Personalize your Ramadan – Friday Night Hour

Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah warahmatullahi wabarakatuhu. Alhamdulillah Palomino, salida homosalate. Mubarak ala Nabina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi. Germaine, welcome everyone to the Friday night hour from the Islamic Institute of Toronto. I am it's a pleasure for me to be your host may Allah subhanho wa Taala

bless you all in Charlotte My name is Manuel Hassan and I will be your host for today

personalizing your Ramadan as you know Ramadan is less than 10 days in sha Allah Allah from today and everyone is getting ready for it and a lot of times the questions that come our way at the slums of Toronto is how do we prepare ourselves so we can take the most advantage of the month of Ramadan itself as you know most of Ramadan is a time of a bad day is a time where faith and Eman is supposed to be boosted. And today she mostly called 100 a lot about him he delivered a football about how to make your Ramadan personal and to Him. That is one of the ways that you can get the full advantage of the month of Ramadan before I asked chef Muslim Khan to join us in the lifestyle and talk a

little bit about his hotbar I do want to let you all actually I want to implore you all to go ahead and share this stream insha Allah with people who are interested if you're watching on YouTube, Facebook

and, and Twitter, go ahead and tweet it back inshallah Tada. Go ahead and reshare it go ahead and also write to us. If you have questions to ask the chef insha Allah Tala even questions to ask anybody from the slums of Toronto, including myself? Go ahead and type it up in the chat. It doesn't matter where you are, we would be delighted I'd find a way to give you an answer. All right. Let me go ahead and bring my dear friend and good chef. So I want to light our chef mostly how are you? Oh Allah como Salama? patola. Good. hamdulillah How are you doing? Alhamdulillah Shia Muslim? It's a pleasure to see you. And

you look as good as always. Mashallah, may Allah subhanaw taala always keep you blessed with a beautiful smile, a beautiful face? She has mostly

how do you personalize your online? How do you make your own personal?

Oh, wow, we could be here for a long time, it

could be for a long time.

You know, one thing that really helps is I try to reflect on the most recent significant events of my life that lead up to Ramadan. So what has happened maybe in the last like week or two prior to Ramadan really affects my experience really affects everything my intention, what I want to work on what was spent most of my time thinking about and doing, it's going to happen in those last couple of weeks. So, yeah, it could just be a number of different things. It could be you know, I'm extremely busy, or I might meet somebody that might ask me something or get into a conversation with somebody about some kind of subject, not necessarily Islamic one, but something with you know,

meaning and it really like, gets me to a point where I'm thinking and reflecting about life. I could have attended a funeral or I've met a bunch of people that have attended funerals. So it just a whole combination of different things. And when it's outside of the personal contact that I have, I'll think about some of the world's problems even and what they mean to me. And those are the things that helped me to personalize Ramadan. How do you do that chef? So now you're just giving examples of like, basically. So show me practically how how would these incidents how these events will make the month or months of personal for you?

Yeah, so I think every one of us has our own personal way and how we internalize world events, right? For me, especially when it comes to like disaster. So when you look at the war in Ukraine and Russia and war and other places, when I think about climate change, when I think about, you know, gas price, food prices, just cost of living skyrocketed, like everything around us is just more difficult. Immediately, what my mind translates that into is that, uh, I have to be grateful and humbled hamdulillah I'm not on the street, 100 Illa I, you know, I have a job I am able to provide, and things like that. So immediately I get into this sort of gratitude mode. And that eventually

pushes me to do certain things and to concentrate on them more, so I'll pray but maybe I'll pray a little longer. Or I'll pray some extra records after I'm done. Things like that. And if I've gone to a funeral, then immediately and I tell people this all the time, every time you go to a funeral,

if you don't imagine yourself being buried in front of you, you have lost at least 80% of your purpose at that Janessa right, you've got to be able to visualize that one day everybody is going to do this for me. So then I start really working on the little things that I know I can improve on with my attitude with my emotions with the way that I am with people with my kids start maximizing my time and that's how it starts to become practical that the world and the things that surround you start to really affect you and inshallah translate that into something good

so in other words, if what you're what you're saying to me is you you actually think about how blessed you are to be around at the time of the month of Ramadan itself and how you don't actually because really

it's been difficult couple of years. I have several members of my of my family whom

I genuinely even though they were they weren't the youngest or they weren't but I genuinely did not ever presume that I was going to lose them before this month of Ramadan. A lot of them that I really didn't think about it I really did not think that there are going to be not around and everyone Milan this happens, right when you have some people who are

who, who you lose along the way really in a sense. And maybe that is the actual point of you know, your story that you had before the actual home base of Chef Muslim.

This is this is how you personalize it online. Now let's talk a little bit about what does this personalizing of Ramadan do for you? How does it make you treat Ramadan itself now that you feel like it's something that's a part of you? Oh, man, you know, chef, I can tell you the biggest benefit behind you know, preparing for Ramadan in a more personal and intimate way is that every Ramadan becomes meaningful in its in a different way. So last year is the Ramadan with the same approach it was it was completely different this year is Ramadan, the way things are going is gonna be completely different. I'm able to use the Ramadan to concentrate on one or various aspects of my

life that in the previous Ramadan I wasn't able to do, or just wasn't on my mind or that sort of thing. So every it makes every single Ramadan, more meaningful, more personal.

And I of course that translates into me really pushing myself further and further. So you know, we all might miss a tunnel, we night here and there as the month unfolds. But when I think about what I'm thinking about, it encourages me that even if I'm a little tired or what have you just go go get out there. If I have a day off, use it for myself when I'm not lecturing and doing other things. So that's the biggest takeaway that I get that I I really look forward to and I benefit from in the month of Ramadan.

Mostly, and the final question that I actually wanted to ask you about the month of Ramadan, which is thought we talked about, I guess, goal setting in terms of the month of Ramadan itself. And I really wanted to ask this question. Well, people actually come and they say, Oh, this month, I'm going to read the Quran 20 times 30 times 40 times and they get into this, these these, I guess really amazing goals that their themselves are trying to set. Do you do the same thing for yourself? Do you have like goals that you say, Okay, I'm going to read the Quran 60 times a month this time, like I just kind of want to know how on a practical level, do you benefit from the extra worships or

how do you plan for them during the month of Ramadan? Or for the month? Yeah, you

Don't get me wrong, I get asked this a lot. And sometimes I kind of cringe what I have to answer it because I don't really know what my perspective of Ramadan how I, how I interact with the month, how that helps anyone else fight encourage them, I don't know. But I can say to you is that a when it comes to the standard things that we do in Ramadan. So of what the top of the list were reading for anyone reading more of Quran,

I don't really set any particular goal when it comes to the recitation. Instead, I just try my best that whenever I can, I'll read and read as much as I could at that moment. So Sunday's are going to be much more than others. So that way, I don't like beat myself on the head. If one day I can only read one sort of because I'm lecturing and fundraising and doing different things, and my mind is all over the place. At least I can let that day sort of slide. So what I do when it comes to the poor end is I remind myself and discipline myself to be consistent, whatever that looks like in front of Allah. So whether it means doing a hotter, you know, every other night, or what have you,

then Alhamdulillah. But if it means I can at least recite one surah Alhamdulillah. I'll take full advantage of that. And then the second thing is that in terms of goal setting,

there really depends on what's revolved revolving around my personal life before Ramadan arrives. So actually, you know, that month it is hot. I was thinking a lot about my beloved. And to that I buried a few weeks ago, right, then it's the first time. I mean, I mean, it's the first time you know, that moment, that was the most emotional and difficult funeral I have ever attended my entire life. Right, it really felt like I was burying my own mother, let's let's just put it away, right. And it just put a lot of things into perspective. There's a part of me that's still trying to heal from all of this from her loss and things like that. But that's the freshest thing on my mind these

days. And so what I did is for today's hookbaits I took that then there were some members of the community who just lost members of their own family. So I decided to say to everybody that look, there's the standard things that we do, the poor and the total, we the charity, all of that stuff. Those are all great Alhamdulillah but don't forget that every single one of us are asked about the Ramadan and how you experienced it and what you did on a personal level. Well, how you performed your silhouette, what intention you carried when you gave and you and the charity and you you fasted and all of that stuff. So I wanted to take that and apply that to we don't know if this will be our

last Ramadan we don't even know if we're going to see this Ramadan despite how close we are in mela make it easy for all of us inshallah. So I wanted people to realize just how fragile life was, and that as they journey through Ramadan in sha Allah to really understand how quickly life can be snatched from you, how you don't know where you will be at what time that death will find you. So I wanted to take that concept now and just really drive it into the hearts of everyone. That that's what Ramadan truly is. Is that your personal way a gift that Allah gives you once a year that you can really make up and work hard for the things that you struggled from throughout the year. That

was kind of the message that I wanted to leave the audience with and I hope in sha Allah that they receive that message AutoCal official must have Allah subhanaw taala bless you and give you generous honestly likenesses as always and ask Allah subhanaw taala to allow us to reach our line inshallah and to gain the benefit from the month of Ramadan inshallah we'll see you in in the weeks coming up mashallah, I know that you and I are going to be working on some very cool stuff for Oman. So we're going to that's all we're going to say for now. Yeah, that's all Yeah, that's right. However, I do want to let all of you guys who are actually watching I do want to let you know that we are working

also on this I'm still trying on something really, really cool, which is the Ramadan

Ramadan Quran competition, I actually want to just drop a link right now for you to actually go ahead and see it because this is really going to be one of the coolest things ever, this account wide or memorization competition.

Like honestly,

there is, first of all, first of all, let's talk about actually what the actual judges themselves. We have some of the amazing judges, world class judges, and shall I shall say, let us again check out

On the table chef, the Attach header. And we also have sister Julie and really we should actually call her chef, Chef Julie because she has the the tempura art and also, Robbie Han. These are amazing people who have served the Quran for so long, there's going to be the actual judges for this plan, competition inshallah dolla. So, you need to register for this though, you have to go to our website that islam.ca And you go to the candlelight parameterisation competition. Go ahead and register there you see the registration there, it's open for all ages, there are sections that are open for ages seven to 15 Certain parts are open seven to 12 and seven to 12. So some really, really

cool

things that are happening inshallah the qualify, the qualifying tests are going to happen between the 15th to the 17th Inshallah, and the last day to register will be the 10th of April so, hurry up and register Inshallah, don't forget over $10,000 Load worth in prizes. I actually wasn't going to say the amount of money because I want to talk about money when it comes to the, you know, the book Allah subhanaw taala. But

obviously, it's halaal for us to give her father the Quran, money as actual, especially when there are parts of the competition's themselves, but $10,000 distributed amongst the top competitors in sha Allah. Yeah.

What do you think that's, that's, I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's a way to encourage it. All of these were ciders. And everybody can use, you know, something of value these days. So it definitely makes life a little easier. So, yes, absolutely crazy. So, if you're young, you can help your parents out inshallah. Yes, yes. Yeah, you can just get money to help you get married. May Allah subhanaw taala bless all of you in sha Allah chef Mosley who will see you again. It's been a pleasure to talk to you in sha Allah, Allah.

And that was chef must have gone from Islamic State of Toronto. My name is Mohan hasn't not been your host for today. mela subhanaw taala bless you all and give you all Jana it's honestly always always a pleasure to have you on Ask Allah subhanaw taala the one who is allowed to both you and I sorry, you and I to be gathered in a small little gathering shall ask Allah subhanaw taala to allow us all to be gathered in agenda in a whole cloth early and until we see you next time shall stay happy, healthy and wealthy of Samadhi for the law