Sikander Hashmi – From Darkness to Light KMA Friday Message
AI: Summary ©
The importance of taking action when feeling hot or experiencing cold is emphasized in the church's teachings, including the need to be prepared by not hesitating and remembering God's plan. The difference between blessed and unaware of light is due to the use of the word "bringing light" in church's teachings, and parents should have true values to make decisions and avoid pitfalls. A tafsir session and parenting support groups are also mentioned.
AI: Summary ©
Hi,
Shala, we'll take a few moments to our
prayers, and we'll
continue.
So please feel free to turn on the
fans.
If you're feeling hot, sisters as well, please
turn on the fans. Do not hesitate
if the temperature gets a bit warm. And,
also, if I can ask the brothers to
please come forward and fill in all the
gaps, please.
Respected elders,
dear brothers and sisters,
my young friends,
We begin by praising Allah
the lord of the universe, the one who
is worthy of all praise.
And we begin by praising him and thanking
him for all of his blessings.
Indeed,
we can never be able to fully count
and enumerate and fully appreciate
all the blessings of Allah
Every once in a while, my brothers and
sisters,
Allah Almighty gives us a jolt,
Sometimes
individually,
sometimes as families,
and sometimes collectively.
These jolts that Allah
gives us
can be seen
either as tests
or as punishments, and this is
a question that often comes up
that
I I find myself in a difficult situation.
How do I know if it is a
test or if it is a punishment?
I often say that it really doesn't matter
which one it
is because what matters most is how we
respond.
And in both situations, the response should be
the same.
In reality, though, my brothers and sisters,
it may very well be that the effect
of the jolt,
the effect that the jolt has on us
may very well determine
if it was a test or a punishment.
So when we go through a challenging time,
a struggle,
we must ask ourselves,
did it lead us to becoming more humble
before Allah
Did it lead us to turn back to
Allah
Did it lead us
to make tawba and istighfar
to repent for our sins?
Did we become, as a result of that
challenge,
more righteous in deeds?
Were we patient
in bearing
the pain
or the fatigue that was associated with the
challenge?
Were we content
and accepting of the decree of Allah
Did we end up reflecting more and becoming
more grateful to Allah
for his blessings?
If we respond in this way,
it was a test, and we respond in
a way that is better, and we come
out
stronger and closer to Allah. Or
did we become angry at Allah,
unruly in word
and deed,
complaining about what happened to us,
showing discontentment with the decree of Allah
and in the process
becoming
disobedient
and more distant from Allah
If this is the outcome of the challenge
and the struggle,
then perhaps it was a punishment from
Allah My brothers and sisters, last weekend was
a long weekend,
one that I think many people were looking
forward to. Almost everyone had plans,
and almost none of those plans went according
to what we had planned.
And instead,
they went only the way that Allah
had planned.
Either our plans match
the plan of Allah
or Allah's plan takes precedence,
and we are the ones who have to
adapt. Allah never
has to adapt to our plans or the
plans or desires of anyone of his creation.
In all cases, we say
because we know
when that happens,
Allah's plan
is always
better for us
even if we can't understand
how.
The storm
and the resulting loss of power has many
lessons for us.
And, you know, we want to build the
habit
of reflecting on what is happening
and connecting it to ourselves and to Allah
Allah And this is part of mindfulness to
be aware of what we are going through
and what is actually happening.
The first thing we note, my brothers and
sisters,
is the fragility of life.
What do we note? The fragility of life.
When things are going well,
we think that we are or human beings
start thinking that they are independent,
that they are powerful,
and they are able to accomplish anything.
The sky is the limit. You can do
whatever you want. You write your own destiny.
It all depends on your power and your
physical power, your willpower, and your brains and
your strength.
One moment, we are enjoying
and living life the way we want to,
and within minutes, the situation has turned upside
down.
A tree
falls one way and has almost no impact
on anyone.
It falls the other way and someone loses
their life.
Property is damaged. Power lines are down, and
there is no power for almost a week
now in some places.
This is the fragility of life.
A person who was living their lives as
they wanted to, as they were planning to,
and within moments, a tree
through the command of Allah
changes their situation upside down within seconds.
As we say as we are taught to
say,
Allah
has decreed it, and what he has willed
has happened.
At any given moment, my brothers and sisters,
we are literally one or 2 steps away
from our lives turning upside down at any
given moment.
And thus, the importance of remembering Allah
of doing our morning and evening routines of
and remembering Allah
throughout our days,
especially offering our salah on time as properly
as possible
so that if it happens,
we are connected to to Allah
And, of course, taking
physical
means
to prepare reasonably
when appropriate
because this is also a part of our
deen to take reasonable measures
to be prepared. And the key
operative word here is reasonable.
Right? It is not to become obsessed
and become anxious
so that we try to take every measure
to protect ourselves.
And even then, Allah
can take us out in a moment
if he so wills. So taking reasonable means
to be reasonably prepared
for something
that might happen and that is in the
realm of possibility of happening to us.
This storm, my brothers and sisters, also reminds
us
of how many blessings we enjoy.
Electricity,
lights,
hot water,
refrigerators,
freezers, and the food that we store,
the perishable food that we store within,
heating,
air conditioning,
Internet access,
fuel,
all of these things we take for granted.
Every single one of these things, most people
will never think twice about
unless Allah
forces them to think about it.
And just one blessing being taken away within
a matter of minutes effectively
crippled so many people in businesses and society
in general.
Within a matter of minutes, just one of
the blessings taken away, and so many things
are gone.
On the other hand,
so much of the world
lives entire lives without these blessings.
People right now
who
children, adults, who have lived their entire lives
without any of these things.
Yes. There are fewer and fewer such people
in the world as the world, quote, unquote,
is or develops.
But the reality
is that there
are 100 of 1,000, millions of people who
have lived like this
in the past and continue to live like
this today
as well. So we learn from this that
the more blessed we are, the more vulnerable
we also become.
This is a very important point to remember
that as Allah
increases his blessings upon us,
we also, at the same time, become more
and more vulnerable
to having those blessings taken away from us.
And we are not accustomed
to living without those blessings.
So don't take these blessings
for granted.
My brothers and sisters,
I can't stop thinking about
the darkness that ensues when the lights are
out in an entire neighborhood
in an entire city, because it's different than
having the lights off. You can have the
lights off in your house. You can have
the lights off in your room. Right? But
it's not the same as having the lights
off in the entire neighborhood and in the
entire city. So I can't stop thinking about
that.
When the light pollution goes away and there's
complete
pitch darkness,
our homes,
domestic,
the places that
we are familiar with,
look so different when there are no lights.
They look so different when there are no
lights, when there's complete
darkness.
And this is the difference, my brothers and
sisters.
Right? You hold that thought of how it
feels to be in this place or be
inside your home and in your neighborhood
when there's complete darkness. And actually, the 1st
night, I think, it was cloudy, or the
1st couple of nights, it was cloudy. So
in fact, there still was some light
because some areas of the city had light,
and the light goes up in the sky,
and it reflects down. So it still wasn't
completely dark.
Right?
But think about the days when it was
completely dark.
So this is the difference, my brothers and
sisters,
between blessed between being blessed with iman, with
the light of iman, and being deprived
of
the light of iman. Allah
says,
And whoever Allah does not bless with light
will have no light.
Whoever Allah does not bless with light will
have no light.
And it's true literally in terms of lights.
Right? We see one house or one business
that has it, and next door, the street
next to it, the neighbor behind them, beside
them even has no lights. But the reference
here, of course, is not to
the lights in our homes,
but the the reference here is to the
nur of iman
which is the light of faith.
Spiritually, having true iman,
having proper complete iman
is like having the lights on.
No iman,
and the lights are off.
Having our spiritual lights
on means
being able
to navigate life effectively,
being able to make sense of things, being
able to distinguish between right and wrong,
being able to avoid pitfalls and dangers,
and knowing where we are and where we
are going,
not physically,
but spiritually.
Having that awareness.
Where am I right now,
and where am I heading?
Without spiritual lights, my brothers and sisters,
all of this becomes increasingly difficult, if not
impossible.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala tells us that it
is not in our hands to have this
light.
Allah says.
Allah
guides whoever he wills
to his light,
meaning to his guidance.
Now a person may not have this life,
may not be guided and say, well,
maybe Allah has not willed for me to
be guided and have this light, so therefore,
I don't.
But that is the wrong attitude because the
question rather should be,
why has Allah not chosen me to be
a bearer of this light?
Why has Allah
not found me
to be
deserving
and capable
of carrying this light and of receiving this
this light.
Allah
asks
Can the misguided be like those
whose hearts Allah has opened to Islam
so they are enlightened by their lord?
Right? So when a person
is guided by Allah
this their hearts have been opened
have been opened and made capable to receive
guidance, to receive the light from Allah
and thus that person is enlightened
by Allah
in terms of
their beliefs but also their thinking, their attitude,
their actions.
Allah
tells us in Surah Al Baqarah soon after
And I I swear I kept thinking of
these verses and especially this ayah as I
was living through the blackout.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is the guardian, is the wali
of the believers.
He brings them out of darkness
into light.
And as for those
who choose to disbelieve,
their guardians,
their
are false gods
who lead them out of light into darkness.
So if you side
with Allah
if you choose Allah
and Allah
chooses you,
then you are being guided
out of darkness into light.
But if you choose to reject and turn
away from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
then whatever you believe in and whatever you
follow, even if you say that you don't
believe in anything,
because not believing in anything is actually making
a choice which is to turn away from
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
then that belief, that choice, and whatever it
is that you're following
can never lead you into spiritual light. It
is actually leading you into spiritual darkness. May
Allah
protect us all.
He said that rarely
faith
begins
like a fragment of white in the heart.
Verily faith begins like a fragment of white
in the heart.
Each time faith increases in magnitude,
it increases that brightness.
When a person completes
their faith,
the entire heart is brightened.
Verily, hypocrisy begins like a fragment in the
heart. And each time hypocrisy increases in magnitude,
it
increases
darkened.
And he goes on to say that I
swear by Allah, if you were to split
open the heart of a believer,
you would find brightness, and if you were
to split open the heart of a hypocrite,
you would find darkness.
Finally, my brothers and sisters, this light from
Allah
guides a person
in many ways.
It is reported that the messenger of Allah,
sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam, said,
beware of the intuition of the believer. Why?
Verily, he sees
with the light of Allah, and then he
recited from
Then the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam recited
the verse that surely in this are signs
for those who contemplate. Now this hadith is
recorded
in Abu Dawood and may have some issues
with this chain of narration,
but many scholars have mentioned it in their
books of Tafsir and Ibn Qayyim Rahimahu
ta'ala.
He says
that it is a light
that Allah bestows
in the heart of his servant.
By which he distinguishes between truth
and falsehood.
It distinguishes between advantage
and disadvantage,
the honest and
the liar.
Ibra Bas
reported that he spent the night with the
messenger of Allah salallahu alaihi wa sallam, and
he woke up.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam cleansed his
teeth.
He performed wudu,
and the call to prayer, the adhan, was
announced, and he went out for salah while
he was saying, while he was making this
dua. Allah
The
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was supplicating,
oh Allah,
place light in my heart and light on
my tongue.
Place light in my hearing and light in
my seeing.
Place light behind
me and light in front of me. Place
light above me and light below me. Oh,
Allah grant me light, and we ask Allah
to grant us this light as well. We
ask Allah
to
protect
us from all types of darkness. We ask
Allah
to illuminate us physically,
emotionally, mentally, spiritually
in this world and especially in the hereafter.
A
couple of announcements.
So, first of all,
tonight, we will be having
a tafsir session,
divine words, and we will be,
discussing
the, lessons
from the story of prophet Lut alayhis salaam.
So all brothers and sisters, young and old,
are invited to attend
in person, but also will be streamed online
as well. So this will be after at
8:45,
and the livestream will probably start around 9
PM,
We also have a,
a new parenting support group starting,
and the first session will be or each
session will be on the 1st Wednesday of
each month,
so starting from June,
and the,
from June 1st.
And
the topic,
for the first session will be,
the terminology used at schools. Right? There's many,
terms, many words that are used,
in,
in society and used in schools. Educators
are using it. We're getting it, you know,
in our emails, but sometimes we may not
be sure as to what these terms are
actually meaning, and some of those terms are
those that, you know, are are, you know,
bringing a lot of discussion as well. So
we will be having