Safi Khan – Soul Food
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My sincerest apologies for starting to lay out
a lot of technical difficulties that weren't really
that difficult, but
I don't know these things. So I'm gonna
act like it never happened. Inshallah, so welcome
back to Soul Food. I know we took
a little bit of a break.
I'm happy to be back. I was gone
for a couple of weeks, so I'm happy
to be back. Then when I finally came
back, the whole snowstorm happened. So I I'm
happy to see everybody's here and healthy
and well. Hopefully, all of your families are
doing well.
So we're gonna go ahead and get started.
We're gonna do things a little bit different.
It's not a little bit different than me.
You guys have the little pamphlets that they
handed out.
So I will have someone read, but we're
not gonna start reading from the top of
the page. We're gonna do exactly what they
tell you about to do in school. We're
gonna start reading from the 3rd paragraph.
K? We're gonna start reading from the 3rd
paragraph.
Anybody want to volunteer to read?
I'm always just yeah.
Good stuff there. Thank you so much for
reading. When you guys hear you hear
think of?
Do you read a part of it of
what is what the, translation gives or what
the scholars say, but what do you think
of?
Okay.
Trusting all?
Good. Anybody else? I like to get a
minimum of 3
answers.
I'm very good at awkward moments too. So
it's a win win situation for everybody here.
Anyone else?
We have trust in the lost.
Amen. Faith, what do you think of? Just,
belief in the unseen.
Good. Believe in the unseen.
You know, believing in something that just because
you can't see it, doesn't mean that it
doesn't exist when it's not there. One more
answer.
Believing in the unknown.
Good. Believing in the unknown.
Recognizing that things will occur, things will happen.
Very good job. So when we talk about
iman,
a very interesting thing is that iman sometimes
is only
what they
focus
on
a matter something that's considered to be a
matter of the heart, right, or an intellectual
exercise of belief.
When in what Imam Al Lawrie's advice is
he that he's given here is that recognizing
that part of faith or part of the
imam is also action.
And that's why you have the hadith here
that Safiyyah so kindly read for us that
the prophet
he says,
That Islam is built
upon these 5 things. It is constructed
upon the 5 things.
When something is built upon something or something
is constructed,
it means that,
you know, if
it means that if any of these things
are not there,
then what will happen?
If we have this whole building,
and it's in these building area, it'll probably
4 pillars.
If I take out one of those pillars,
what will happen?
It's gonna fall.
It's gonna fall. It's no longer gonna be
there. That structure
would no longer be sturdy.
And so we have here where some of
the same
that doing
Islam, your religion,
the acting upon of your the acting upon
of your belief is built on 5 things.
Like, in order for you to truly say
or in order for you to truly,
embody your belief, you have to do action.
There has to be some level of action
that is there. And so then in here,
Imam Abu Ghazali goes on to explain what
an iman is. He says 3 things.
He says that iman is faith,
is repeating the faith with your tongue.
It is belief in the heart and is
the performance of pillars.
Performance of the pillars of the song. And
what's really interesting
is that these three things, they go hand
in hand
because when you when you really like a
person, for example, like you have a good
friend,
you know, you have a very good friend
and you meet someone else,
right,
you're more than likely gonna talk about your
friend. You're like, yeah, my friend. You're awesome.
This and that. We did this the other
day. We went.
Your kids get really annoyed sometimes. Like, you,
your friends, you're always talking about your friends.
Right? When you like something, you like someone,
you talk about them them or talk about
that thing a whole lot. People who love
basketball
grew up in a house full of basketball
fanatics.
You know, my brothers, all they do is
talk about basketball. I mean, I love basketball,
but now, like, their love is deep.
Okay? Deep.
You know? So when you love basketball, what
do you do? The Lakers this, Lebron this,
you know, Kobe this,
Steph Curry this.
All good. That's it. Just keep talking about
it. And so
here, it's saying that the first thing is
that the confession at the top
that you you are affirming
your belief,
that you are
letting when someone believes something in their heart,
they speak about it. When they love something
in their heart, they speak about it.
And then he says belief in the heart.
And what's interesting is that the prophet in
a very
little bit of momentum narration, He talked about
that
and he says that
that know that within the body, there is
a piece of
flesh. That if that thing is pure, if
it's sound,
then know that the rest of the body
will be sound.
And if that thing is corrupt,
then the rest of the body will be
corrupt.
And this is the heart.
And what's important
is that if your belief is in your
heart, then the rest of your body will
follow suit.
The rest of your body will do. It
will begin to act.
And that's why he says that the third
one is performance with the limbs.
And, some of the man who's gonna go
through some ayaat that talk about it, but
there are so many ayaats in the Quran.
Oh, you who believe
and do good deeds.
Why isn't belief enough?
Why isn't belief enough?
Anybody?
But why?
Why is it important to show it?
Because you need to show it. That's very
true. I agree with your answer. But why?
Anybody?
Imagine if I told
the start of doctor Amanda, we're good friends.
Never
family.
Never.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all. Maybe if I
see him once or twice a year, I'm
like, oh, yeah. This is my great friend.
Do you believe that we're good friends?
I can say that I am good friends
with this person as much as I want.
But if I don't show not one step
towards
that, is it really a manifestation of what
I said?
Is it really solidifying what I said?
So that's the first thing.
That action and faith, what it does,
it it's manifesting what you believe.
It's manifesting putting into action what you claim
that you believe.
That's the first thing. And the second thing
that I think is so beautiful
is that
That those who believe Allah's heart causes
them in.
That the more that you
act
upon
your your belief, the more that you do,
recognize that God, what he does is he
brings you closer to him.
He brings you closer to him, and you're
able to, you know, have that closeness. And
that's why there's so many examples
in the time
where people may make mistakes.
K. They may do things
that are not correct or do things that
are wrong,
and you will never see the process of
vanishing them. Like, get out of here. Don't
ever come back. You're a horrible person.
He will take them to make do.
It's like,
what?
And then he'll take them to pray.
And he'll tell them, say that you believe
and be steadfast enough to leave like.
These are types of practical, you know, steps
that the process will get.
Why?
Because process is teaching us that part of
our belief is acting upon it and then
recognize that the more you act upon, the
closer you're bringing yourself to that.
The closer you bring yourself to Allah.
And there's a narration
from processing that's very interesting
and it talks about people who've committed certain
sins.
And the prophet says in this narration,
There's someone who drink alcohol,
and while they're drinking alcohol, they're not a
believer. That's what the process says.
So and then he continues. He names the
other things.
And that person who steals while they're in
the act of stealing, they're not believe they're
not believing.
So what's interesting
is that after this,
in the last time he walked in,
he asked a question.
He said, how is that how does that
be? Do they just, like, turn into disbelievers?
You know? Like, they commit in a, an
act, and he's like, oh, you're just a
disbeliever?
And the answer that they get is that,
actually,
sins are things that are direct disobedience to
Allah.
And so it's not that they push further
away from Allah, but in that moment, you're
not thinking about the lost one.
But when you turn around and repent, you
know what happens?
That brings you close to Allah. Because then
the prophet has another narration
where he says
that be aware and be mindful of Allah
and every situation that you're in, wherever you
may be. And then he says what
he says,
and make sure you follow-up a bad deed,
something wrong that you did.
Do a good action after that, and you'll.
It'll wipe them away. And then he says,
and be good to people. Treat people in
the best of ways.
And you see that here with our students
teaching us that just because, you know, you
have this moment and this lapse
where you're not necessarily, like, focused on God.
K. You're not. You're not thinking about him.
You're
ima
and those things, those good deeds, those good
actions that you are doing before the moment
is what's gonna take you back to that.
Because if you are in the process of
working on yourself
and doing the deeds and doing good actions
and things of that nature, when it's time
for when when
human will make mistakes, guess what?
You never go down a a spiral in
a hole with misery.
I can never be better. I can never
do good with my my environment is dependent
upon my good deeds,
and now I have knowing that
doesn't work like that. So it possibly gives
us a healthy balance.
A part of demand
is that it's very important to have action.
And our religion gives us the the 5
pillars to act upon and then also so
much more.
Can someone else read the last portion for
you?
Good. What did you guys understand from this
paragraph?
I'm
asking asking these types of questions. No one
asked my questions.
We do understand from that.
Over beach.
It's like a small river.
Anybody, you guys know, wanna give it a
shot?
It's about your personal understanding too. In fact,
there's no right or wrong answer.
Good. Your iman
is the most important thing. And, ultimately, what
are we trying to reach?
Where are we trying to go? Why are
we doing this? Why do we believe? Why
do we do compete? Why are we what
are we trying to do?
They're Jannah. We want the pleasure of the
law. We want to go to Jannah.
So what Imam Ghazali is saying here is
that your saying of I believe is not
enough. That's the bare minimum,
and the bare minimum is not enough.
Because what is that bare minimum?
God forbid something happens.
You know? What do you have to, like,
pick yourself up? What do you have to
push yourself forward?
You're just doing the absolute bare minimum.
So here he's saying that the bare minimum
is not enough and also recognize
that the way that we enter into Jannah
is through the mercy of Allah.
K? The way that we enter into Jannah
is through the mercy of Allah. So there's
our belief, There's our act. There's the mercy
of Allah. And there's a narration he talks
about this and he tells the companions this.
And he says,
He tells the companions, do good deeds properly
and do them very sincerely.
And
he says, and also,
like, be happy.
Be happy. Receive good receive good news. Take
good news. Be happy. Like, don't be miserable.
Okay?
And this is so important. I understand this
is definitely not obsession, but it's important. It's
important to know a part of your religion,
part of your belief, part of you living
in this world is that God wants you
to be happy.
So prophet Islam says, and we have received
good good news and and, gifted news.
And
then he says because
a person's good deeds will not make them
enter into paradise.
A person's good deeds will not make them
enter into paradise.
So the companions are sitting there and they're
like, what?
You spent all this time doing other deeds.
So they asked the.
They said, when I answer your,
even you,
think about all the debt that the prophet
Hassan has done in his lifetime.
And the prophet answered, he says,
And only if Allah
decides to wrap his mercy around me. That
is how it says to Jamba.
But does he tell him, so don't do
anything? He ends off the narration. He says,
know
that the the deeds that God loves the
most that Allah loves the most
are the ones that are consistent even if
they're small.
And so what the process I'm saying is
that your
confidence
in your religion
comes from
your relationship between you and Allah.
It's not rooted in your own ability.
Because Allah is
limitless
and his power is great
and so is his mercy.
That even if you fall short in your
action,
recognize that's not the only thing that takes
you to Jannah, but rather what takes you
to Jannah is the mercy of Allah.
That is what he's explaining. We have to
put in our effort. Yes.
We believe and we do big deeds. That's
putting in our effort. But know that Allah
sees it.
And Allah,
he's even saying the prophet was telling us,
the most beloved needs to Allah, the ones
that are consistent even if they may be
small,
even if they may be very tiny,
like a little bit,
is giving us hope.
Imagine you feel like
if you did your deed. Right? You do
something good, and it wasn't as great as
it could have been. See someone else who
did it better.
Then you're like, man,
I'm not gonna get the full reward for
that because it wasn't as good as it's
gonna be.
Right? And then you go and you do
it better, then you see someone else do
it better. You're like, man, I'm not gonna
get the full reward for that either because
this person is like Ramadan. You're praying, you
know, the person next to you starts crying.
You're like, I definitely didn't even work with
this person. I'm not crying. This is, like,
the single tear.
So if you base your ability to go
to Gemma based only on that,
how confident would you be that you're gonna
make it?
Not very confident.
So the process I'm saying here, do your
best.
You say you believe, you do your good
deeds, and he mentions doing actions twice. He
started off at the beginning and he said
it again at the end. You do your
best to believe. You do your deeds and
then recognize that what takes you to the
agenda is the mercy of Allah. So do
things that are beloved to God.
Do things that are beloved to him.
And my last point here
is, you know, a little bit of an
example with your parents, for example.
You're younger, even maybe now, you really want
to go somewhere, what would you do? Start
cleaning up the whole house.
Right? Like, you wake up on a whole
mission.
Go ahead, just expand, you know, things you've
never done before. Okay? Your your mom or
your dad come out like, what do you
want? That's the first thing. They don't even
say thank you. They just ask, what do
you want. Why? Because you want them to
agree to your thing that you're gonna ask
for.
Right?
You want them to agree to what you're
about to ask for.
You're like, let me go ahead. Just wake
up, wash dishes, make everybody breakfast, wash dishes,
clean up, mop, vacuum.
Let me wipe the mirror in the direction
my mom wants me to wipe it in.
Do not think it's completely ridiculous. You start
doing all kinds of things
because you want them to agree to what
you want.
We want to go to agenda.
That is what we want.
And if we want to go Jannah,
then we do the things that are pleasing
to Allah because we said that we believe
in him. He's asking of us to do
good things and asking of us to do
good things and so therefore, we need those
things. I'm gonna hand it off to the
staff now and then afterwards, we'll
connect
West and
Irving, it's already pretty, the power already went
out a couple of times. I know that's
giving you a trauma again, you know, crazy
like this. So with the power went out
a couple of times. So,
I do wanna abbreviate the q and a,
just because that it's not worth, like, you
guys getting stuck in traffic or, like,
you know, anything happening on the way home.
So I'd rather have you guys get in
safe control mode than whatever portion I was
gonna do, you just do it next week
in control mode. You don't have any questions
about the stuff you're set up and we'll
talk about or anything at all?
It can be a little bit tricky sometimes.
Remember, Zari is not, like, he's not easy
reading, if that makes sense. Like, he's he's
pretty deep. You have to wear your coatings.
So
any questions?
Anything? Everyone's staring like intended part of it.
Any questions about anything
at all?
Only a dog and a son?
What do you think?
Oh, okay.
Alright. Okay. Bad luck with you guys. Thank
you guys for coming out. You know, I
will say something that's really interesting.
So back back, we started studying on my
1st teacher technique tab.
We used to study on Saturdays at the
local time of school. We used to go
from, like, 8 AM till, you know, I
think, like, 3 PM every Saturday. We used
to go through different lessons with him, and
in the beginning, the class was, like, 5
people.
That was
it. And, we used to walk in
and the classroom was really big. It was
a summer school, so, like, they're used to
having 30, 40 somber school 50, 60, 70
kids,
not 70 but, you know, they're used to
having 30 kids in one room and there's
5 people up there for us to shift.
So we used to walk in as students
and we used to feel like,
you know, I'm kinda embarrassed,
but we used to feel
bad. We used to apologize
to the shame. Like, we're so sorry that
more people don't
come and, like, we're, you know and he
used to say that, you know, for every
seat
that you see in this room that's not
filled by a person, there's an angel there.
There's the Malaika. So he's like, I he's
like, I would be happy to kinda teach
if one person came. You know what I
mean? And so sometimes I feel we get
caught up in, like, the numbers game and,
like, you know, there have been times where,
like, our work has, you know, too many
people show up and this and that. But
to be quite honest with you, the the
gatherings where it's smaller where it's a few
people,
it means that Allah chose you and there's
something very special about you. That Allah saw
you for you to come tonight, that you're
here in the gathering with all these angels
listening and benefiting. So, you know, make sure
that whatever it is you heard tonight, I
want you to take it really seriously because
maybe this is something you needed to hear.
Maybe this maybe I'll have brought you here
specifically because of how the stuff that Hoffman's
gonna teach it. Right? Because look at it.
Like, there's nobody here.
There's nobody.
Right? There's only, like, a few of us.
So maybe all of us, a lot brought
us here because this section of the book
was something we needed.
And then we're gonna go,
and it'll be like no one was ever
here. So we asked for what time I'd
say except for months. We asked for what
time I'd say to everybody home safe. We'll
see you guys next Thursday.
Okay?