Mustafa Khattab – One Good Thing At A Time
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Anything.
Okay?
How many of you know the story of
the trench? The prophet was the king of
the trench.
So it's a it's a big project,
and it took everyone working together to do
it. Right?
And if the Prophet
wanted to do his own bank himself,
it would have taken
a long time to do. Right? A lot
of work.
Same thing for building the masjid of the
Prophet
in Madinah. Did he build it all by
himself, or was he working with other people?
Did he do it by himself, or with
other people?
His?
With his. Oh, this is Ibrahim. Building the
Kaaba. Right? But we're talking about the Masjid
in Madinah.
Yes? With his people. With his Sahaba, companions.
Right? With his friends.
So if you want to do something good,
then you can either do it by yourself,
and it would take a long time,
or you can work with other people. So
I'm gonna give you a few examples.
I'm not sure if you heard,
the story of a brother from Turkey. How
many of you, are from Turkey?
Masha'Allah.
So
there's this brother,
He lived and died a 150 years ago.
Maybe you heard the story last year, when
we were doing the fundraise.
So this brother
was in Turkey
a 150 years ago. He was not rich.
He was just working hard to make the
ends meet. He was trying to keep his
head above the water, provide for his family.
But one day,
he decided to build a Masjid.
He decided to build a Masjid for the
people.
So what he did basically,
every time he passed by the market, and
he saw something that he liked,
he said, you know what? If I wanted
to buy ice cream,
I'm gonna donate the money that I wanted
to buy the ice cream with. I'm gonna
put it in a box.
So first thing, he put the $1
he wanted to buy the ice cream with,
put it in the box.
Next day, he wanted to buy a banana,
put the $1 in the box. And he
said, it is as if I already ate.
So he put the money in the box,
and he said, let's assume I ate.
They say
in Turkish.
Right?
So it is as if I ate.
So he kept putting one dollar everyday,
and it took him about 25 years, 30
years to raise enough money, all by himself.
And he built a masjid, and the masjid
is still standing in Turkey till this day.
They call it the Sankey Yedim Masjid. If
you Google it, Google Sankey Yedim, you'll read
about the history of the masjid.
One man, he built a masjid all by
himself.
But he couldn't do it all overnight.
It took him 25
years, 30 years.
How many of you heard about Malcolm X?
Didn't you have?
Yes.
I think he was in grade 3 or
grade 4. When he dropped out of school,
he couldn't continue
because his father
died or was killed, and he had so
many brothers, so he had to leave school
so he can work and provide for his
family.
Eventually, he got in trouble with the authorities.
He didn't have the best friends,
so he ended up being a drug dealer,
a thief.
He ended up in jail. He stayed, I
think, for about 7 years in jail.
He couldn't read that well.
So eventually in the story, he became Muslim.
And he thought that the best way to
become a good person and to have a
future is to have an indication.
He couldn't get an indication in jail, so
he started to learn how to read. He
learned
a b c.
Then he started to memorize the dictionary. He
got a thick dictionary, that big, and he
started to memorize the dictionary.
He memorized about 5 words every day,
starting from a, b, c, all the way
to z. And it should have taken him
about 2 years to finish, and he actually
memorized
the whole dictionary.
Everything inside, between the two covers.
Then he started to read books in philosophy,
in history,
in politics, and so on and so forth,
in religion.
And soon enough,
he began to, he started to debate
with
the guards in jail, with professors who were
visiting the jail, and he won the debates.
And he became a very important figure in,
in Muslim history in the US.
I also like to give the example of
the clear Quran.
I know I used the example a bit
of times before.
The translation, the whole project, took about 3
years,
for a 1000 days to be exact.
5000 hours.
But the actual work, the actual translation took
me 1 year to translate. So why did,
basically,
of course, 1 year to prepare
the and
different translations,
and 1 year at the end for revisions
and reviews and editing and all that stuff.
But the actual translation took 1 year.
How how many pages are there in the
Quran?
Yeah. Yeah. I can't hear anything. 104.
104.
104. 104. Now I'm talking about the pages,
not the chapters.
Masha Allah.
We'll give you something tomorrow.
We'll send you the check-in the mail.
604
pages in this Quran.
So I decided to translate
1 page every day.
Two faces.
Like this. This face and this face. One
page every day.
365
days in the year.
So come, as I said English, come *
or high water. I had to translate my
page every day. Whether I was sick,
I was in the hospital, I have to
translate.
I eat.
I did my Eid salah. I eat Khutbaah.
I go home and I translate my page.
When I went to the RIA's conference in
Toronto, it's coming up,
by the end of this year, last week,
last,
last weekend of, December.
When I was there
listening to Norman Ali Khan,
listening to the other people, I took a
page with me, and I had to translate
when I was there. So every single day,
I had to translate 1 page, and it
took 1 year to finish. I know a
professor of mine at Allah's heart. It took
him over 20 years to finish. Because he
was busy with other things, and he got
distracted and but I was focused. And I
tried to do it in 1 year. So
why am I telling you all these examples?
It's because if you want to learn language,
a language, like Arabic,
or Turkish, or Somali, or Urdu, nothing is
difficult.
It takes time and dedication.
Make sure you do one good thing every
day. You memorize 1 word, 2 words, 5
words from a language every day, and after
some time you'll be a good speaker of
that language. You'll speak it fluently.
If you want to memorize Quran,
you can memorize 1 aya every day. Yes,
it will take you a few years to
finish, but you will do it.
The other way, if there's something difficult that
you want to do, something
good, as I said, either good along over
a long period of time, And I gave
the example of Lake Ontario.
It didn't happen overnight.
Small drops of rain came together over many
years, and they formed Lake Ontario. Huge.
So you can take a long time, Russians
are dead. I'll give you one more example.
You can take a long time to do
this, or work with other people.
2 years ago, I was a mob in
Saint Catherine's,
and I was teaching a youth Hanukkah. We
had about 80
youth in the group.
There was this brother,
he came from Egypt. His name is Ahmed.
And
he was born in Canada. His father was
doing the speech today. Omar was born in
Canada. The family moved back to Egypt, and
the brother didn't learn English because he never
thought that he would be coming back to
Alastair.
The situation that works there,
you know,
the economy,
whatever. So he decided to come back. And
I think he's he was 17 or something.
16, 17. So he came back to study.
He went to school, but his English was
in the basement.
So he decided to improve his English,
and, in the meantime, he had to work
to provide for himself.
Those of you who know Saint Catherine's, the
employment rate is probably the highest
the unemployment is the highest in Canada. If
there is a job open opening in, Saint
Catherine's,
more than a 100 people applied for the
same job, and they end up taking one
ride. Right? So it is the highest unemployment
rate in Canada.
I tried to find him a job. I
spoke to
car
car dealership.
No.
No opening.
I spoke to a restaurant.
Grocery store. Nothing.
So I told him, okay.
Why are you so desperate to find a
job? He said, Because I wanted to buy
a laptop, so I can
do my studies, I can learn English, and
so on and so forth. I can communicate
with my family back home.
So
$400 laptop.
So that night when we had the youth
helipah,
I spoke to the 80 brothers in the
group, they were sisters as well, and I
told them we need I told them the
story.
Omar was not there.
And I told him the story, this is
what happened. I didn't tell him the name.
There's a brother who needs our help. We
need to come up with $400 to buy
him a laptop.
Each one of them pledged
$5,
and in 2 minutes, we raised enough money
to buy him a laptop.
So if every one of them paid $5,
would that
make them poor?
Would that be difficult for anyone?
No. $5,
that's a cup of coffee
or 2 donuts. Right? So everyone donated for
20 tidbits.
So everyone donated $5, and we got the
laptop for the brother like that, and he
was elevated, he was dancing in the streets,
and he started to learn English, call his
family. And he didn't have the words, so
we have to focus on his studies.
But it took so many of us to
do a little something,
something good together, so we can make someone
happy. So this is the point for today,
inshallah. Do you want to do something good,
Either worse with other people,
or take your time, and it would be
done inshaAllah with the help of Allah. We'll
see you tomorrow inshaAllah.
We ask Allah
to make peace of
you, give you success and tawfiq.
Is that a lot of violence?
Oh my gosh.