Safi Khan – Soul Food For College Students Dear Beloved Son Class 13
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of knowing one's own success and identifying one's own success. They emphasize the need for success and the importance of following the Prophet's teachings and not giving too much information. They also discuss the power of Islam, including the ability to change one's behavior and pursue one's beliefs. The speakers stress the importance of working towards one's own goals and not trying to be a good person. The Q&A session will be on Thursday.
AI: Summary ©
Okay, inshallah.
Sorry for the slight delay.
Okay, bismillah walhamdulillah, assalatu wassalamu ala rasulillah wa
ala alihi wa ashabihi ajma'in.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.
How's everyone doing?
Alhamdulillah.
Is everyone doing okay?
Are we inching towards midterms yet or no?
Sort of?
Kind of?
MashaAllah, there's like a wave of depression I
feel that's hit the land.
But mashaAllah, inshallah you guys will all do
well.
Alhamdulillah.
Anybody so far struggling in school?
Yeah?
We need to define struggling, right?
Like what is struggling?
To a lot of Muslim kids, struggling is
like getting a B.
Struggling is much worse than that.
But mashaAllah, inshallah you guys are all doing
well and hopefully you guys are making progress
through your year.
So we're inshallah going to do two chapters
today.
And today also we're going to plan on
doing a Q&A inshallah.
So around 8.15, so in around 35
minutes, we're going to stop inshallah the chapter.
And we're going to dive into our Q
&A session.
So inshallah the Q&A by the way
for anybody who wants to know, you can
go to slido.com and you can type
in the code will be soulfood, S-O
-U-L-F-O-O-D.
And you can kind of pre-submit some
of those questions inshallah that we're going to
go answer one at a time at 8
.15 inshallah.
So again slido.com and the code is
soulfood, S-O-U-L-F-O-O
-D inshallah.
So go ahead and pre-submit your questions
inshallah if you can already think of some.
But obviously you can do so along the
session as well.
Okay, so we're going to start a session
today inshallah that's going to be very powerful
in terms of the topic of adhering to
things that we know are substantive and not
being people of fluff.
Okay, and I'm kind of paraphrasing this from
Imam al-Ghazali's words.
Because Imam al-Ghazali, he begins this particular
chapter and he says, You should know that
your words and deeds should be according to
the shari'ah since knowledge and action without
observance of the shari'ah is absolute deviation.
Now, I know that sentence sounds a little
bit intimidating but I'll explain what Imam al
-Ghazali actually means by this.
So the first thing he says is that,
Know that your
words and deeds should be things that are
done underneath the permission of what Allah Ta
'ala has allowed you to do.
Meaning, in simple terms, adhere to things that
are good and stay away from things that
are bad for you.
And then he says, because an action or
a piece of knowledge without the observance of
what Allah has allowed you to do is
what we would call dhalala.
Dhalala in Arabic means things that are done
incorrectly.
Now, what this means in paraphrasing ways is
to know that Allah and His Messenger know
better than you.
And this in and of itself, this phrase
is uncomfortable for human beings to accept.
Why?
Because all of us like to think that
we know best for ourselves.
I mean, how could anyone possibly know better
for me than I know for myself?
I know my life.
I've lived my life.
I know my context.
I know the different pieces and elements of
my life that makes it what it is.
So how can anyone tell me something that
is better than I can already think or
tell for myself?
And what Imam Ghazali is saying here is
a part of your deen is to admit
that Allah and His Messenger know better.
And everyone in here, including myself, I think
it's hard for us to hear sometimes that
somebody might know better for me than I
know for myself.
It's a little bit of like an ego
trip.
How can that person possibly know better for
me?
But the two in question here are Allah
and His Messenger.
And subhanAllah, one of the most incredible teachings
of our deen is that even if you
think you know what's best for yourself, out
of manners and etiquettes and respect for Allah
and His Messenger, it's always better to say
that Allah knows better.
Allah knows best.
And I'm sure you guys have heard this.
At the end of any answer that certain
people give, particularly this happens in scholarship, whenever
you talk to like a Shaykh or an
Imam and you ask them about a particular
question or an issue, they'll always say at
the end, Allah knows best.
Why is that something that is beautiful to
behold?
Why?
Because those who say that Allah knows best,
they're automatically raised in the ranks of knowledge
because you understand that your knowledge would not
be what it was if it wasn't for
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Everything you know in your life is because
Allah allowed you to know it, right?
عَلَّمَ الْإِنسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ Allah says that
in the Qur'an.
That you only know things that I allowed
you to know.
So imagine like a little kid.
Imagine if you had like a little sibling
and you taught that little sibling, you know,
gems after gems, right, in their life.
You taught them how to, you know, cook
certain foods.
You taught them how to do certain chores.
And then all of a sudden that kid
turns 10 and they look at you and
they're like, yeah, I don't really need you
anymore, you know.
And at that moment you're like, what a
disrespectful little snot, you know, like you call
them all these names.
And the reason why you feel that way
is because you saw this kid grow up
in front of you.
And all of a sudden this kid thinks
that it knows better than you.
Now imagine how we come off to Allah
when we say that, no, no, no, you
know what?
I know Allah tells me to do certain
things, but I feel like I know better
for myself here.
This is literally what Imam al-Ghazali rahimahullah
is saying here.
That if a person is acting and speaking,
they should do so under the allowance of
what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has allowed
them to do, right.
Because at the end of the day Allah
knows best.
This is actually a tradition, by the way,
of all of the sahaba, the companions of
the Prophet ﷺ.
Anytime they would be asked any question by
the Prophet, they would always say, Allahu wa
rasuluhu a'lamu, even if they knew the
answer, even if they knew the answer.
There's a famous narration I'm sure a lot
of you guys have probably heard of.
It's a narration called Hadith Jibreel, where Jibreel
alayhis salam, the angel, comes to the Prophet
ﷺ and he asks him a series of
questions in front of people like Umar ibn
al-Khattab.
And at the end of this questioning, and
by the way, it wasn't hard to detect
that this was not a normal human being
that was asking these questions.
The Prophet ﷺ, he was described, this being,
this creation, this man, he was described as
wearing all white clothes, his hair was jet
black, extremely beautiful, striking person in the middle
of the desert.
Ain't no desert Arab ever looked like that
in their life.
And so at the end of that entire
ordeal, the Prophet ﷺ, he asks Umar ibn
al-Khattab, he says, Ya Umar, do you
know who that was?
And Umar ibn al-Khattab, I mean you
can only think about this guy, right?
Umar ibn al-Khattab is one of the
greatest companions the Prophet ﷺ has ever seen.
Don't you think that Umar ibn al-Khattab,
after years and years and years of being
around the Prophet, he would know enough to
know that this person that asked the Prophet
all these questions wasn't just a regular man?
He probably was an angel.
Umar ibn al-Khattab witnessed the Prophet ﷺ
receive wahi, revelation from Jibril ﷺ.
He could have easily been like, yeah, I
know who that was.
That was Jibril ﷺ.
Of course, I'm a tenured veteran at this
point, right?
But Umar ibn al-Khattab, he said, and
you can look at the hadith, he says,
He didn't want to speak in front of
the Prophet ﷺ.
He didn't want to say anything in front
of the Prophet ﷺ.
Because even if he thought he knew what
was correct, out of mere respect for the
Prophet, he never wanted to overstep his limits,
right?
And we did this, by the way, in
Surat al-Hujurat a few months ago, before
Ramadan.
Actually, subhanAllah, not a few months ago.
This was almost like eight, nine months ago.
When we were doing Surat al-Hujurat together,
the first verse of that surah was, O
you who believe, don't step ahead of Allah
and His Messenger.
Don't ever think in your life that you
know so much that you know better than
Allah and His Messenger.
Always think that Allah knows better than me
in this regard.
Even if it's something very personal to you,
right?
You're trying to figure out if you want
to tie the knot with somebody in your
life, right?
You're getting married.
You're like, yeah, 100%.
I know this situation in and out.
I know exactly the venue that I want.
I know exactly the things that she likes
or he likes.
I know exactly how to go about it
with my family.
That moment when a person admits, Allah knows
better than me, automatically you're putting barakah into
your decisions.
Allah knows better than me.
Always get used to saying that phrase, Allah
knows better than me.
It's a very humbling statement, by the way.
It's more about putting barakah into your life
than actually not making decisions for yourself.
Just because Allah knows better doesn't mean that
you don't make decisions.
You make decisions with the knowledge that Allah
knows better.
And so this is what he mentions.
And then he says, do not be deceived
by ecstatic utterances and vehement cries of those
who claim to be religious.
In this particular text, you can see that
Imam Ghazali is taking a shot at a
group of people that call themselves the Sufis.
By the way, we're all Sufis.
The idea of Sufism actually means that you
are a person who practices tasawwuf.
Tasawwuf means purification of the heart, reviving the
soul to be closer to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
But understanding the context of where Imam Ghazali
was, there was a group of people who
used to call themselves the Sufis in his
time.
They would basically think to themselves that I'm
going to do pseudo-spiritual things that will
help me grow closer to Allah.
I want you guys to think about this
very easily.
It's like your modern-day manifestors.
I'm going to sit in a room, light
some beautiful candles, I'm going to basically put
on some scents, listen to uncut gems, and
I'm going to manifest all of my duas.
That would be what Imam Ghazali is talking
about in modern-day terms.
And he says, don't be fooled by these
eloquent people.
AKA, don't be impressed by fluff.
Don't be impressed by fluff.
Because these people will have these beautiful utterances
and cries, and he says that this isn't
the way to go.
This isn't the way to go.
Because he says, this path can be traversed
rather by one who fights their whims and
selfish desires through spiritual exercises.
What are spiritual exercises?
Salat, dua, dhikr, fasting.
This is what Allah and His Messenger told
you to do.
Some people think that, no, no, no, it's
okay.
I'm going to bypass prayer and I'm going
to meditate.
This is the opposite of what a Muslim
should do.
Never ever think that something that you thought
of can be better than what the Prophet
of Islam already did.
I'm going to tell you right now one
thing.
I know we live in the age of
creators.
I'm actually a creator.
Everyone's in the generation of originality.
Everyone wants to start that trend.
Everyone wants to start that new thing on
TikTok that 8 billion people now stitch into
their own videos.
Islamically, I'll tell you guys something.
Islamically, you should never want to be a
trendsetter.
That's not what you want to be.
In fact, in Islam, you want to be
the most beautiful of followers.
That's the greatest compliment as a Muslim.
If a person can follow what the Messenger
of Allah did and follow it to the
T, that's better than starting your own trend
Islamically without a doubt.
Don't worry about being original.
That's not what it's about in Islam.
You can spend all night thinking about what
can I post on my Instagram story that
nobody else has posted before?
What angle of roots can I shoot that
no one has ever shot before?
Everyone's thinking about that new cool thing.
What latte can I make that no one
else has made before?
Should I add garam masala to mine?
You think that'd be good?
We're all excited about trying that new thing
and becoming that new trendsetter.
But in Islam, I'll tell you 100%, you
follow what the Prophet ﷺ taught you, and
you will surpass everyone around you.
On the Day of Judgment, Allah is not
going to ask you, Ya Fulan, Ya Fulana,
did you start a new trend when it
came to Salah?
Did you pray in this new cool way?
Did you start a new Salah in the
day?
Allah is actually going to punish you if
you did that.
Like, man, Allah, I made a 6th prayer
actually.
You're like, no, no, no.
Why would you do that?
No, no, no.
Allah will ask you, did you pray in
the way that My Messenger taught you to
pray?
If you did that, then, فَادْخُلِي فِي عِبَادِي
وَادْخُلِي جَنَّتِي That's going to be the test
for you.
So he said, don't be in love with
the trends and the utterances of those people
who claim to be spiritual.
What he says is, rather, fight your inner
nafs.
True victory is not by beating other people
in the dunya.
True victory is actually beating your own inner
self at its worst.
That's what true victory means.
In a moment of desire, when you have
the option to do something haram, and you
overcome your inner self, and you choose to
not do that haram thing, that's the actual
show of quwa, of power.
Power, by the way, subhanAllah, I was actually
sharing this with a class that I was
teaching last night.
Power, when you think about the power of
Allah, power of Allah is never ever in
only grandiose things, right?
That's the power that human beings define.
If you look at power in the dunya,
you think of people who are like, wow,
mashallah, like, they have this many followers, and
they can do this many things, and they
have power to make that many decisions.
The power of Allah is power to be
able to change the waves in the ocean,
but also to take care of the ants
within the ground.
So you see, the power of Allah is
never displayed via grand things all the time.
The power of Allah is sometimes to take
care of ants and small animals.
That's also the power of Allah, subhanAllah.
So don't ever get twisted and think that
power always has to be this great show
of strength.
Power can be you not clicking a certain
button.
Power can be you deciding not to send
a text message.
Power can be you deciding to open up
the Qur'an one night.
It may not be like some crazy show
of strength, but you being able to grab
the Qur'an off of your bookshelf and
open up one chapter takes a little bit
of determination.
That can be the greatest show of strength
in your day, right?
That's what Imam al-Ghazali is talking about.
He said, not through falsity and wrong practices.
Not through falsity and wrong practices that will
take you away from Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
You don't have to reinvent the wheel here,
okay?
Then he said, وَعْلَمْ You should know that
a fluent and quick tongue and a close
heart of heedlessness and lust are signs of
unhappiness.
This is a powerful, powerful line in the
book.
He says, a fluent and quick tongue.
What does this mean?
People who speak really well.
Nowadays, unfortunately, subhanAllah, I'll tell you guys, we
are so obsessed with people who speak well,
right?
That's why when you see the TikTok video
at night, and there's the humming noise behind
the video, it's like some random Muslim guy
singing a nasheed, you have Mufti Menk pop
up, and mashallah, he says something really motivating,
and now you want to repost it and
retweet it, and it sounds really good, right?
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that,
but to be obsessed with that and to
make that the entirety of your motivation is
somewhat problematic, because that means that you're just
obsessed with whatever looks good right now, right?
Whatever looks good right now.
Whatever feels good right now.
And the reality is, that moment of flowery,
beautiful speech will not last forever.
It will not last forever.
You know what's funny, actually?
Sheikh Omar, I'm going to mention Sheikh Omar
here, because me and him had a really
interesting moment exactly a year ago, actually.
How many of you guys were here when
Sheikh Omar was here for soul food a
year ago?
Yeah?
Afra, you were here?
So, Sheikh Omar was here a year ago
when we did that book reading of Al
-Mahajah Fi Sayyidil Duljah, right?
The book about the journey to Allah, okay?
And he said, mashallah, Sheikh Omar is the
most famous Muslim in the world at this
point, right?
Him and Mufti Menk need to go in
a boxing match to see who's the most
famous Muslim in the world.
But he was telling me, when we were
going through that session together and people heard
about 45 minutes of me and him going
back and forth, he said that the book
that we were reading that day was a
book that he went through with his teacher
in like the most boring fashion.
He's like, I sat and I read this
with my teacher and if anybody in this
room that was like here for the halatah,
for soul food that night, they went through
the way that I went through that book,
they would have fallen asleep.
What does that mean?
He put in years and years of reading
that book with his teacher to make it
sound beautiful for you guys for 45 minutes
that night.
You see what I'm saying?
So, never get obsessed with the eloquence in
speech, right?
The substance is actually what matters.
Okay, so he says, you should know that
fluent and quick tongues and a closed heart
full of heedlessness.
Now, that's the second thing that Imam Ghazali
warms about.
He says, وَالْقَلْبَ الْمَطْبَقَ He says, this heart
is closed.
This heart is closed.
The moment they hear that 30-second motivational
video, they're motivated to pray.
But then the moment that video gets turned
off, they no longer want to pray anymore.
You never want to be a person that
does that.
You never want to live and die by
motivation.
You want to live and die by substance,
right?
There was a group of people that came
to the Prophet ﷺ and they said, ya
Rasulallah, we feel almost hypocritical.
And the Prophet ﷺ said, why?
And they said, because when we're around you,
we feel so spiritual.
We feel like we want to pray and
we want to give charity.
We want to make dua.
But the moment we go away from your
presence, O Messenger of God, we feel like
an absence in that.
And the Prophet ﷺ, he said, of course,
because that's not how it's supposed to be.
You're supposed to be a person who is
able to go through your spirituality regardless of
if I'm here with you or not.
And this is why the famous statement of
Abu Bakr as-Siddiq radiAllahu anhu, at the
death of the Prophet ﷺ, he said, those
of you who worship Muhammad, what did he
say?
Know that Muhammad has passed away.
فَقَدْ مَاتَ Know that he passed away.
Because he's a human being.
But those of you who worship God, know
that God will never die.
So who do you really worship?
Do you worship these moments of motivation?
Or do you worship Allah?
If you worship Allah, you'll never be disappointed.
Allah will never go away.
Allah will never leave you.
Allah will never disappoint you.
Allah will never give you a high level
of motivation and abandon you the next minute.
Because Allah will always be there for you.
That's the nature of Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
One of his sifat is that he's always
there, right?
And so he says, a person who believes
in the fluency of speech and the quickness
of the tongue, their hearts will eventually be
full of what?
Of?
بِالغَفْلَةِ Of heedlessness.
Heedlessness, by the way, is this idea of
kind of, you know, feeling motivated at one
point and then being completely mindless the next.
Right?
And the reason why غَفْلَة is used is
because غَفْلَة is very, very hypocritical.
Heedlessness is very hypocritical.
Heedlessness is like you pray when everyone else
around you is praying and then when no
one else is around you, that prayer is
not seen anymore.
Right?
That charitable moment is no longer seen anymore.
It's like those people who like put their
phones up for like a TikTok video and
then they wake up in the morning stretch
and then they're ironing their clothes on like
0.25 speed.
Right?
I'm like, I wonder how they look like
when they're setting that camera up.
Like I just want to know.
Just out of curiosity.
I just want to know what they look
like when they set it up and they
go down for sajdah.
Like I wonder what it looks like.
Right?
I'm not hating on like the creator mentality
of social media.
But like there has to be a serious
gut check of like who I am here.
Right?
Am I just doing this because I see
like 30,000 likes next to my video?
Am I only doing this because I see
600 comments underneath the video I just posted?
Or am I doing this because sincerely I
love Allah سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى.
Remember what Junaid al-Baghdadi said.
I remember we mentioned this weeks ago in
our conversation.
There was a scholar by the name of
Junaid al-Baghdadi.
He was seen in a dream and one
of his companions said, يَا أَبَالْقَاصِمِ His name
was Abul Qasim.
He says, يَا أَبَالْقَاصِمِ What news do you
have of the hereafter?
And Junaid al-Baghdadi رحمه الله He said,
Vanquished are the eloquent speeches that I gave.
Perished are all the flowery words that I
spoke in my life.
The only thing that mattered were the two
raka'ats that I played in the middle
of the evening.
That was it.
That's the only thing that mattered.
So again, a very staunch reminder to remind
ourselves of where we truly lie here.
And so he says here that these are
signs of true unhappiness.
الشقاوة الشقاوة He says true unhappiness.
Unhappiness doesn't mean like you're an unhappy person.
It means misery in the hereafter.
You won't be happy in the hereafter.
You'll be happy because of the followers here.
You won't be happy when none of those
followers actually benefit you in the hereafter.
In the hereafter, you'll be with Allah سُبْحَانَهُ
وَ تَعَالَى You know there's a powerful lesson
that one of my teachers taught me.
He said that a person who does really
well in this dunya in terms of their
Islam, they will be happy with themselves in
the hereafter because there's no one else to
rely on in the hereafter.
You can't ask anyone to save you that
day.
So you have to be really happy with
who you are.
And I keep on mentioning the modern day
kind of obsession of social media here because
I feel like after the cameras are turned
off and the recording stops, there's like this
deep sense of loneliness that's felt there.
That like, you know, if I'm not recording,
then what's the point?
There are actual people, Allah, I'm telling you
guys, there's actual people that have come up
to me and told me that like, if
I don't record something and post it on
my Instagram story, I don't feel like it
actually happened.
And I asked them like, why?
Why do you feel that way?
It's just because like, I see all the
other people that have seen this memory and
I feel it makes it more real.
I'm like, that's really sad because you feel
like your own account of it's not good
enough.
Right?
Like you feel like your own memory of
it's not good enough.
A person who is strong in their relationship
with Allah, they don't care if other people
saw them pray, they know they prayed because
it was them and Allah in that room.
And in the hereafter, they won't have to
rely on other people because their memory was
with them and Allah to begin with.
And so they have this extreme confidence about
themselves that I don't need to rely on
other people.
So, a really beautiful reminder here.
So he says, until you annihilate your inner
self, حتى لا تقتل نفسك until you basically
oppose your nafs, your inner self, all the
desires that you have, only then will you
understand what true happiness is.
Okay?
And he says here that this is found
in true مجاهدة مجاهدة that word that unfortunately
western terminology has stolen away from Islam, the
jihad, it doesn't mean just a fight.
It means striving.
It means trying hard.
Any sort of striving for the sake of
Allah is مجاهدة.
It's مجاهدة.
You know, stopping yourself from doing something that's
not allowed by Allah is مجاهدة.
You stopped yourself from cheating on an exam,
that's مجاهدة.
You stopped yourself from lying to a friend
when it was easy to lie, that's مجاهدة.
You stopped yourself from stealing something that was
somebody else's, that's مجاهدة.
That's true jihad.
Because it's hard at that moment to listen
to your true heart, to tell yourself to
stop even though it may give you satiation
for a minute.
Don't think for a second that this is
gonna make you feel extremely regretful down the
line.
That's what مجاهدة actually is.
Okay?
And he says, your heart, unless a person
does this, unless a person strives for مجاهدة,
your heart will never become illuminated بأنوار المعرفة
with the true light of knowledge.
The true light of knowledge.
You're always going to feel like a fluffy,
performative person.
You're never gonna really feel like you accomplished
much, if anything.
Okay?
Okay.
Here, inshaAllah, I wanted to go over a
beautiful part of the next chapter, inshaAllah.
I'm gonna just kind of fast forward a
little bit for the sake of time.
Okay?
He then goes into this amazing, amazing chapter
about what we call عقيدة.
Okay?
He says, يا أيها الولد Oh, my beloved
son.
Some of your questions, some of the questions
that you ask are of this type.
But the portion which can be answered, we
have mentioned in our previous book.
Now, what are the two types of questions?
I'll give you guys an easy answer to
this.
Imam al-Ghazali basically says that there are
certain questions that his student has asked him
that you can't really know unless you've experienced
it.
Anybody ever had that before in their life?
You ask like a friend, like, hey, how
was it?
And they're like, you just kind of have
to be there.
You ever got that before?
That treatment sucks, right?
Like, you're like, you're the worst person I've
ever met.
You know?
But it's true.
You know why?
Because I can guarantee you've experienced stuff like
that in your life.
Somebody asks you, what was your first Umrah
like?
What was your first time ever seeing the
Kaaba?
How can you explain that?
How can you explain that?
How can you explain something like that?
What was it like to, you know, hold
your baby brother or sister for the first
time?
You know?
How can you explain that?
What was it like to like, you know,
your first day of college?
What was that like?
You know, how can you sometimes explain those
moments?
Sometimes you can't.
So Imam al-Ghazali, he says, there are
certain, know that there are certain experiences that
I can't even express to you unless you
experience it for yourself.
Right?
And what the lesson of that is, put
down the books and the pens for once
and just go experience these experiences for yourself.
Somebody can take notes about Salah for days.
Anybody done like extensive Islamic workshops in their
life?
Dua workshops, Salah workshops, right?
Quran, learning this, learning that.
Sometimes you just gotta dive in and make
those mistakes.
Anybody ever make a big mistake in their
Islamic experience before?
Right?
They attended like a Quran class and they
read aloud to the class and they basically
said Fi instead of Fa.
They said Bi instead of Ba.
And now everyone around you is looking at
you like you're an idiot.
You're like, wow, I never wanna do this
again.
Right?
I should've never entered this class before.
I congratulate you.
I really do.
Because at one point, you just have to
dive in.
You have to dive in.
You have to be willing to make mistakes.
There is no substitute for making mistakes in
your life sometimes and learning because of those
mistakes.
You can take all the notes you want
in the world.
But Imam Ghazali, he's saying here is that
you have to sometimes experience those things in
your life.
You can't take notes about Salah.
You actually have to pray.
You can't take notes about Dua for eight
weeks.
You have to make Dua, right?
When we were doing our Dua series, if
you guys remember in Soul Food, right?
We did our Dua series for like three
months.
The goal of the Dua series was not
for you guys to wait 90 days until
you made your first Dua.
The goal of the Dua series was to
make your first Dua after the first session.
And then each and every week, you come
back to Soul Food on Thursday night.
You're like, wow.
Yeah, from my Dua that I made last
Friday, now I wanna add on to it.
That's what the goal of this is, right?
So that's what Imam Ghazali is trying to
teach us here.
So he says, the rest of what I
can teach you is in my other book
that I've written.
Then he says here, the traveler of the
path must be in possession of four things.
Now, what is this path?
What is this path that Imam Ghazali is
talking about?
This is the path of a person who
wants to improve in their life.
How many people in here, raise of hands,
wants to improve in their life at some
level?
Beautiful.
That's all you need to know if you
wanna be a Muslim.
If you wanna be a Muslim, your goal
is self-improvement everyday, just a little bit.
Just a little bit.
Don't be obsessed with the jackpot moment of
spirituality in which you basically expected morph into
Mufti Kamani overnight.
It's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
Because there was work that was put in
by every person who is confident in their
relationship with Allah each and everyday that you
actually didn't see.
You didn't see those times in which they
stayed up until midnight making dua, doing dhikr
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
You just saw the finished product.
But a person who wants to grow in
their connection with Allah is a person who
works behind the scenes.
So Imam Ghazali, he says, the traveler of
the path must be in possession of four
things.
The path of self-improvement, okay?
The first thing is al-'aqeedah sahih a solid
understanding of who Allah is free of any
sort of bid'ah or innovation or mistakes.
Can I tell you guys a really beautiful
hadith that will help you highlight this?
There's a hadith of the Prophet ﷺ where
he said, من عرف نفسه فقد عرف ربه
You know what that means?
It means a person who knows themselves they
will know Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Okay?
You want to know who you are?
Know who Allah is in relation to you.
Know who Allah is in relation to you.
Know who Allah is.
A person who is having a hard time
forgiving themselves for a mistake that they've made
in their life they learn that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala is ar-Rahman al-Ghafoor.
They learn that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
forgives sins that even the human being will
not forgive themselves for they will understand who
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is in relation
to them.
Right?
To know that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is al-Kareem, the most noble.
To know that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is al-'Azeem, the greatest.
You will understand where Allah is in your
life in relation to where you are.
So, a solid aqeedah.
The second thing he says is a sincere
repentance that prevents them from returning to sin.
The second thing that a person who is
striving for self-improvement they need is a
person who is engaging in sincere repentance.
Tawbah nasuhah.
Sincere repentance.
Sincere repentance means that the greatest humiliation for
me is to go back and make that
same mistake again.
The Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam what did he
say?
That a true believer is not bitten from
the same hole twice.
What does that statement mean?
That you learn from your mistakes.
You learn from the mistakes that you made.
You don't go back to that same place
that you went to that caused you trauma
and difficulty and make the same exact mistake
all over again.
Imam al-Ghazali, he says this is a
great form of humiliation for the believer.
They feel humiliated by themselves for making that
mistake over and over and over again.
Rather, a true believer, they understand that that
memory was so bad for me I don't
want to go back to that place again.
I want to move forward from here.
I want to move on from here.
That's the second.
Is tawbah nasuhah.
A very sincere repentance.
The third, he says is to settle all
dues even with your enemies so that there
will be nothing remaining over you on the
day of judgment.
Wow, subhanAllah.
The first two are about Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
The third one is about the people around
you.
Guys, the goal of a Muslim is to
never neglect the people around them.
Settle your dues with the people around you.
Even the people you had run-ins with.
Conflicts with.
Don't go to sleep at night hosting any
sort of ill-will for another person.
This is what, by the way, what shaytan
feeds off of.
Shaytan's food is knowing that a person is
angry at somebody else when they go to
sleep at night.
Anybody ever go to sleep at night trying
to memorize something and they wake up the
next morning with that memory in their head?
It's really weird, by the way.
Y'all ever think about that before?
Like you try to memorize something all day.
It didn't work.
Then you go to sleep and the next
morning you wake up like a hafidh.
You're like, wow.
Alif, lam, meem, dhalik, al-kitab, al-arayb.
I never knew I knew that, right?
All of a sudden you know it.
Sleeping on something actually, subhanAllah, imprints something into
your memory.
It really does.
And the same works with negative things as
well.
You have a conflict during the day?
Don't sleep on it.
Don't sleep on it.
My wife and I, by the way, alhamdulillah,
I learn a lot from her.
We agreed that if we have any disagreements
or arguments during the day, we will never
go to sleep angry at one another.
We have to solve it before we go
to sleep.
We can't do that.
You can't do that.
The relationships that Allah has given you in
your life are too precious to squander away
like that.
Always settle your dues before it is too
late.
And that's why He says, even with your
enemies, don't leave this dunya knowing that you
have enemies in your life.
The Prophet ﷺ, subhanAllah, before he passed away,
alayhis salatu was salam, he was speaking to
his companions.
And he said, if there is anybody in
this room that I owe anything to, all
of my beloved friends and my family, if
I owe anything to you, please come and
see me so I can pay you back
or I can repay you for whatever I
have done or taken so that I can
depart from this dunya with a clean conscience.
And you know what he said?
Abu Bakr as-Siddiq radiAllahu anhu was standing
next to him.
And he said, I can pay everybody back
for anything that I've borrowed from them, but
I can never pay one person back for
what they've done for me.
And he pulls at Abu Bakr as-Siddiq
and he says, this man right here, he
gave me more than I can ever pay
him.
And at this moment, Abu Bakr as-Siddiq
radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, he began to shed
tear after tear after tear, crying.
Can you imagine if the Prophet ﷺ said
that he can never owe you back?
He can never repay you back.
What a lofty statement.
And at that statement, Abu Bakr as-Siddiq
began to profusely cry.
And after his tears kind of settled down
a little bit, he said, Ya Rasulullah, Allah
gave me my life to serve you.
That's why Allah created me.
Allah gave me my entire life to serve
you, Ya Rasulullah.
You owe me absolutely nothing.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give us
friends like Abu Bakr as-Siddiq radiAllahu anhu.
Everyone say ameen.
And he says, the fourth is to attain
enough knowledge of shari'ah that suffices you
to comply with the umoor of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala, the commands of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala, than a share from other
disciplines that leads you to the salvation of
the hereafter.
I'm gonna share with you guys two things
to end, inshaAllah, in this chapter.
He says it is narrated by al-Shibli.
This, by the way, is Abu Bakr al
-Shibli.
He was a great scholar at that time.
He was a student of Junaid al-Baghdadi
radiAllahu anhu.
So Abu Bakr al-Shibli radiAllahu anhu, he
said, I served 400 teachers in my life.
Can you imagine that?
Having 400 sheikhs in your life?
Man, I'm like struggling with one.
Imagine 400 of them.
He said, I served 400 scholars in my
life.
And I said, I read 4,000 hadith
from them.
So how many hadith per teacher?
100, right?
You guys are just horrible at math.
SubhanAllah.
I don't know the American education system.
You're like, carry the five, divide the two.
No, no, no.
If he studied under 400 scholars and he
learned 4,000 hadith, it's about 100 hadith
he studied under each and every scholar.
OK?
So he says, I learned 4,000 hadith
and selected one of them for practice.
Now, a person who looks at that, they're
like, wow.
You learned 4,000 hadith and you only
practiced one?
What are you talking about, man?
He says, because having pondered over this and
considering it seriously, I realized that here lay
my salvation since it embodied the knowledge of
the pious predecessors and those who followed them.
You know what that means?
It means that the sahaba and the tabi
'een, their goal was never to collect hadith
and just memorize them for the sake of
memorizing them.
I'll tell you guys right now.
From your Thursday night halaqas here, right?
And by the way, I'm not teaching you
guys anything new.
I'm literally regurgitating whatever my teachers have taught
me.
If you guys from each and every Thursday
take one wisdom and you implement it in
your life from the 50-minute sessions that
we go through every Thursday, it's actually a
major W for each and every one of
you.
Don't think that you have to memorize.
I know some of you guys are like
vehement note takers.
MashaAllah, brother Abrar captures you guys sometimes taking
notes on the Instagram reel once a week.
And some of you guys are like every
word that's being spoken, you're like, I got
to get that.
What did he say at that moment?
Did he say if or or?
I'm not sure.
Don't worry about that.
Worry about the one thing that you can
take home with you that you can implement
in your life this week.
It could be just one teaching.
Abu Bakr al-Shibli, he says, that's what
I focused on in my life, okay?
And he says, and that tradition was that
the messenger of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he
said to one of his companions, and this
is a famous narration in some books of
Hadith.
He said, work for your world according to
your maqam feeha, your maqam within it.
What does that mean?
Work for your dunya depending upon whatever station
that Allah has given you in this dunya.
If you're a person that Allah has given
you with certain rizq in this world, work
accordingly to it.
Can I translate that for you guys?
Live by your means.
Live by your means.
Don't be a person who has 20 bucks
in their bank account and go on a
vacation to Japan.
Habibi, it's not for you.
That's not written in your rizq, okay?
If you have 10 bucks in your bank
account, you have no business going to Knife
Burger with your friends.
I'm sorry.
I don't care how halal it is.
Them burgers are too expensive for you.
Go grab like an Olive Burger burger and
like split it in half and spare it
for two days, okay?
Live within your means.
This is a powerful lesson by the way.
You know why?
Because so much of human nature is to
try to keep up appearances.
How many of us do that?
We live outside of our means.
Your friends are like chatting it up about
like their new Tesla and you're like, yeah,
yeah, yeah.
And you're over here driving your 1997 Toyota
Corolla, 800,000 miles on it.
More than Burakh, right?
The animal that the Prophet ﷺ rode, right?
Like you are struggling.
But for some reason, you have to keep
up these appearances.
The Prophet ﷺ, he says, live in the
dunya with the maqam that Allah has given
you in the dunya.
Don't try to go above and beyond it.
Live within your means.
If Allah has blessed you with money, spend
that money for good.
If Allah has not blessed you with money,
don't pretend you got that money, right?
That's what he's saying here.
The second thing he says, work for your
akhira according to the length of your remaining
in it.
Now, this is kind of like a really
interesting rhetorical statement.
How long do people live in the akhira?
Khalidina feeha?
Abada.
Forever.
So when the Prophet ﷺ, he says, work
for your hereafter according to the length of
your remaining in it.
What's everyone's length in the akhira?
Forever.
Work for the akhira because you know that
it will be forever.
No one that reads this hadith will ever
say, well, my time in the akhira is
gonna be about like two months, one year,
ten years.
No, no, no.
Akhira is forever.
Work for your akhira knowing that you'll be
in it forever.
So if something's not worth it for the
akhira, don't touch it.
If something is worth it for the akhira,
invest in it.
Okay?
Then he says, work for Allah according to
your need of Him.
What does that mean?
You need Allah for everything.
So whatever Allah asks you to do, drop
what you're doing and do it.
Your need for Allah will never ever fall
short.
You will always be in need for Allah.
No matter how happy you are, no matter
how much money you have, no matter how
many degrees you graduate with, no matter how
many people you have on your followers list,
you will always need Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
Work for Allah depending upon your extreme need
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And then he says, work for the fire
according to your endurance in it.
What a powerful statement.
What is everyone's endurance in Jahannam?
Zero.
You can't tolerate it one bit.
Remember the story I told you guys about
Muhammad Ali last week?
He used to walk around with a lighter
in his pocket, and every time he would
be tempted to do something haram, he would
turn that lighter on and put his arm
over it.
And he would say, if I can't handle
that, I can't handle the consequences of doing
what I'm about to do.
So he says, work for the fire according
to your endurance in it.
And your endurance is you cannot endure.
So if you can't handle Jahannam, don't think
about something that will gain Jahannam.
This is a powerful lesson, alhamdulillah.
InshaAllah we'll end with that.
We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
forgive us for our shortcomings.
And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to accept from the good that we have
said and forgive us for our mistakes.
And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to allow us to learn from these sessions
and allow us to benefit from each other's
company.
I know that you guys all hate me
right now because I said that we're going
to do a Q&A.
But we only have five minutes.
So unfortunately we'll not be able to do
the Q&A.
We'll inshaAllah pivot the Q&A to next
Thursday inshaAllah.
I'm going to keep the Q&A portal
live for this next week.
So you can submit your questions from now.
And you can also submit your questions next
Thursday inshaAllah.
And then we will inshaAllah touch base with
the Q&A next Thursday.
Also, by the way, next Thursday's session will
go back to 7 p.m. start time.
Because Maghrib now is earlier.
It's like 6.43. Then inshaAllah in just
a couple of weeks, Maghrib Daylight Savings and
all that stuff.
So official session time for next Thursday will
be at, everybody?
7 o'clock inshaAllah.
Okay?
Alright guys.
Jazakum khairan.
If you would like to inshaAllah be added
to the Telegram group, please come up to
me inshaAllah.
And you can be added to the Telegram
group for the college students and the college
community here at Roots.
I would love to have you inshaAllah.
Jazakum khairan.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.