Nadim Ali – Islam Is Da Balm
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AI: Transcript ©
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 causes
to go astray, then there is no one
to guide him.
I be witness that there is no deity
except Allah who is unique and without partners,
and I be witness that Mohammed is his
worshiper 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.
Oh, you who believe, fear Allah as he
should be feared and don't die except as
Muslims. Again, oh, you who believe, fear Allah
as he should be feared and don't die
except as Muslims. And, oh, 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,
he spread forth many men and women.
Be careful of your duty to Allah whom
you demand your mutual rights and be careful
of your duty to the wounds
that bore you. Indeed,
Allah is our al Akib over you.
Oh, 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, a newly
invented marriage, which has no precedent
in Islam.
And, again,
the most evil of all affairs are newly
invented matters, which has no precedence in Islam.
And indeed, all innovations
are astray, and each astray is in the
hellfire.
And, oh, Allah, save us from it. And,
oh, Allah,
accept our dua.
And we sent down the Quran
that which is a healing and a mercy
to those who believe in Islamic monotheism and
act on it.
And it increases the, the polytheists, and the
wrongdoers
nothing but loss.
And when we look at this particular ayat,
it's talking about how
the Quran
is a healing
and a mercy to those who believe. And
when we talk about Islamic monotheism last week,
we talked about the importance
of accepting and and understanding the concept of
Tawhid and worshiping only Allah, worshiping only Allah
and not engaging in any type of Biddah,
not engaging in any type of association
with the partners of Allah. You have people
calling themselves gods.
You have people,
trying to put food out for what they
call this their gods.
And the the thing about Islam,
it it clarified
the whole concept of who and what we
should worship and what worship
to be about. You know, again, Allah says,
it is a healing and a mercy to
those who believe.
And we have to understand,
you know, the young folks talk about, you
know, that's the bomb, and that's the bomb,
the b o m b.
But Islam is the bomb, b a l
m.
The bomb is a healing.
It is it is something that makes you
feel good, and and Islam
is a balm for the soul.
A balm is something that it's medicinal,
spiritually healing.
And so we have to recognize that we
have
this gift that Allah has given us,
but we ignore it a lot of times.
And we have to recognize
the spiritual bomb
helps you
to develop
a level of connectivity.
The social scientists and the psychologists talk about
the concept of spirituality, and, again, spirituality
is different from religion.
I always tell people an atheist can be
spiritual.
So called religious person cannot be.
Because, again, as the we talk about the
Hadith where the the people who,
you know, walk past the the starving person
or the starving dog
and and and the person who was of
the lowest of the the of the community,
they basically
fed the the the dog some water and
was given Jannah, given paradise just for that
act. That person had more spirituality than all
the religious people coming from the Masjid,
you know, walking past the homeless,
walking past the helpless,
not basically contributing to the society,
but engaging in acts that degrade the society
degrade the society.
You know, when I was living in Saudi,
I always speak about that experience because it
was a life changing experience.
And one of the things I learned when
I was over there is that the hot
season was the time when most of the
heroin came into the country.
Marinate on that.
You go on to Hodge,
and
in in in in that time of year
that the country that produced a lot of
the heroin,
they,
it it took during that time,
$750 was the yearly income.
$750
was the yearly income.
And
so they would say, we'll give you $10,000
if you bring this package, and we'll pay
for your Hajj. And if you get caught,
then we'll give the money to your family
because you won't get your haircut.
And so they exploited poverty.
It's just like in this country. They exploit
poverty.
And so you have to understand
that the super rich the super rich,
they've always
tried to exploit people and not allow people
to,
elevate themselves.
The super rich were against public schools.
They wanted people to remain ignorant.
They wanted people to remain uneducated.
But,
you know, we we have to understand
that they have a vested interest in maintaining
their materialism. And as Muslims, we have to
be of those who recognize
that there is something greater than this,
that true life begins
when we leave this plane of life.
True life begins
when we die. And as I always talk
about, this is just the middle womb. The
first womb is in our mother's stomach, and
this is just a bigger womb.
What Imam Jamillius talked about is just a
bigger prison. So everybody's in prison, but the
walls are just a little bit more expanded
in the in this frame of prison.
And so what we have to recognize
is that we have the ingredients
through success,
true success.
And we have the bomb that that can
heal all of the sickness in this society,
the drug usage and the the the the
confused,
sexual orientations
and and all of the poverty
in in the land. We have
the solution
because those are symptoms, as the poet said,
of a sick society.
When you have all of the people just
basically just throw their ethics out of the
window,
They
basically engage in lifestyles that are inconsistent with
what Allah would have us engaging in.
The promiscuity in the land.
It's it's become no sickness have become normalized.
You know, people talk about the people who
are engaging in same * actions, but what
about the people who are engaging in heterosexual
actions? You don't talk about that.
You don't talk about that.
You got Muslims
jacking up.
You know, Muslims basically
are not working to get married,
but, basically, as grandma say, milk the cow
through the fence.
Don't basically
put the monies together to be able to
provide for your wife and your children. That's
the thing that we have to do. We
have to
spread the balm on our souls.
Spread the balm on our souls so that,
you know, if
we want to have a relationship,
we have to basically get in position as
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said that, you
know, if you're not ready, just fast.
Just fast and fast is castration for the
single person.
Fasting is castration for the single person. We
have this bomb, we have this healing,
but what are we doing with it, brothers
and sisters?
You know, as Muslims, we have to recognize
that
we have a creator that watches over us
and wants us to be our best selves,
not our beast selves. We have to be
our best selves. We have to recognize
the fact that we can attain great benefits,
you know, that and and and and recognize
that we have attained great benefits.
We've been healed.
You know, just breathing.
You know, you see people on oxygen.
They would give all their wealth
just to be able to breathe normally.
People who basically are in wheelchairs or who
have lost limbs.
And the law has given you that ability,
and we we sit around and and just
look at all the people who,
you know, has the riches, have the riches,
the the the Bezos and all of those
other Zuckerbergs and all of those type of
people. But the prophet said, don't look up,
look down. In other words, don't look at
those who have more than you. Just be
conscious that there are people who are who
have less than you.
Don't look up, look down. Because if you're
looking up, you're gonna you're gonna start to
compromise your ethics
to to to get paid,
to get the package.
And as Muslims, we have to
stop
the
the the the ignorance that is contributing to
a distorted view of Islam.
You know, whether it's selling weed, you know,
because you got Muslim trying to normalize weed,
making it halal.
And the scholars only said the CBD oil
is okay, but the THC
is an intoxicant.
And the prophet said anything that intoxicate,
you know, a lot a little of it
is forbidden.
And so, you know, again, if you say
it's just natural,
you know, I always tell people just smoke
some
poison ivy then. It comes out of the
ground.
You know, people just wanna get high.
And so and I'm not about you know,
I don't teach positive addictions or getting high
naturally. You don't have to be high. Just
basically,
as they say, live life on life's terms.
And life is going to sometime be a
roller coaster. Sometimes it's gonna be a smooth
road.
So we have to be of those to
recognize that Islam
is more than just a basic religion. It's
not a religion. It is a complete way
of life.
And we have to recognize this fact, and
we have to engage
in healthy prayers. And, you know, prayer
is seen for some of us as a
check
off.
And for some of us, prayer can be
a check-in.
Checking in.
It's like
basically a form of dialysis,
spiritual dialysis.
You're checking in.
You're checking in so that you can basically
replenish your soul,
but the check off is like, you know,
stealing. It's like stealing.
You know, you're just praying just to get
it out the way.
You know? So
just like a per if a person is
on on diabetes
medicine or hypertension
medicine
or have to get actual dialysis for their
kidneys, we have to start to view our
salat, our fasting, the giving of charity,
to the attempt to make the umrah, the
Hajj, and just coming to Jummah
as medicine, as a balm, as a healing,
as a healing.
Abu Abdullah
al Ashari reported that
the prophet
led his companions in prayer,
and then he sat with
he sat with with them, and a man
came in and started to pray, but made
his movements rapid like the chicken pecking the
ground. The prophet said,
do you see this? Whoever dies having done
this has died outside of the community of
Mohammed
and his prayer is like a crow pecking
blood.
The person who bows then pecks in his
sujood is like a hungry man who eats
no more than 1 or 2 dates.
What good would that do for him?
So you you hungry and all you're eating
is 1 or 2 dates, so you still
your soul is not fulfilled. And so we
have to be of those to recognize the
importance of prayer, that it is it is
a balm. It is a healing. It is
it is something that that that helps us
to become better human beings.
Because Allah
sent Islam for all of mankind
for all of mankind. And if Allah has
given you the invitation to Islam,
then what's stopping you from spreading
this word? What's stopping you from teaching your
neighbors and teaching your relatives about Islam?
So we have to be of those who
are not just here,
but we have to be of those who
are spreading this message.
We have to recognize the importance of Islam,
and it's a defense
against wrongdoing, and it protects you from harm.
Abu Hurair
said that the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam said, shall I not guide you
to something
for which Allah blots out sins and raises
men's ranks?
When his hearers express their desire that he
should tell them, he said, performing complete ablution,
all those circumstances
make it difficult. Traveling
far to the Masjid and looking expectantly to
the next time of
prayer after prayers have been said. That is
the defense of the frontier. The tradition of,
Malik
has
have said that the defense of the frontier,
that is the defense of the frontier, and
he repeated it twice. Here, it's meant
in a spiritual sense as a defense
against infidelity
and wrongdoing. And so you see how the
prophet, peace be upon him, in the first
generations and all the succeeding generations, how they
viewed prayer, how they viewed salat.
You know, but we take a lot of
days ago attitude towards salat,
and we have to start basically
becoming more
active
in
expressing our deen. And not just, you know,
the dress that we wear,
but, you know, what is in your heart?
He said that the remembrance of Allah removes
the rest from the heart because he said
everything will rust, and that which removes the
rest from the heart is the remembrance of
Allah. How often are remembering Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala?
We can't be engaging in
in in illegal behaviors in remembering Allah.
You know, law gives us all the same
168 hours of the week. So what are
we doing with it? What are we doing
with our time? Because time is gonna testify
against before or against you.
Your money is gonna testify
be for you or against you.
And so what we have to do is
be of those who
recognize that our worship is a holistic type
of worship.
And then
even how we approach Jumu'ah, how we approach
Jumu'ah, we all familiar with the Hadith that
the prophet
said, when it is Friday, the angels stand
at the gates of the Masjid
and keep keep on writing the names of
the persons who come to the masjid in
succession according to their rivals.
The example of one who enters the masjid
in the earliest hour is like that of
offering a camel in sacrifice.
The one coming next is like offering a
cow,
and then a ram,
and then a chicken, and then an egg.
And when the imam comes out for the
Jummah prayer, they, the angels, fold their papers
and listen to the kutba. In other words,
they
stop recording at that point. And so we
have to
basically engage not only in recognizing that the
this is the bomb, it's it's it's healing
for us, but we have to recognize the
importance of time management, begin to regulate our
times based on our salat,
based on our salat. I'll see you after
us, I'll see you after Isha.
We'll we'll handle this after Fajr. And then
the prayer becomes
primary to you as opposed to secondary.
We have to be of those who are
checking in and not checking off. If I've
said anything that's inconsistent with what Allah has
given us, I take responsibility for that. And
if I've said anything that in which you
have gained some new insight, as always, all
praise belongs to Allah.
Again,
the Quran
is a healing and mercy for mankind, and
we have to view it as such.
Through the Quran, again, we're giving guidance
and it keeps us from becoming spiritually sick.
And brothers and sisters, please, when you come
to the mosque, silence your phones. You know,
I always tell people if somebody dead, they'll
be dead after Jummah.
You know, so, you know, you make that
a point. Not just Jummah, but when you
come to the masjid, silence your phones,
you know, you know, because it's a distraction.
We have enough
noise,
you know, just in general. So, you know,
just make it turn it off or just
silence it. It's important.
And so
what we have to do is be of
those who
believe in it, and then we act on
it because Islam is
a religion or a way of life for
action.
It's action. And whenever we go, we need
to connect with the Muslims. If we're on
vacation or if we're traveling, connect with the
Muslims. We were talking this morning about how
even when we would be on vacation, we
would find massages wherever we go.
You know, and and and one of the
saddest things that I experienced this week
was,
one of the imams that, national imams asked
me to facilitate a janazah
for a brother who died here by himself,
by himself. And when we went to the
graveyard, there was nobody
there except for the people who were
preparing preparing his grave, and we prayed to
Janaza for him.
The brother wasn't connected.
And so you have to ask yourself,
are you connected?
Are you connected?
And even young people, again,
almost lost my life at at 16, 17.
My brother died at 27. I had one
brother who died at 18.
Young people, you're not guaranteed
a long life.
How are you preparing
for the next life?
How are you preparing for the next life?
And especially in Atlanta, everybody has a pistol.
Everybody has a gun
shooting up
young people dying at 14 and 15. So
we have to basically
prepare
for the next phase of life by doing
good, by engaging in in prayer, by engaging
in in holistic worship,
but also
making sure that
your death won't be a burden on the
communities.
Put some money away, making sure that you
you can get in the ground.
Be a part of a Jamat
and not just apart from the Jamat. What
what community do you go to? I go
to all the communities. That's the largest community
on the in the country.
All the communities.
I go everywhere,
not committed to nowhere. It's like a tree
without a root.
It's like a plant
without roots.
So you have to plant yourself to grow
brothers and sisters.
These are some of the things that we
want to to look at.
Believing
in this deen and acting on the deen,
acting on our beliefs are essential.
And we're all familiar, for instance, with the
Hadith, what the prophet said,
whoever among you sees an evil, let him
change it with his hands. If he cannot,
then with his son with his tongue. If
he cannot, then with his heart. And that
is the weakest of faith.
The weakest of faith. And if we see
things that are wrong, we have to change
it with our hands.
People who have moved into this area, you
know, they are surprised that, you know, when
I tell them how, you know, during the
the times of the crack epidemic and all
of the when this, neighborhood
was is is rife with a lot of
violence.
You know, how we would be out all
night, and they just they couldn't see it.
They're walking, you know, poodles in the park
and all that stuff. They just didn't see
it.
You know? And I said, yeah. We we
would
be here all night. We were changing it
with our hands.
We didn't say, oh, Masha'allah, you know, that's
that's them. Leave well enough alone. Don't bother
them. You know, we put our lives on
the line because we didn't know when we
went out for sutra if we were gonna
come back.
And that's the attitude that you have to
take to protect your community, to protect your
family.
You have to always be willing to put
your life on the line
because you never know because people are dying
for nothing.
Overarguments,
arguing online, and then they meet. And in
the old days, we put our fists out.
These people pulling out guns, young people, 1213.
If you have an opportunity, get into the
schools. If you have an opportunity, go to
the juvenile facilities.
Go and talk to the young people.
If you've had a negative experience in your
youth and you've grown out of it,
they need to hear from you.
Change it with your hands. Speak out against
it and not just hate it in your
heart.
These are some of the things that we
have to look at.
You know, again, Islam requires us again to
be active in the society. As I always
say, if you're gonna be here, you need
to be here
and not just be Muslim hermits going from
the house to the masjid.
You know, just dicking and praying and they're
not doing anything.
Well, the people,
they praying with the e. So these are
some of the things that we have to
look at if we want to have,
a role in the changing of this society.
Because
in a couple of decades,
America will be majority minority,
and Islam
will be a major part of that. There
are so many Muslims coming to this country.
And there are people in this country, they
don't they don't like that.
You know, there there some people have a
problem with that.
You know, Islam will be prominent. There are
some people have a problem with that.
I look online. I see my name. Oh,
he's an Islamist. Yeah.
You know, I want Islam to be
dominant over all systems.
As Islam grows in the society,
you know, we have to be of those
who are presenting a positive image of Muslims.
Again, practice this deen on a holistic level.
You know, again, we don't want to
have Islam seen as a trap religion,
a ghettoized religion.
Don't bring your bad habits into Islam. Allow
the Islam to get rid you of the
bad habits of the cigarette smoking, of the
alcohol drinking, of the weed smoking, you know,
of the promiscuity.
Allow the Islam to be a balm for
you. The Islam is the balm,
and let the balm heal heal you, brothers
and sisters.
You know, it's a balm. It's a healing
and a mercy
and a path to to true success.
And the law says,
it is they who are truly guided by
their Lord,
and it will it is they who will
be successful.
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 who
have gone before us. Our Lord, lay not
on us a burden which we do not
have the power to bear and overlook our
faults and forgive us and have mercy on
us. You are our protector and grant us
a victory over the disbelieving people.