Nouman Ali Khan – How Taqwa Can Improve Your Family Life
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AI: Transcript ©
Right? Allah says even if you do something
small, Allah will multiply it. You might not
think much of it, but if you become
more more mindful when you're making wudu, your
salah is gonna be better.
If you just take this little small step,
you're gonna notice something your your consciousness of
Allah has changed. If you start just being
mindful that you're walking into your home with
the right foot and you're making a dua,
small little deed takes you less than 5
seconds to do that, but it might actually
have a multiplied effect on your consciousness and
your awareness of Allah. In today's khutbah, I'll
be speaking to you about a few reflections,
just some lessons that we can take from
the opening ayah of Surat Al Nisa. That
is the 4th Surah of the Quran in
the Mus'raf order and an early Surah revealed
to the prophet
when he was in Madinah. It's one of
the largest surahs in the Quran also. You'll
notice that some of the largest surahs in
the Quran are also in the beginning of
the Mus'haf.
Some things you should know about the larger
surahs is that in the introduction of the
larger surahs, Allah will mention a few comments,
introductory comments,
and those are the most comprehensive rich comments.
Allah will mention lots of things in this
surah, but the opening is going to be
this orientation. And in fact, this time, the
orientation is just a handful of ayaat, and
the first of them is extremely comprehensive. In
the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam, we learned that this is an ayah
that Rasul alaihi wa sallam used to encourage
and also recite in the nikah ceremony.
So when people are getting married, this ayah
would be recited. This was a common practice
of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. You
ayyuhannasuttaqurabbakum
Humanity
so this is an address to all human
beings, not just Muslims.
He says, be be spiritually conscious
of your Master.
Aladhihalakakum
minafsinwahidah,
the one who created you from a single
person, wakalakaminha
zawjaha, and from out of that person He
created His spouse, meaning He's talking about Adam
and Hawa, salamu alayhima.
Wabathaminhuma
rijalalandkathira,
and through the both of them He spread
from both of them many men,
and many women.
And be mindful and spiritually conscious of Allah
in whose name you ask each other for
things. Let me explain what this means briefly.
In whose
In whose name you ask each other for
things.
You know, in.
You
know,
just I swear just in Allah's name, just
please stop.
You know, for god in English, we say
for god's sake, can you please do this
for me? Right? We have these phrases
where we call on Allah's name and we
ask somebody in the in the
hoping that their sense of faith to Allah
will be enough for them to do something
or stop doing something.
For Allah's state's sake, please don't do this
anymore. Please don't do that anymore. You know?
So the taqwa of Allah, there's a few
things. There's hundreds of things we learn about
it, but there's only 2 or 3 things
that I'm going to mention to you. And
as I mentioned, each one, we're gonna see
what we might learn from that from the
taqwa of Alarham.
So the first of them I wanna mention
to you is small deeds.
Right? Allah says even if you do something
small, Allah will multiply it. You might not
think much of it, but if you become
more more mindful when you're making wudu, your
salah is gonna be better.
If you just take this little small step,
you're gonna notice something. Your your consciousness of
Allah has changed. If you start just being
mindful that you're walking into your home with
the right foot and you're making a dua,
small little deed takes you less than 5
seconds
to do that, but it might actually have
a multiplied effect on your consciousness and your
awareness of Allah.
When you're getting in the car and you're
making du'a for travel,
right, a Muslim du'a for travel, if again,
10 seconds or less you can make that
du'a. It's gonna be hard for you to
start the car and go somewhere Allah doesn't
want you to go
if you made that dua first.
You understand? So
small elements of zikr, what do they do?
They bring about the taqwa of Allah. Small
small things add up. And when you start
getting rid of those small things,
when by when you're like, that's not fun.
I don't have to do it.
It's not it's not mandatory. I'm not kafir
if I don't do it. Fine. You're not
kafir.
You're not non muslim. You're you're you know,
you didn't you didn't sin technically,
but you know what you're doing? You're diluting
taqwa. You're diluting the awareness of Allah. You're
not I'm not mentioning him as much anymore.
I'm not thinking about him as much anymore.
And when I'm not thinking about him as
much, in my conversations, I might notice that
I start talking about people a lot more
or I notice that I'm using foul language
a lot more.
I'm noticing that I'm maybe laughing at others
a lot more. I've become more cruel, more
I've become I've become meaner. I'm generous a
lot less.
So what might we learn from that on
the side of Al Haram? Al Haram means
all of our relationships.
There are small things that you and I
can do in our relationships
that annoy each other. A wife can do
very small little things. Every time you see
hear her do it or see her do
it, you're like,
but you just do, and you just keep
going.
Right? And just like when you don't remember
Allah properly,
and you don't do these small zikrs, over
time the heart starts getting harder and harder,
your these small annoyances that the husband does
towards the wife or the wife does towards
the husband, over time, what does it do?
It starts distancing their hearts. They're still living
in the same home. They still fulfill all
of their responsibilities.
They're still raising their kids together. There's still
all of those things are going on, but
emotionally, slowly but surely, because of small, small
things.
Like, she always laughs at me when I
does this, or he always says that when
I do this, or he's always commenting on
this or this, and she doesn't bring it
up and she doesn't say any I'm just
gonna have sabr. And this sabr sabr sabr
sabr eventually becomes,
he I don't like him. He's so annoying.
And in fact, when the husband says, hey,
I'm going on a trip for 2 days,
inside of her heart she's like, takbir.
Like I'm so happy that he's gone for
2 days. I don't have to put up
with those habits. You know, like there's a
the the
the absence of the loved one should cause
distress,
should cause sadness. But what's happened over time
because of these small, small acts of insensitivity,
one to the other, the other to the
first, that they actually celebrate being far apart
from each other. They're happier when they're not
around. Or the you know, you're really happy
when he's not home. You're like calling your
friends, you're happy, you're smiling, and the moment
he walks in you're like, oh,
And your energy disappears because he's here. Right?
Or she does the same thing to you,
you do the same thing to her. And
you could do this towards your children. Small,
small things that pull siblings apart from each
other. Small things that put pull parents and
children apart from each other. So it's the
the first thing that we learn about taqwa
on the on the spiritual side. Our taqwa
to Allah is small deeds, when you when
you and I become mindful of them, they
add up
and they start affecting bigger things. So that's
the first. The second thing, let's take a
little a little bit of a bigger step.
The taqwa of Allah can also be, you
know, in in our, you know, our thoughts.
Allah is directly connecting in the Quran, mindfulness
of Allah and spiritual awareness of Allah. He's
directly connecting it with the way that we
think.
You know, Why don't you think? Why don't
you ponder? Why don't you think deeply? Well
and Allah even says about us says to
us that there are things we can say
that are offensive to Allah. You know?
You can say things about Allah that you
don't know of. So there's thoughts and there's
speech. So I'll make a quick comment about
thoughts and speech.
You see what happens is we when we
turn to Allah with taqwa, we make dua
to Allah for forgiveness. When we pray to
Allah, we have to be aware of our
own mistakes.
Right? I have to be aware of my
flaws.
I have to be aware of my sins.
And I know there's no secrets between me
and Allah. Allah knows how messed up I
am.
Allah knows all of my failures.
Allah knows all of my flaws.
I can't pretend in front of Allah and
say, yeah, Allah, I'm not that bad.
You know, Allah knows exactly how bad and
I know that Allah knows. So I have
I have an unfiltered
conversation with Allah, and I'm very real about
myself. And I don't want Allah to judge
me based on one mistake
or based on even a 100 mistakes. You
Allah, I know I've made a 100 mistakes.
You Allah, you know I made a 1,000
mistakes, but you know that in my heart
I want to make a change.
You know that in my heart I'm not
I'm gonna try my best never to make
those mistakes again. You have this if you
truly have taqwa, you have a confession to
Allah and you don't pass judgment on yourself,
you're real about yourself. Right? You're real about
yourself. But if you gave up on yourself
Think about that for a moment. If you
gave up on yourself and say, you know
what? I've made way too many mistakes, I
messed up anyway.
If you give up on yourself then it's
impossible for you to have a real conversation
with Allah. In fact, you'll avoid it. What
what is the point of me talking to
Allah now? What is the point of me
praying to Him now? I'm already messed up.
There's no it's not like he's gonna forgive
me. So even the taqwa of Allah and
what results from the taqwa of Allah, the
du'a to Allah, the prayer to Allah, all
of that cannot happen if I'm not real
about myself and vulnerable before Allah. Now let's
bring that to our relationships. What happens in
our relationship sometimes is if if I made
a mistake.
If I made a mistake, that's because I
was really mad.
Or, you know, you did this, this, this,
that's why I made this mistake.
Or it's understandable.
You know. It just It happened. I messed
up. Fine. I messed up. It happened. But
if your spouse makes a mistake, if your
child makes a mistake, if You know, they
always do that.
That's how they always are. You're not looking
at their mistake. You're looking at their heart
behind the mistake and you're saying, this person
The the reason they they spoke like this
is because they're filled with hate, they're filled
with arrogance, they're this way, they're this way,
they're this way. I've already judged them,
Their intentions, not their action. I've already judged
their intentions. When it comes to myself, I
only want somebody to judge my action
and never my intention.
I messed up, but that wasn't my intention.
And, you know, it's it it makes it
a lot more innocent. But when somebody else
messes up in the relationship,
you're the first thing we go after is
their intention. This is who they really are.
So that's another thing we have to be
be become when Allah says,
what I'm telling trying to tell you is
if we're gonna have taqwa of the relationships
then that means we have to be mindful
of the things that can destroy the relationship,
that can separate the hearts. And taqwa by
the way is in the hearts.
Right?
Quran
says, That that is from the taqwa of
the hearts. So this taqwa also has to
do with the way we feel towards someone.
The way we feel towards Allah, and in
this case the way we feel towards family
members. Right? And and those two things go
hand in hand. A third one that's a
little bit more sensitive
is actually money matters.
Money matters.
In our religion,
money is a big deal.
Earning halal is a big deal. Giving zakat
is a fundamental pillar.
Not consuming haram money is a big deal.
Right? Riba is a big problem. It's a
serious thing. So and and stealing is a
serious thing.
Not giving the the the widow her share
or not giving the inheritance, these are big
crimes. These Allah has elaborated
financial crimes in great detail. In fact, Allah
has even talked about bribery
and using your influence to gain advantage in
business and things like that or or corrupting
politicians.
Right?
Don't don't don't don't give your money to
buy influence so some people can consume the
money at the expense of everyone else. Don't
do those kinds of things. So financial corruption
is actually a a major component of taqwa.
By the way, the ayah that I just
mentioned about financial, you know,
consciousness
and being mindful of not being corrupt with
your money is mentioned right after the ayat
of Ramadan,
the the the month in which we develop
taqwa. Right after you have taqwa, fix your
money situation.
Right? Don't be corrupt with your money. Well,
we need to bring the money conversation into
the family matters too. If we're gonna have
taqwa of alarham then
it has to be that inheritance disputes are
solved by Allah's book with taqwa.
When you when you get married, you have
to take financial responsibility for your spouse.
You know, wabi ma'anfaqum minam walihim.
You cannot I cannot take ask my wife
to pay the bills.
I can't tell my wife to go that
if you couldn't support her financially,
then you shouldn't be, you know, you shouldn't
be in the, you know, taking the nikah
contract on and then saying, well, you know,
you have to pay your own. Or you
go to a restaurant, you're like, well, I
only ate 2 pieces of chicken, that means
I'm paying 18.37.
You you ate 3 pieces of chicken, you
pay 21.30
it's not gonna work.
That's not taqwa walarham.
You gotta spend on the kids, you gotta
spend on your you you have to take
care of your parents. And what happens sometimes
in this taqwa is that because a lot
of times men are in by the way,
men are not the only ones in this
situation. Sometimes women are in a situation where
they're earning all the income.
You know that happens too. There there are
situations like that and there are sometimes
understandable situations like that, like the daughter of
the old man in in in, you know,
in Madyan whose daughters were were basically taking
the animals out to grace. So they're the
ones making the money in the house. Right?
That's in the Quran, in Surat Al Qasas.
So situations like that can happen, or there
was a married couple and the husband became
disabled and the wife has to do work,
and she's supporting him financially. Khadija
supported Rasul alaihi wa sallam financially for a
time. There are situations like that exist that
are based on mutual understanding.
That's different.
That's a separate thing. But outside of that,
what I'm trying to tell you is I
cannot impose a financial obligation that Allah did
not impose.
And I cannot
make Just like in the taqwa of Allah,
I cannot make haram
what Allah has made halal. And I cannot
make halal what Allah has made haram. The
same way in my financial dealings,
I cannot tell my wife, hey, I don't
like my mother I don't like your mother.
Don't give her a gift to say it.
I can't do that. Why is she she
doesn't have a right to give her mother
a gift?
She doesn't have a right to take care
of her cousin who needs a loan or
what? It's her it's her choice. That's the
goodness that Allah has made that halal for.
In fact, it's even an act of rebadah.
Why would I stop her from doing that?
And the same way she cannot stop the
husband. Hey, you said you're gonna give your
mom this, this, this. Why are you gonna
give her this, this, this? Your mom has
enough,
you know, or your dad has enough,
you know. She can't do that to you.
And your mother can't come along and say,
I see you're taking your wife on a
vacation,
Don't take me on a vacation.
Right?
Your wife has a right.
She has a right. And your mom can't
come and impose her judgments on how you're
gonna spend on your spouse or your children.
So you're stuck in the middle. Everybody hates
you because whoever you spend on you makes
somebody else angry. Congratulations on being a man.
Right? But
but the idea is the idea is that
you have to have taqwa of Allah and
that you don't you're mindful that you're being
fair in all of your financial dealings, in
all of your financial responsibilities,
and you're giving people what their rights are,
that's actually part of wataqul arham.
In fact, early commentators on this ayah said
that this wataqul arham has to do with
inheritance law first because inheritance law is coming
later on. In other words, they understood Taqwa
of the close relationships will have to do
with money matters.
The ugliest family dispute happens when the wealthy
father dies and the children are at each
other's throats.
Oh, when somebody dies and everybody's like, who's
gonna get the house? Who's gonna get the
car? Who's gonna get the land? Who's gonna
get the farm? Who's gonna get this? Who's
gonna get that? And there's this people that
used to be brothers and hugging each other
at Eid are now taking each other to
court.
For what? For a goat? For a house?
For just a patch of land, which you're
gonna be under it in a little bit,
but you're destroying family ties because of it.
So money is yet another thing that we
have to be mindful of in terms of
Allah, but also in terms of family.
The final thing I'm gonna mention is time.
It's time. Allah has created this this system
of taqwa
with him, and it revolves around time.
There are specific times when I'm supposed to
pray. There's a specific time when we go
to Hajj. We're in Hajj season now. May
Allah accept the Hajj of all of the
Hujjaj. And those of us that haven't had
the rizq to go to Hajj, that Allah
provide you the rizq to go to Hajj.
So
there's a specific time for hajj, there's a
specific time for fasting, there's a specific time
for prayer, there's a specific time for 'id.
The entire religion and our taqwa of Allah,
mindfulness of Allah is actually about
taking advantage of particular times. And even voluntary
times, there are special times to make dua.
There are special times to make adkar. Wal
mustaqfirina
bil ashar.
Hayna tusbihoon.
You know, early mornings, late at night. There
there are there are times, times, times, and
times. Well, if we apply that formula and
what it could mean for our families,
then there are times that we have to
give. Rasool alaihi wasallam used to give allotted
times to his spouses.
There's a there's there has to be dedicated
time where people that have a relationship with
you feel like they got your individual attention.
If you, for example, have 3 children,
right,
and the only time you talk to them
is, How was dinner? How's school? Blah blah
blah. But you know what? There's a time
where it's just you and your daughter. Even
if it's 10 minutes, it's just you and
her. She got exclusive
time from you.
Right? And you made it into a habit.
You disciplined yourself. This is the time. Hey.
It's daughter time. Come here.
And there's there's a set time.
Like I said before, it could be a
small thing. Could it it could be life
changing in the psyche of that child.
It could be life changing.
It could be that you're living with your
wife. You're living with her for 20 years,
but you never actually take time other than
the groceries, the shopping, the bill, the kids,
the commute, the this, the that. The other
somebody's always around. We're always talking about, No.
No. No. There's a time. We're just gonna
go for a walk.
Just you and I are just gonna go
for a walk and we're gonna talk. This
is our time. No. There's no phone. Everything's
on airplane mode. Everything is everything else disappears.
It's just you and me and we're just
gonna talk. We're just gonna take our walk,
whatever's on our minds.
Right? There's that exclusive time. What does that
do? Just like in our religion, it strengthens
our relationship with Allah. Right? The daily prayers
on their times.
The same way, if we can figure out
a way to discipline our time with our
family members,
idi, you don't have to give them all
day. Allah didn't ask for all day. Even
Allah only asked for a few minutes every
few hours, doesn't He?
So human beings actually need a lot less
even. But that time, it it it's not
this the length of it or the shortness
of it, it's the quality of it. If
you're sitting with your kids watching a show,
watching a TV show, dude, that's not quality
time.
Even though you're present there, you're not actually
talking to them. So you didn't spend time
with each other, you both spend time with
a screen. You understand?
So it it can include
allotted times
that can slowly but surely, one drip after
another after another in a few months, in
a year, and sometime you'll notice that relationship
becomes a lot healthier.
It's a lot easier to protect.
So we come back to the meaning of
the word taqwa. Taqwa actually, I keep translating
it as spiritual consciousness and protection.
We are we're protective of our relationship with
Allah. Wa taq'ullah
Protect yourselves
from hurting the relationship you have with Allah.
This is the kind of a nuanced translation
of this word. If I lose my taqwa,
my feeling towards Allah will get weak.
I won't feel anything when I pray, I
won't feel anything when I make dua, I
won't think about it anymore. I'm just gonna
live my life and I happen to be
Muslim. That's a that's a life of a
Muslim without any taqwa. Taqwa is about consciousness
and awareness and a wear a protectiveness.
I wanna protect my feelings towards him the
same way I wanna protect my feelings towards
alaham.
That's the command Allah has given.
And Allah at the end adds that he's
always been watchful over you. He's he's protecting
over you. In other words, this instruction, one
way you can look at this aya is
this is Allah's way of trying to of
of asking to protect you, guiding you, guiding
me so that we can live a life
where both of these things go hand in
hand. And I would finally argue that one
of the lessons we can learn from this
ayah is the taqwa of Allah and the
taqwa of Alarham are in fact hand in
hand. You cannot have taqwa of Allah and
you're not mindful of the family relationships.
1 will affect the other. And if your
relationships are going bad, your relationships with Allah
will also suffer.
I hope you guys enjoyed that video clip.
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