Nouman Ali Khan – When The Devil Attacks Head On

Today's football is dedicated to two of the attacks of the devil. We've been talking about the story of creation for a few weeks now. And I'm going to continue that, as the art of SoTL are off, continue, I would also encourage you on your own time to read surah number seven, it's not that far in this is the IR in the teens. So when you start to Sula, by the time you get to the 20 26th ayah, that's where the story is. Right? Even before then. So it's not a lot of reading. And it'd be interesting for you and beneficial for you to start reading and even start asking questions of your own or writing contemplations of your own and your notes as you read the Quran because that's

something we're supposed to do. One of the things allows that which I mentioned is in Quran about our relationship with the Quran, as he calls it, I atone, Lisa, Ilene,

these, these are IR for people who ask questions. So one of the things that we're supposed to do with the Quran is actually wonder what what could be the guidance that I can get from these words of allowing this statement of a lower this IR this story, or this event, or this particular word even? Right, because everything Allah gave us is for the purpose of guiding us. And we're not going to get that just like in class students who sit in a class and never asked any questions are the ones that benefit the least. But the student who sits in a class and ask the teacher questions, is actually the one whose mind is the most engaged. And they're the ones who develop their understanding the

best. So we accept allies, our teacher, Andaman Koran, we become students. So we become people that ask questions, and that's something that we should be doing. In any case, today, I want to talk to you about the two attacks of the four attacks that are mentioned of the shaitaan. He says that I will absolutely after he sits on the straight path that we talked about last time that I will I swear to it, that I will absolutely, absolutely come at them, and attack them from right in front of them in benei ad him. And then he says woman, Humphrey, him and from behind them. So those are the two attacks I want to talk to you about this week. And next week, and I'll talk to you about how he

attacks from the right and how he attacks from the left. But today, the front end from behind. So let's talk about what's ahead.

The Arabic words mean benei ad him right in front of their hands, that's literally the translation, which was translated in English, often as in front of them, but actually does it means a lot more than that. In the Arabic language. Of course, if you extend your hands out like this, what's immediately between your hands is what's immediately in front of you, it's right in front of you. It's not something far away. It's right there, and it's hitting you right in that you have to go around it. You know, it's unavoidable. And so he says it basically, let me put it in common vernacular, I'm just gonna get right in their face. I'm gonna be right there in front of them, and

I'll attack them head on. Now, how do these attacks work? You see, the shadow is invisible. We don't see him and we don't hear his voice. We don't know what he looks like, we don't know any of these things. So how does he attack us from the front? The idea of if you study the the the phrasing what is in front of them in the Quran, you learn something, you learn that it's talking about things that you see every day, when you open your eyes, what is right in front of you is the world around you, your family, friends, the world as you see it, things that attract you things that you don't find attractive, this is the world in front of you. And human beings have this tendency that to be

impulsive, Allah says in certain kiama but you little insomnia Jorah, a mama who that human beings want to just explode, jump right into things that are in front of them. When I was studying marketing, so long ago, we used to study consumer behavior. And you know, what they do in grocery stores is they put eggs and milk all the way in the back of the grocery store. The reason they do that is they want you to go through a number of aisles because you only came in for milk and eggs, most customers come in just for milk and eggs. But that so you logically would be right in the front, but they want it all the way in the back because they want you to be impulsive and see them

Swiss rolls, or chocolate cake, or this or that and keep piling it in because you see something in front of you. And just throw it right in. That's a human impulse to put that inside human beings. shavon wants to capitalize on that there are things that come right in front of you. And he says Come on, just enjoy yourself a little. It's not that bad. It's not so bad. He doesn't want you to think about the future consequences of something, he wants you to think about what's immediately in front of you right now. You know, it's so much more understandable. Now, because we live in a digital age, whatever you want to look at whatever you want to see whatever you want to hear

whatever you want to order is right at the tip of your fingers. It's immediately accessible. It's not even so far physically, if you want to go somewhere, you just hop in your car and go somewhere. You can make a decision to follow whatever impulse whatever desire, whatever thought comes into your head, and you just immediately run after it and you don't think about the consequences. You know, a lot of people that that engage in sin. If you ask them, Why do you want to engage in sin, they don't see that I want to be a sinful person. I just don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about it. And if you try to make them think about the consequences of this behavior, then don't talk

to me about that. You know, I talked to I've often spoken to you about doctors that I know that work in the emergency room, and the kinds of things they see on Friday night. People just want to get away from their troubles knocked down a couple of weeks.

drinks, and then the kinds of horrendous things you see in the emergency room, so much of it related to alcohol, so much of it related to overconsumption. Why? Because those people don't want to think that alcohol is alcohol is destroyed so many lives before you and me. But I don't want to think that that's going to happen to me, I just want to have fun right now. I just want to get the buzz right now I don't, that's all I care about right now, the consequences I'm not concerned with. This is the first thing shaitan wants what is right in front of you, he'll attack you by making you not think about the consequences of things, the other meaning of what is right in front of us as material

things. In other words, he wants us to be obsessed with things that we can see. You're just thinking about this car constantly, constantly, constantly. You're thinking about your appearance, checking yourself out in the mirror, that's all you're always thinking about is how do I look? How do I look? How do I look? How much how much do I weigh? Or, you know, am I dressed better than this one or that one? You know, you're constantly just obsessed with material appearance, goods, products, people obsessed with the kinds of brands that they're going to wear, what they're going to show off to somebody obsessed with the idea of man, I'm living in an apartment, I'd have to get a house. It's so

embarrassing. I live in an apartment, I have to buy whatever means I got to get into a house because that's what's in front of me. You drive by a nice neighborhood where you see the houses and you kind of the car just automatically slows down and you just kind of, you know, your mind goes in your head, you're already living in there, you know, and he wants you to be obsessed with that now wanting those things in and of itself isn't bad. And that before I continue is an important part of this whole book. Please pay attention to this, in sort of NASA law told us about the devil, and let us be super useful during us that he whispers it's translated he whispers into the chests of people.

He whispers into the chests of people. The thing about the word chest in the Arabic language is that it's actually used also for emotions, like a lesson for us. fucile Dora calm meaning to heal the chest of unbelieving people. What that means is when Allah uses the word chest, he's actually also referring to our emotions, our feeling anger is part of the chest. Fear is part of the chest. Love is part of the chest greed is part of the chest, all of those feelings that you and I experience every day that we're attracted to something beautiful, that's part that's in our chest. When we're when we're turned away from something ugly, that's that's in our chest. laziness is in our chest.

Enthusiasm is in our chest. When Allah says he whispers into the chest, what it also means is, he takes all of those emotions that Allah gave me in a login view. And there are normal emotions, anger, fear, happiness, all of these emotions are part of who we are, it's natural, but he uses them and manipulates them, he'll use your anger to mess you up. He'll use your happiness to mess you up. He'll use your laziness to mess you up. He'll use your sadness to mess you up. In a certain degree. You need those feelings, but he knows what he can do to manipulate you. And to get you to start feeling things that you're not supposed to be feeling, you know, and to overwork overrun you. And so

of course, everybody's attracted to something beautiful, who wouldn't want to live in a beautiful house. As a matter of fact, the fact that Allah offers us in garden, he was in heaven, He offers us mentions, and he offers his beautiful gardens and waterfalls. Why would we be attracted to that stuff? If we're not interested in it now? It's the fact that Allah made us attracted to those things now is what makes heaven so appealing, right? So those things that that are beautiful us attracted to them is natural. What does shaitan want to do? He wants to take that feeling out of balance, I will do anything I can can to get it. I don't care about the consequences. It's in front of me. I

want it right now. Let me give you an analogy to help you understand this, as opposed to what allies offering. You know, if somebody came to you, and made you an offer, look, I have a house. Here's a picture. Beautiful mansion. It's the most beautiful house and it's in front of the beach, and it's on top of a cliff. It's got this gorgeous view. It's exactly the kind of interior you wanted. exactly the kind of exterior you wanted. Everything You Ever Wanted is there in that house. And he says this house is worth a few million, but I'm willing to send you sell it to for $200. First of all, you won't believe it. That's no way you're gonna sell me that for 200 bucks. But then he makes

you. He furthers the offer. He says listen is guaranteed. I'm giving it to you for $200. But the only thing is, you can have it after 15 years. You can have it right now. So I need the $200 now, but you can have it after 15 years. Okay. There's no way you take that deal. It's a scam. But basically, that's what Ally's offering. He says, Here's heaven doesn't take much to get in it. I'm not asking for a lot. But you can't go now.

You can't go now. And the devil comes along and says, Look, I'm not giving you a mansion in heaven. I'll give you much less. But the thing is, I'll give it to you right now.

It's cheap. Just do it right now. It's much easier. You don't have to pay

thing to me is, and he'll just make the immediate cash offer. Those of you that are in business, when somebody comes to you and says, Hey, I want to buy your product.

But I'll make the payment next month. Somebody else comes to you and says, I want to buy your product. But I'll pay you cash right now give me 10% discount, you'll take the cash, because I don't want to wait for another month, human beings to have Boolean algebra on things that come quickly shiping capitalizes on that he excites your feelings and says, Why do you have to wait? Why do you have to be patient? Why can't you have what you want right now? Don't you want to be happy? He comes at you right in front of you. And you can't see anything but what you desire, what you want, and it blinds you to the point where you just don't want to think about what's going to happen afterwards,

what damage it will do to others, what damage it will do to yourself, you're just completely LED on by him. That's actually one of the great attacks of shaitaan from the front, from right in front. He glazes your eyes over. And then a lot, as I mentioned describes, you know, what, about membrana ADM is about the future, if something is right in front of you. Like for example, when you're driving on the road, and you get stuck in traffic and there's a truck right in front of you.

You don't know how bad the traffic is, you can't even look around it because it's so big, you know, your view is completely blocked. When something is in front of you, you can't look ahead. That's one of the things shut on ones. What is actually ahead of you and me is meeting with Allah, it's unavoidable. You and I got the one in Arabic adhan from Allah p, we are marching towards your master, you and I are marching towards him. It's like even if you're standing there, you're on a conveyor belt that's heading towards Allah, whether you like it or not, whether you want to accept that or not, it is we're all heading that way with every breath that we take. And that meeting is

unavoidable.

But he doesn't want you to see that he doesn't want you to see and he doesn't want me to see that with every passing day. We are now closer to meeting a lot than we were yesterday. And then tomorrow, we're even closer. And then tomorrow, we're even closer. All he wants you to think about when it comes to the future is not meeting with the law. But meeting with your friends. were meeting with some vacation, meeting leading up with some good times. What's going to happen this weekend? What are we doing next weekend, he wants you to think about the future with what's right in front of you, but not the long term, not the long term. And even people then they start thinking long term,

like I'm thinking long term, I'm thinking about homeownership, or I'm thinking about where I'm going to move, or I'm thinking about my future education, that's long term thinking. But actually Allah wants you to have even longer term thinking when you and I are going to stand in front of him. And when you do that, just like when you have a plan, if a young man among you are young woman among you is going to the university and you plan to graduate in two years, then you're going to seriously think about which courses you're going to take this semester. Which ones are you going to take next semester? How many credits do you have? Can you slack off? Can you do this how much time you plan

everything out. Because if you want to get to that destination, you need a plan, you need to stay on target. And if you're falling off, then you have to do extra to make up for it. But if you have no vision in front of you, and you have students like that they go to university, they don't care about graduating, they're super seniors. They're in school for 10 years, they're still taking courses, what are you gonna, What's your major, I'm still thinking about it, you're like, you have gray hair, now you're still thinking about your major. You know, there are people with no direction, that's what the devil wants in life, he wants you to have no direction, there is no goal in front of you.

And that goal that Allah set in front of us is meeting with him. And when that goal is in front of you, every decision you make you first say is that gonna mess me up when I meet with him or not. I have to take a loss questioning and allows meaning into consideration before I take my next step. But if he can make that invisible, then the thought doesn't even occur to me, it doesn't even occur to you, you just do whatever you want. The thought about Ally's gone because he attacked you from the front blinding your view of what is actually coming ahead of us. What is also ahead of us is our anxiety and our fear. You know, shaitaan wants, that you worry about the future,

that you just keep worrying. What's my son going to do? is you're going to rebel, what's my daughter going to do? What's my husband going to do? What's my wife going to do? And you keep worrying about other people and what they're going to do and how they're going to feel like you're in charge of them. Or you're in control of them. We're barely in control of ourselves. But we think we can control what everybody else around this is going to do and what their future is going to be and we want to control their future. You'll have a mother dying every day. Why isn't my daughter who's married? Why isn't she having a baby? When is she going to have a baby? When is she going to have a

baby and she's calling her and saying you know Allah wants you to have a baby a lot doesn't want her to have a baby. You want her to have a baby. I don't know what email you got from Allah, that you told her.

But this is in your mind. You just want these anxieties, worldly worldly things that you want is all you think about for the future.

I don't have it, I don't have it, I just worry about it. I don't know why I don't have it and you're just consumed by that completely consumed by that. It can be the most innocent of things. But shaytan wants you to be that way. Because when you do that you're not happy with what Allah has given you. Number one, and you easily forget that the one in charge is Allah. And the one in control over everyone is Allah. I am actually not in charge of my children. Once they get to a certain age, what they do is between them and Allah, all I can be is an advice that's all I can do, but their decisions are going to be theirs. If our messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam can turn to his

daughter and say, yeah, Fatima to bint Mohammed tequila in Nila am liquid leukemia, lanisha Fatima, daughter of Mohammed, be mindful of God yourself, because I won't have any control when it comes to standing in front of Allah, I won't be able to help you. That's what he tells his own daughter. So how do you and I think we have control over others, even within our family, he wants us to think we're in charge. And we want to and that's actually something only ally has the right to. We he consumes our minds within Of course, when you try to control people, it backfires. It never works. You can never control people. You can't control people. And when you can't control people, you get

even more anxious and you get, you know, negative constantly. And when you become negative, constantly, it's impossible for you to be grateful. Look at how the is going to end. Well. I urge you to accelerate home shakin you're not going to find most of them grateful, because they're going to be negative all the time. They're going to be anxious about the future all the time. What's gonna happen to my job? What's gonna happen with my money? where's this going to come from? Where's that going to come from? What's gonna happen to the health? What's gonna happen in the kids? What's gonna happen to this? Or that? or the other? What if they find out? What if this happens? What if this one

says this? What if that one does that and you're just so overwhelmed by these petty things that you forget that a lot of controls the future that allow owns it, not you, not me, and the fact that we had even a good peaceful day, one day, one moment was not because we earned it, or we planned it, or we controlled it, it's allow gives relief, every single day that's allowed gives relief, the fact that our bodies are still functioning, and we're sitting here in the Friday prayer is a lot giving us relief, a lot giving us ability, and we forget that and we think that we have to figure all the future out, we have to control all the outcomes. And that's one of the things that Don wants is to

make you confused about thinking that you have something to do with the future. One of the greatest tricks of the shaitaan is to make you pessimistic about the future, nothing is going to work out it's all going to be bad. Nothing ever worked anyway, it's always going to fail. You become so negative, that you not only are you negative about your own self, you become your negativity becomes infectious, even people around you somebody's happy about something somebody graduated Yeah, like Yeah, but you're not really gonna get a job.

These have to throw in some kind of negative cuz you know, just our luck runs in the family, don't worry about it. You just and this is the pessimism of the devil. He wants that from you. Because if if a person is pessimistic, and how can they have pessimism and hope in Allah?

How can they pessimism and reliance in Allah, then with what heart are they making throughout your life, they've already accepted defeat inside that nothing's going to work out, then they have no expectation from Allah, then they're the most essential relationship we have with Allah, which is that of asking him having hope in Him, you cut that off, you have your hopeless and what is shaytan by definition, he's hopeless. By definition, he's hopeless, and he wants you to become hopeless. These are his attacks from the front. He also wants you to become, you know, human beings are meant to be goal driven. This is again, attacks from the front, and we're taking a lot of time, even

though if I don't cover the attacks from behind, that's okay, I want to take my time with this because I want us to understand how he gets to us. Right? So, you know, human beings are meant to be goal driven. Like, you know, you people do like pay 1000s of dollars to attend seminars, to like self help Tony Robbins type stuff, right? Because they want to be driven and you want to accomplish and you want to have goals ahead of you and you want to, you know, be self disciplined, and that that kind of thing. And these are good things. These are actually very powerful things. But you know what he does, he makes you set your goals, I mean, give you an analogy first, when you take you

know, mountain climbers, they take the rope and they throw the hook on top. If you threw your hook, 20 feet high, that's as high as you'll ever go.

If you threw your hook 30 feet high, you'll get 30 feet high. shaitaan wants that you throw your hook very low.

He's once you throw your hook up to money, if I have this much money, I'll be good. And that's all you're thinking about is this goal, I want to accomplish this goal, I want to accomplish this goal. like as if if you accomplish that goal, everything's gonna work out and it's gonna be amazing once I get to that goal. And what happens once you even get near that goal or get to that goal, there's like 30 other problems you never saw before.

He just wants you to be consumed with lesser goals, and be driven so immersed in them that you see nothing else.

You see, you and I are supposed to be goal driven, I should have goals about my health, I should have goals about my career, I should have goals about my education. But understand something, those goals are never actually your actual purpose, they are only means to a larger end, if you and I forget that we are on this earth for a limited time. And our purpose here was not to get a job. Our purpose here was not to make money. Our purpose here was not to get a house, because we're going to leave all that stuff behind. Our purpose here was to actually do some kind of good

to some kind of good for ourselves, and do a kind of good that will live longer than we live.

That's the purpose for which we were put on this earth. And if you have that in mind, and then your education is leading you to do something good. Your house is leading you to do something good. Your car is leading you to do something good, then those things have a purpose. Those things in and of themselves are not a purpose. But shaytan wants to take those things and make them your purpose. Man, my goal is I got to get the 2019 that this this, this that car, I got it all figured out. That is my goal. It's not really a goal. It's just a thing. And that thing is just one car accident away from being gone.

That's all it is. That that thing that you're so obsessed with that house is just one earthquake away. is one fire away. What are these things, these things come in they go Lofa Polly boo, boo. But he wants us to be immersed and obsessed with those things. This is what you get on ones. So we don't realize that Allah has made us very meaningful, purposeful creatures. He wants us to lose sight of our purpose by attacking us from the front. And finally, this last bit of how shaitaan gets us from ahead of us. What is there's one thing that all of us have ahead of us. Maybe some of you have a lot of money ahead of you, Allah knows. Maybe some of you have a lot of major challenges coming out of

you only Allah knows. Maybe some of you have great happiness ahead of you. Allah knows, we don't know. But there's one thing ahead of all of us. And that's time.

Maybe some of us have a few seconds. Maybe some of us have a few years. Maybe some of us have a few decades. But one thing for sure we all have time. Little or more we have time. When Stefan comes in attacks from the front. He wants you to have no respect for your time.

He wants you to think you have all the time in the world.

There is no urgency. There's no set the only urgencies for your desires. But there's no urgency to do anything meaningful in life. As a matter of fact, anything meaningful that comes he says you got time.

Exactly what happens to you and me with every prayer. Lord time comes, you're in the middle of something lower time comes, your phone goes off, your watch goes off, your computer goes off the automatic athon you put it on pause immediately.

And then you say I got time

for the video game immediately for the next episode on Netflix immediately. For salon I got time.

I a time

you're about to sit you have some free 20 minutes, you got nothing to do in between classes at the university. Right? And you've got a copy of the Quran in your bag. You could just open that up. And I mean later though, I want to I'll do it but little later. But anything frivolous, useless, pointless, just sit and just scroll through Instagram or Facebook or just look at what other people are posting on their Snapchat. And 40 minutes will go by you'll even be late for class. You made time. He wants you to have no respect for your time. He wants you to throw it away frivolously and get rid of it frivolously. And it's actually incredible because what's ahead of you your future, you

will ruin it by wasting your time. And when you're when you're done wasting it. You'll look back and say man, I wasted so much time and you become even more hopeless.

You know, that's that's the game that he plays with us. So that's his attack from the front these multiple attacks from the front. And I pray Allah azza wa jal makes us mindful of these attacks that the devil has against us from ahead of us. And may Allah azza wa jal not ever let us become people who don't see things for what they are Allahumma inni What are you not happy catella Shia comma here, Allah the prophet SAW Selim said, she, Oh Allah, I want you to show me the reality of things as they really are. This is my last bit of advice to you. How do we fight this attack of the devil? Of course, you have to recognize it. But you have to constantly refresh and I have to constantly

refreshing myself Reality of Things. You know, just like we're in the we're in the modern world. So I can give you a tech example, you see an app, and the app has a skin it has a look and feel it has color, met a menu, whatever. But that's actually not the app. There's a source code behind it. You don't see the code. You don't actually see the functionality. You just see the front, right. The thing is, everything you see in front of you is just a skin. It's just a cover. There's a reason

reality behind it, there's an engine behind the purpose and meaning behind it. The problem is, we start giving value to things at face value, we don't actually look at what's behind them that actually has the value. And that's what Quran does. Koran doesn't let us see with these eyes. There's another set of eyes here. You know, the homayoun sunovion, they have eyes, they don't see with them, meaning they don't see reality with them. They just see the shallow things in front of them. There's a there's an AI we have to develop for what really is what really has meaning, what really has purpose. And when that happens, the way you spend your time, the way you think about

things, the way I value things, the way I prioritize things, all of that starts changing, you know, because at the end of the day, this entire life that we have left these few breaths that we have left until we go and meet with Allah, all of it will boil down to one thing, you know, but will insulinoma even be more Kadima? Well, human beings will be the human being will be informed on that day. What did you make priority? And what did you make secondary? So all this all it boils down to every single choice you and I make? What was the priority? What could wait, what was the priority? What's less important? That's all it is. And that's all shaitaan wants to mess up what's coming

ahead of us. He'll make us think about the wrong priorities. And he'll make us put aside what is actually important mobilizer which will make us of those who put the priorities in the right place, and don't allow the whispers of shaitaan to dissuade us from our purpose. barakallahu li walakum filco Anil Hakeem when a family will he accompany it was the Kentucky