Shadee Elmasry – Isolation & Alone Time – 2 – NBF 410
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of learning one's spiritual experiences and understanding their values to avoid going on the path of abandonment. They emphasize the benefits of being in a certain situation, including being an only child and avoiding negative consequences. They also discuss the importance of social media and a worker leadership program, as well as the importance of finding one's own values and protecting one's home. The conversation also touches on the legality of investing in silver and gold mines and the importance of protecting one's home.
AI: Summary ©
We're back on?
All right.
So we were saying that just the idea
of saying, I have a great, it feels
great, I had a amazing feeling, you have
to ask yourself two things.
The first thing you have to say is
how did you get there?
Is it Mashru'ah?
By legitimate scholars of Islamic law in the
four schools of thought.
If it is, okay good.
Number two, what are you leaving it with?
What ideas are you concluding from these spiritual
experiences?
Are they lawful in the Shari'ah?
That's it.
Are they valid in our Aqeedah?
So you have to measure them because it
is not just possible, but it's very common
too, that people get misled.
That's why he says, from the Shurut of
Uzla, the Shurut of someone who's going to
spend a lot of time alone, is you
have to learn your Aqeedah properly.
You have to learn your Shari'ah properly.
You have to learn, really, epistemology too.
I had this amazing dream.
Okay, but I can't go act on it
right away.
You cannot.
You have to act upon it according to
Shari'ah and according to Uruf.
Right?
People can really hurt themselves by doing this.
Like, can you lift without a spotter?
The heavier the weights, the better the spotter
has to be, right?
You gotta have spotters.
So he then says, Of
course, he has to know his obligations, so
that if Ibadah becomes so beloved to him,
he then doesn't go off and do good
things, leaving off more important things.
So what's important for Ibadah to know, is
what is more important.
And there is, for example, concepts of betrayal.
If you were to go and see someone
making a terrible mistake, or dhulm, or error
in religion, or something like that, and you
say, okay, well, I'm gonna go do Ibadah
in the Masjid.
You betrayed him, and you left what is
more important for what is less, what is
good, but less important at that moment.
And as a result of that, you're Atham.
That Ibadah is, that Ibadah is not gonna
be accepted.
You've abandoned what is far more important.
They said, for example, if a man goes
through a marketplace to the mosque, an imam,
and he just sees a Riba happening everywhere.
Riba, Riba, Riba, everywhere.
He's doing Riba.
Then he gets to the Masjid, and he
gives a khutbah about Zina.
He's betrayed the people, and his khutbah is
invalid, unaccepted.
He has no reward for that.
Actually, he gets sins for that.
He's literally abandoned them, people.
He's betrayed them.
You leave someone, you see someone, essentially, it's
like this.
You see someone walking into a ditch, right?
And you see someone selling lemonade, and you
buy the lemonade from the little kid, saying,
ah, it's Sadaqah.
Buy lemonade from a little kid for his
little baseball team.
Sadaqah.
But you let the person walk into a
ditch.
All your good deed is completely unaccepted.
You have no reward here for that.
So this is the idea here of knowing
Sharia is to know what's more required, and
there are times when uzla cannot be, except
a little bit, because you're needed.
And especially in the front lines, Sheikh Babakr
al-Sudani once said that his Sheikh told
him, and his Sheikh was al-Fatih Qaribullah.
Omar, if you get a second, you put
up a picture of Fatih Qaribullah from Sudan.
No, Samania.
No, that's the sun.
There he is.
There he is.
There he is.
No.
No.
No.
Yes.
Put up the picture of Sheikh Fatih Qaribullah.
That's his Sheikh.
And he said, son, this is no longer
the era of khalwah and uzla.
Like the old days, such that a person
would become enlightened in that way and reach
those levels of ma'arif and ma'arifah.
He said, this is the era you get
drawn near to Allah by khidmah, and uzla
is a little bit here on the side.
It's by khidmah.
The ummah is in like dire need.
It's all, everyone has to be in complete
state of khidmah at some point in time
with whatever skill that you have.
Uzla in reality is the abandonment of bad
qualities in yourself.
And putting in good qualities in yourself has
nothing to do with leaving your country.
In other words, leaving the town and go
and live on the hills.
That's what he means by that.
That's not what it is.
What's the point of that if you're just
not going to change?
So he said, really what the effect that
you're looking for is that uzla is the
alteration of yourself.
That's the benefit.
It could actually be better off for you
to be keeping people's company if they're changing
you than to be in uzla.
Now, why would a young man, at some
point a young man may not benefit anymore
from uzla, right?
If he doesn't even know what's bad about
himself because he's still young.
So better off for him be put out
there in the world and you scrape.
It's like things when you're rubbing against each
other, you see what's under the surface and
now you discover I have an anger problem.
If you're an only child, you never know
you have an anger problem.
There's no one there to bother you.
If you're an only child, you never know
if you're stingy or generous.
You never have to share anything.
There are households with five and six and
eight and nine people in the household.
The moment a pizza is brought into the
household, your stinginess and greed is exposed.
It's unfathomable now in such a household to
go in and take.
It's like the worst akhlaq.
You have to now call everybody, make sure
everyone has a piece, hold on, make sure
so-and-so is not here, leave him
a piece.
All of a sudden, pass it around, pass
it around.
Let the brothers eat.
Eat while it's hot.
What did you bring us, Fahad?
It's crispy chicken rolls.
Crispy chicken rolls.
These guys are innovating.
What kind of sauce?
Buffalo?
All right.
You don't want to give away the recipe.
Pass it around and eat it.
How many eat after?
Because yeah, keep it here.
Give it to the brothers if there's any
left.
These are travelers, they're passers-by.
Give Zakah.
Here, take some Zakah.
If you live alone, if you live in
a big group of people, as soon as
food comes, you have to think, is everyone
going to get some?
So that's a mature way of handling sustenance
and provisions.
When you live alone, if it's you and
your mom and dad, and your mom comes
home and puts down a box of pizza,
you just open it and eat.
You don't think twice, right?
It's never going to run out.
If there's a bag of chips, it's all
yours.
Everything, imagine that, everything is yours all the
time when you're an only child.
But the moment now you have multiple people
in the house, and you go in on
these chips, you have to think twice.
So some people, if they stay like that,
and then they go and all of a
sudden, it's useless for them.
What's best for him is actually to mingle
with people, to be put in different scenarios,
to see how annoying he actually is.
To see how unforgiving he is.
Imagine someone who's never been told no, he's
never been offended.
You don't know how big your ego is
and how sensitive it is until you're in
a situation someone puts you down or ignores
you, right?
Mixing is really good.
And one of my critiques of homeschooling, one
of the critiques of homeschooling, there are ways
around it.
But homeschooling has a lot of good qualities.
I'm not saying it's not good.
But I'll tell you one of the critiques
is, you literally only socialize with who your
family approves of, in most cases, right?
Now, you want a little bit of say,
but not too much say.
You want a little bit of say, like
I don't want my kids, for example, being
exposed to something so far away from Sharia.
I don't want them being with, I don't
know, people who are so far off from
Islam, then they'll be negatively influenced.
But at the same time, if they're only
with my group of friends, they become soft
because everyone's nice.
But if they go to a place with
a company that, in general, I approve of,
in general, I approve of, and in general,
they're good, but we don't know them, they're
not going to treat my kids special.
And then the kid gets ignored.
Kids are cruel, right?
Ignored, maybe made fun, maybe.
He has to scratch, he has to get
scratched a bit.
He has to get offended a little bit.
He learns, he becomes better.
He becomes hardened to that, in a good
way, I'm saying.
So too much protection from company like that
is not good.
So that's why it's always better sometimes for
people to be out in the world, offended,
to discover all their flaws.
Then the khalwa has a benefit.
Now you can sit alone every day and
think, why do I get so angry?
Why is my lust out of control?
Why am I greedy?
You got to do the introspection, but you
don't have anything to introspect if you never
scratched up with people and got to see
your flaws.
And that's why the Prophet ï·º said, to
be out with the people and be patient
with their harm is better than to be
away from them.
Because you benefit them, but they also show
you your flaws when you interact with them.
Got to know your weaknesses.
It's always also better to over-inflate others
and blame yourself.
In other words, don't blame others.
And over-inflate your rivals, maybe you could
say, and give them more benefit of the
doubt and put more blame on yourself.
So that's really the purpose of uzla is
to get rid of these qualities.
And if uzla doesn't help you in doing
that, I think you take a lot of
these people and give them uzla, they may
be deluded.
Because they may have spiritual experiences, which is
going to happen when you're all alone and
doing a lot of dhikr.
Spiritual experience on top of somebody who has
stinginess, anger, greed, selfishness, and he doesn't even
know it.
That's really bad now.
That's terrible.
That's like giving a person a lot of
knowledge, a lot of knowledge when he's a
worldly person and he loves the dunya.
He's going to use his sharia knowledge only
for dunya.
Not good.
Mr. Curry Swag says, can you talk about
the United CEO and the ethics behind Luigi's
decision to kill the guy?
Decision during the Q&A.
I'm at work, so I have to dip.
Yeah, I had some advice on Luigi.
He doesn't know how to commit murder properly.
Telling you, he gave himself...
Does he want to get caught or is
he just not bright?
I know he's bright because he graduated like
UPenn, Valedictorian.
You know he's smart.
But clearly something happened where his judgment's not
right anymore because he arrived 10 days early.
Why?
So many people see you, right?
He had his real ID in his backpack.
Not smart.
He committed the murder.
Okay, fine.
In broad daylight, but it was 6 a
.m. He did have a silencer.
He did have a mask on.
Okay.
Why aren't you on the next plane to
Mexico?
Forget plane, car.
Why aren't you on the next car down
to Mexico?
He just committed murder.
It's a good question, but commonsensically speaking, you
do not show up in advance of the
crime.
You show up the morning of the crime.
Where did they get his face from?
They got a picture of his face from
the CCTV of the hostel he stayed with,
and there are witnesses.
He stayed in a hostel.
You see other people, right?
He had his ID on him.
He should have burned that.
He went and got caught because someone made
a facial ID from TV.
He matched his face at a McDonald's in
Pennsylvania.
Why are you even on the East Coast?
Like this?
You want to get caught to become a
martyr of the cause?
So the answer, the right way to do
this, let's say you know the guy's schedule,
okay?
Just, it's bad to commit a crime, but
to commit a crime badly is worse, right?
You show up the day of, the morning
of, completely masked.
No ID, no nothing.
You commit your crime.
You are on the next car straight to
Mexico.
Plus, no one's ever going to see you,
ever again.
You go to Mexico.
You're, you still wear your mask.
Go all, keep passing Mexico.
We have deals with Mexico.
Mexico is part of like, still part of,
keep going.
Keep going down to Chile.
When you see Nazis, you're good, right?
When you see all the old Nazi guys
walking around, okay?
Then you're good.
You know they're not going to catch you
from here.
Deep in Chile and Argentina.
Then 20 years later, maybe you come back
to America when your face has changed.
Everyone, the case is cold case.
Plus, so.
That's what you get for supporting McDonald's.
Yeah.
Yeah, he couldn't stop.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Trim your, your unique facial appearance.
No beard, then grow a beard.
You know, black hair, make it brown hair.
Yeah.
No, no, be out of sight completely.
Be in a car on the way down
south.
Out of the country completely.
That's how you're going to be able to
get away with it.
Probably all his cousins and his uncles are
just fuming at how they know how to
kill people, right?
All his cousins and uncles, I'm sure, they're
like the new generation.
That's probably what, what Mario somewhere at some
pizzeria is saying to his, to his friends.
Look at this new generation.
They don't even know how to commit murder
properly, right?
Question.
Yes, go ahead.
This is actually something that's kind of spreading,
like the idea of the utilitarian, uh, like
underpinning behind what he did.
Yeah.
So, who do we have here?
Bring it.
Come with a place opened up like the
red sea.
Yeah, we're live.
Yeah.
Put, put his mic on.
My man looking great.
How are you, my man?
Give this man a piece of chicken.
You see loyalty to the restaurant.
He doesn't need opposing chickens anymore.
Not public yet.
Okay.
We'll keep that side.
So, uh, by the way, ZX 82 is
saying, how do we know if Sakina is
real or from Shaitan?
You don't have to worry about that.
You worry about how did you get there?
And what are you leaving with?
If it's Mashroo on both ways, you say
it's from Allah.
That's how it is.
We have Hosn Ad-Dhani Billah.
If I got to that Sakina through Ibadah
Mashroo Maqboolah, then you have nothing to worry
about.
But if, and if you're leaving with any
conclusions that are, uh, good and Mashroo and
acceptable, then khalas, that's all you have to
worry about, right?
And mostly that will be the case.
That's mostly the case.
Imam Safwan, how are you?
I'm good.
Tell us about, tell us about your organization
that you started.
Oh yeah.
Because you know, your boy, uh, Sharoz has
been sending me clips.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you guys are looking good in that,
in that live stream.
Tell us, what is it?
So it's called Asli.
So Asli is obviously authentic real, right?
But it's actually a double branding.
Yeah.
Which is American Servant Leadership Institute.
Yeah.
So basically we're developing a curriculum and a
pathway for servant leadership, either on the road
to, or opposed to becoming a scholar.
So most of the madrasas and these types
of things are, we've developed a kind of
all or nothing type of mentality where it's
like either you're a sheikh or you're a
layman or you're a businessman or, right?
But obviously our ummah needs more than just
mashayikh.
So if you're going into entrepreneurship or if
you're leading the ummah in some way, volunteering
for masajid or whatever it may be, you
need to have a particular set of skills,
which include aqeedah and fiqh and tazkiyah and
include some of usul and include some of
qawaed fiqh and include...
That's beautiful.
Like a literacy, general literacy.
Yeah.
I think it's a type of malakah for
this specific type of person.
So they need to be authoritative in certain
spaces, but they don't necessarily need to spend
time in other spaces.
So it's just someone who's kind of walked
that path a little bit, has scholars and
wants to kind of build this network of
servant leaders.
But I think it's more than that too.
You know, being an imam for about a
decade, all of my 20s and now into
my 30s, um, I've made a lot of
mistakes and I've come up with a lot
of solutions as well.
Good.
So alhamdulillah.
And how would a person be part of
it?
So the basics of it is there is
a program that's specifically for imams.
And that will be something where we start
with apprenticeship, that there's been kind of a
misplaced emphasis on the kind of academic side
of it when in reality what makes great
scholars is suhbah with great scholars.
Exactly.
Right.
So we've kind of made the foundation of
the model apprenticeship.
That's great.
Where, you know, we could have imams like
yourself as these kind of apprentices or their
fielding apprentices and someone be able to spend
three months with you or six months with
you and what it may be with a
kind of specific learning outcome and objectives and
experience that they're getting from you.
Does it go beyond imams?
Let's say I want to be an entrepreneur.
You connect me with a Muslim entrepreneur.
Exactly.
That's great.
So we have a servant leadership and a
servant entrepreneurship pathway.
That's amazing.
And so it's all developing very fast.
But alhamdulillah, we're a registered non-profit.
We're 501c3 pending.
That's great.
And what's your YouTube channel called that you're
on?
Are you pre-recording this?
We're not public 100% yet.
But we've made everything.
We're starting to get there.
But it should just be like the Usleep
podcast or something.
MashaAllah.
Wonderful.
Wonderful.
So he's your co-host.
So Shahroz is my legal advisor.
Yeah.
And my co-host too.
Very good.
I think he is a beautiful person.
He's a very interesting person because, you know,
he's kind of dabbled in music in his
past, you know, career and life.
And mashaAllah he's in law.
But he's also, you know, someone who has
sent me extensive notes of his Maliki fit
classes with you and stuff like that.
So I feel like he has the right
combination of attributes to kind of push this
thing to the next level.
Oh, that's that kind of well-balanced person
that we talked.
And earlier we talked about this idea of
a talent stack, which is you're good at
things that have nothing to do with each
other.
But the beauty of that is that when
you are able to mix these things, you
can get results that are amazing.
Yeah.
It's like mixing flavors in food.
And someone is really good at, let's say,
Chinese cuisine and French cuisine.
You bring that person, he can probably cook
stuff no one else can.
And that's the idea of the talent stack.
What you're saying here is that you don't
have to be like...
You only need certain knowledge that benefits you
when you're in a certain field.
Shariah knowledge.
That if you were to have to go
to a regular imam school for that, you
wouldn't...
It would be lost in the middle of
things that you are not going to use.
So it makes a lot of sense what
you're doing here.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think that it's kind of charting
a timeline for these imams.
So it's like apprenticeship.
So it's like you finish madrasa.
Or even while you're doing madrasa, it could
be something where we're taking in people in
high school and having them do apprenticeships with
imams.
So when they get into madrasa, they've already
built a foundation.
That's why the kids of any discipline, they
tend to be better than the people who
are not kids of that discipline.
Because they know the life.
They know the routines.
They know what's critical.
They've been around...
In every field, you're going to see people
who are the kids of people in that
field.
And they excel because they have so much
more information about the life.
Yeah.
I mean, I grew up watching my father
was an imam who served and did, mashaAllah,
many things.
From chaplaincy to university to prisons to masajid
and so many things.
And I was able to get that experience.
And I see students of knowledge coming up
now who don't have that experience.
And the ways that they might struggle within
the masjid ecosystem and the ummah at large.
So I think that just giving them a
platform to build that experience but I also
think that I'm also building this platform so
they can learn how to develop financial independence.
So that when they're a seasoned scholar, they're
also financially independent.
And they can give their time to what
they feel authentic and passionate about.
Rather than...
Because not everyone's cut out to be just
the day-to-day imam.
Or not everyone wants to do that.
So we have to figure out how to
expand the ecosystem and the economy of servant
leadership.
You need to have someone who doesn't do
those things.
Because that silence and that empty schedule is
what's needed to produce intellectual material.
Even one of the biggest shuyukh in the
Maliki school, he was asked one time if
he had read a certain commentary.
And he said no.
Everyone was like, he teaches the highest level
of Maliki books all the time.
And he's like, if I keep reading all
these commentaries, who's going to teach?
I got to be out here on the
ground on the front lines every single day.
So reading commentaries and having a humongous library.
And it's on multiple occasions.
People have asked him, did you see this
book?
Did you see that commentary?
Did you see that commentary?
And he says, no, I never even knew
about this book.
I didn't even know about it.
And he's one of the top scholars but
he teaches the medheb.
But all the commentaries, if he's going to
read those, who's teaching?
And so usually the teacher's life is different
from the researcher mufti life, which is very
quiet.
And Allah has different plans for different people,
different temperaments for different people.
And that's what you need.
You need different, you know, all a community,
Imam al-Haddad said, needs four types.
It needs the scholars.
And there are many different types.
Between the teacher, the researcher, the one who
writes the books, and the one who teaches
the people, the two different mentalities completely.
It's like Ghazali never mingled with the people.
He didn't give dawah to shabab.
That's, he didn't do that type of thing,
right, Ghazali.
But others did.
Others, Abdul Qadir Jilani was always with the
people.
Constantly with the people, different types.
Then you had, you need the abed, the
abad, the baraka, the people who are zuhad.
And the sick fall into that.
Because the sick who are patient with their
sickness, they are the pinnacle of ascetics.
Like they don't need to forget, you don't
have stuff, they don't even have themselves, their
health.
So usually when you see people coming in
the masjid, live in the masjid and they're
very sick, they remind you, they take the
dunya comes right out of your heart.
SubhanAllah.
Right.
So you need the worshippers and the ascetics.
And then you need the administrators.
We underestimate this.
We think it's just a necessary evil.
These people sometimes are the ones are so
important a good board member can transform a
community.
A good board can literally be the door
that allows, they could open the faucet or
close the faucet on benefit.
They could let it happen and support it
or they could close it.
And if they're knowledgeable, they'll also know the
right person to put in place.
So board members and community leaders are critical.
And then you have finally who's going to
finance it all.
The entrepreneur businessmen, the Sayyidina Abdul Rahman bin
Abu Uthman bin Affan type of people are
needed.
Who's going to finance all this effort?
So that's where they say, Abu Bakr and
Umar and Uthman and Ali fit in this.
They fit as these four.
Abu Bakr being the scholar, Umar bin Khattab
being the leader, the administrator, Uthman bin Affan
being the entrepreneur, the financier, I should say.
The financier and Sayyidina Ali representing the ascetic.
Of course, all of them had everything, but
which one did they have more of?
And that's how your Ummah is balanced, diverse
and it grows.
It's a great initiative.
Absolutely.
And as you know, the last hundred years,
particularly Tasawwuf has been kind of removed from
mainstream learning.
And to be a leader, you need to
master a great deal of Tasawwuf.
A hundred percent.
And that's why repeatedly these organizations are making
the same mistakes over and over again is
because they haven't spent the time.
They haven't spent time with scholars.
They have not spent time purifying their heart.
And I think that that's one of the
critical solutions, but also from aqidah standpoint, giving
them the worldview of Islam and the decision
making tools, the alat of the tradition, so
that they can operate within that Islamic worldview.
One of the diseases of the heart that
comes upon people is they begin to view
themselves as a qayyum for the community, a
sustainer.
And many, many, many people get tricked by
shaitan.
Say, if I don't do it, who will?
You didn't exist before for all those centuries
of Islam.
So obviously other people did.
And what you're doing now, someone did it
a generation ago and Allah removed them.
Otherwise you wouldn't be here.
So that's al-qayyum is the attribute of
Allah.
And that's where Tasawwuf is so important for
all the categories, because the faqih needs it
to soften his heart from being dry and
judgmental.
A bad faqih would turn off to everybody.
Or he loves the dunya, so he misuses
his knowledge.
The Prophet ï·º, for a reason, he said,
the bulk of the munafiqin are from the
qurra.
The bulk of hypocrites are from scholars.
Then the leaders need it because they're the
leaders.
They're the number one person whose ego can
get to him.
Telling everyone to do higher this, fire this,
write a check, don't write a check.
You're not allowed to do this.
And then of course the entrepreneur, his aspect
of what he needs of Tasawwuf, the financier,
is the fear of Allah judging me for
every dollar that I have.
Like that's a terrible audit.
Fear the audit.
If you fear the audit in this world,
any smart businessman who he doesn't want to
get audited.
I don't want the IRS all over me,
so we're going to do things right.
By the book, nothing is going to be
cash under the table.
It's going to be by the book.
Now some industries you literally can't do it.
Some industries you have to.
You literally, in some industries, you literally cannot
avoid paying people cash.
But nonetheless, and there are bigger issues.
Tax fraud, all that stuff.
You don't want to be audited.
That's the number one thing the IRS, you're
aware of.
So what the Muslim financier, you got a
second audit coming, which is the audit of
your Zakah.
Then you got a third every year, your
Zakah.
That's an audit.
Third audit on Yawm al-Qiyamah.
That's going to be a huge audit.
You want the headache, right?
So that's going to be the Tasawwuf of
the financier is that constantly on his mind
is that audit of Yawm al-Qiyamah.
It's constantly on his mind.
So everyone needs Tasawwuf in a different way.
So how do you love accountability?
You know, because Allah is going to hold
you accountable, but you still have to love
Allah.
True.
So this idea that you have to love
the one who is going to hold you
accountable, that's a matter of Tasawwuf.
It's like you're being evaluated by someone and
you actually have to love that person for
their accountability.
And in this day and age, and in
every day and age, right?
It's the Naba' al-'Azim that you at night,
that you have to undergo constant scrutiny and
accountability in order to reach the dreams and
the goals that you have.
And one of the best things is that
you're being scared from what harms you.
When Allah brings his threats of punishment, he's
threatening you away from what harms you.
So every time that you hear, you shall
not, in other words, a prohibition, you have
to put in harm yourself.
Anything that fits in that blank is equivalent
to self-harm.
You should not look at women, don't harm
yourself.
You think it's nice, but you're harming yourself.
Should not do this, that.
And anything that's obligatory, you should just look
at as you must benefit yourself.
You must benefit yourself.
Whatever you feel.
Now, for you not to understand how this
is benefiting me, how this harms you, it
goes back to you.
That has nothing to do with the truth.
Like a grand chess master tells you, don't
move your pawn here.
Move it here.
You just listen.
Imagine you're in a chess match and a
grandmaster tells you, as you have a grandmaster
right next to you.
So, oh, he put his pawn right there.
I want it.
No, don't take it.
That's what he wants you to do.
He was luring you to take that pawn
to open something else up five moves later,
right?
Chess master is right there talking to you.
Now, what a fool that wouldn't just listen
and obey without thinking, right?
Listen and obey without thinking.
Well, I need to know why.
Okay, you will know why after five moves,
right?
When you lose.
So, when the chess master tells you to
do something, likewise in the Sharia, when the
Sharia tells you live like this, teenagers don't
understand it.
They rebel with their mind.
They're just being teenagers.
20-year-olds, they still don't.
30, maybe around 40.
If you followed the law, right?
If you followed the Sharia in your teens
and your 20s, you see it all in
your 40s.
You're like, this makes so much sense.
That's everything in this scenario, in this decade
of life is literally perfect.
No one's perfect, perfect.
But we mean financially, no issues.
Women problem, divorce, Zina, Meshach, not there.
Kids are rude and terrible and bad, not
there.
Because I had Sabbath with my parents, so
I now have Sabbath with my kids.
So they like me, right?
What do they call it?
Guy gets in his 40s and he starts
going, midlife crisis.
Don't even know what it is.
Never even heard of it, right?
People, every righteous Salih Muslim of his youth,
when he hits the age of 40, that's
his life.
Because now all the moves starting to make
sense.
Now all these chess moves, which did not
make sense.
I'm not eating pawns.
I'm not taking horses.
I'm not taking anything, right?
I'm not gaining the pawns that I see
sitting right in front of me.
You don't take them, don't take them.
You have positioned yourself now.
Your enemy is trapped.
Completely.
Your enemy's trapped.
And you're going to win this game with
ease, right?
So in what they call the, there's the
beginning.
Then there's the middle game.
And then there's the end game in chess.
Right in the middle, you start seeing the
benefits of discipline in the beginning.
And then you reap all the rewards.
Now you see the rewards coming, but you
reap them all in the end game.
When you got your queen, both rooks.
I got two horses.
I got a bunch of pawns.
And this miskeen, he's got a bishop.
His queen is gone.
His rooks are gone.
He's finished.
It's just a matter of time before he's
cornered into a checkmate.
Let's close up Al-Risal Al-Qusayriyya.
You know his Sheikh is Abu Ali Al
-Dakkaq.
Every time he says Al-Ustaz, he means
Abu Ali Al-Dakkaq.
Listen what he says.
Abu Ali Al-Dakkaq.
Oh, worshipers.
And this is so important for those people
who go study abroad and come back.
Dress as the people dress.
Look as the people look.
Eat what the people eat.
In other words, you want to be unique
in your ibadah.
Be unique alone.
But with the people, be as the people
are.
Imam Malik did not like excessive things in
religion such as a beard beyond the qabdah
or the tattered garments of the fuqara for
the zuhad.
And why didn't he like that?
He said that the beard beyond the qabdah,
it gathers attention to you.
And it's besides that the sahabah did the
qabdah.
Qabdah means you gather your beard and you
cut from here.
So you don't need a beard longer than
your fist.
Basically, you don't need from your chin to
four fingers down.
You don't need it to be longer than
that.
If you do, it's shuhrah.
Now, oh, he's the one of the big
beard.
The guy with the big beard.
Now people might think you're a faqih and
ask you questions and stuff.
And they're just giving you attention.
He says it's not necessary.
It's not what the sahabah did and no
one should do it.
Also, he also viewed it as like unsightly
too.
So that's on the beard.
On the clothes, he said, don't wear the
clothes of the zohad.
Then people will either attribute you as a
zahid and therefore shuhrah.
You become famous as a worshiper.
It's not good for your ego.
Or he said, don't think you're poor and
give you sadaqah when you don't deserve the
sadaqah.
All right.
So the certain clothes and certain appearances of
worship and of ibadah, if you do those
things, then you're just getting attention for yourself.
And that's not good to get so much
attention to yourself.
So he says, you want to do these,
just drawing near to Allah, do that in
secret.
Also, imagine this.
Imagine we have like a gathering or here
we're all sitting.
And then someone goes off and he prays
nawafil and does dhikr on the side.
Like, okay.
He's like, oh, dhikr is a good thing.
Yeah.
But now, am I supposed to think you're
so great now?
We all will.
That's not good for your ego.
So be with the people as normal and
do your special ibadah by yourself.
All right.
So that's what he's saying here.
Last thing we'll say, we'll take some Q
&A.
Man came to him and said, I traveled
to you.
Shaykh, I've traveled to you from a long
distance, right?
He came to see the spiritual master from
a long distance.
He said, no, this affair doesn't require all
of that.
Go away from your nafs, even at home.
And you've achieved the goal.
In other words, the whole goal here is
to decrease from the hadh or the portion
of our ego.
All right.
Let's take a few questions and then we're
going to break for food.
Did I see a tray come in here?
What is that tray, Fahad?
Okay.
All right.
Let's take a few questions here.
First of all, any comments and questions from
the live audience?
Retreatful situation with other people or by yourself?
Personally speaking, the other question was, if I
got the question right, what do you think
of long retreats, long uzlas like that?
And I think like if a person has
been traumatized, like you threw a bad experience,
it's different.
That's sort of just normal mental well-being.
But if someone wants to just draw near
to Allah and he's going to go for
long periods of time, I think you should
ask somebody who's been around the block first
because you could harm yourself.
Keep in mind, shaytan is also around there
too.
It's not just angels in the khalwah, right?
Shaytan, and that's why he said earlier, he
must study his aqeedah first and his shariah
first before he goes to khalwah because shaytan
is with you there.
It's not just malaika.
Shaytan is there too.
So you have to just maybe consult somebody
before going and someone who knows you, someone
who knows your states, right?
Someone who knows if this could be harmful
to you to be alone for so long.
That's not normal, right?
Maybe in the past, it was probably normal
to be all alone for two weeks.
Like if you're on a journey, if you're
going from north to south of your country
or east to west, you may actually be
alone.
Here in America, you see those old like
cowboy and Indian movies.
When he's traveling from state to state, he's
all alone on a horse with a bag
and he pitches a fire and like that
was normal.
Their minds could handle that back then.
For us today, it might be different.
All right, here's a question that says, do
we believe all sahabah are going to heaven?
Some of them apostated in the Rida Wars.
If someone apostated, they wouldn't be a sahabi.
Yeah, the definition of a sahabi, we said
it yesterday, is somebody who was in the
presence of the Prophet ï·º as a Muslim
and died upon that same Islam.
No apostasy in the middle.
Okay, that's what we said.
All right, are we sinful if we ignore
family members or Muslims that we do not
like?
No, the default is that you only owe
people five obligatory huquq.
But family member like who?
Mother and father, you can't ignore.
You have to be good to them even
in worldly matters.
If you don't get along in deen, at
least in worldly matters.
But family members like you have a cousin
who abuses you, you can ignore him.
What's haram is to abandon your Muslim brother
for three days over a worldly dispute.
But someone abusing me, of course, I can
stay away from him.
That's shari'a.
That's a shari'a reason to stay away
from somebody.
But to say, I'm never talking to someone
so and so again, I'm not going to
talk to him.
I hate, we're in a fight for three
days for a worldly dispute.
That's the concept of you can't abandon your
brother for three days.
For a dispute related to the dunya.
But if there's a shari'a reason such
as someone abuses me, of course, I can
stay away from him for as long as
I think he'd abuse me.
That's it.
Same thing with other Muslims.
If they abuse you, you can stay away
from them.
But it's always better to be with a
jama'at of normal, regular, mainstream Muslims who
pray and fast because we all need support
and nobody can go without support.
If you put questions before this period of
time, put the question again because I haven't
seen it.
All right, this question said, Syria will not
have rest until a sign from Allah from
the sky yells follow this man and points
to al-Mahdi and that's in Kitab al
-Fitn.
And a lot of people were talking about,
no, Kitab al-Fitn by Nu'aym ibn
Hammad.
That's the book I was talking about a
couple episodes ago, live streams ago when I
couldn't remember his name.
His name is Nu'aym ibn Hammad.
He is al-Bukhari's teacher in hadith.
But he was of the view that signs
of the end of time, you can narrate
in them weak hadith.
Imam Ahmad was of a different view.
He said, shihad.
So his book has a lot of hadith
in it, maybe weak.
So you have to take it into account
because Imam Ahmad warns, if you say something
is a prophecy of the Prophet and the
opposite happens, you basically just said the Prophet
is a liar.
If it doesn't happen, that's okay because it
could happen later.
But the opposite can never happen and that's
the key.
But I didn't read that about Nu'aym
ibn Hammad.
Excuse me.
I didn't read that about Nu'aym ibn
Hammad.
But he had an amazing hadith that is
literally, I'm going to show it one day
as a PowerPoint.
I have a PowerPoint on this hadith.
Taking apart literally each line from his hadith
and showing how they apply to ISIS.
Like literally word for word, the whole hadith.
It's amazing.
That's what the hadith that Sheikh Abdul Kareem
Yahya, I think was talking about when he
said, a Sheikh in Yemen said, why are
you worried about the Senate?
The thing is right there in front of
you.
So yeah, this da'eef hadith doesn't mean
it can't be true.
Just mean it doesn't have the strongest chain.
But when we actually see it right in
front of us, then it was true.
It clearly was true.
Can a dream be actual reality as opposed
to symbols?
Yes.
There is a type of true dream, which
is exactly as it is.
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, I saw us
in making Umrah, right?
That was not a symbolic dream.
That was actually that the Sahaba will perform
Umrah.
And they did.
I did perform Umrah.
Two minutes of quick fire, then we break.
Then because I, oh, can we afford to
eat before Maghrib?
Yeah, yeah, maybe we can.
Okay, let's do quick fire, two minutes, and
then we eat until Maghrib.
Okay, so someone's asking, is it possible for
us to have a caliphate before al-Mahdi?
There's nothing by Sharia that indicates that it
will and nothing that forbids it from possibly
happening.
Someone's saying, do you know if in the
Maliki method, we can invest stocks in silver
slash gold mines?
And if so, do you have some recommendations?
No, I don't know.
I can't give you advice on that.
By the way, it's probably illegal.
I think it's illegal to give financial advice
in public without a certificate, without a license.
I found a man with good deen and
character, but I feel too shy to ask
him for marriage.
I have no father or brothers.
Should I wait for him to ask me?
Repeat.
She's saying she found a man with good
deen and character, but she's too shy to
ask him for marriage, and she doesn't have
any father or brothers.
Should I wait for him to ask me?
Well, you can ask somebody else that you
know that's related or that's in close to
you to signal to him, not propose right
away, but see if he's interested without it
being looking like you're asking.
What does Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala instruct
Ahlul Kitab to judge by the scriptures if
they're already corrupted?
Oh, that is a question that...
Actually, we talked about that the other day
in the perennialism live stream where the Mufassereen
said that it's...
What was it they called it?
Like ta'ajjub?
It's like, hold on a second.
Why are you asking the prophet?
You don't believe in him and you believe
the Torah is haqq, right?
Rule by your book.
It's almost like...
What's the right word for that?
Something...
I forgot what it's called.
Yeah, it's like ta'ajjub or it's like
a challenge almost or showing your inconsistency, right?
Secondly, by Sharia, by Sharia, dhimmis rule by
their book.
By Sharia, dhimmis rule by their book.
Two Yehud have a debate in the old
days in the Khilafah or in the old
Islamic countries like the Ottoman Empire back in
history and they come to an Islamic court.
The Muslim judges say, you go rule by
your book.
You get a rabbi to judge between you
because you're acting based upon your law.
How could you do tahakum by another law,
right?
That doesn't make any sense.
You two people in New Jersey go to
California and say, we had a dispute in
New Jersey.
California is going to say, go back to
New Jersey.
So even by Sharia, we are telling them,
go rule by yourselves.
When two Yehud have a problem or two
Nasara had a problem, go let your priest
rule over you or judge between you.
So there's no difference.
Just we believe it's a muharraf.
We believe the book is abrogated and even
besides abrogation, it's altered.
We also, Sharia requires them to judge between
themselves.
So the concept that the Sharia requests them
or demands them to judge amongst themselves does
not mean we believe it.
Likewise, marriage between a Muslim and a Jew
and Christian is lawful.
Female, it's lawful.
It doesn't mean that we believe in their
Aqidah is correct.
Next question.
Someone's asking, does fighting alongside non-Muslims in
jihad make one a disbeliever?
You mean if a non-Muslim makes jihad
with a Muslim?
You mean, I think they just mean war
by that.
Well, no, the question is, is the war
lawful or not?
That means Chile invades Argentina.
I'm in Chile.
I don't want my country invaded by Argentina.
You have the right to defend yourself.
That's part of defending your home.
Your home is just not this.
Your home is also North Brunswick and then
Middlesex County, then all of New Jersey, then
all the United States.
So if people were coming to invade or
can ruin your country, it's very much akin,
by analogy, to ruining your home.
And if you die protecting your home, you're
a shaheed.
It's a valid war.
Someone's asking, how can you tell that when
a person is using the sharia knowledge for
dunya purposes, particularly with people who are very
pious outwardly?
Repeat that question again.
How can you tell when someone's using the
sharia for dunya purposes, dunya purposes, especially with
people who look very pious?
We just have to look at the ruling
of what they're doing.
We can't judge their heart, but you just
look at the ruling.
When the Quran says, selling the word of
Allah for a price, for a low price,
it means lying about the religion for money,
to earn favor from somebody.
It doesn't mean selling services, religious services like
janazah services, teaching Quran for money, selling a
book, selling a class, having tuition.
That's not what's meant.
What's meant is telling lies, twisting the sharia
to please the wealthy or the influential so
you can win influence with them.
That's the meaning of selling your religion for
a low price.
Someone's saying, you talk about socializing a lot.
So what's your advice for people who never
socialized before?
How do we start?
It's very hard when you become an anti
-social person.
Yeah, but we can teach you one thing
at a time.
Go to the masjid and just smile, say
Assalamualaikum to people.
That's it.
That's your step one.
For the anti-social club members, you know
that t-shirt and everyone, that hoodie everyone
wears?
For anti-social club members, social club, now
to re-socialize, your first step, go to
the mosque.
The person, anytime someone's near you, just say,
smile, say Assalamualaikum.
That's it.
Then step two is going to be, Assalamualaikum.
Beautiful day out, right?
Stuff that's like neutral, right?
Little by little you learn and then listen
and watch other people how they socialize.
Some people, they really don't know.
The first time, it's a 15-minute conversation.
That's awkward, right?
Or from the first time, my dad died
when I was eight.
There's no way I can match this, right?
So sometimes you see this, that someone is
anti-social, trying to be social, then it
backfires badly.
So what happens?
They become more anti-social.
Because like, oh, the people are bad.
No, the people are not bad.
You are weird, right?
You're weird, right?
So you have to learn very slowly how
to socialize by saying innocent things, just saying
Assalamualaikum, not being too personal, not digging too
deep, stuff like that.
And a lot of people can teach you
this.
Next.
The chicken is waiting, yes it is, to
be eaten.
One more question.
Yeah, we're leaving these brothers hungry.
And they're travelers in Abu Sabeel's and eligible
for zakah, all of them.
Last question.
Let's look at, let's get a good one.
How do I, no, actually, that doesn't make
sense.
I'll just pick any because How to convince
parents that you are, to marry outside of
your culture.
How do I, Are you a man or
the woman?
It's a guy.
It's a guy?
I guess you do it and then invite
them, right?
Technically.
Yeah, technically a man can marry himself.
He doesn't have to.
But you have to convince your mom and
your dad.
I don't know, to be honest with you.
You're just going to have to be really,
really nice to them.
And hopefully they won't say no.
They have to reciprocate the niceness back.
Right?
This is a good one, Tanan, I think.
So someone's saying that his wife, him and
his wife moved to a remote town with
only 15,000 people.
They're the only Muslims who have studied mantiqah,
aqeedah, and I guess in general they've studied.
But forgetting how to talk to normal people,
not steeped in kalam.
Do you have any dawah advice?
Yeah, probably stop reading a little bit of
those books for a little bit and hang
out with the guys and listen, don't talk.
Just hang out, go to the guys gatherings
and listen, don't talk.
That's it.
And that'll help you re-socialize.
And then anything that they said, look it
up.
So you have a clue what they're talking
about.
You know that I met a brother and
this wasn't because he was in Taliban, but
he was steeped in ilm.
I'm not joking with you when I tell
you.
And he may be listening and get offended,
but I'm saying this because it's so interesting.
I can't not say it.
The guy did not know who Michael Jordan
was.
Now, Michael Jordan is not someone they were
rewarded to know about, right?
It's just a marker, right?
It's not like we're saying astaghfirullah, how could
you not know who Imam Bukhari is, right?
That's not the point.
The shahid here is like, this is a
very well-known name in all the world.
That must mean that you closed off so
much to the point that maybe it's too
much.
Like that's probably too much.
That's not, again, it's who cares who he
is in reality, but it's sort of a
sign that maybe there's too much being closed
off here, right?
Anyway, that brother is probably gonna see this
because we see him every Jummah, right?
But no, we gave him the treatment when
he didn't know who Michael Jordan was.
We gave him the treatment that day, right?
Listen, we're gonna log off, guys, and we're
gonna read this mysterious drones and manned aircraft
being flown lawfully over New Jersey.
What are we reporting so much on Syria?
They're coming now.
So did you hear this?
Shajib, yeah.
Drones that cannot be detected.
And even one guy, congressman, said they're Iranian.
And the Pentagon said, no, they're lawful.
We did it.
We're flying these drones.
Why are they flying those drones?
We'll see.
All right.
Subhanakallahumma bihamdik.
As-salamu alaykum.
As-salamu alaykum.