Mustafa Khattab – Stop Clowning Around
AI: Summary ©
The importance of learning to value and value oneself is emphasized in a training session on Islam. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding one's purpose in life, including the importance of praying, fasting, giving money, and being gratitude. They stress the need to un expos one's political beliefs and not give up on political beliefs until it is clear what it is about. The importance of gratitude and being grateful for everything is also emphasized.
AI: Summary ©
I bear witness that there is none worthy
of our worship except Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And I bear witness that Muhammad salallahu alayhi
wa sallam is the seal of the prophets
and the final messenger to all of humanity.
Whoever
Allah guides, there is none to misguide.
And whoever Allah
leaves astray, there is none to guide alight.
About 10 days ago,
took a flight to, to the UK
to attend the training there,
and actually, 20th
January 20th January. I sometimes I lose sense
of time. So anyway, I spend about a
week there,
and Subhanu'lalah has been a very,
empowering
and humbling experience for me. You go there
because as an imam,
most of the time I'm talking, I'm teaching,
but now I got the chance to sit
as a student and listen to someone teach
me. And and this is something amazing, alhamdulillah,
because sometimes we forget.
And I told the other imams, it was
a group of 15 imams, 15 imams from
Canada, who went to, the UK to get
training,
on how to do dawah. And I told
them,
always think of the story
of
Musa Alaihi Salam,
who was a prophet. He was receiving revelations
from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala Wa'hi all the
time, and Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala told him,
there is knowledge that you don't have, go
to Al Khidr Alaihi Salam and learn from
him. Right? This is a knowledge that even
a prophet doesn't have. So So it was
a good experience,
and sometimes there were struggles on the way
like how they drive. They sit on the
right, and they drive to the left, and
you have to struggle a bit with the
British accent.
So we don't say water anymore. You say
water
and and so on and so forth. But,
generally,
on the plane, the 15 hours about 14,
15 hours I spent on the plane,
on this, round trip, I started to think
about the purpose of my being and the
purpose of my existence. Who am I and
what am I doing here in in this
world?
And and those of you who travel a
lot, sometimes you have this experience
when the plane takes off
and your heart starts shaking
because sometimes you have this feeling what happens
if one of the engines fails
and you crash and die.
Especially when you are on the way and
there, you know, you have air turbulences and
you feel like heart is shaking and you
say, oh, You Allah, you remember Allah all
of a sudden.
And
when they, you know this happens when the
plane takes off and at the time of
landing you feel the same thing. What if
something goes wrong?
Where am I gonna be? Like, when you
are traveling, you're up there in the air
between the, you know,
in the heavens and the earth,
you know your life is between, you know,
the fingers of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. He
can do whatever he wants
and you feel powerless.
So these are some of the thoughts I
had,
at that time.
So the reason I'm talking today is sometimes,
subhanAllah,
we forget the very purpose of our existence
in this life. Our fitrah,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala when He created us,
when He manufactured us,
he placed the inside
us.
And sometimes this gets clouded,
whether a person is a Muslim or a
non Muslim, their gets clouded.
So in the case of a non Muslim,
for example, the prophet
says, the Allah created you in this, natural
way to worship Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and
to be a good person, but the prophet
says the parents
change this fitra. They make you a yahudi,
the salani. They make you anything. They change
your filter, and this is this is very
true. Most people in this world, they have
certain religious beliefs because their parents are doing
the same thing.
So if someone is born in China, most
likely they would be Buddhist. If someone is
born in India, most likely Hindu, we'll see.
If someone is born in Europe, most likely
atheist. If someone is born in Latin America,
Catholic.
If someone is born in the US, most
likely Protestant, and so on and so forth,
and so on and so forth.
And Muslims,
Allah
gave you this treasure,
this hadiyah, which is Islam, but sometimes our
fitra is clouded and we turn our back
to the faith
unless for example you go through a difficult
time, there are turbulence.
This is where you remember Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
If you are a student and you are
taking your final exams or someone goes to
the hospital for a surgery
or someone goes to jail. This is when
they remember Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. The air
turbulence. Right? So I'm gonna share with you
today, inshallah, some of the air turbulence,
moments,
during this, present
presentation very quickly inshallah
to uncloud our fitr.
If I see someone
and eating for example and ask them why
you eat and they say, of course, I
eat
to sustain my body so I can live
a healthy life.
If someone is getting married, I ask them
why you get married? They say, well, because
I want to start a family,
protect myself from, you know, temptations and so
on and so forth. If someone is going
to school, I tell them why you're going
to school,
and they say, well, I'm going to school
because I want to get a degree. I
want to be a doctor, an engineer, a
teacher, anything
to serve humanity and make a living, for
example. There there is always a purpose.
Right?
There is a purpose for everything we do
and sometimes we forget the purpose of our
own existence here in this world.
If I ask someone here, why did you
come to Jum'ah? They say, well, I came
to be to get close to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala and learn something about the deen,
and I assure you there are some people
here in this audience, I see them sometimes
and some people tell me
that these brothers, maybe sisters as well, when
they come to the Jumah Khutbah, they play
with their cell phones, they chat on WhatsApp,
and they talk to each other.
So what is the purpose of your coming
here? Right? If you're not coming to learn
something or very close to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala or to learn halal and halal.
And I've seen people go for a tikaf
in Ramadan, the best time of the year,
the last 10 nights of the, you know,
of the year basically, in the month of
Ramadan.
They go to the masjid for a tikaf
and they don't spend the night,
making dhikr, remembering Allah, praying, making dua.
They sit and talk about other people. Oh,
this guy is ugly. Who does he think
he is? Right? Why did he come to
the masjid? What is the purpose of your
being here?
Because if you came just to talk about
other people, they are ugly,
they this, that.
You didn't have to come here. You could
just go to Tim Hortons and talk there.
So sometimes the purpose of our being is
totally messed up.
So I just wanted to to focus, a
little bit on this,
to focus on the purpose of your being.
Why you are here in this world? Because
sometimes our is clouded and we forget.
Right?
So, for example,
say for example, you woke up one day,
you found yourself on an airplane. You didn't
take the plane. You didn't take to the
airport, Parisian airport. You didn't take the flight,
but you open your eyes, you found yourself
there, Air Canada.
And you didn't take the flight,
nothing. You didn't buy the tickets, you just
found yourself there. Right?
And there are some fundamental questions that will
come to your mind at that time. You're
hanging in the air. What am I doing
here? So there are basically three questions that
will come to your mind.
Where did I come from?
Where is this plane heading?
And what am I doing here?
These are fundamental questions everyone should ask themselves.
So now imagine as you're asking yourself
these fundamental questions,
they start to serve dinner,
DJs play,
and your favorite movie is on, and you
get busy for an hour or 2. Right?
And sometimes people get busy their entire lives.
They forget where they came from, what they
are doing here,
and where they are going after. Where the
plane is going to land. Right? So these
are important questions that everyone should ask themselves.
You know, you shouldn't get distracted by the
entertainment
or the food or the DJ or the
movie.
What are you doing here
on this plane?
Now if we can
make the analogy a bit bigger,
if you think of this world,
this planet Earth as your plane, because quite
frankly,
our,
planet Earth is not much different from the
plane you take off because
it's it's this blue marble hanging in the
air.
And, subhanAllah, I like to watch NASA and
watch these,
footages of the earth and the solar,
system because you feel insignificant.
Like, what is this? This ball hanging in
the air, what are we doing there? What
is our purpose of existence?
And I asked myself the exact same questions.
Where did I come from?
What am I doing here in this world,
and where this Earth is taking me? What
am I doing at the end? When I
die or when the plane will land at
the end. What am I doing here? And
we same thing. We get distracted. Your job,
your boss, your family, your kids,
money, bills,
taxes, insurance.
We get busy, and sometimes we forget most
of the time, we forget the fundamental questions.
Where did I come from? What am I
doing here? Where am I going after? Right?
And we get distracted by these things. The
only time we seem to
think about our existence and our being and
our purpose
is when you have air turbulences in your
life. You go to the hospital, you fall
sick,
you have a near death experience, this is
when you wake up, and you start to
think, oh, what is going here?
A lot of people I know accepted Islam
because they came across an air turbulence in
their life.
They ended up in jail or they went
to hospital or something terrible happened to them
or they lost their brother, their father passed
away, their mother passed away. When they have
these turbulences in life, they start to think
about the purpose of their existence in this
world.
So while we were in, the UK,
one day before we left, we they took
us to the streets of London to do
dawah.
And we're doing a lot of dawah to
people and sometimes, subhanallah, you come across someone
and you think there's no way in the
world this person will take shahada. Like you
find someone with tattoos from head to toe.
And and subhanAllah, when you look at them
you see shaitan.
Right? And you try to stay away from
them because there's no point wasting your life
with and time with this guy like there's
nothing good about them.
And you look at other people, Mashallah, with
the suit and tie and, you know, and
you talk to them and they don't listen
to you. And you talk to someone with
tattoos and stuff and you talk to them
for a few minutes, they take shahada
because their fitra is unclouded.
Now they understand
why they are doing here,
where did he come from, and where they're
going. So we came across brother Aaron.
I'm not sure if you can see him
clearly. He's the clown in the middle here.
So myself and Imam Mamoon, he is from,
Toronto, we made dua to him for 10
minutes.
Initially, brother Mamoon just wanted to take a
picture with him.
You know, his niyyah was not just to
make doubt to him because he was thinking
maybe, what is the point? He's not gonna
listen to us. This guy is just he
is into dunya, he's not gonna listen to
us. His fitra
is is totally clouded. He's not gonna listen
to us. Wallahi, we spoke to him for
just 10 minutes.
And I gave him the example of the
plane. You woke up, you found yourself on
an airplane.
Where did you come from? What are you
doing here? Where are you going? 10 minutes.
And after 10 minutes he took shahara, he
said,
this is the truth.
I'm ready. And he took shahara. Alhamdulillah. It's
like beer.
So sometimes
you just need to uncloud this footah. Every
now and then before you go to bed,
try to think about your existence. What is
the purpose of your being here? Because this
will help you put a lot of things
in perspective.
Like say, for example, your priorities in life,
because sometimes we get distracted.
I have to have the biggest house in
town. I have to do this. I have
to have the fanciest
car. So what is the expense?
Well, the expense sometimes your health. You're not
taking care of your health because you're working
day and night. You're not taking care of
your wife. You're not taking care of your
husband. You're not taking care of your kids.
So once you put your priorities in order,
you understand the purpose of your life.
Your rights and your obligations as a human
being and as a Muslim. You have obligations
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. You have obligations
to your family. You have obligations to your
nafs, your health, and and so on and
so forth.
So understanding your purpose in life will give
you this, perspective of who you are and
what you're doing here.
So as I said at the beginning, Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala created us with a fitra.
This innate nature,
the this natural way that Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala instilled in every one of us. That
we are here for a purpose, to worship
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, to be good to
one another.
We have a goal in life. We have
a purpose.
And as I said, sometimes we get distracted.
The reason of this khutba is to make
you think
on cloud and awaken your fitra.
What is the purpose of being here? And
believe me,
one of the reasons why is I started
I spoke about this topic is, you know,
the number of people who come to me
for counseling
and the problems they have, and the issues
they have, like, a couple would come and
they are fighting over child support. The money
they get from the government, who's gonna take
it?
And the fights over, like, husband and wife
issues, some small things.
Oh, he came 5 minutes late from work.
Oh, he he is visiting his mother. He's
giving money to his brother. Come on, man.
I you are wasting your life and you're
making me miserable.
We are not in the kindergarten here. People
fight over trivialities,
small things, meaningless things, and they forget the
very purpose of their entire being.
Wallahi, I came across a brother and his
brother, like 2 biological brothers.
And one of them told me, wallahi, they
didn't talk to each other for 35 years.
He didn't talk to his brother for 35
years. Why?
Because they had the disagreement over mihrab, inheritance.
So he, one of them got a piece
of land, the other one took another piece,
and one of them was not happy. So
they took each other to courts
and they started to fight and now they're
not talking into each other. They just talk
to each other through the lawyers. Right? And
their children, they don't know each other, and
they don't talk to each other.
And I told them to to have with
the money man you are fighting for wallahi.
Your relationship with your brother is more precious
than any money or any land.
You got this land from your father. Eventually,
you are gonna leave it behind and move
on. Your kids will take it, and Allah
will hold you accountable in,
and you leave the money for your kids
to fight over,
and you will be accountable. And maybe I
don't know where you your place will be,
Jannah ur Jahanam, Allahu'alaam.
But you just you're just wasting your life.
You are missing out. You're losing your brother,
your own flesh and blood because of
some dust? You're going to leave behind? Come
on man, what's wrong with you?
This is the fitra that I'm talking about.
Right?
And a sister would come and say that
her husband took off. He's neglecting her because
he travels somewhere else. He's after money and
dunya and stuff.
And her brother would complain, my wife is
not taking care of me because she is
busy doing a lot of other things.
Come on man, awaken the fitra, uncloud the
fitra.
We need to understand that Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala put us here in this world for
a reason,
and we'll talk about these for a little
bit in the next, 3, 4 minutes at
the end of the.
So these are basically some of the fundamental,
fundamentals of our existence in this world.
So whether you are a U of T
professor
or you are a teacher,
you are an imam,
you are an Uber driver, you are plumber,
it doesn't really matter.
These are the fundamentals
that everyone should know.
We are here to worship Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala. It says in the Quran.
Don't tell me
I don't have 5 minutes to praise a
lot of dhul when you are at work
or you go to school
because you are putting everything in front of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, your life would be
messed up. When we put politics ahead of
Allah, when we put money before Allah and
when we put our nafs, we worship our
nafs.
This is where you have the plot problems
and the misery in the world.
Why do you think the suffering, and the
fighting, and the 100 of 1000 who are
dying worldwide? It's because of this.
People forget the purpose of their existence.
They think they are here just to collect
money,
and to take over, and to be the
most powerful person in the land, and so
on and so forth. When you put Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala at first,
this will humble you. This will make you
feel insignificant.
It will make you humble before Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. So always try to uncloud this
fitra and put Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala first.
So your boss is not your God.
Your nafs is not your ilah. Money is
not your God. Allah is Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. When you put Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
first,
everything will become insignificant
in your eyes.
Number 2, Ikhlas, and this is what Allah
says in the Quran. What I want from
you is Ikhlas, sincerity.
Do your best. Even if your best is
not good enough,
this will be too much for Allah subhanahu.
This is all he's asking from you.
Even if you are sick, you cannot pray
standing
up. Do your best. Sit down and pray.
Pray with your eyes.
This is all that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
needs from you and he will give you
the full reward.
Allah says the only thing I want from
you is Ikhlas,
sincerity.
Don't worship your nafs. Don't worship money. Don't
put anything before me. Don't show off. Ikhlas
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And the Ulamas
say, there's something amazing about Abu Bakr He
was not abused like Bilal Radi Salamu. Bilal
Radi Salamu suffered the most
torture and abuse. You know the story. They
put him in the sun and the stone
on top of him and they almost killed
him several times,
and Abu Bakr did
not go through all that stuff.
Allah Sahaba,
they were killed.
Allah Sahaba used to pray and fast and
give more money than Abu Bakr
They did a lot of things and
the prophet
said that Abu Bakr is in the front.
He's ahead of many people, those who were
tortured.
He's ahead of those who died at shahid.
He's ahead of those who prayed and fasted
more than him. Why?
The Ulamat say because of his Ikhlas, his
sincerity.
And this is what matters to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. This is why Abu Bakr is
in the forefront
because of his great sincerity for Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
Number 3, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala wants from
you gratitude.
He gave every you everything. Everything you are,
everything you have, everything you would ever be
is from Allah.
Sometimes we forget this.
Sometimes we forget Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is
the one who gave us the help.
He's the one who gave us the knowledge.
He's the one who gave us the authority,
and we forget this sometimes and this will
lead us to be arrogant and look down
upon people and to abuse our authority.
When you think that everything is coming from
Allah and he can take it from you
any minute, this will humble you.
This will humble you.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran,
if you are ungrateful,
Allah does not need you
anyway. If you are grateful,
this is what Allah wants from you. It's
it is stated very clearly in the Quran.
He wants gratitude from you.
We spoke about this briefly.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says in
the Hadith, your nafs, your body has a
right on you. Your family has a right
on you and Allah has a right on
you. So give everyone the right.
And the prophet
gave us this nasihai in conclusion,
when you are in this world, think of
yourself as Musafir.
So in this case, the attachment to the
wealth, to the power, to the authority, the
ego will not be there.
If you know that one day your plane
will land
and you will reach your destination,
you are not here to stay. You are
just Musa'afir,
so you make sure you make the right
choices and decisions in life. Because as we
said before,
if your plane took off,
then the day will come when your plane
will land.
So, you know, don't be foolish. Don't think
that your plane will be flying forever. No.
Eventually, it's going to land.
My mother taught me when I was young,
she had never been to school, and she
told me whatever has a beginning
has an end.
If something has a beginning, it has to
have an end. Right? So you have to,
you know, be ready for this time. You
never
know whether your plane will take will land
today, tomorrow, after 10 years. One thing we
know for sure, it is going to land.
Be ready
when you land.
He said something amazing.
You see people are just lost.
They spend the first half of their life
wasting their health
to collect money,
and they spend the second half of their
life
to regain their health.
They spend the second half of the life
spending their wealth to regain their health.
So first half, you spend to make money
and you lose your health,
and the second half, you spend their your
wealth to regain your health.
So people are confused, people are in great
loss, and the reason is that you don't
understand their fitrah.
So make sure inshallah you reflect on these
things before you go a bit to bed
tonight,
and appreciate everything that you have in this
world.
And
my last lasiha to you, I I know
I'm getting over a bit, just the last
10 seconds.
The best thing to have in this life
is to have this,
attitude
of gratitude.
Before you go to bed every night, thank
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for everything you have,
and less and think of those who are
less fortunate than you are. This will help
you appreciate the Ni'ma as the prophet said.
Thank Allah for the health.
Thank Allah for every heartbeat.
Thank Allah for the wife, and the kids,
and the house, and the jobs, and the
and the and the family,
and and the fact that you are surrounded
by good people who show you the way,
and they take care of you. Thank Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala for your parents.
You could be dead. You could be in
the hospital. You can lose your family. You
can lose your health and everything you have,
and Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is keeping this
manna with you.
And if you say if you don't say
thank you to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, how
ungrateful you are to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So always reflect
on the plain,
analogy that I gave at the beginning, and
hopefully, inshallah,
this will help us uncloud our fitra just
like it did to our brother Aaron, the
cloud the cloud in the streets of London
in just 10 minutes. So we ask Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to give us the best
in this life and to help us reflect
on the purpose of our being and to
be grateful to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and
to ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to help
us be grateful to him for everything. To
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to protect us from
harm and we ask
Allah to give us the shafaa of Muhammad
to give us a and
give us the best in this life and
the best in the life to come.