us do less
do less good deeds, give less
then know that that fear is an unhealthy
fear that Allah does not love.
But the healthy fear is the fear that
draws us closer to Allah
and makes us fear ever
disobeying him because he is our loved ones.
Subhanahu wa ta'ala. We ask Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala
to rectify our affairs, rectify
our hearts. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to forgive us for our shortcomings. We ask
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to guide us to
the straight path. We ask Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala to show us the truth as truth,
and guide us to following it. And to
allow us to see falsehood as falsehood, and
guide us away from it. I ask Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala to bless our families, our
spouses, our children, our parents, to unite us
together in Jannatul Firdaus. Brothers and sisters,
on this blessed day of Yomul Jummah, I
ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to alleviate
the pains and hardships of our brothers and
sisters
around the world. Our brothers and sisters in,
the Uighurs, in China, and the brothers and
sisters in Burma, and in Kashmir, and Iraq,
and in Suriya, and in Libya, and all
over the world, and in Yemen
to help our brothers and sisters in Yemen.
And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as
well to free the occupation of Al Masjid
Al Aqsa Mubarak, and to be with our
brothers and sisters in Palestine. We ask Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala
to give them
Make sure you fill the rose inside the
main So So the brothers by the doors
in the center, you can move to your
right and left
to make space for the back
Watinewaszayitoonwatoonisinninwahadal
we are
we'll,
pray
we'll make adhan and, pray
in jamaah.
But before that, there's a a sister
upstairs
who, wanted