Nadim Ali – Friends In Deen 013021
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of not being separated from a social club and learning to change one's behavior. They stress the need to be mindful of one's actions and finding one's own values. The importance of restraining people from doing wrong and speaking out against it is emphasized, as it is unhealthy relationships or connections between two people or in a family. The speaker also recites a previous hadith where the prophet said not entering Eve until you believe, and not believing until you love one another.
AI: Summary ©
Indeed, our praise belongs to Allah, the most
high. We thank him, and we seek his
aid, and we seek his forgiveness, and we
seek refuge with him from the evil of
ourselves
and from our bad actions. Whoever Allah guides,
then there is no one who can mislead
him. And whoever Allah calls to go astray,
then there is no one to guide him.
I bear witness that there is no deity
except Allah, who is unique and with our
partners, and I bear witness that Muhammad is
his worshipper and his messenger.
May the peace and blessings of Allah be
upon him and his family and his companions,
and those who follow them with good intentions
until the day of judgment.
All you who believe, fear Allah as he
should be feared and don't die except as
Muslims.
And all mankind,
be careful of your duty to your who
created you from a single soul and from
it created its mate, and from the 2
of them spread forth many men and many
women.
Be careful of your duty to Allah whom
you demand your mutual rights, and be careful
of your duty
of the wounds that bore you. Indeed, Allah
is our rakib over you.
All you who believe, fear Allah and always
speak the truth. He will cause your deeds
to be beneficial,
and he will forgive for you your sins.
And whoever obeys Allah and his messenger,
then he has truly achieved a tremendous accomplishment.
For indeed, the best speech is the book
of Allah and the best guidance is the
guidance of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
And the most evil of all affairs are
newly invented matters, which has no precedent in
Islam.
And indeed, all innovations are astray, and each
asrays in the hellfire.
Oh, Allah. Save us from it. Oh, Allah.
Accept our dua.
Allah says,
your real friends are no less than Allah,
his messenger, and the fellowship of believers,
and those who establish regular prayers
and regular charity,
and they bow down humbly in worship.
And again, as Muslims, we must honor this
verse
and surround
ourselves with like minded people.
People who are prayerful. People who are charitable.
And people who humble themselves,
not necessarily humiliate themselves,
because being humble
is quite different
than being humiliated.
If we are arrogant, then Allah will humiliate
us.
If we are humble,
Allah will honor us. Allah will reward us
as well.
You know, following this advice
will help us avoid many of the pitfalls
that we may
go come upon in life.
You know, often
we can
love
a human being more than we love Allah.
And when you hear that, yo, you know,
we we say as Muslims we only fear
Allah. We love Allah only.
But again,
the deen is is is something that is
not something that you say. It's about it's
something that you do.
You know, this is indicated. This love for
other people. This love of human beings is
indicated
by allowing them to influence you to compromise
your values. To compromise your Islamic values.
If Allah says that you don't drink alcohol,
but you have friends who influence you to
drink alcohol,
you're loving that friend more than you loving
Allah.
If Allah says don't smoke weed and you
have friends that allow you to smoke and
sell weed, you're loving that friend more than
you're loving Allah.
If Allah says that you shouldn't be gambling
or selling alcohol and selling drugs,
then you're loving
whoever is influencing you more than you love
Allah.
You
know, we have to have friends in deen,
not just friends in deed.
You know, the prophet
says that a man follows the religion
of his friends, so each person should consider
whom he makes his friend. And when you
look at this particular hadith,
it implies that you know who you are
and what your level of iman is
based on who you spend your time with.
Who you spend your time with. If your
associates
are ratchet and shady, then 9 times out
of 10,
that's who you are.
As we change,
we want our physical and psychological and spiritual
quality of life to change also.
The rapper Chuck D, he said many years
ago,
I'm going to change the people around me,
or I'm going to change the people around
me.
Through language, he emphasized the importance of changing
the quality of your associates
in order to improve your quality of life.
So this is what we have to look
at brothers and sisters.
Allah
tells us to hold fast all of you
together to the rope of Allah and do
not be separate. Do not separate.
The bond of Islam is strong. You know,
they called the hubble. The rope is strong.
The only time the connection breaks is when
you let go. The rope is unbreakable.
When you pray together,
you strengthen the connectivity
between you and those you pray with. And
Islam is not just it's not a social
club. The ummah has been put here to
do good.
The ummah has been put here for a
reason.
Allah says he only made mankind and jinn
to worship him.
Allah says that you are the best nation
produced
for mankind.
You enjoin the right and you forbid the
wrong and you believe in Allah and you
believe in Allah.
What does this says in this particular ayat?
You do what's right, avoid doing wrong, and
having belief in Allah. This is who we
want to be. This is the job description
of the Muslim.
This is
the description of the people who we want
in our life, and these are the people
that we want near us and around us.
The prophet
said that the right of a Muslim
upon a Muslim are 6.
It was asked, what are they? He replied,
when you meet him, salute him. When he
calls you, respond to him.
When he seeks advice, give him the advice.
When he seizes,
you praise Allah and respond to him. When
he falls ill,
you visit him. And when he dies,
you follow him in the funeral, dear. That's
a hadith for Muslims, saiye Muslim.
You will see the believers
in their mutual kindness, love, and sympathy, just
like one body. Just like one body.
When a limb complains, the whole body responds
to it with wakefulness and fever.
This is how we're supposed to be connected,
brothers and sisters.
We should be so tight that when a
fellow Muslim is experiencing a problem or some
type of oppression,
we should feel the impact. We should feel
the sadness. We should feel some type of
empathy or sympathy for our brother or sister
who is suffering, whether it's a person who
is incarcerated, whether it's a person who is
being oppressed by war or famine.
You know, we have to basically
increase our Islamic empathy, brothers and sisters.
As a therapist, I teach
my clients about the concept of codependency.
Codependency
is
unhealthy relationships or unhealthy connection
between 2 people. Or in a family. It
could be a marital relationship or a friend
relationship. In other words, when you allow someone
to continue
to do wrong, even though you know it's
wrong and you are very passive,
and you you just go along,
you know, just to get along.
You know, and again codependency is unhealthy connectivity
between people. Instead of people instead of telling
people what they need to hear, you just
tell them what they want to hear. You
enable
them to engage in unhealthy behaviors instead of
advising them towards healthier behaviors.
And as Ibn Malik
reported that the Messenger of Allah
said, Help your brother, whether he is the
oppressor or is being oppressed.
It was said: O Messenger of Allah, we
help the oppressed, but how can we help
the oppressor?
The prophet
said, by seizing his hand.
In other words,
restrain them. Restrain them. This implies that we
are to restrain people
from engaging in wrongdoing. So we can apply
that to
all types of relationships.
The prophet, peace be upon him, did not
promote
codependency.
If that was the case, he would
have been to the will of the Meccans
who wanted him to go back to worshiping
the over
360 idols that they were worshiping.
He would have been to the will of
when they offered him
basically all of the riches in that area
to give up his preachings.
He could have been left a wealthy man.
But he knew that wealth is not having
material gain, not having diamonds and gold, but
wealth is having contentment and having the pleasure
of Allah in your soul. So this is
one of the things we have to look
at. You know, we have to restrain people
from doing wrong, either verbally
or physically.
As the Prophet
said that, you know, basically when you want
to see a wrong, when you see a
wrong,
you again, you change it with your hands.
If you cannot do that, speak out against
it. If you cannot do that, hate it
in your heart. In other words, being passive
is the weakest form of faith. The weakest
form of faith. You need to change things
with your
hand. Speak out against it or hate it
in your heart. And speaking out against it
could be writing about it. I know we
have all sorts of people who do blogging
and broadcasting. We have so many ways of
communicating
now brothers and sisters, even through this medium
that we are communicating now.
And so,
what can you do?
We complain a lot, but what solutions are
we offering?
So it's important for us to develop
the tribe. Look at our tribe members,
the people that are closest to us. What
is the quality that they're bringing to you?
What emotional fulfillment
are you getting from that relationship? So these
are some of the things that we have
to look
at. Again, we want to avoid codependent
relationships.
We want to develop healthy relationships.
Again, healthy relationships
are not codependent, but they're interdependent.
Interdependent
are based on mutual understanding. It's basically you
work together to accomplish certain things. And that
can be an marital relationship. That can be
a platonic relationship. That can be an other
familial relationship. Interdependence.
That you decide and you determine and you
have an equal type of,
of input into
what is the the the quality or what
is the direction of this relationship. As Muslims,
we have to work
to reflect the essence of the hadith that
I just presented and internalize our deen, for
we know who we are by who we
are with.
Whether we are lifelong associates or relatives, because
the prophet
had to separate from many of his blood
relatives and his most ardent enemies
were related to him by blood,
but not by belief.
And his closest associates were related to him
in belief.
And that's how we have to be, brothers
and sisters.
We have to basically
learn that
the belief
bond
can be stronger
than the biological
bond.
And so, we have to protect ourselves by
setting boundaries with others.
When you set boundaries, people are going to
respect the boundaries or they're going to push
the boundaries. They're going to try to violate
the boundaries.
As the
prophet said, oh people, beware. Every king has
a hima, and the hima of Allah
on earth is his illegal or haram things.
It's forbidden things. Beware. There's a piece of
flesh
in the body. If it becomes good, then
the whole body becomes good. And if it
becomes spoiled, then the whole body gets spoiled.
And that piece of flesh is the heart.
And so what we do and who we
associate with can impact our heart. It can
damage our heart. It can cause heart disease,
spiritual heart disease.
So we have to beware of Allah's Himma,
the forbidden things. And he forbid those things
for a reason.
He forbid them for the reason, and we
have to honor that.
So we have to be of those who
are striving to establish
a healthier way of life.
We have to be of those who
trying to avoid all of the problems that
are associated with disbelief.
If I've said anything in which you have
gained some insight, may Allah
guide you to greater guidance. And if I've
said anything that
is
inconsistent with what Allah teaches us and the
prophet
has taught us through his behavior and through
his actions,
then I take full responsibility
for that.
And in closing, I would like to
recite this particular hadith where the prophet
said, you shall not enter paradise until you
believe,
and you will not believe until you love
one another.
And shall I not guide you to a
thing which when
done, will make you love one another?
And he said, spread the greetings of salaams
among you.
Assalamu alaykum, umu ra'amatullahi wa barakatuhu.
Peace be upon you, and the mercy of
Allah
and his blessings.
Our lord, take us not to task if
we forget or fall into error. Our lord,
lay not on us a burden such as
you did lay on those before us.
Our lord,
lay not on us a burden which we
do not have the strength to bear, and
overlook our faults, and forgive us, and have
mercy on us. You are our guardian,
so grant us a victory
against the disbelieving people.