Rania Awaad – Al-Muhaymin & Al-Azeez
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of finding one's own strength and reflection on Islam, including praying five times a day and following rules. They also emphasize the importance of acceptance of Islam and reissuing a message of love and compassion in parenting, as well as the need for parents to reissued their faith in Allah's strength and weaknesses. Prayer and fasting are emphasized as crucial to achieving a better life and strong personal relationships, and acceptance of Islam is emphasized as crucial to strengthen strong relationships.AI: Transcript ©
We're doing in this middle of Shaban.
It's a full moon outside
which means we are exactly
2 weeks to Ramadan.
May Allah bless us. InshaAllah, allow us to
reach Ramadan.
The dua of the prophet
when the month of Rajab and Shaaban would
enter, he would say
Because the idea is as soon as you
can just enter into the month of Ramadan,
the blessings descend
and we all start to feel that. Inshallah,
we have the best Ramadan. We always pray
that every year it's the best Ramadan that
we have inshallah coming forward.
So let's go ahead and start inshallah officially.
My voice.
Forgive me.
Every time there is a
well, I don't know about every time. But,
you know, the conference that I've been organizing
for some time now, the Muslim mental health
conference is next Friday Saturday.
The Thursday prior to that we have with
Madison and all day training for the imams.
We have almost, I think almost every masjid
of the Bay area and even Northern California.
We have their imams, inshaAllah, coming for a
training on the very difficult topic, but important
topic of
suicide. So Insha'Allah, Madison is doing that training
on Thursday. And then Friday Saturday I'm hosting
at Stanford the Muslim Mental Health Conference,
which there is about 500 people attending and
flying from all over the country and the
world actually. We have some people coming internationally
as well.
And then Madison has a big gala on
Saturday night. So I pray that it goes
well. And I ask you all to pray
for me inshallah.
It seems in the midst of doing all
that, I've lost my voice.
And I'm like I can't lose my voice
before the conference.
This is Alhamdulillah. This is Allah's messages to
us to slow down.
I will accept. I will accept. I will
accept.
So please forgive the voice tonight.
I feel okay. It's just I sound like
a frog. So.
Well, in these 2 weeks that we have
remaining before Ramadan,
And I hope some of you have attended
the women's Ramadan readiness conference last Sunday and
if you haven't, we've recorded I think the
beginning part of that at least. Insha'Allah. So
please do
listen to that
and I also think that the teachers who
had the breakout sessions have notes that they
had sent out to the people who had
registered
for the sessions.
And next week, inshallah because I'll be busy
with this next week, there is halukah for
the girls and there is a woman's halukah
here happening still even though I won't personally
be here because I'll be in that other
conference.
Even though it's just
not very far from here in California, but
still not physically here with you guys. And
so will be here inshallah
doing Ramadan prep with all of you. So
that's kind of next week's plan, and then
we'll have one more Friday with more Ramadan
prep, and then it'll be.
Can't believe it. Mashallah. It's kind of amazing
that it's this quick.
So for today inshallah, we're going to continue
on with our 99 names
discussion and because they tie in so beautifully
to the moment again that we're in, so
I'm going in the order
of book,
following it loosely, but
it's amazing how each of the names that
we have covered or have been covering are
so relevant
to the moment that we're in.
It's
a perfect name for this week to cover.
So today's,
of the two names that we're gonna cover
today, inshallah,
the first of which is Al Muhammin.
Al Muhamen.
Does anyone know what Al Muhamen translates to?
Al Muhamen.
How do you translate Al Muhammed?
Anybody?
A
little harder to translate this one. Okay. I'll
tell you.
Translates into the one who has complete
control.
Now you know why. It's like a perfect
name for this week, subhanAllah,
for the time that we're in.
The one who has complete control.
So let's talk about this name of Allah
Azzawajal because
when a human being
has control,
they have the ability
to do a good job with that control,
like as a leader,
or they have the ability to actually cause
a lot of harm without control.
And the reality is every single one of
us has some level of control over
something or usually someone else or many someones
that we're in charge of. So in one's
household,
we have a certain level of control over
maybe people who are younger than us such
as our children, for example.
You're always in control of something or someone
potentially
and there's a very famous saying that we
probably have all learned at some point in
high school or wherever we learned it.
Absolute power,
what is it? What's the rest of the
statement? Absolute power
corrupts?
Absolutely. Yes, it leads to corruption. Absolute power
corrupts? Absolutely.
So when a person has power and control,
they have the ability to oppress.
They do have the ability to harm,
but they also have the ability to
harness that control
and understand that they are just merely a
vehicle
and Allah azza wa jal is the one
whom
has complete control.
This is a very important distinction between human
control and between the control that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala has. And in this very moment
with everything that we're seeing and witnessing
an entire genocide, many actually,
particularly the one we're witnessing right now in
Palestine,
people are asking where
we feel a lack of control. We don't
know how to help. We feel
helpless, especially from over here witnessing
what's happening.
Is Allah
actually in control?
And the answer, of course, is a resounding
yes, of course Allah
is in control,
and his control is different than human control.
His control is complete
control and with divine wisdom that we may
not fully understand or know the how and
the why, the where and the when and
the what.
And this is part of where belief comes
in or faith.
So think about this. If you had a
big problem or a big issue and your
friend tried to console you
and they might say to you, don't worry,
don't worry, maybe it's maybe a person, and
this is true, right? We came out of
a pandemic in which there was quite a
number of,
job losses, right? People were being laid off
a lot, quite a bit.
And there was definitely this sense of like
if a person heard that their company was
going to lay off 50% of the company,
they don't know which 50% they're in.
They're going to have a lot of worry,
anxiety, issue, lack of control,
sense of like feeling
no sense of control, and your friend comes
to you and tries to console you and
says to you, no, no, no, don't worry,
inshallah, inshallah, inshallah, you're going to be in
the 50% that's safe.
You might feel a little bit reassured,
but are you really reassured?
Why?
Because you know your friend doesn't have control
over that company. Do you know what I
mean? They don't have the actual answers. They
didn't see who was the person, the half
that was going to be let go and
half that was going to stay.
And so
when we compare that level of control
to the control maybe of the company's CEO,
if you were to bump into them, right,
and they were like, don't worry, you're in
the 50% that's staying, then you're
much more reassured because you say that person
has more control. Right? They have more sense
of what's happening.
Now imagine the control of Allah, aasawajal, if
Allah says to you,
you
are protected,
you are safe,
and you will have safety even if you
experience a lack of safety in this world.
Your belief as a believer, as a
protects you in the hereafter.
Is that not more reassuring than even the
CEO?
Do you see what I'm saying? Do you
feel more reassurance with that statement
than with a human being that tells you
don't worry, don't worry, don't worry.
SubhanAllah.
If we could just close the door inshallah.
Sorry because there's the microphone coming through on
the other side.
And so what does it mean to have
to be al Muhammin?
It says here there are 3 basic understandings
of the term al Muhammin. Number 1, complete
control.
Number 2, to have command.
And number 3,
to have protection.
Last week we talked quite a bit about
protection.
What was the name that we learned last
week?
What is it?
Al Mu'min.
Al Mu'min.
And think about all 3 of these. If
our person to have what they say in
Arabic, Al Muhamayman
is the word that they use, the term
they use is.
To have
you have to have 3 aspects. What are
the 3 aspects that Allah has?
Number 1, he has knowledge
and he has complete knowledge, not just
basic knowledge if you will, but complete knowledge.
That means that even if things appear
one way, even though Allah is a wajan
actually knows the truth behind it.
And for a human being, even when they
appear like they know what they're talking about,
you may not have full confidence. Let me
give you an example. I know this from
my medical practice
that if I have to travel or if
I have to go,
or I'm not able to see a specific
patient anymore, I might say, I'm going to
refer you to my colleague, so and so.
They're wonderful. They're great.
I can't see you any longer. Maybe I'm
ending this clinic or maybe I'm moving or
maybe I'm on vacation or whatever the case
might be. I'm gonna transfer you to the
next person.
What is the reaction normally?
No, no, no.
And it's not so much about
there is a change, but a lot of
times their issue, the concern is that other
doctor, even if they're very competent, they don't
know my whole
story the way you've just heard all my
story over weeks weeks months and maybe years.
You know a whole lot more about me
than the new person who might be very
competent that doesn't know the whole story.
Their knowledge isn't
complete.
And I know that where the change happens
where people kind of calm down a little
bit is I'll say, don't worry.
I'll talk with that doctor and I'll give
them
all the details, so you don't have to
start from 0. Right? I'll explain and catch
them up so that when you do see
them, they already have a sense of where
things have been.
Right? You kind of bridge the lack of
knowledge.
So imagine Allah, this
is human to human.
Imagine Allah's knowledge. Right? The complete knowledge that
Allah possesses
allows you to feel
and understand that he truly is the one
who is in control
because he has full and complete knowledge of
what's happening.
And so we say these words, Allah is
the all knowing. He's.
He's the knower of the unseen
and the seen
world. He has full knowledge of everything on
earth
and everything in your heart,
even if it's not spoken,
Which is why sometimes if you hear the
duas carefully that are made sometimes, one of
the duas I like to make is, you
Allah please accept the duas that are in
the hearts of each of the women here
that are on the tips of their tongues
even if they haven't said them. Why? Because
he already knows what's in your heart.
He already knows what's there.
Do you see what I'm saying?
And so when you get to that point
of a solid knowledge of Allah has complete
knowledge, you have a solid understanding that He
has complete knowledge, your relationship with Allah changes.
The way you interact and the way you
ask
people also changes because you realize people can
only do so much. But Allah is truly
the one who is in full, full control.
Number 2, he has full ability.
So a person that has true control has
to also be able to exercise that ability.
It's not just the title.
It's not just the title. We can give
a leader of a country the title king
or queen or whatever,
but can they actually
make something happen?
Where in the Quran
is a question asked
what prophet is asking who exactly? What's the
story?
Where there's something where he keeps saying, but
I can do that. But I can do
it. Your God can do that? Well, I
can do that. Your God can do that?
I can do that too.
What's the story that I'm referring to?
Yes?
Who?
It's Hadith Musa. Yes. It's prophet Musa
and pharaoh. And what's the conversation? What's happening?
What does he keep saying to him? He
says he says, Allah can do this.
And says, I can do that too.
Allah can do this. I can do that
too.
Then what does Sayidim Mustafa finally say to
him?
Yes. Yes. He says that.
Yes. Life and death. Yes. And then what
else? Where does the conversation go?
It is about the sun. Yes.
I guess both of them have a story
like this. Yes. Okay. Good. It's true, actually.
Yes.
Yes. You're saying it?
I can
I can do this too? Yes.
Yes.
And
then?
Right? So
yes. So this is the part that I
wanna get to.
And there's also the conversation with
Oh my goodness.
Oh,
Where also they're going back and forth and
he says, I can do this and I
can do this. So here though, this one
is so beautiful because the Quran talks about.
So basically he just
you know, he's
silenced. He can't speak anymore because he says
to him, if you're following the conversation,
they were going back and forth, and finally,
finally, it said to him,
a law makes the sun rise from the
east,
so you make it rise from the west.
Can he?
He cannot.
So understanding ability, you could have a title.
He's the king. He can order executions.
He can order who lives and dies, so
to say. But can he actually change the
natural rotation of the world?
This is full control, exercising full control and
ability.
Number 3,
continuity.
Continuity means
we know that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, one
of his other names is
the everlasting.
So his control
is able to transcend time and this is
beautiful too. Think about anybody who's been in
power, even if they're an atrocious
leader, we've certainly had our fair share,
and you know that their period
of governing or ruling is going to come
to an end. Here in the United States,
4 years. 4 years. Even if you max
it out, it's 8 years. Right? Like you
know that there is a set time. In
places in which there's monarchies and kings and
queens, eventually it could be their death.
But it's coming.
Do you know what I mean? Nobody lives
forever. But Allah will
live forever.
Is everlasting, so to say, so better to
say. And so when you think about that,
that too gives you full control
because a person could, an oppressor could have
control
for a certain amount of time
or a certain amount of control, and not
everybody
they cannot potentially have what Allah has in
terms of control. Does that make sense? The
three
understandings of what makes Al Muhamayim
the one who
has ultimate control.
So then let's talk about
what does it mean then if you know
that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is ultimately in
control,
how is it that you why is it
that we as humans worry?
Why do we get worried about things,
especially when they're outside of our control?
This is a really important question.
I'm not gonna get too technical and researchy
on you guys,
but I'll share this much. And some of
you may have heard this some time ago,
but I was sharing with you when we
were in the pandemic.
My research lab connected with, Yaqeen Institute to
do a study on COVID
and Muslims.
And it was a really, really big study.
It was a study that, it was actually
more than this number, but globally it was
about 10,000 people took the surveys that we
were giving, which is a really big research
study.
And it was so interesting
to see people's
answers when we asked questions like, why do
you think
COVID happened?
And you had everything from Allah's waking us
up, this is a wake up call,
to Allah's punishing us,
to this is a time for us to
understand Allah's mercy.
People said things like blame it on China.
I mean,
there's all kinds of
answers that people said. All kinds of answers.
And then we took the people's answers of
why they understood or believed
COVID to have happened. Right? This tiny little
minuscule
virus that you can't even see that made
the world stop
and come to a standstill
and put us all into lockdown and change
the face of things for a good while.
And then we compared it to what people
were doing.
How was their prayer?
How was their dua?
How was their routine?
Were they how was their sleeping, eating, walking,
going, coming? Like, what were they doing? So
we can correlate
what was happening.
And then we ask questions related to mental
health,
which is of interest to me because we're
talking about worry and anxiety right now.
So we asked people about their worry and
anxiety because there's this everything in the world
changed suddenly, very suddenly.
Right? And it was not clear what was
going to happen and there was a lot
of people dying.
There was fear. There was fear.
And the fear of the unknown, unknown of
what's to come is what we kept hearing.
I know we're like, we're
about to enter next week into March
of 2024.
Can you imagine 4 years?
That was March of 2020.
SubhanAllah. I can't believe it's been we're gonna
hit the 4 year mark. That's the most
ajeev thing. Happened like that.
And in that time, SubhanAllah, Allah gave us
knowledge to be able to have vaccines, whether
your opinion on it is not my conversation
today, but the point is it's very much
minimized in what its original effect was, correct?
But in the midst of 2020 and 2021,
it was very much anxiety provoking and fear
provoking.
And what's amazing to me is the results
of the study. You guys want to know
what it
said? So interesting.
The Muslims who understood
or believed that
this was Allah
punishing them
had much higher rates of anxiety
and worry and mental health concerns.
And the people that
understood or their world view, their understanding of
what was happening was this was a test
from Allah
A tribulation or a test
did much better mental health wise.
Much better.
People who turned to prayer and du'a did
a whole lot better. This seems kind of
obvious, but not everybody in the study right?
These are scientists looking at this. It's not
very you know, you go in with a
theory, you're not terribly sure what's going to
happen. And
it was clear. It was really clear.
And the most interesting thing is there's a
function of anxiety called
the ability to tolerate
uncertainty.
Uncertainty,
tolerance,
or uncertainty,
intolerance.
I can't tolerate the uncertainty of what's to
come, which is a function of anxiety.
People who
believed
that this was a test from Allah
and essentially what they did
is.
They said this is bigger than me.
This is something Allah has brought here.
And
if he's brought us to us, he's going
to
bring us through it. I'm going to do
my part and then tell Akkul.
And we ask questions like distancing, hand washing,
and masking, you know, all the questions. Right?
And they did their part and then they
let go. We like to say let go
and let God.
Right?
Do you know that the difference
when we compared
anxiety, clinical anxiety, and clinical depression,
that the rates
how big of a difference it was?
People who had increased rates of uncertainty
intolerance, the ability to not tolerate the uncertainty,
meaning not able to,
they had a 70%, or I should be
more accurate, 69%
chance of developing major depressive disorder,
MDD.
And the opposite was true.
This is powerful.
Powerful, powerful, powerful data.
It's so interesting
because here we're not testing anybody's medications. We're
not testing anybody's,
you know, like here what we're really testing
is a person's world view and their iman
and then how that translates into practice.
Do you see what I'm saying?
It's so interesting too because we also ask
people, did you already have
any already underlying depression or underlying anxiety? I'm
talking here about people who didn't necessarily have
this. It was a function
of the pandemic and the lockdown.
And so you're really getting to the very
core essence of what does it mean to
do Tawakkul,
right, or uncertainty and tolerance.
It's a beautiful thing that this dean teaches.
So
I was interviewed by a journalist
in the midst of the pandemic. She said,
I'm doing a journal article. I'm writing an
article
about what all the different faith groups and
people of no faith are doing with the
pandemic. And I said, Okay.
And she said, You know, you do a
lot with Muslim mental health. So what are
you finding?
I said, Oh,
the study.
And I described to her the study and
she said, Okay.
So
what are Muslims doing?
And I said, Well, and if you guys
remember,
March of 2020,
a couple months after that was going to
be Ramadan.
And everybody was so worried about Ramadan because
they said, how are we gonna have Ramadan
by ourselves in the lockdown? There's no there's
no congregating, there's no tifadas together. How are
you gonna have this Ramadan? As researchers, when
we asked this question, we did a survey
actually specifically in Ramadan,
and we thought
already things are pretty tense for people.
The fact that they are not going to
have Ramadan as they normally have is going
to cause everybody to
go plummet and go down in their mental
health.
We actually found the exact opposite.
It was the most agape thing. It was
like one of those when you go in
as a researcher, you have a hypothesis and
then you find the opposite tree. You're like,
oh, wow.
You know what's so interesting? Do you know
what people said they were doing?
Because there wasn't the distraction
of
jumping from house to house, visiting each other,
having to entertain other people, going in and
out. You were just literally unlocked. It was
like Allah
told us
that Ramadan,
you're going to be in.
You're going to be in a perpetual
at home. Do you guys remember we had
a whole at
home hashtag trending here on the Rahama Foundation?
We had a whole hashtag called
at home and then it started to trend
across the nation. It was so cool. It
became kind of like a viral trend.
And People were taking pictures of their little
corners. It was so great.
Anyhow,
and it was like Allah put us
in that year.
And suddenly people felt they had a much
better Ramadan
than previous years. Not everybody, but many people.
The majority actually is what
the data showed was the majority
had a better Ramadan than the years prior.
And I thought, subhanAllah, the essence of Ramadan
isn't about breaking each other's fast or eating
the great foods that people only bring out
their great grandma's recipes.
These are the foods that are known for
Ramadan. Okay. What are they? The most complicated
food in the world That takes on so
many hours to make. That's not the point
of Ramadan.
The point of Ramadan, and this is what
I was saying about last weekend when we
had our women's conference on Ramadan readiness, I
was saying
the essence of Ramadan, the point of it
is to deeply connect with your Lord.
It's not about the food or the lack
of the food.
It's about thinking about that a resident child
or a woman. I was telling you about
a story last week about a psychologist I
met who literally is so hungry, so hungry,
so hungry, so hungry
that even
having
a fourth of a piece of bread when
someone finally gave that to her,
she said it was like somebody gave me
a gold bar.
That's how hungry,
how hungry a person can get.
And so when you start to feel the
pangs of hunger yourself
in fasting, it's to understand the empathy, to
even start to because you can at an
arm's length go,
but you don't actually understand until you feel
the pangs of hunger,
and that's what Allah insists that you do.
And not for a day and not for
a week but for an entire month.
Do you see what I'm saying?
This is
powerful,
and Allah says it takes a whole month
every year to cleanse
us, to then be able to
be functional
believers
for the rest of the year.
Do you see what I'm saying?
The essence of Ramadan, the essence of deeply
connecting with him,
the essence of sitting there and understanding
my worries, my anxieties, they're valid. I'm not
here to tell you they're wrong or shameful
or bad or squish them away, but rather
to say
to learn to get to a point
of letting go
and letting God.
To get to a point of after you've
done your duty,
like the Prophet
and the Bedouin,
when he sees the young man, right, the
Bedouin
go into the masjid and leave his camel,
and he calls him back out, and he
says,
What about your camel? And he says,
Allah will take care of it. And
what does the prophet
say? Right? Tie your
camel and
depend on Allah.
Right?
There's that word
of do your part. Tie your camel
and
depend on Allah.
Our Islam is 2 fold. This religion is
a 2 fold religion that requires us to
do both, to do our part
and depend on Allah. Doing your part alone
is insufficient.
And depending fully on Allah alone also is
insufficient,
which is why the prophet doesn't say good
for you. Yes.
No. No. He says to him, tie your
camel
and depend on Allah.
And this is where we say here,
knowing that worry and anxiety is a function.
It's a real thing. It truly is a
real thing. The excessive worry
often comes from a place of
not fully understanding that Allah truly has full
and complete control,
full and complete knowledge, full and complete ability.
Because once you have that, it's a lot
easier to
let go and let God after you've done
your part.
Do you see what I'm saying? And that's
kind of the beautiful story, honestly, with this
COVID study. It was so
clear,
in the data. Oh, and I was telling
you about this journalist. Oh, yeah. The journalist.
So I said to her, so she said,
what does it mean that the Muslims are
doing this?
What do you think is kind of a
unique that Muslims do that maybe some of
the other faiths don't do exactly?
I said, Well, you know,
in the 5 pillars of Islam, of course
fasting in Ramadan is unique.
The shahada, of course, 1st and foremost. Charity
you find in other traditions. Our zakat is
very specific.
Hajj once a year is also very particular.
Let's focus on prayer. And she said, Okay.
Because I said, This is what people are
in their lockdown,
in
their
enforced,
if you will. This is what they're doing.
And she said, So what do you mean?
I said, Look, I know from having been
home for weeks months months months, we were
home for
months.
That night started to turn into day and
day was starting to turn into night and
then all of the day everything was kind
of mushing together and merging together.
But as a Muslim,
you have 5 daily prayers
that must be prayed. It doesn't matter what's
going on around you.
It doesn't matter what's crumbling around you. We're
hearing this even out of Gaza.
People are maintaining their prayers, and you're hearing
the bombs and things falling around you, and
they're maintaining their 5 prayers. How are we
not maintaining our 5 prayers?
Like, in the middle of in the middle
of chaos,
I said to her on our I said
to her, Look, the 5 daily prayers, we
wake up at fidget. We have
our morning prayer, afternoon prayer. We have our,
you know, evening prayer. We have our night
prayer. And that, it's like these stakes,
pillars that are held down in the day.
That way, a Muslim's day doesn't merge into
day into night and night into day. I
said this to her like this in the
midst of everything else we were talking about
in this hour long interview that we had.
Okay.
She wrote, Oh, great. Great. Great. She wrote
all this stuff down. And then, she eventually
interviewed people from the Jewish tradition, Christian tradition,
Hindu tradition, Buddhist tradition, agnostics, atheists, all kinds
of people. And she wrote a big, long
article. You can read it.
And then she contacts me like a year
later,
and
it's a funny story because when she contacts
me, she emails me, and she goes, Oh,
do you remember me?
And I was like,
Sorry.
I don't know. I talked to so many
interviewers. I was like, I don't know. And,
which one are you? And she said, I
was the one who was doing this specific
study on what was it like for the
for people from different faith groups and how
they were coping with COVID. I said, okay.
And she said, she said, I come contacting
you because I finished my article and I
published it. I want you to see it.
I said, Oh, thank you. Very nice. And
she said,
And me as an agnostic, somebody who I
think there's a divine power out there but
I don't really believe in anything,
she said,
something you said stuck out from
all the other people that I interviewed. I
said, really? What was that? And she said,
all the other faiths had different ways of
coping, but the Muslims and their
but the Muslims and their prayer
the Muslims and their prayer was very unique.
She said, No other faith group talked about
this. No other faith group
talked about how
everyone talked about how night was turning into
day and merging into one another, but nobody
was talking about the how of maintaining your
sanity through all of this
and being able to actually cope
with something so uncertain.
And she said, I started to find myself
night turning into day and myself spiraling. My
mental health was spiraling down and so many
people's mental health was. We saw mental health
rates spike up
in the pandemic and has continued to spike
up since, actually.
And she said, this was happening to me.
And then I started to say to myself
as an agnostic,
maybe I should start praying.
I said, Oh really?
And she said, Yeah. I looked at myself
in the mirror after feeling really down and
depressed after a day emerging into tonight and
just being lonely and being on lockdown and
finding, like, no meaning in things.
And I started to say,
Maybe I should try some of that prayer.
And I said, and did you? She said,
yeah.
And I was like, alright. That's one step
in the right direction.
Insha'Allah.
And then I contemplated saying to her now
repeat after me.
I didn't say that.
But it was so interesting that a year
later that this was something that she held
out of all the people she talked to,
all these people she talked to, but she
was so insistent on coming back and telling
me this,
of how
this thing that Muslims have, and I think
she even said, I don't think you all
realize what you have
compared to other people, meaning we take this
for granted.
Other people don't have us.
So this beautiful thing of prayer, du'a, knowledge
that God is truly in charge of all
things is a gift that Allah has given
us. And a believer isn't a believer just
by name.
Like we said last week, a believer is
one who truly
right? It's from the inside out. Insha'Allah.
So I wanna close this because I know
it's gonna be closed to Isha. So I
wanna
spend the last couple of minutes before the
break telling you the 3 practical steps. We
always do practical steps with every one of
Allah
names. So for the name Al Muhammin, here's
how we live with this name.
Number 1, we take control
to protect our inner states. Why? Because our
inner states is something we can actually control.
We have the ability to
pray,
to make du'a,
to connect with God, to converse with God,
to even have conversations with Allah.
Why is this happening? It's hard
to say
send me people. Send me help.
Show me the way.
I don't understand.
This is conversing with God. We need to
control our inner states because that is something
we actually have control over.
Doing our prayers. Doing our duas. Doing our
fasting.
Number 2,
to find calm in the knowledge that he
is in control and
this brings our own anxieties down.
And number 3, we talked about people who
are in control and every one of us
has some level of control over something or
someone.
And so when you do,
when you're given control and authority over people,
do not oppress them.
Do not oppress them. It is a trust,
including our own children,
and so we're going to make sure that
we are
not oppressing so that we're not asked about
the and held accountable for it.
We'll come back inshallah after the break and
complete.
Alright. Let's see here.
Okay. I think we're back again.
I guess we're still live. Okay.
All right.
I love
recitation and
all his recitations, but is just so beautiful.
Did you notice he was reading in today?
So beautiful.
Such a beautiful thing. You
know,
in these difficult moments, we're given,
beauty.
And,
I don't know. I found myself smiling in
the entire
prayer. And I was like, I'm smiling. That's
such a strange thing. It was such a
beautiful.
We need that. We definitely need that.
So shall we
start up again where we left off inshallah
Forgive the voice. Forgive the voice.
InshaAllah, we're going to do the second name
that we're covering today.
We are now on the name.
Al
Aziz. Translation?
How do you translate Al Aziz?
It has a connection to this, yes?
What someone said?
It is close to your heart. Yes?
The love, that's what you were saying as
well? Yes. It has a connection to all
of these words. So let's break it down.
Here they
translate it as strength from dignity.
But let's, because all of what you said
is true, so let's take a look at
what this means.
There are different types of strengths.
Excuse me. Oh my goodness. Let's see if
I can get through this hour.
There are different types of strengths
from different types of sources is what we
learn. And some people that you meet, they
have physical strength
and some people you meet, they have
mental strength.
Others have emotional strength. Some have a combination
of all the above. Some are stronger in
this than that. There's different forms
of strength is what we learn.
But the one thing that's very interesting is
that
when you derive strength
from dignity,
it's a different kind of strength altogether.
And that's why I was telling you guys
at the very beginning, every name that we
go through in this period, SubhanAllah, I say
SubhanAllah, it's like we need it at this
moment because what are you seeing in front
of you? You're seeing people literally being
massacred. You're seeing a genocide unfolded in front
of your eyes. Yet the sheer amount of
dignity
that we're witnessing
is unparalleled.
This is why
the people who live in the holy lands
and hold down the fort of the holy
lands,
they're unlike others. I mean, there's just there's
something about that, SubhanAllah.
And there's a kind of,
inherent
dignity that comes when you are a person
who is oppressed
and yet you have
this internal dignity
to stand up in the face of oppression
and injustice
and to be able to say
this
is hurting me
but I'm not going to
break down. I'm not going to lose it.
I'm not going to completely melt. Yes, I'm
crying tears because I'm human.
My family members
are dying.
I
saw a young man today, a clip of
a young man
literally crossing
barren territory,
carrying
a bag,
carrying a bag, carrying a bag, carrying a
bag. What's in the bag? The remains of
his brother.
How do you do this? How do you
do this and continue to be
functional again?
But he wants to bury his brother in
a safe place.
And
he's wailing and screaming and cursing
with dignity.
Oppression.
Oppressed
yet dignified.
It's an amazing thing.
And when you look at the name Al
Aziz,
meaning Allah,
the one who has
strength from dignity,
You start to understand the reflection when humans
have this, the reflection of Allah's
Azzah.
Right? What that means. So how do you
break down the word? What's the 3 letter
word 3 letter root of this word?
Rain?
Zane?
Zane?
Basically, yes. That's a 3 letter word.
3 letter root.
And so what it means is the one
who is invincible,
the one that nobody can overpower
and the one who is dignified, the strong,
the one who is needed
and doesn't need others.
That's essentially what it's meaning.
So when you think about this in the
Quran there's many, many, many word times that
the word or some derivation of it, some
connection to the word shows up in the
Quran.
And every time it shows up you get
a different layer of the meaning, a different
kind of
cross section of this meaning.
So for example,
there is a conversation here between
Sayyidna
Suleyman
and the queen,
of Sheba.
And the queen says to Sayidna Suleyman, who's
telling her, right, to accept
Islam, right, to accept the faith,
that she says, indeed
kings, when they enter into a city, they
ruin it and they render the honor of
its people humbled.
And this is what they do.
Meaning that there is a clear, like if
I allow you and your army to come
in here, what's going to happen to my
city? That the Aza,
meaning the most honored of this group of
people, are going to be
turned upside down essentially. There's a cover they're
having a whole dialogue back and forth between
themselves
And as you know the ending of the
story, she does in fact accept the faith.
Right? It's a beautiful story.
And here are the honored people that she's
referring to in this verse. Right?
Allah
uses this word,
the same root to describe them. Why? Because
they are a strengthened people.
They are happy in their land. They are
people of dignity,
of power at this moment. Right? And if
a new group comes in, that might change.
So this is kind of the description that
Allah uses.
Also another way to understand
al Aziz
is to explain it as exalted in might.
Exalted in might. Meaning what?
The one who cannot be overcome.
The one who is unassailable,
invincible,
nobody
can transgress against them and if they do
try to transgress against them, he can humiliate
them.
And the one who is honored.
And here the conversation turns to, the Battle
of Badr.
In the Battle of Badr, do we know
how many? How many,
how many
were the Muslims in the Battle of Badr?
Someone said it.
313. Excellent. Excellent. Gold star.
313.
And how many were on the other side?
A thousand.
It's a big difference, right? And actually when
the Muslims went out to fight, Quraish said,
Oh, are you guys thinking you're so Yani?
You're deluded. You're deluded to think you're going
to be able to
handle your tiny and your small and your
new as a group of people in the
army and we are Quraish. Like are you
really thinking you're going to beat us?
But when somebody transgresses
against Allah,
he has the ability to
humiliate them. So what does he send?
What does he send?
The angels.
He sends angels to fortify
the Muslims.
Even the descriptions of some of the people
who are on the Quraish side who then
later
become Muslim, they tell their story when they
were not Muslim at the time and they
were on the other side, They would say,
well, you just would see
swords flying and people dying, and we couldn't
and we weren't seeing people killing them.
Like, what was going on?
And more than anything what these angels were
doing was just fortifying
the Muslims.
As in to say giving them a sense
of security, comfort, knowing Allah is with you.
Strengthening
what was only
a third,
not even a third, right, of the population
to, right,
to feel like they were more than the
Quraysh. It's an amazing thing. When Allah gives
you that sense of might and power, he
gives you his might, right,
Nobody can overpower that. And when he wants
to humiliate, he will humiliate.
And the question becomes even in what we're
seeing right now in a genocide unfolding, people
ask, well, where and when and how? It's
coming.
It's coming. I I can't tell you exactly
when and where and how. What I know
is what Allah has promised. Allah has promised
it's coming.
What kind of humiliation? I don't know, but
it's coming. When?
But it's coming. Do you know what I
mean? And that's the kind of understanding and
the belief that a believer, a person of
faith has, the promise of whatever God has
said.
And when we think about
the angels were there simply as this reassurance
for the heart of the believers
that Allah is the one who is mighty.
Allah is the one who said
anything that is against
him will be defeated,
and it happens.
And so to remember insha Allah that the,
the people who are in the Quran it
says the people who are the hypocrites
are the ones who have sickness in their
heart, and they said these people, meaning the
believers, must be deluded by this religion.
But if anyone puts their trust in God,
God is the Almighty and the wise.
Now we put our trust in Allah
but it also means taking your necessary precautions,
which is what we talked about in the
last hour. And we said this concept of
right like tie your camel
and dependent on law. Together. They go hand
in hand. They happen together. But you have
to be able to take your necessary precautions.
And,
and what does that mean? It means obeying
him and trusting him. So if he put
rules in place instead,
for you to do okay,
it requires you
to pray 5 times a day,
to fast the month of Ramadan,
to give in your zakat,
to make sure that you're connected to my
holy house.
You have to be connected in this way,
SubhanAllah. And you have to do these things
on all the other rules. Those are the
pillars. Then there's a lot of other rules
of Islam. The rules of engagement. What is
halal? What is haram? What is considered
to be and what is not? Why all
these rules? What is modesty? All these things
that Allah put in place, he knows
why they're
there. And even if you don't fully conceptualize
them, the first answer when someone says why,
why hijab,
why halal food, why this, why that, the
answer is first answer is
because Allah said so.
And then second answer you can give other
explanations. It guards from this, it helps with
this, it protects you from this,
x y z. But the first answer is
always
We heard and we obey,
right, is the first answer.
To get to that point is very powerful.
When a person gets to that point, they're
no longer our teachers talk about a person,
the difference between someone who is very petty
in their faith, in their belief, and so
everything is like a tit for tat.
How come? Why? Show me the proof. Show
me the evidence. Show me the hadith. Where's
the ayah? How do you know? Right?
And Islam, interestingly enough, is a religion of
knowledge.
In the Quran, Allah says seek, learn, read,
contemplate, look, go, travel,
find out.
It's a religion of knowledge.
It inspires you.
So it's not a religion that just says
do because I said so.
But when you get to a point of
strong belief,
your first answer is because Allah said so
and now let me explore
the other reasons why. You don't come at
it as well how come Aisha was so
young?
It's a different
experience in the way a person approaches the
dean.
It's a valid question.
Let's have a discussion.
But that pettiness of, like, well, I'm not
going to deal with the prayer or the
hijab or anything else until you can explain
the age 9 story.
It's a different way
of dealing with this deen.
But you wanna talk about Sitarashi? Let's talk
about it.
But you don't tit for tat with God.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Do you understand what I'm saying?
It's a different relationship.
One of the things our teachers in the
girls' holocaust were telling me,
and I heard this from a number of
teachers now, this new generation, it's kind of
a you know, with every generation you have
to kind of like work with new techniques
of teaching. Okay? New things coming at you.
One of them, SubhanAllah, I was gonna say
something else. I'm gonna take a little tangent
and come back. But just before the teachers
have their halakan, one of them said to
me, you know it's so interesting. I was
reflecting that in years past I would always
hear that when we get to the age
group that's like your
pre pubescent,
pubescent age group, the adolescent age group, normally
one of the biggest interesting topics is boys.
And so it is. This is definitely the
case still. This is like age old. It's
not gonna go away.
But the interesting thing is that I thought,
oh wow, this is a different generation.
In years past, even in here, right here
in this halukkah, years past, I would hear
the girl say,
the trouble that they have more is with
the
non Muslim boys versus the Muslim boys. Muslim
boys understand that they're Muslim and they kind
of like, you know, and they're kind of
like, oh, we see you at the masjid.
Okay.
But the non Muslim boys, we have to
explain to them I can't do this, I
don't do this, etcetera.
Now they said, these girls, the teachers tonight,
they said actually it's like flipped.
They had no problem with the non Muslim
boys. Think about the generation we're in. This
is a generation of everybody's very careful
and sensitive.
I don't wanna offend you.
You know, whatever you say goes.
And so it's kind of like it's very
interesting, the flip. They're like, we have no
problem. Apparently, they're saying
this age group is saying that they don't
have as much problem with the non Muslim
boys. They say, we can't do this. We
can't do this. Boys are like, okay.
But the Muslim boys
he's the ones giving him trouble.
Why? Because they say because they're like, you
know, they're kinda like pushing their limits as
kids will always push their limits. Right? And
I thought, interesting.
It's generational. It changes. And everyone's experience is
different of course. I'm overgeneralizing
but this is what was brought into the
room here right before you. And I thought
every generation you have to
mentor, teach, parent differently depending on what's going
on in the broader society around them.
In years past,
I have found that actually the concept of,
like your core belief system,
was pretty strong.
What I felt like the girls needed to
do mostly in the groups here is
polish and fine tune.
You know, maybe a little bit on the
prayer is a little off or maybe there's
some details missing on this or that, but
the core beliefs tended to be there.
What I'm hearing recently from a lot of
the teachers is
even the Aqida tends to be missing some
these days. There's some core things about the
very beliefs of Islam that we're finding the
kids go, Oh really? Do we believe in
that?
Or we don't believe that? Or is that
a thing in Islam? Like even some of
the core beliefs.
And that tells me something. It tells me
that the way we're
teaching Islam,
right, is
is is becoming,
much more like
can I speak very frankly?
You won't be upset with me?
It's not coming from a place of judgment,
but rather from a place of reflection.
Researcher here at data.
But it's very interesting. It's really coming from
this place of like,
I rather you
not stick out like a sore thumb.
Islamophobia is a very real thing. We know
the data. We know the data on that.
Right? We know that it's a 5050 chance
that your kid is most likely probably
going to be something a believer. Something's going
to happen because of their Muslim identity. Their
hijab, their name, their food, something
about them.
We know this. So a lot of people
have sort of retreated
a whole lot more
in saying don't be as obvious.
Don't be as
you know?
Whereas upon all of them, when we were
going through school, I think about like
high school. When I went to high school,
there was a whole era of like we
had these like very blaring t shirts that
was like Islam is the truth
that I would wear all around my high
school. Islam, religion of truth. It was great.
It's my favorite t shirt. It was like
and there was like you know, we'd wear
these like very I mean now, Moshe, you're
seeing with Palestine, people are wearing like a
lot of
very clear,
the kefias and the watermelons and so on.
But interestingly,
this is new.
This is new. For a while, the fad
was earlier, some decades ago,
it was very clear. Islam religion of Haqq.
Where it's always kinda like,
oh, you have a path and I have
a path.
And
all paths are good.
People are good.
The paths are different.
And I think it's important that we're much
more clear because we're finding that the kids
themselves are understanding of their religion,
Even understanding Islam to be Haqq,
to be truth with a capital T
has changed.
A lot of young people, their Islam is
a Islam
that is a truth with a lower case
t.
They're not too sure that it is the
truth,
which also translates into is Allah the God
with a capital G.
And I say this again in no judgment
and this may not be applicable necessarily to
the group right here in this room right
this very minute, but in general
the our core belief system is weakening and
lacking
in many ways.
And I shared this with you, I think,
at the beginning of the year and we
had it out. It was fixed right away.
But nevertheless,
it still sticks with me until weeks or
weeks later. The story still sticks with me.
1 of the teachers in the halakut, the
teacher's halakut came in and
said she was teaching a younger age group.
And she said she was saying, you know,
just kind of carrying on just normally the
way you carry on with what you're teaching
little kids. And she said, you know, Anna's
Muslims and Islam. And she's just sort of
carrying on.
And the little girl said to her, excuse
me, excuse me,
are we Muslim?
And she was like,
You know, like it kinda like really stopped
her in her tracks. And so she wanted
to clarify. She was like,
yes.
I'm like, yes.
And she's like, oh, I didn't know.
And so the teacher was kind of alarmed.
So she came into the teacher's holocaust the
next week and kind of said, I had
a little girl who said that she wasn't
clear. And I said, oh, maybe it's just
semantics.
But she was like, no, no. I tried
to ask a little bit more. And the
girl truly wasn't clear. And I was like,
okay.
But the little girl the next week actually
came back
right later that day and she said, I
asked my mom, you know, and she said
we're Muslim. I said, okay.
But for a moment, you could understand the
teacher's heart kind of stopped for a minute.
She was like, oh, like we're really like
here she is going on about whatever the
pillars, and we have to start all the
way here, like point 0. You know?
Again, there's no judgment in anything that I'm
saying. In fact, when I said to the
teacher,
that we're here.
Even if you start at point 0,
Right? And thank God for the parents who
thought to bring them here in the 1st
place
and welcome. Do you know what I
mean? It tells me something though about the
broader issues that we're dealing with. Sometimes we're
like, we'll be here.
When we try to talk to our kids
and even ourselves about this religion and it's
not very tangible or practical.
It's not very clear and it's not
very decisive.
This
is Haqq truth.
There is a jannah and a jahannam.
There
is hissab, judgment,
like very decisive language.
Do you know that Ramadan is coming up
and one of the teachers told me
that she has a class of boys
and she said she overheard the boys who
are not yet they're also in this pre
pubescent age group. So they maybe are not
yet at the point where you'd say it's
for them
necessarily to fast, but they're very close. We're
talking, like, right around the corner.
And in our deen, just like with prayer,
you start to prep the child to
fast, just like you start to prep them
to pray so that when puberty hits,
they're ready. They've had their practice. They've had
their practice runs.
Right? How many of you growing up you
did like half days, part days, little days?
Right? You started with lack. You know, you
eat part of a day and then you
just don't eat the rest of it or
you leave something out.
And eventually, eventually you work up to a
full day of fasting.
This group, this teacher said she had this
group of boys and they were having a
conversation amongst themselves. They were like, oh, Ramadan's
coming up.
And they were like, are you gonna fast?
Are you gonna fast? Are you gonna fast?
Woke themselves. And they're like, No. No. No.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. And
they all decided, except for 1 kid, decided
that they're not going to fast because why?
They didn't have to.
And so the one little voice, the teacher
is saying she could
over she's not interfering with the conversation, but
she's overhearing the conversation. And then she said
the one little boy spoke up and he
goes, he goes, What are you guys talking
about? Of course you have to fast.
So she's laughing to herself about this very
cute conversation that's happening. And
then I was reflecting with her and I
said, how interesting. How interesting that all it
takes sometimes is the one the one voice
that's kinda like, stop out of it, guys.
Come on. We've gotta try. We've gotta work
hard. You know? And they're all little kids
amongst themselves. There's no adults in this conversation.
They're talking. But I thought to myself, subhanallah,
what is this also reflecting on us as
parents and parenting or the adults in people's
lives of kind of saying
fasting
must be practiced before it's obligatory in you.
Prayer must start happening little by little by
little before it's obligatory on you.
And the age of obligation is how old?
How old?
When is puberty for boys?
What's the average?
Yeah. Somewhere in that 13, 14. Some people
could be 15 even. That's kind of older,
but yes. And girls?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 10, 10, 11, 12, so
it's earlier. They tend to also kind of
get with it a little faster than the
boys. Right? But nevertheless think about what that
means. Think about what that means if you
have a 10 year
old,
a 10 year old who now it's obligatory
all 5 prayers,
obligatory
all the month of fasting.
How? How do you get that unless she
practiced
at
7 and 8 and 9?
Do you see what I'm saying?
And our 7 and 8 and 9 year
olds are like running around
around without even like a carrot. Nobody's even
saying to them, fast a little bit.
Start praying little by little. Do you see
what I'm saying? There's no judgment here. I'm
just laying out to you the process when
we do a whole other course we do
on raising children,
raising spiritual children. Part of it is
it's on us because
before they reach the age of puberty
and their book is open
to accept
the sins. Because right now they get all
the from
day 0. They get all the good deeds.
It is anything good that this child does,
It counts and it's there and it's open
from the very beginning.
What's closed for them is the book of
sins.
Those are not recorded until
puberty.
So how are you going to raise a
child
that you love and you take care of
and you otherwise hug and kiss and want
the best for them. And yet on their
spiritual end,
here they come in puberty.
I'm still a little animated right now.
Here they come in puberty and this book
opens
and they are not ready whatsoever. They're just
not ready.
This is on who?
This comes back to us.
This comes back to us which is why
we're told in parenting
that
their deeds in that middle period by the
age of 7 because that's what the hadith
of the prophet
says, teach them at 7. By 7,
and that was specific to prayer, but you
measure fasting against it.
Okay? So fasting and prayer.
By the age of 7, you start teaching.
And if the teaching
and the implementing a routine and a ritual
in the household isn't happening,
7, 8,
9. Who is carrying the sin of that?
It's not the child because that book is
still closed.
It's whom?
That's a powerful lesson in parenting
and
once you realize that and you kind of
like the shock of it sometimes if you
haven't even thought of it that way, the
shock of it, then you realize, oh wow,
I need to reorient
a lot of the way I parent and
what I do. You wouldn't get a group
of boys, Muslim boys in a Muslim halakah,
Muslim setting,
saying to each other and now this age
group is literally around the corner of puberty.
So next year,
probably, all these boys are gonna have reached
puberty most likely. Right? From what I know
about their age group, most likely next year.
They definitely
are gonna be there. So how are they
conversing amongst themselves
right around that corner going
what is this fasting? I'm not going to
fast.
There's something not wrong with them.
There's something in those who said, you're little.
You don't have to do this. It's a
long day. You don't have to do this.
You're at school. You don't have to do
this. That then
has this
understanding of like, nah, not for me.
Are you bad at me?
Are you upset with me?
I'm just reflecting back literally the conversations of
the little people when they start having these
conversations.
The reflection has to do with the ambiance,
the environment,
the parenting,
the halakas they're in. And I
said the same thing to that teacher.
I said they're in your class
because now you can
have some corrective measures and help with the
parents, help reinforce
what the parents probably want inshallah, but you're
gonna help reinforce it inshallah.
Do you know what I mean? May Allah
accept from us all.
And some kids are easy breezy with this
kind of thing and others are
oh.
And Allah test us in so many ways.
Let me finish, I went into a big
old tangent, but Ramadan is coming up and
I think it's particularly
pertinent and important
inshallah. So let me finish inshallah with the
name I want to tell you more about
this name Al Aziz
and the concept of being exalted in might,
and we finished the section we were talking
about,
the Battle of Badr.
And so let me tell you more. Another
way it is other than exalted in might
that we understand the name of Allah,
Al Azziz, is strength and dignity
is from him.
And that might is not oppression.
I love this too. It's so pertinent to
our time.
That might
does not equal oppression.
For a lot of people, the way that
they, again,
they deal with the people in their life
or whoever they have control over,
they exert their might
in an oppressive way.
Not just politically in countries but even within
homes.
Right?
And so if you look at the Quran,
the name Al Aziz in the Quran, I
love this, the name Al Aziz in the
Quran is almost always paired with certain other
names
like Al Hakim,
the wise.
Al Aziz
and Al Hakim paired together 42 times in
the Quran.
Or
Al Aziz and Al Raheem,
13 times paired together in the Quran.
Meaning that you have strength, but it's tempered
by wisdom
and it's tempered
by mercy.
This is something we learn about the Prophet
He was so merciful, he was so compassionate,
he was smiley,
He said what he needed to say
firmly,
but with mercy
and with compassion and with a listening ear
to the person in front of him, salallahu
alaihi wasallam, who felt that
it was custom tailored to him.
Even though that's the rule of Islam. Right?
But it's like custom tailored to him, SubhanAllah.
This is the beauty of our prophet, sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
This name, Al Aziz, is also paired with
Al Ghafoor,
the one who forgives,
and Al Ghafar,
the perpetual
forgiver.
Why? Because when you have might, you also
need to have
forgiveness.
Right?
And when you think about Allah being the
almighty, and I've heard this actually, I've heard
this from people saying Allah, Azzawajal,
seems so big, so,
like, it's overwhelming to me. I feel almost
like because of my awe and reverence for
him, I feel paralyzed
to even have a relationship.
Right?
And so it says here do not ever
think that having,
allowing yourself to be paralyzed because thinking, oh,
Allah is one of these Allah
is quick to punish.
No. Think about how he is Alighafoor.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teaches us
through the hadith
that he is to us
what
I am
as my servant
sees I am, thinks I am.
So important. How do you understand
Do you understand him to be harsh,
punishing?
Then that's
how he'll be. This is how the relationship
will be. But if you understand him to
be compassionate, merciful, loving
yet firm
yet mighty,
then that's the relationship you have as well.
So you're careful but you know that there's
a lot of love and concern
from him as the witch hunt.
And then, in addition,
I also want to tell
you there are many people that are going
to seek strength
from worldly things or from other people.
And what we understand is those people are
temporary, and their strength is temporary like we
talked about in the first hour. But Allah
is the one who gives you
internal strength, internal strength,
and external aid. He's the one who's able
to do both.
When you pause there, you realize this is
why people
meditate and I put that in quotations because
we have much more of a contemplative meditative
tradition than the
kind of meditation you hear about today, but
it's one in which you contemplate the names
of Allah
who he really is to you
And through that you get this internal
connection.
You do. You get an internal connection with
him.
Now when you live with his names, let's
end this section with this.
Number 1,
to fear only Allah
Know that he cannot be overpowered.
He can't be overpowered,
so you don't need to fear greatly anybody
more than him,
including
the oppressors, including those
who are causing destruction.
Ultimately,
Allah can overpower them when he chooses. Last
week we talked about Sayeda Asiya,
the wife of
pharaoh,
and we talked about how she chose
to believe in Allah
before he was ready for it. Or he
was so angered by the fact that she
chose to move forward before him,
and decided to do a public
of humiliation
and ultimately cost her her life.
But in doing that,
Allah humiliated
him.
Allah humiliated
him.
And to know
that you have the parting of a sea
literally like this miraculous happening that happens, right?
And that Allah says
that in those final moments he tried.
He said I believe in the God. Oops,
you ought to be.
Very excited.
It's okay. Just leave it.
It's okay.
Sorry.
People got a whole display of the messages.
It's like, hello.
Alhamdulillah.
I was so so Yes. Add drama to
the story. Yes. Yes. Look.
I'm sorry people.
I don't know what this thing is. Let's
just Okay.
Leave me alone. I'm not gonna get too
emphatic. I'll just keep my hands away.
I talk with my hands.
Alhamdulillah.
And literally in those last moments he says,
I believe in the God of Musa.
But Allah says, too late.
Too late.
Right?
And Allah says in the Quran and we
are going to make a sign of him.
Right? Make him, right, something that people will
see and understand. And it's debated, subhanallah, if
you go into the ancient Egyptian museum today
in Egypt and Cairo,
they say that this is
there is in fact
a mummy that's preserved there, and they say
that it's because of the salt water that
it looks exactly like this.
We always say
who exactly this is, but it could be.
It could be, subhanAllah. Who knows? But Allah
is clear about making him a sign.
Right?
Humiliating him when he thinks
what he has as temporary power and might,
humiliating his wife publicly,
he's humiliated even more.
Do you see what I'm saying?
To understand that fearing only Allah because as
much as people do, as much as they
kill and plunder and destroy,
Allah is able to destroy them.
And it will happen. It's bound to happen.
Number 2,
be strong for and through him. And I
love this.
Strength, as we said, can be physical. Can
be emotional, can be spiritual, can be mental
strength, but you have to know
that this strength ultimately comes from Allah
only comes from Allah
So when we deal with something that has
befallen us, some difficulties, some calamity, some hardship,
some anything that's happened,
the first person you turn to
is Allah to
see you through it all while you're tying
your camel and doing your part. Do you
know what I mean?
Number 3. For sake just for sake of
time I'll go a little quicker.
To strengthen people.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says or sorry, the
Hadith. The Hadith of the prophet
says, whoever is humiliated before a believer and
does not help him when he's able to
do so,
Allah will humiliate him
before the creation on the day of judgement.
So when I think about all what we
learned, they do all these trainings about bullying,
about bystanders and upstanders.
That when you see something happening to a
person in front of you,
you should
in your capacity
help and not allow the bullying or the
abuse or whatever it is to happen. All
of these trainings.
And I think to myself,
here's the hadith.
Over 1400 years ago
saying exactly that. Do not allow your brother
or sister to be there humiliated and you
don't help.
It's a command.
Do you know what I mean? We don't
need some training to tell us, oh, that's
the good thing to do. Here's the research
behind it.
It's directly from our sunnah,
our beloved prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
Number 4,
go to God with humility because the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam tells us the one who
humbles himself for the sake of Allah
no one humbles himself for the sake of
Allah except that Allah raises his status.
And this is beautiful too.
That you humble yourself for the sake of
Allah because you say, look,
maybe I did have a history in which
I was somebody who screamed and yelled and
caused, you know, trouble
and potentially oppressed people. Maybe I'm a person
who has abused,
has verbally abused, has physically abused.
I'm going to say that I'm wrong
and humble myself in front of Allah
so that
Allah raises me in my status and ranks.
He forgives me and raises me in status.
It's kind of an amazing thing that you
see. And I always say this, if it's
a private sin
that a person has done then it's a
private
tawba.
And we don't ever publicize that or need
to publicize that.
When it's a public
sin,
the Tawba, the apology, and the moving forward
needs to be public.
People don't like when I say that, but
it's very important.
If a person causes major blunder in a
position of public leadership,
then their apology
and their humility in humbling themselves needs to
be in a public
status.
As simple as that.
And if it happened in private then the
asin is the is done in private, and
it happened within a home setting
then it has to be done within a
home setting.
But no one just sort of says, oh
I was bad and now I'm okay. Nope.
Nope.
Right?
When you humble yourself, Allah raises you in
your status
and insha'Allah forgives you. You Arab.
Number 5. To be strong does not mean
being harsh. So is not being harsh, uncompromising,
unforgiving.
It means that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is
able to forgive,
and so to have strength,
that dignity,
that means that you also have,
that you're not harsh in doing so.
A lot of people think strength is harshness.
It's just not the way of our prophet,
salallahu alaihi wa sallam. We don't have any
descriptions of him being harsh.
In fact, Allah Subhanahu alaihi wasallam says in
the Quran,
like if you were harsh
and difficult,
they would have run away from you. This
is not the way of our prophet, so
it should not be our way. And sometimes
when people get religious,
they think that religiosity is with harshness,
but that too is a misinterpretation
and far from our prophetic tradition. And then
lastly, lastly,
to be dignified.
To be dignified.
The meaning of 'eza, like we said, is
honor and dignity. So the one who truly
strengthens themselves
and gives honor,
this is where you see true dignity.
SubhanAllah.
And we'll end with this. It's a saying
of Saydna Umar ibn
al Khattab
who said,
we were a people
who are very lowly,
and Allah raised us to honor
and greatness
through Islam.
And he went, we became a people of
honor and greatness
because of Islam.
Now listen to the rest of this.
If we forget who we are
and we wish for other than Islam,
which elevated us,
then the one who raised us will surely
debase us.
Yani, the only reason we have any elevation,
any
status in this world is because of our
Islam.
And if you reject this Islam,
or you say I don't want it, or
you look for something other than it, Allah
will debase you.
And this is what we find with the
Muslims so often. Think of the Muslim world.
Think of the Muslim majority world.
So much of what we see is in
fact debased.
Why? Is there truly a real practice of
Islam?
There is a lot of West is best,
a lot of copying and imitating
brain
is that a word? Brainlessly?
Like literally, blindly, blindly copying,
thinking this is better.
And so you're debased.
You have no power. You have nothing really
because you left behind what was actually making
you strong in the first place, which is
Islam.
And that's what his
wisdom is saying. The only reason we're up
is Islam. The minute you leave that, down
you go.
Do you see what I'm saying? And that
goes to the earlier point I was making
of
of explaining to our kids Islam Haq truth
with a capital t.
Jannah and Jahannam are real. These are not
metaphorical things.
Right?
Hisab and judgment is going to happen.
Judgment at the grave is going to happen.
Right? The fact that there that our souls
will be resurrected
is going to happen. These are not.
These are not makeup things.
And this is where aqidah comes from, where
you are certain about these things. And with
certainty then you move and proceed in your
life.
This is a person with Aza. And what
I'll close with is just the image of
a woman I saw months ago now. I
can't believe it's been months that we've been
witnessing
a genocide, but it's been months. And I
don't know if she's still alive or not,
but she was an elderly woman.
When somebody was coming with their phone. I
think I was telling you this story some
time ago. Somebody was coming to with their
phone and saying,
look, look, all the people of the world
are praying for us.
And she said,
we don't need their prayer.
They need our prayer.
And then she starts reciting from Surah Al
Baqarah.
The verses that talk about you know them,
about
how does the what's the verses that come
before that?
It talks about
Right? It's talking about all the types of
tests and tribulations
that Allah is going to give people.
So give glad tidings to the patient ones.
Right? The people, if they have a tribulation,
come to them. They say
And just like that, this elderly woman, literally
she's putting out garbage or something in the
alley and somebody comes with the phone and
says, Look, look all the people making du'a
for us. And she just literally just recites
Surah Al Baqarah. Do you know what I
mean? And I was like, woah,
inshaAllah, it's pretty amazing. Which tells you
the amount of Quran that the people of
Gaza have. Even the elderly woman in the
middle of the street, like, the amount of
Quran
and the certainty
the certainty of this Islam and this faith
and the dignity.
We have Allah.
In fact, if anything, the world needs our
prayer, not the other way around.
It's amazing.
Allah, it's amazing. They have people in this
time, real people in today's world, 2024,
being able to say these words. You You
hear these stories of like the beautiful, great
people of the past be able to say
this with iman.
Okay. One little, little, quick story. The story
reminded me of a person who,
when they had a drought,
right? This is historical. When they had the
drought, right? They overheard him say
just to just to prove they didn't know
anything about him, anything about this man. They
just saw this man raise his hand and
they overheard him say, You Allah, for your
love of me, make it rain.
Who says that?
And I don't think he meant for it
to be heard. Right? So people said to
him, what's your secret? What's going on here?
And he said,
I know my relationship with Allah. Like that
dignity,
that is, that love and that confidence.
Right? And the and it rained.
And when it rained, people came to him
and they were like, what's your secret? What's
your secret? Who are you? What's your story?
What's your story? And he was a'araf Bilah.
He was somebody who was connected to Allah
For your love of me make it rain.
Who says that?
But that's what it reminded me of this
woman. The dignity, the
that Islam gives you, that faith and belief
gives you. So we'll end with this inshallah.
We ask Allah
to accept from us, to allow us to
be people of
to allow us to be people
that live these names of Allah
and understand that he
is God, capital G, Boss, capital B. That
this is Sam is truth with a capital
T.
In ourselves, in our children that we're able
to pass this on for many, many generations.
That they be I say this
is that they be believers
here
in America and whatever countries all the countries
that all of you are tuning in from,
but they're here in these countries that are
not Muslim majority
for many generations
able to still call themselves Muslims after we
are long gone and in the graves.
I mean, otherwise, why we're here? Why are
we here?
I saw sheikh okay. Last last thing. Last
last. I promise. I saw sheikh, I mean,
from
Chicago, the daughter of Qasem. I saw him
in Qatar when I was at that conference
the other week. I was sitting next to
him, and someone said, something about America
and why are we living there and why
are you living there and something. And he
said,
listen, and this is true, it's written in
all the filk books, that if you are
a non Muslim majority lands
and you choose to be here,
you must be here
to do dawah,
to spread the name of Allah and Islam.
Everyone has their way. Some people have a
microphone,
and some people have their personal characteristics.
Their neighbors, their friends, the kids that come
in their neighborhood, right, the families that meet
them,
the parents, the teachers, you know, like in
their capacities,
their colleagues at work, their boss at work,
like everyone has their own capacity.
But your intention to be on this soil
has to be Dawah
in some form, some way. Some form, some
way. Some people make social media content, whatever.
Everyone has their own capacity.
But
if you lose track of that, the scholars
say it is not permissible
for you to be in a land that
is not and if you say,
but I can protect myself and I know
myself and I
it's not about you.
It's about your progeny.
Can you guarantee that your great,
great grandchild who you may not see, some
of you may see a great grandchild, but
most of us will not, Will not.
Can you guarantee they're going to say that
and die in Islam?
Then stay here.
Then stay.
But if that cannot be guaranteed,
then there is a fault as to what
we're doing here
and how we're living our life here.
Do you understand what I'm saying? It's a
heavy ruling, but it is the ruling of
being on the soil that is not and
when people say, oh, they're not practicing Islam
very much in the Muslim majority countries. I
agree. In the last 6 months I've been
to I think 5 or 6 different Muslim
majority countries. It's true. I agree with you,
but I'll tell you something.
Push comes to shove. Push comes to shove.
People are not praying. They're not fasting. They're
not giving sick they're not but at the
end of the day, very few of them
will say I'm not a Muslim.
But here.
But here.
Oh, no. There's people who are very blatantly
saying in large numbers, yes, in Muslim majority
countries you have it in, but in much,
much smaller numbers. They may not practice,
but oh my goodness, look at what happened
with Palestine. As soon as Palestine happened, what
happened?
Allah.
It's inside.
Can we guarantee that the great, great, great
grandchildren on this well can still do that?
Then you stay.
Then you live your life as you're living.
But if not, then something has to change.
And I close with this. InshaAllah. May Allah
accept from me and you.
Allah
to live our life with full potential,
with intentionality
of dawah that we that our progeny
that
our progeny, my progeny, our
progeny
together
are from the Muslim, are from the
Oh, Allah.
We ask you to shower your mercy upon
us. You Rabbi in this month of Sha'aban
we ask you to bless us. You Rabbi
we ask you to allow us to enter
the month of Ramadan.
Oh Allah we ask you
that we are from the best
from the best, you Rabbi, that we are
from the best of Ramadan, you Rabbi. Allow
us, you Rabbi, to witness.
Allow us, you Rabbi, to be praying and
fasting,
making sujood
and. You Rabbi from people of, from people
of, from people of
charity, of Zakat. You Rabbi allow us to
reach. You Rabbi your holy house again and
again and again.
We ask
to allow us to be people who are
solid in our knowledge of this deen and
are able to pass that to the next
generations. You Rabbi fill our hearts with love
of you and love of our prophet Muhammad
and
allow
that love to then enter their hearts.
You Allah grant us and our children
a righteous companionship.
And allow us to enter Jannah without any
previous or judgment and grant us the highest
levels of Jannah.
Ourselves and our parents
our teachers, our children, our spouses
all of us enter the highest levels
of
with the and the
and the prophet Muhammad
and you Rabbi protect us from the hellfire
and protect us from the fitan.
You rabbi protect us you rabbi from those
who wish to pull us down and protect
us you rabbi from those who do not
wish well for us and protect us from
those who are jealous, and protect
us from all that is wrong and all
that is
the lack of pleasing for you.
And grant our sisters and brothers across the
safety and security,
and grant
them better than what they have lost, and
accept their martyrdom.
Grant them the highest levels of Jannah.
Replace what is better with what they've lost.
I mean I mean I mean I mean,
bottle
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