Safi Khan – Soul Food for College Students- Dear Beloved Son – Class 15
AI: Summary ©
The importance of safety and trust in Islam is a core part of Islam, as the Prophet has a rule for individuals to feel safe. The speaker emphasizes the need for understanding of one's own culture and finding people to guide them. The importance of grounding one's faith in the Prophet's deity and finding people to guide them is also emphasized. The speaker encourages people to protect themselves and avoid harms to others, and to help those affected by recent accidents, like those affected by it, and be a Muslim in their actions.
AI: Summary ©
equivalent of a day is for an all
-nighter.
He stayed on campus all day taking meetings
and hanging out with us, alhamdulillah, here.
So we're really appreciative of your time, Qari
Sahib.
Wanted to, inshallah, open up the floor a
little bit, right?
One of the things that has been on
everyone's mind is the topic of safety, right?
And I think when we talk about the
word safety, we always define safety as just
physical safety, right?
But I think, you know, Islamically, we tend
to find out that safety comes in a
variety of different ways and elements and it's
on a spectrum, right?
And one thing that the Ummah of the
Prophet ﷺ was very known to do is
to make everybody feel safe wherever they were,
right?
And subhanAllah, sometimes, because of certain situations and
things have happened throughout history, by the way.
A lot of times, people don't realize that
certain things that have taken place, it's not
the first time, unfortunately, that certain things have
happened.
But the objective of the Prophet ﷺ has
always been to create a safe environment for
everyone that walks through any door, right?
And at Roots, you guys have always known
this.
We actually have one rule at Roots.
I mean, Ustadh Murphy always have one rule,
which is that if anybody makes anybody feel
unwelcome or uncomfortable, we're going to have to
ask that person to kindly exit.
Why?
Because this is a place of safety and
sakinah.
We want people to feel like this is
their second home.
So, Qari Sahib, I want to kind of
start off and ask you the question, you
know, why is that safety such an emphasis
in the prophetic model, right?
Why did the Prophet ﷺ want to make
people feel safe when they entered any sort
of space where he was?
And what's the tie between safety and Islam,
right?
Because this is the whole issue this week,
which is that, you know, seeing that violation
of safety within a Muslim scope is something
that really shakes people at so many different
levels.
So, what's the importance of that from your
experience and from your insight?
It's a pleasure to spend the day here,
to then get to spend the evening with
you, and to spend the evening with y
'all, and to reflect, navigate, make peace with
ourselves and challenges that we're facing, trying to
heal with some of the difficulties that we're
experiencing.
This is why we come together to learn
and to grow, to seek.
And that is why these spaces are so
important, more than just in times of happiness
and prosperity, more so in times of loss
and tragedy.
This is where we turn to, this is
where we go to find that clarity and
to find healing.
And that is exactly what the Prophet ﷺ
did for his community.
And I reflect over a statement and a
hadith of the Prophet ﷺ that y'all
must have heard multiple times in this space
by Ustadh Murphy, by Ustadh Safi, the words
of the Prophet ﷺ when he first arrived
in the city, when he first came here,
from the first time he's now interacting with
the people of that city.
And he wants to make it very clear
and known to the people of Medina what
it means to create a space, what it
means to create a city that is welcoming,
that is safe, a city that is empowering,
a city that is going to help a
person in their journey to Allah ﷻ.
So what do the Prophet ﷺ say?
It's interesting because the companion who narrates this
hadith, Abdullah bin Salam ﷺ, he actually comes
to see the Prophet ﷺ for the first
time, never seen him, never interacted with him,
he himself not a Muslim, himself is curious
to learn and to understand who this man
was.
And for the first time so many people,
actually all of those people are interacting with
the Prophet ﷺ the first time.
They didn't listen to his lectures before, didn't
have a chance to see him or interact
with him the very first time.
And who is he?
The Prophet of Allah.
But instead of calling towards in that moment,
in a very straightforward way to tawheed, to
the oneness of Allah and believe in Allah
and believe in he as a messenger of
the Prophet ﷺ, what does he say?
Abdullah bin Salam, this young man, he's there,
he's observing the Prophet ﷺ.
The very first advice that he's giving that
community is spread Salam.
Now we can understand Salam in a few
different ways, like literally say Salam to each
other, and go out of your way and
say As-salamu alaykum, you know, shake up,
dab up, make sure that you guys are,
that's what my kids want to do nowadays.
I want to say Salam to them and
they're all like, Salam.
Right, just saying Salam.
That's one way.
The Prophet ﷺ taught us to say Salam
to those who you know and those who
you don't know.
Because it creates a space.
Salam in itself makes a person feel comfortable.
They had their guard up, he said Salam,
now they feel a little bit more comfortable.
But it's more than just a statement that
we say.
Salam is more than just a welcome or
a greeting that we share with someone.
Salam is when we are telling someone that
while we are interacting and while we are
engaging with each other, you will not experience
any harm from me.
That's what a Salam is.
You're letting a person know that I come
with peace, I'm here and while we're together,
no harm, no evil, no hurt is going
to occur.
That is why, you know, the famous hadith
of the Prophet ﷺ where he equates or
he helps us understand what a Muslim is.
Muslim is one who others are protected from
the harm of their hands and the harm
of their tongue.
You're protected from physical harm and you're also
protected from verbal abuse, you're protected from their
emotional abuse, you're protected from their different harms
and hurt that may come from a person.
That is the definition of a Muslim.
That is who a Muslim is.
That you can't at your core be someone
who is intentionally, consistently causing harm to everyone
around you.
Muslim and that is an oxymoron, they don't
go together.
The Prophet ﷺ is teaching us in that
hadith.
So when he says spread that
peace, make it known that your interaction with
people is always going to be meaningful, it's
going to be uplifting, it's going to be
positive.
Never are you going to be a source
of pain and hurt and negativity for the
people that you're around.
And that is why it's really important that
we're constantly checking ourselves.
Every night taking account for my interaction with
people.
Were they beneficial?
Were they healthy?
Did I say something to hurt someone?
Did I say something to offend someone?
Was my comment a little condescending?
Was my, you know, when I commented on
someone's post, did I really need to say
that?
It's not, you know, we think about like
protection from your tongue, that doesn't just mean
the words that you speak.
It means the words that you type.
It's the messages that you send.
All of it, it's encompassed in this idea
of feed people.
The Prophet ﷺ says it's part of that
building of a safe community, right?
That's why we're always eating and we're always
feeding.
We're always grabbing coffee and there's always some
type of food in Muslim spaces.
It brings us together.
It breaks down barriers.
It literally helps us connect with each other
because of that food that's presented.
A blessing of Allah ﷺ for us.
The third thing the Prophet ﷺ says is
the one way that you create a safe
space, community, and masjid is by family.
And you know as we talk about this
whole like incident or the navigating some of
the difficulties of this particular incident, it's so
connected to this idea of family.
And the Prophet ﷺ is telling us that
that is where actual safety begins, within your
home.
If he's saying that everybody else must feel
safe, he's also telling you that the people
who feel the safeness are those in your
home, your children, your spouse, your siblings.
Your siblings don't feel safe from you, right?
You're always constantly going at it with each
other.
We are constantly going at it with each
other, right?
Siblings.
It's a really weird dynamic.
But that, those are the people that must
and should feel the safest around you.
The Prophet ﷺ, he concludes this statement by
reminding us that true safety and true peace
and true contentment and positivity is going to
be achieved when you are in sync with
Allah ﷺ.
That is why at night you get up
and you pray and you engage in the
dhikr of Allah ﷺ because without that, without
that connection, it's really easy for a person
or an individual to lose their sense of
safety, peace that they present to others.
Their compass is off.
Their understanding of what it means to be
kind and what it means to be, you
know, a person may be.
And so, it's actually connected to this conversation
that you all have been having with Imam
Ghazali ﷺ.
He's a perfect example of what it means
to be a person who spent his entire
life studying religion and being a master at
all these different sciences and understanding coming to
a point in his life where he understood
it doesn't matter how many books I've memorized
and how many books I've written if my
heart is not in the right place.
And then he goes on this journey of
working on his heart.
And then you have his student that's writing
him a letter, a student who is himself
a scholar in his own right who's writing
for his teacher, right?
Because it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter when and how, you know,
you gain knowledge with who you did.
Here, you see that his student, despite being
someone who studied all his life, is now
sending his teacher a letter.
Advice.
What do I do?
I'm struggling with my faith.
In a sense, I want to truly understand
what it means to be successful.
A scholar in his own right, writing to
his teacher, seeking guidance, seeking advice on how
to navigate different challenges of life.
How to truly be a person of God
and a person of Allah ﷻ.
I wanted to start off with these thoughts
about this idea of, you know, what it
means to be people of safety.
What it means to be people of Islam.
What it means to be a Muslim.
What it means to create spaces that are
welcoming, where everyone feels comfortable.
And so when you look at the seat
of the Prophet ﷺ and you look at
anyone who walked through the doors of the
masjid of the Prophet ﷺ, they always felt
a sense of safety and comfort.
It could be a brother or a sister.
It could be someone who was older or
younger.
It could be a Bedouin or someone who
had mental illness.
It could be someone with special needs.
And the Prophet ﷺ made sure that everyone
who walked in felt safe.
So when urinated in the masjid, they can
feel safe.
So this is a common hadith that we
hear, right, how we can interact with people
in the masjid.
Someone committed this sort of mistake.
I mean, mistake is saying it lightly.
But the Prophet ﷺ is teaching his companions
to feel safe.
He made a mistake, but make sure that
the Prophet ﷺ were teaching him with love
and kindness and care.
So those are some thoughts.
You know, something really powerful that Gharnaman mentioned,
even the hadith of spreading peace and keeping
ties of kinship, the ending advice of the
Prophet ﷺ and pray in the evening while
other people sleep, is actually a powerful lesson
in that because the first three instances of
the advices he gave were all in relation
to interpersonal relationships, right, how you interact with
other people.
The way that you treat people.
But the last advice that he gave was
between him and Allah ﷻ.
And a powerful lesson to draw from that
is, you know, when it comes to building
safety within community and friendship and companionship, there
will inevitably be people who sometimes may have
evil intentions and they're able to mask those
evil intentions with like kindness to other people,
right?
There's reality to people being kind to each
other if they're with each other for 10
minutes, right?
I can be nice to you guys for
one hour at soul food on Thursday nights.
Ustadh Abdur Rahman can be nice to people
at Hartwood for one hour every single Monday
night, right?
But the reality is the people of truth,
the people of siddur, they are those who
are not only kind to people when they
have opportunity to be kind to them, but
they back up that kindness with Allah ﷻ
in the middle of the evening.
That's how you know those people are truly
rooted in sincerity because they're not just doing
it to put on a show, right?
It's easy to fake a lot of things
in Islam and we're going to talk about
that tonight, inshallah.
It's easy to kind of like put on
this facade of who you are for a
certain amount of time when you're in the
public realm.
But when you're in privacy, that kindness, that
goodness, the khairat that you you know put
forward in front of other people, that is
always cemented when you are with nobody around
you, right?
And this is why I'm so glad that
Qari Noman mentioned the idea of family.
People out here, guys, I'm telling you right
now, it's so, it's so baffling to me
sometimes when I talk to people's families and
I'm like, oh that's your son?
He's an amazing person, mashallah.
And the mom's like, what was that like
weird mousy squeak?
Like why?
And I hear this plethora of just, and
of course mothers are sometimes our worst critics,
right?
But like, but there's something to be said
about that, where there's smoke, there's fire, they
say, right?
It's unfortunate sometimes that, you know, we display
the best parts of ourselves when we're out
in public with people that may not see
us very often, but with the people that
truly matter, we kind of, we are diminishing
in terms of like the best parts of
ourselves, right?
So that's something that's kind of powerful to
think about it, you know, that these are
the people who deserve our best, right?
Like if I were to go and ask
somebody's sister or brother or father or mother,
they should be the ones that, subhanAllah, have
the most accurate depiction of who that person
is.
So when you would ask Aisha radiallahu anha,
and she would say famously about the Prophet
ﷺ that he was the Qur'an, right?
He was the Qur'an.
When the Prophet used to walk, he used
to walk according to the Qur'an.
When he used to talk, he used to
talk according to the Qur'an.
When he used to sleep, he used to
sleep in accordance to whatever Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala had legislated for him.
I mean, what a greater compliment can you
find than that?
Not only that, but that coming from your
spouse, right?
Usually if you ask somebody's spouse, I don't
know how many people in here are married,
but if you ask somebody's spouse what they're
really like, they're like, all right, how much
time you got, right?
Like, let me tell you exactly the long
list of things that I have on this
receipt that I have.
I mean, that's unfortunate, right?
So I think what Qari said kind of
hit the nail on the head, which was
the idea of cultivating that safety within community.
Sometimes we look on the exterior community, but
the community begins internally, right?
What are you like in your home, right?
What are you like with that one person
that you spend the most time with?
And that tells you a lot about who
you are.
So Qari sahib, I want to kind of
ask you this follow-up, which is kind
of interesting.
We talked a little bit about making sure
that the community is safe and secure, you
know, but unfortunately, you know, there's a reality
that unfortunate situations will take place, right?
No matter how many times you lock a
door, you know, in the evening, sometimes, you
know, there will be break-ins, no matter
how hard you try.
Sometimes you will read Ayatul Kursi and you
will recite Mu'awiyah with attain, but sometimes
certain things will happen to you, right?
How are we supposed to process when these
pieces of just, you know, events take place
in the community?
And I'm sure the Prophet ﷺ also went
through these circumstances in his own community, where,
I mean, if there's somebody who, SubhanAllah, I
always think about this, right?
Because we sometimes we think we're like an
immune community.
We're like, yeah, you know, Shaykh Omar, we
had a khutbah about that last week.
How could that happen?
But then, SubhanAllah, you think the Prophet ﷺ
was the best da'i of all time.
He was the greatest example of Islam that
ever existed.
But even during his time, there were certain
people who did really evil things.
So how do you reconcile that reality?
How can you make meaning out of why
certain things happen?
And SubhanAllah, you know, the mind goes to
deep dark places, right?
You know, we go through the Twittersphere and
we see the worst side of humanity through
the internet, right?
It's like, why, you know, this person has
this opinion and that person has that opinion.
And so how do we make sense out
of this at the time of, you know,
tragedy or the time of trauma?
How does a Muslim react to this?
And I think that it is safe to
say that it's difficult to make sense of
something like this.
And it's difficult for us to understand and
to process a lot of these type of
events that take place within our communities.
But then when you connect back to the
words of the Prophet ﷺ, you're almost like
reminded that the Prophet told us about this
1400 years ago.
It's not a new phenomenon.
This is not something that's, you know, not
spoken of by the Prophet ﷺ.
You know, from the idea of fitna and
trials increasing and us experiencing it in the
most, you know, interesting ways.
But also the narration of the Prophet ﷺ
tells us that from the very first people
that will be thrown into the fire of
Jahannam are, number one, a Qari of the
Qur'an.
Literally, the Prophet ﷺ says a reciter of
the Qur'an will be from the first
people to be thrown into the fire.
I think, wow, the Prophet ﷺ said that?
Those words were used by the Prophet ﷺ?
And then he says the one who spent
the cause of Allah ﷻ, the one who
donated and spent their wealth for the sake
of Allah, and then the one who made
the ultimate sacrifice and became a shaheed in
the path of Allah.
The Prophet ﷺ said they will be the
first to be thrown headlong into the fire
of Jahannam.
Why?
Because each of them sought in this dunya
praise for their quality, praise for what they
were given.
And so because of that they were thrown
into the fire.
You hear the narrations of the Prophet ﷺ
where he talks about how there will be
those people who recite the Qur'an but
the Qur'an will not go below, it
will go down their throats.
Literally, the Prophet ﷺ is telling us that
there will be people who recite beautifully.
There will be people who recite in an
amazing way and sometimes when you hear them
recite, you feel really, you feel bad about
yourself.
The person who recites so beautifully, man, I
can't even recite the alphabet properly.
I'm struggling with my fluency or I don't
even know how to recite.
You internally feel like sometimes down, that such
a person recites so beautifully, I want to
be like that.
And the Prophet ﷺ is saying is that
that's just all joke.
It's all beautiful, but the words are not
penetrating the heart.
The words are not really making an impact
here.
And the Qur'an, as Allah ﷻ in
His own words, what does He say?
That the Qur'an itself, a dhikr, is
meant to be Allah ﷻ clearly
tells us in the Qur'an that this
Qur'an is a reminder for those who
have a heart.
A heart that is willing to take and
accept.
A heart that is willing to work and
willing to put in the time and the
effort.
A heart that is willing to acknowledge weakness.
A heart that is willing to remind itself
that we can't pretend.
We can't fake it.
We can fake who we are on the
outside, but we can't fake who we are
in front of Allah ﷻ.
And so you all, we all, on the
Day of Judgment will be shocked to see
these people be the first to be thrown
into the fire.
Them, they're the people that we followed.
They were the people that we looked up
to.
That was a person who helped me get
closer to God.
This is literally going to play out on
the Day of Judgment in front of us.
And sometimes we get a glimpse of that
in this dunya as well.
Sometimes we get a glimpse of disappointment in
this dunya as well by the people we
looked up to.
The people that we sought knowledge from.
People that helped us get closer to Allah
ﷻ.
And so a lot of times there's this
weird conundrum.
There's this weird feeling that we have is
that this person helped me get closer to
God, but this person himself wasn't close to
Allah.
Like I'm questioning my entire religion now.
And then the Prophet ﷺ tells us in
a hadith, Sometimes Allah ﷻ uses a sinner
and a transgressor to help his religion.
Sometimes Allah ﷻ through these individuals and through
people will continue.
Look, the reality is that we're all full
of faults.
Allah is still using us.
All of us in whatever capacity that we
can help people.
We're all full of flaws.
We're all full of mistakes.
We're all full of wrong.
No one is perfect.
Allah is still using us in different capacities.
And we're going to find that Allah is
going to use people, but those very people
are going to disappoint us tomorrow.
This is why, you know, the statement of
Abdullah bin Mas'ud is so important to
follow and apply.
He's a companion of the Prophet ﷺ.
A man who had the sohbah and the
companionship of the greatest human being.
He says, رضي الله عنه, Abdullah bin Mas
'ud, that don't make any living person normal.
But what he means by that isn't that
you can't take inspiration from people that are
living.
But don't place your complete trust in someone
that is living.
Your trust of religion and what you want
to be and who you want to be
like.
Why?
Because he says they are not safe from
the fitnah yet.
They're not safe.
None of us are safe.
Until the day we die, until we leave
this world with لا إله إلا الله on
our tongues, none of us are safe from
fitnah.
That is why you hear about stories of
the great scholars of the past, where even
on their deathbed, their worry is, am I
going to be protected from the fitnah of
the shaitan in these final moments?
Am I going to be protected?
And you have the Prophet ﷺ, and I'm
just sharing some random thoughts.
I'm trying to connect you all together, inshallah.
But the Prophet ﷺ, he shares an incident
of a man from Bani Israel, who was
a scholar, who was a person of knowledge,
who was a person of piety, who people
looked up to.
Everyone who, you know, wanted to entrust this
individual with their aghanat, with their belongings.
He was entrusted to look after his sister,
to look after a woman who was in
the community.
And how slowly the shaitan continued to cloud
his jadid, slowly and slowly more corrupt.
He went from committing an immoral act of
zina to then committing the crime of murder,
and then the ultimate sin and crime of
shirk with Allah ﷻ.
Now you ask yourself, how does a person
go from being the most religious, the most
pious, the most connected person to Allah, as
we sort of see, as we can tell
by a person's deeds and actions, to the
worst.
So Allah ﷻ reminds us over and over
again in the Qur'an as well.
Right?
Don't go on in my claiming piety about
people, this person that person is pious.
Reality is that we don't know true piety.
That taqwa is between a person and Allah
ﷻ.
This doesn't mean that we become paranoid and
that we lose all trust in all human
beings.
That I know there's nobody in the world
that I can trust.
That happens to us.
It's a real feeling.
It's a reality that a lot of us
face.
If you're in an abusive household, you lose
trust in parents.
It's a reality.
If you had, you know, at times an
abusive spouse, you lose trust in the system,
and even sometimes the idea of marriage.
I just don't want to get married.
A lot of young people will say, I
saw my parents and their marriage.
If that's what marriage is, I want nothing
to do with it.
I'm just going to stay away.
So we lose trust and we lose like
a sense of hope and faith.
Prophet ﷺ reminds us of these realities that
will exist in our communities.
And when something like this happens, how do
we get back up and continue moving forward?
How do we make sense of these things?
How do we ensure that, you know, we
navigate these things?
And there are stories from the Seed of
the Prophets ﷺ that may not be directly
connected to certain incidents and events that take
place in our communities, but definitely events where
you can connect and take lessons from.
Whether it was the hypocrites of Medina, the
Munafiqun in Medina, and how they, you know,
used their positions to cause distrust within the
community.
There were people like Abdullah bin Ubaid bin
Salud, who was the head of the Munafiqun,
who was actually a father figure to the
people of Medina.
He was a leader.
He was a person that everyone looked up
to.
Abdullah bin Ubaid bin Salud, the Munafiqun, the
head of the Munafiqun, was someone that the
people of Medina looked up to.
He was their leader.
They looked up to him.
And then when the Prophet ﷺ came to
Medina and sort of the dynamic changed, the
very person that they all looked up to
now is becoming the one that's plotting against
not only them, but to the person that
they love the most, to Allah ﷺ.
They're trying to make sense of us all.
He's our uncle.
He's our elder.
He's our uncle.
He's someone that we, you know, we always
trusted.
And here he's betraying us.
And here he's trying to cause harm to
us.
How do we make sense of this?
I don't know if you wanted to share
something.
You know, something that I was kind of,
as I was listening to Tariq Iman, you
know, these, and Shukrullah Nasir actually, he kind
of shared this advice just a couple of
days ago, that our religion is so beautiful
where we're able to call a spade a
spade, right?
Things that are permissible are clear and things
that are impermissible are clear.
Whenever you see something that is clearly wrong,
Islam never tells anybody to like, hush, cover
it up, cover it up, cover it up.
I don't know.
Call what is wrong, wrong, right?
But at the same time, it is a
blessing to know what haram actually is and
what haram looks like.
Could you imagine if Islam was ambiguous about
what is clearly haram?
No, no, no.
When we see injustice, we call it out,
right?
When you look at Palestine, when you look
at Gaza, you see the oppression.
And SubhanAllah, I will even share that this
goes even beyond Islam.
There are non-Muslims who are seeing what's
happening in Palestine and they're like, this is
wrong.
You guys see the video, SubhanAllah, it broke
my heart.
I watched it earlier today and I shared
it.
The video of the young boy who was
found in the middle of a cemetery in
northern Gaza.
And he was sleeping on top of an
actual qadr.
And this reporter found him and he said,
Habibi, what are you doing in the middle
of the night?
Why are you in a graveyard?
He said, I need to be in my
mother's arms.
This is where his mother was buried.
And he said, I want to sleep in
my mother's arms.
There are comments under that video of non
-Muslims who are like, this is wrong.
Whoever put this child in this situation, they
are doing something terrible.
The fact that Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala
has given us in our hearts the comfort
to know what is wrong is a blessing
in and of itself.
A discomfort that we have.
You know, when you witness like a lie,
your body registers a lie, by the way,
this is a blessing from Allah.
The lie detector test.
Somebody begins, their heart begins to race.
They begin to perspire.
Their eyes begin to dart.
These are all signs of things that are
wrong.
So the ability to be able to know
that is a beautiful thing.
Alhamdulillah.
Now, what Qari Nouman was reflecting over is
the challenge of maneuvering that wrong once you
know it.
How do you kind of figure that out?
How do you reconcile that situation?
I'll share one small thing inshallah, which is,
subhanallah, in order for us to appreciate the
good, we have to acknowledge what is evil.
Right?
I mean, subhanallah, Qari Nouman mentioned Abdullah ibn
Ubayy ibn Sulul, the hypocrite of Medina, right?
The man who, subhanallah, there are narrations that
say that when the Prophet ﷺ used to
give his duroos, when he used to give
his talks after salah, or in between salawat,
Abdullah ibn Ubayy would be sitting in the
back of the prayer hall laughing and joking
and making a mockery of the other munafiqun
of Medina about the Prophet ﷺ.
You don't think the Prophet ﷺ knew this?
He knew it.
He knew this guy was troubled.
He knew this guy had like a deep,
dark disease within his heart.
But, subhanallah, it is because of the existence
of people like Abdullah ibn Ubayy ibn Sulul
that people appreciated the truth and sincerity.
I don't want to be like that.
I don't want to be like that hypocrite.
I want to be like a person who
is a mukhlis.
I want to be a person who is
sincere.
I want to be a person like the
Prophet ﷺ.
So sometimes, subhanallah, you know, you don't really
realize some of the most beautiful people around
you until you see the evil around you
as well.
So I'm not going to lie to you
guys, sometimes when the stories that unfolded this
past week, when they came out, do I
really go and I want to hug Sheikh
Abdullah Nasir?
I want to hug Sheikh Abdullah Nasir.
I want to hug people like Mufti Kamani.
I'm like, man, thank you guys for being
who you are.
Seriously.
And Hari Noman, my Tashbeen teacher, mashaAllah.
Hari Noman, sometimes he digs in me and
I'm like, you know what?
This is a true special relationship.
Earlier today, Sheikh Abdullah Nasir was pulling out
of campus as I was pulling in.
And he just like tried to ram me
over with his weird Dodge Ram that he
has.
Weird vibe that the guy has sometimes.
But subhanallah, these are the moments where you
appreciate the people that you have a lot
of mukhabbah for, right?
And sometimes it takes being burned by a
bad friend to really appreciate your real ones,
right?
You go back and you text your real
ones and you're like, man, I learned now.
I warned you, I told you about that
person, right?
But subhanallah, sometimes we get burned, right?
We get burned.
And one thing that's so important to understand
is that this was a part of the
Khadr of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Nothing happens without Allah knowing about it.
The question of like, man, how could Allah
allow this to happen?
Of course, there are people who were hurt
and harmed and you know, those people, what
we say sincerely is we ask Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala to heal these people.
We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that
Allah rewards them for every ounce of difficulty
that they went through.
There's some sort of meaning behind it.
But for us, man, it's a glaring lesson
from Allah himself.
You need to appreciate the true people around
you, right?
So I wanted to kind of ask you
this question to kind of get a little
bit deeper here.
And you mentioned this already, right?
One of the traumas from this past week
was the reality of seeing a person who
subhanallah may have been preaching and teaching the
deen, but at the same time, fell so
short, obviously, right?
What is the reality of grounding our faith
in the deen and not in people?
You mentioned this a little bit, but I
want to kind of ask you specifically something
so powerful that I right?
This is the most glaring one, right?
I mean, the Prophet ﷺ was a beacon
of light for the ummah.
And there was this shocking realization that the
ummah in Madinah went through at his own
death ﷺ.
So I want you to reflect a little
bit about the idea of grounding your iman
in the deen of Allah, instead of always
relying, especially man subhanallah, and I'm sure you've
seen this with you know, you know, communities
that you serve and communities that I've served
as well, where we're in this kind of
really weird, you know, time and generation where
we love that quick, like 60 second reel,
right?
Like when we see somebody like spit bar
for seconds, we're like, wow, that was amazing,
right?
Even though like, it may have come up
for 60 seconds, it was good.
But for the 59 minutes, otherwise was absolute
trash, right?
But we get caught up in the blitz
and the glamour of it all.
So how do we kind of make sense
out of that, right?
How do we improve our deen in things
that are substantive, instead of things that are
kind of more performative, right?
Subhanallah.
Yeah, and you're talking about this, even with
the statement of Abdullah bin Mas'ud radiyallahu
anhu, where he's telling us that the people
that you follow are those who truly have
already passed away.
Make them your role models.
They've navigated the test of time and they
left this world without, you know, without falling
prey to the waswasah and the fitnah of
in the public life, at least.
Because at the end of the day, we
don't purify anyone and know their inner state
except Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
But that's who we follow.
And so, you know, the example that you
gave the Prophet ﷺ is so powerful.
You know why?
Because in that moment, I want you to
think about how the greatest blessing to the
companions of the Prophet ﷺ was the Prophet
ﷺ.
He was their greatest blessing.
Because of him, they were guided.
It was because of him that they came
out from their darkest of character into having
the most noble of character.
They were people who were involved in the
darkest of deeds.
Prophet ﷺ brings them to the light.
So they owe this man everything.
But when he passed away, right, think of
the confusion that it caused amongst the companions.
The man that guided us, the man that
helped us, the man that made us understand
and made us, you know, helped us navigate
our dark moments, our difficult moments, our loss,
our tragedy, everything.
He's no longer here to help us.
It's like someone was holding your hand through
every difficulty that you went through and all
of a sudden they said, you're on your
own.
I'm not here for you anymore.
And so when in that really challenging moment,
when Umar ﷺ is standing there and telling
people that anyone who says Muhammad ﷺ has
died, I will be the person to take
care of them.
I don't have an issue with you.
He was in shock.
He was trying to understand and, you know,
make sense of the fact that the person
they love the most is now gone.
You know Umar.
Umar was a man who left his home
to tell the Prophet ﷺ.
And in the next moment, he's the most
beloved man to the Prophet ﷺ, to Umar.
What does Abu Bakr come and say?
He comes and he states an ayah of
the Qur'an.
Allah is reminding us, even about the Prophet
ﷺ.
Muhammad ﷺ is not but a messenger.
He's not more than that.
Don't make him more than that.
He's not God.
He's not Allah.
And the religion doesn't end because Muhammad has
passed away.
Look
at
the wording that Allah ﷺ uses.
If the Prophet ﷺ was killed, and this
is being said while the Prophet was alive
by the way, his verses were revealed when
the Prophet ﷺ was alive, obviously revealed to
the Prophets, right?
So the verse is saying that if he
was killed or he passed away, would you
just turn your backs and run the other
way?
Would you just leave everything that he taught
you?
Would you just give up on everything that
you got from him?
Is that the attitude that you're supposed to
have?
Allah ﷻ is reminding us through even the
passion of the Prophet ﷺ that our ultimate,
ultimate connection is with Allah ﷻ.
And then Abu Bakr says the famous words
that he said, the one who worships Muhammad
ﷺ knows that Muhammad ﷺ has passed away.
But if you worship Allah, Allah never is
going to die.
Ever living, never going to end.
His religion will continue.
The Prophet brought it to the world.
The Prophet left this world and the religion
will continue.
It will continue with you.
It will continue without you.
It will continue with us and without us.
Those scholars who throughout time who helped propagate
religion, it would have been preserved without them
as well.
As Allah ﷻ says, We are the ones
that take it upon ourselves to protect the
Qur'an.
We will ensure that it will reach the
people.
This is why we even mention that at
times Allah ﷻ will use interesting people to
convey messages.
We use people that may have transgression in
their life to be a motivation.
But that doesn't make them a true representation
of who Allah ﷻ is or who the
Prophet ﷺ was.
Even in the lives of the companions, you
think about this, right?
Because we're taught, all of us, through our
tradition, that be mindful of who you take
religion from.
Know who you're taking your religion from.
Don't take your religion from people on TikTok.
Don't take religion from people on Instagram.
We are very easily wooed and wowed by
people because of some background machine song, right?
It sounded nice.
They all sound the same after a while
actually.
After a while, it's like the background sound
and the background machine.
It's just like a vibe and we're like,
man, that was powerful.
Yeah, inshallah.
If it motivated us to become better, that's
amazing.
Don't make that speaker that you've seen for
the first time or you now started to
interact with online become the person that you
are now dedicating the rest of your life
to.
The scholars, they mentioned that be mindful of
who you take your religion from.
Make sure that they are people that are
truly rooted in tradition, that their tradition and
their learning of Islam can actually be connected
back to the Prophet ﷺ.
But know that even people that are rooted
and that are connected in the sunnah, in
this chain back to the Prophet ﷺ, they
also make mistakes.
They are also fallible.
That even the companions of the Prophet who
had the companionship of the Prophet made major
mistakes.
They experienced challenges and we often talk about
like Nu'man, right?
Because his incident is really, you know, remarkable.
He's a companion of the Prophet ﷺ but
he struggles with one of the major sins
and he's constantly caught drinking and the companions
are fed up with him cursing him and
the Prophet ﷺ stop it.
This guy loves Allah and he loves the
Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
It's reminding people that he's human.
He's going to make mistakes.
He has my companionship, he has my sohbah.
That doesn't mean that your sohbah will protect
you from them.
And there is no one in this world
that is ma'asum, that is completely pure
from sin except Allah.
When we understand that and we can agree
to these facts on a personal level, this
is why we have these conversations.
Because at times it doesn't make sense.
We have these conversations because at times we
can't navigate.
We're confused.
But I think once we can make peace
with ourselves and understand that our being is
pristine, it's beautiful, it's full of positivity, it's
full of guidance, it's light.
Darkness cannot be attributed to this beauty and
any darkness that we find is the darkness
that comes from the shortcoming of human beings
but not the shortcoming of the religion or
the word of Allah in any way.
It's like the person who will use the
book of Allah at times for their own
shortcomings.
You have a person who's abusive, really easily
they'll quote the verse of the Qur'an
that they think allows them to be abusive.
They're perverted understanding of what the words of
Allah ﷻ convey.
You find that happens.
But when you learn with people with knowledge
and that are rooted in clarity in a
lot of these things, we ask Allah ﷻ
to protect us and guide us.
And for those of us who are struggling,
right, it's not that you just got to
figure it out, but it's important that you
take your time and truly, you know, delve
into this sort of journey of understanding, what
is my religion?
If you're struggling, then seek help.
Reach out to those who can help and
guide you at a time where we are
being told to distrust everyone.
Try to find within yourselves people that you
can go to.
Our deen is so beautiful because he teaches
us that when we do go to people
to seek knowledge or when you go to
people to learn from them, then do it
in a particular way.
There's a reason, you know, as Ustadh was
mentioning, that the halal is clear and the
haram is clear.
And there are issues in between that are
great.
And there's any time you're in the gray
area, stop and just seek clarification.
The gray area doesn't mean that you just
do it and, you know, maybe it's okay.
The gray area means that you actually go
seek clarification.
If something seems shady and something seems weird
and something seems off, I'm going to go
seek clarification.
I'm going to go find someone that can
help me understand whether this is right or
wrong.
And so we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala for those of us and all of
us who are struggling to make sense of
these kind of situations to help us understand
and to help us navigate.
I also think that for a lot of
us, it's a reminder that we are constantly
protecting ourselves.
Don't think that you're ever free from the
attack of Allah.
Don't ever think that you and I can't
fall into sin.
And keep these checks and balances in your
life.
Have people in your life that will hold
you accountable.
Have people in your life that will call
you out for the evil that you may
be involved in.
Or when you're veering off, that someone will
say, hey, listen, you need to stop.
Those are the times that sometimes the people
that we want to push away from our
lives.
But they are a true blessing for us.
Because they are what keep us protected from
falling into sin.
And from becoming the shaitan's prey.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us.
I mean, I just want to inshallah share
just like a couple of minutes of ending
thoughts and reflections and inshallah we'll have Shaykh
Nouman inshallah gonna end us off with a
dua.
One of the things that I wanted to
end with, and he said it so beautifully,
at these times, guys, when Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala is testing the ummah with certain
difficult circumstances, I think it's very tempting for
the nafs to say that I just need
time to be by myself.
And of course, this is true.
You know, sometimes it's good to take like
a breath and to decompress and to think
about what just took place and allow your
mind to wrap around what happened, right?
The Prophet ﷺ, I quote this narration so
many times, when his son Ibrahim passed away,
this is in the latter portion of his
life.
And when he passed away, the Prophet ﷺ
began to cry profusely, almost like he never
cried before.
And one of his companions, he saw this
and he saw the state of the Prophet
ﷺ.
And he said, Ya Rasulullah, what is this?
Like what is happening to you?
I've never seen you in a state like
this.
And the Prophet ﷺ, he explains to this
companion, that the tears that are flowing from
my eyes are actually just signs of mercy
from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
That the ability to express emotion, to feel
pain, to feel, you know, sadness and grief
sometimes as a Muslim is a serious lesson
from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
You should never bottle these things in, right?
You should have these moments of conversation and
consultation.
But one of the things that we always
try to avoid as Muslims is trying to
take these emotions and cause those emotions to
push you away from Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
What's shaitan's goal here is to try to
get you to feel so hopeless about certain
situations that you just completely give up on
the khair.
You give up on the khair, right?
And yeah.
I was just thinking about the hadith of
the Prophet ﷺ where he says, the one
who says that people are like, the ummah
is done for.
And it's interesting because that's the sentiment a
lot of us are feeling because of Gaza,
because of Lebanon.
We're always thinking the ummah is taking an
L.
This is our thought and now with this,
the ummah takes another L.
And we're just like giving up hope and
we're giving up hope and we're giving up
hope.
And the Prophet ﷺ is saying that either
you are the most hopeless of them, you're
the most gone from them, or you are
the reason why sort of this is happening.
You are part of the reason why the
ummah is, number one, he says, number one,
it's either in your head that you're the
one that thinks this, you're sort of projecting,
or you actually might need help in the
process.
No, that's powerful.
And, you know, we keep on bringing this
up, but the hypocrite in Medina, Abdullah bin
Ubaid bin Salul, you know what he did,
subhanAllah, on the way to Uhud, the battle
of Uhud, he pulled out from his group
of people that he was supposed to bring
to that battle to help the ummah.
And at that time, the Prophet ﷺ lost
a significant few hundreds of people that were
supposed to fight for the Muslims during the
battle of Uhud.
At that point, the Prophet ﷺ could have
easily said, you know what, man, we just
took a huge loss.
This guy just, you know, took away like
half our artillery.
It's time to go home and just kind
of like call it like a loss for
the day.
The Prophet ﷺ continued to engage and continue
on to Uhud.
The goal, guys, as a believing body of
people is that these things are not going
to break us at the end of the
day.
They will hurt.
They will hurt.
Of course, they will hurt.
I would consider you almost like, it would
be like a very insane type of situation
if this situation didn't hurt people.
SubhanAllah, how many of you guys were affected
by the sister who passed away this past
weekend?
Her friends from UTD, we were at, me
and Asad Murphy were at UTD last night
reflecting with the MSA about this.
I mean, how many people would say that
they were not affected by this situation?
Everybody's affected by this situation.
But the difference is that a Muslim may
be affected by it, but they're not broken
by it.
They're affected.
You're sad.
You're grief stricken, but you will not be
broken by it.
Allah ﷻ has made the Muslim too strong
to be broken by the terrible choices of
one person or two people.
We will inshaAllah continue on.
We will continue to open our doors.
We will continue to ensure people's safety.
We will continue to ensure that everybody who
is inshaAllah coming through the programs at Roots
or at Qalam or any other masjid that
you see around you, they will be made
to feel safe wherever they are.
One or two people who made terrible choices
will not define the rest of us inshaAllah.
That's not what we're going to allow inshaAllah
within our community.
So, I want to kind of share that
small sentiment of hope and optimism inshaAllah in
times of difficulty and confusion and darkness.
And again, the Prophet ﷺ was a man
who always saw the cup half full.
Always saw the cup half full.
After Allah ﷺ, the Prophet ﷺ used to
go back to the site at Uhud and
say, well, Uhud is beloved to us and
we're beloved to Uhud.
Are you kidding me?
This was a place that was traumatic for
the Prophet ﷺ.
If he found positivity even in the darkest
of places, right?
So, this is who he was ﷺ.
InshaAllah, we'll ask you to wrap up our
session with a short du'a inshaAllah.
And then we can kind of finish the
session off and head over to Surah Al
-Ashraf.
Bismillah.
Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.
Alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salamu ala Rasulullah wa
ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in.
Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, Ya Kareem.
We ask you to forgive us and honor
us, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, we ask you to protect us
and guide us, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, heal our hearts, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, allow us to make sense and
navigate through the loss and the difficulties that
we experience in our lives, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, in this moment, we ask you
that you help and protect the impregnable young
individuals of this ummah, Ya Allah.
The young and the old, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, protect those who have been harmed
by those around them, Ya Allah.
Protect us from the harm of people around
us, Ya Allah.
Protect our children from harm, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, we ask you to protect us
from being the source of evil and harm
to others, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, we ask you that you have
mercy on the ummah, have mercy on the
people of Ghazal.
Ya Allah, we ask you that you help
them and protect them and guide them, Ya
Allah.
Make those who have been killed from the
shuhada, Ya Allah, we ask you to replace
for those who have been displaced, Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, grant shifa to those of them
who have been injured, Ya Allah.
Ya Rahman, Ya Kareem, we ask you to
be a janitor for those to our sisters
who have passed away in this recent accident,
Ya Allah.
Ya Allah, grant them a high place in
Jannah, Ya Allah.
O Allah, our loved ones, allow us to
serve them and honor them, Ya Allah.
Allow us to show safety and peace to
everyone around us, Ya Allah.
Allow us to be a Muslim in its
true sense, Ya Allah.
Ya Rahman, Ya Kareem, allow us to navigate
the waswasa and the evil whispers of shaitan,
Ya Allah.
Allow us to be the people of khulub
and hearts, Ya Allah.
Allow our hearts to be filled with nuh
and light, Ya Allah.
O Allah, those of us who may be
struggling with sin, O Allah, allow us to
overcome that struggle and overcome that sin, Ya
Allah.
O Allah, any of us who may be
involved in any type of dhulm and oppression,
O Allah, we ask you to stop us
from that dhulm and oppression, Ya Allah.
Those of us who may be in wrong,
Ya Allah, we ask you to guide us
towards that way, Ya Allah.
Ya Rahman, grant us all the goodness of
the Prophet ﷺ and make du'a for
all the evil of the Prophet ﷺ to
seek protection from.
Ya Rahman, Ya Kareem, we ask you to
accept our du'a.
Subhana rabbika rabbal izzati amma yasifoon, wa salaamun
ala al mursaleen, walhamdulillahi rabbil alameen.
Insha'Allah, jazakumullahu khairan, everybody.
Thank you for spending time with us, alhamdulillah,
on a Thursday night.
Insha'Allah, we're going to wrap up the
session now.
We do have a couple of programs, I
believe, before the Thanksgiving break, insha'Allah, for
college students.
Obviously, so we will, insha'Allah, continue next
Thursday.
So insha'Allah, hope to see you guys
again next Thursday at 7 p.m. And
then insha'Allah, just look out for the
calendar for the rest of the events of
the month.
Jazakumullahu khairan, everybody.
Salatul Isha is in the masjid at 8
.15. We just kind of encourage everyone to
make their way over to the masjid so
they can pray on time with the jama
'at.
Jazakumullahu khairan, y'all.
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.