Suhaib Webb – Finding the Path Part Four Allah’s Love and Disruptive Moments
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So we praise Allah.
We send peace and blessings upon our beloved
messenger,
Muhammad upon his blessed family, his companions, and
those who follow them until the end of
time.
Welcome, everybody.
Great to see everyone back,
and some new faces. So why don't we
start by just some people introducing themselves, so
we can kinda warm up a little,
and get to know one another. So how
many people this is like your first
time. How many people? Oh,
So we don't wanna put you on the
spot, but if you want, please feel free
to, like, introduce yourself.
Yes.
Sima.
Sima. Dina. Dina. Nice to have you. Welcome.
So Dina's here.
First time.
Yes, sir.
Ahmed here is from an organization called Grassroots
Dawah. There's a lot of,
you know, disruptive Dawah,
in different ways.
Nice to have you, man. Welcome. You know
what? Anyone else would like to yes, ma'am?
Did you sign a waiver
before you came in?
So,
Chantel is a student at the law school.
Alhamdulillah. May Allah make it easy for you,
over there. I've been there a few times.
It's tough.
And, it's great to have you. Alhamdulillah.
Anyone else just, like, just wanna introduce themselves
because they're happy?
Yes, sir.
Ibrahim.
I saw you at the NJ event. Oh,
okay.
Yeah. Down in Jersey.
Went to Jersey a few weeks ago. It
was amazing. Masha'Allah. Cool community. Ibrahim, welcome.
Yes, sir.
As he revs up the startup,
that Allah will put Baraka Insha'Allah.
Anyone anyone else?
Okay. No. Fine.
Yes.
Please.
My name is Maria,
and,
I'm here from Jersey. Masha'Allah.
A
lot of people come from Jersey.
That's what's up.
Yes,
sir. My name is Majay.
It's my first
time. I'm in Brooklyn.
Okay.
Brooklyn.
Brother Mujahid from Brooklyn.
That's awesome, man. Yes, sir.
Awesome.
Yeah. Are your brothers from Turkey?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I watch man. So
I got a little Turkish. Some of the
old school Turkish. But, you know, that's that's
that's, like, this is a safe place where
you can, you know, have those moments, like,
we've all been there. Right? Anyone here speak
more than one language? I'm sure most of
us,
probably do. You know it's not easy.
Just learning cities, streets, towns. I found the
most difficult thing in Arabic was just like
talking.
You know, I could talk to them like
religious language and they're like, what? You know,
They're like,
who's this dude, man? Like,
where's the camera, man? So, hamdulillah, man. It's
great to have you guys here, man. From
Queens and Brooklyn.
It's very rare to find 2 friends,
from Queens and Brooklyn.
You figure that out later.
Unless they're on Steinway.
Any other
folks, like, just wanna introduce yourself, let people
know who you are. Yes, ma'am.
Jasmine from Jersey. Jasmine from Jersey. Jersey's taking
over, man. It's like a new borough.
It's been a while. Yeah. Okay.
I'm from Oklahoma. I don't know.
Yes, sir. My name is Hany. I'm also
from Jersey. So Hany, also from Jersey. Is
there anyone here from not from Jersey?
Yeah. Oh, okay.
The whole room is from Jersey, man.
Why you gotta why you gotta go in
like that?
You already took their sports teams, man. Yeah.
From Jersey. Okay. Please.
Jersey. Wow. So, like, you're gonna be on
our team. You're gonna be in Jersey.
Okay. Okay. Cool.
But, well, it is certainly, a blessing,
to see all of you. And
it's great to see, different demographics in the
audience,
and people who are here from different backgrounds,
different age groups.
That's really something that, the IC
is one of our foundational
ethos. Hold on a second, I gotta introduce
this guy. Hey man, come here man. Well,
don't come here. But, this is Taherim. He's
from Boston.
Did I do your did I do your
your nikah? I spoke at your wedding. I
spoke at your wedding. Yes.
But he's like a very dear friend. He
and his wife, he went to Saint John's,
but he's from Brooklyn. Even though he's from
Boston, we're gonna claim you as in being
from Brooklyn.
But a very good family friend. He and
his brother, Masha'Allah, and his parents. So they
just moved here. Your wife's here too. Where's
your wife? Masha'Allah, you wanna
let people know who you are, and you
know.
And,
they're like they're like amazing people, man. So
it's like great to see you both, man.
When he texts me, he's like, I moved
to New York. I was like, masha'Allah, come
around.
You know, there's like 2 2 moons now
in the sky, alhamdulillah. So it's it's we
welcome you inshallah.
And, anyone else Some people ask if they
can bring like non Muslim co workers, of
course.
Like beat somebody up, like check them at
the door. Kufi checking folks,
before they come, as well as their friends
or their neighbors. Like I know Imam Khaled,
one of the things that he really believes
in is fostering,
an opportunity for people,
and opportunities are very important. So inshallah, we'll
pick up, where we stepped off. We've been
going through,
just to kinda review some of the qualities
of the auliya of Allah.
Subhanahu wa ta'ala, those qualities of those people
that are close to God. And we went
through in the beginning, if you go on
YouTube, it's a shameless plug.
You can find the first few videos there
recorded. We talked about some of the presumptions
that Muslims tend to have around this idea
of being close to God. Like for example,
I'm not close to God. I can never
be close to God. I can never have
a relationship with Allah.
So the first lecture we had unpacked, like,
some of those
assumptions and ironed them out a little bit.
And then we started with the first quality,
which was which is to establish the obligations.
Right? If I wanna draw near to somebody
then I'll do what they love.
And we mentioned the famous hadith of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
where Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala is quoted by
the prophet saying, and nobody comes closer
to me with anything,
which is more beloved to me.
Than like what I've made obligatory.
So obligatory here means physically obligatory, as well
as like emotional components,
character,
how I treat people,
the 5 prayers for example, fasting the month
of Ramadan,
respecting my parents, respecting my spouse.
All those fall under, like, what are called.
So we unpacked that and we talked about
what that means.
And then we started to talk about something
that we we noticed people tend to miss
out on a lot, and that is when
they think about,
how come no one's asking me why I
have purple glasses with a price tag on
the side?
Thank you. I'm glad you asked because I
was so blind, I got the wrong glasses
in the grocery store. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't
see what glasses I got. It's kind of
it's kind of like Circular Logic, isn't it?
In a weird sort of way. But,
I'm gonna set I'm a trendsetter. You know
what I'm saying? You just wanna keep your
tag like that.
Right.
So we noted that sometimes we tend to
make this mistake,
that we
restrict the idea of religious knowledge just to,
like, cognition or physical practice.
We noticed in the Quran,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala certainly mentions that he
taught the prophet sallallahu wa sallam how to
look at the world. That's very important.
Like, we taught you what you didn't know.
You did not know how, like, to read
and write, Allah says to the prophet salayhi
wa sallam.
You know, recite.
So the prophet sallaihi wa sallam is ordered
to engage in, like, a deliberate act of
cognition.
So it's
prophet Ibrahim.
Allah says,
Like we showed Ibrahim
the secrets of the heavens and the earth
so that he could achieve certainty. Right? So
the idea of cognition is mentioned.
So we tend to focus on that. We
have classes and classes. We talk about, you
know, increasing our understanding of religion, which is
important. We learn religious obligations. We go to
Sunday school.
Those things happen. We have access to teachers,
inshallah. Online lectures, for example, and books.
And then the second thing we talked about
is we tend to think of knowledge in
in the realm of, like, perfecting our worship
and becoming, like, a better devotee to Allah.
And that's also mentioned in the Quran. Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
says Like, he talks about the prophet of
the salami. He said the prophet is a
perfect devotee of Allah.
Allah orders and commands prophet Muhammad
to worship until he dies.
So those 3, we tend to see
programmatically
a lot of things happening in our nonprofits,
a lot of opportunities for courses.
But the 3rd component is sometimes lost in
all of this,
And that is that Allah
teaches the prophet
the importance of having a religious EQ,
the capacity to love,
and the ability to forgive.
So we know that sayin Mohammed
he says,
right, as related by
I am a a merciful prophet.
Sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
Prophet who said, you know, if you love
someone, you should tell them you love them.
Salallahu alaihi wa sallam. So
to be in the office of prophecy
is also to be very mature with
one's feelings, to be in one's feelings.
I couldn't resist.
Right? But in a mature way.
And the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, Allah
says to him very early on in Mecca
when these people are
giving him a lot of problems.
You
know? Just like turn away from them and
just say
salaam. That doesn't mean that the prophet is
a pacifist because
within the EQ is also the need as
we'll talk about perhaps later to stand for
justice.
But the idea of redemption,
a redemptive prophet,
People can find forgiveness.
People have the opportunity to reform themselves.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, in order
to do that,
has to have a very high religious capacity
emotional capacity.
We don't talk about that a lot. So
we may find, you know, religious people are
very mean.
We may find religious people are like extremely
intolerant of things which they should be tolerant
of.
We find that people may, in fact, even
teach
or engage with people, or we may think
of
religious
teachers and instructors as people who are somehow
naturally very stern and tough.
That's why Al Razi, he says something very
powerful,
in
the word kul is actually an order because
it's not in the nature of the prophet
to say to someone, Yeah, Kafir. He's too
nice.
So, yeah Bani Abdul Mutaleb, yeah Bani Hashim,
like he'll call them by their tribal names,
he'll call them by their father's names,
He will call them by respectable
names. So it is though Al Razi said
that the default of the prophet is kindness.
So Allah has to command him, say kafir
to them.
And Ar Razi says this is a a
window into the psychology and the emotional maturity
of the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam.
So do we have also opportunities to grow
in our love?
Do we have opportunities to grow
in redemption?
The the the most difficult person I ever
had to forgive in my life was my
brother.
Because when I became Muslim he became a
professional
first round
guaranteed contract Abu Jahal.
Right? And you would think
easiest person to forgive is your brother
or your family. Right? I I learned something,
I said if I can't forgive my brother,
what kind of husband I'm gonna be?
If I can't forgive my brother when he
was asking me to forgive him, what kind
of father will I be? So we believe
that character is important. It's systemic.
And it doesn't mean you have to forgive
people. Maybe there's people that's done a lot
of things to you in your life, so
don't I'm not telling you what you have
to do.
It it it didn't happen overnight.
My brother invited me to his wedding. I
flew to Oklahoma, and he uninvited me when
I arrived
because I was Muslim.
So I said to my mother,
that's it. I'm out.
I'm done with this dude.
Like Musa and Khadr, man.
Like I'm not gonna tell you
the And then after a few years,
you know, it's your brother, man. Hit me
up, needed something. That's how family is. Right?
And they said, you know, I'm sorry, man.
I messed up. I said, I forgive you.
Don't worry about it. I forgive you because
of Islam.
But that doesn't mean I've forgiven everybody in
my life.
Right? That's just one example.
But he owned it and he he sought
redemption.
So the prophet sallaihi wa sallam,
we should also work on our EQ
and how we engage people. And if we're
gonna step into roles of religious education,
we need to be very sensitive to people.
So the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, I
mentioned it before,
everybody thinks that he loves them the most.
Nobody thinks he has like favorites
because the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam has
a high emotional IQ.
And that's something that I believe students of
knowledge, and imams, and content providers, and teachers
need to go through, not only personal counseling,
but also how to, like, how to be
good people, man.
How to step away if you feel you're
burning out.
How to pull back.
So the third component is that Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala teaches him character.
Emotional intelligence.
Allah says that the prophet with the believers
accepts excuses and forgives, man.
Ra'uuf
Rahim,
pardons. Pardons happen when someone does something wrong.
And then when he engages them and he
teaches them,
he's merciful to them.
So that took us now into the idea
of love.
And, you know,
people who are loved are happy and people
who give love are happy.
This is kinda how it works.
And we said that the word love is
from the word
have been hope, a seed meant, so it
grows.
Love just doesn't happen.
Love isn't an event.
It's not a trip to Chick Fil A,
you know.
It's not a, you know, fortnight.
It's not, you know, true detective 3, the
best series ever.
Right? It's
a process.
And there'll be seasons.
Sometimes it will be nice, sometimes it'll the
weather will be,
you know,
fitting for love, sometimes it won't be.
We have a lot to offer the world,
man, if we dig into what we have
to offer.
So
love is a seed that you plant,
and then it has to be looked after.
You can't give it too much water, don't
let your insecurities,
you know,
reign too much on that love, but also
can be neglected.
So the root word of love in Arabic
is from the same word as the seed,
that's the point I'm making.
And then we talked about the love of
Allah.
A year ago in this gathering,
I asked people
how many of you feel loved by Allah
and only one person raised their hand, man.
That's tough,
but that's real, like I appreciated it,
you know, but that's real.
So tonight what we're going to talk about
is
when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
said to his companions
there are a group of people
who
the martyrs and the prophets will envy.
He said there's no relationship between them. There's
no family relationship.
There's no monetary
relationship.
There's no agency in this relationship.
And the Sahaba they said who are they?
Like what did they do?
The prophet said the lovers.
SubhanAllah.
He said people who love
for the sake of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
So we're gonna try to unpack some of
this a little bit tonight, Insha'Allah,
and we'll continue.
This Thursday, we have a special program beyond
Bilal.
We already have, like, 250 people signed up,
So we won't have our halaqa, but make
sure to come through. It's supposed to be,
like, really, really
times 10.
So we consider Allah's love an extension of
his mercy.
So let's listen to some, like, Hadith about
Allah's rahma.
The prophet
said
Prophet said that Allah
has made mercy into a 100 parts,
and that he kept
99 of them with himself.
And he distributed one
of those aspects of mercy
to the earth.
And that's why people find like mercy amongst
themselves.
There was a scholar, Yahya,
Muad al Razi
was one of the early scholars who was
known for his saintly personality. He said,
He used to say in his dua,
oh my oh my god,
oh my lord,
you have based on this hadith, you have
distributed
one
part
of
mercy.
Like you honored and blessed us with that
that mercy.
That's my faith, Islam.
And if you were to actually
exercise the other
all of these 100 parts of mercy,
Like, then how could we ever not have
hope in you?
Like, if I see, like, this is just
one component of that rahmah,
what about if all of them are manifest
to us? So he, like, calibrates it into
a sense of hope
in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
It's important before we talk about something tonight,
the mystery of love.
Love is a mystery, man. I ask my
wife that every day, why you love me?
Still ain't got an answer, but,
that's that's my home, you know what I
mean. But I'm saying,
there there there tends to be
this idea,
because we live in a world which is
very very confusing.
We live in a world where Starbucks benefits
because prisons are publicly traded.
1983, the first prison in America was publicly
put on the market. 1986, people started to
trade shares in it. Avis rent a car,
Target,
Starbucks,
all invested in a prison industrial complex.
We never know that, like it's very easy
to be twisted in this world. It's tough,
man.
It's hard.
And sometimes the the idea of love has
been so commodified, I mean, we came out
of out of, Valentine's Day,
right?
Love has been commodified and kind of turned
into
very shallow meaning. It's not planted anymore.
It's processed love.
We need some of that whole foods love,
you know, some Aldi's love.
When we talk about the love of Allah,
it's very important that we realize it doesn't
come on our terms,
and that's hard to deal with.
Because most of the time within physical the
physical world,
you know, I wanna be loved how I
wanna be loved.
And I try to give love how someone
around me may want that love without sacrificing
myself.
That makes
sense.
But the greatest manifestation
of Allah's love
is to put someone on salat al Mustaqim.
That's tough.
That's why this famous supplication of the prophet,
I mentioned it before,
where Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says more or
less,
look at this worshiper of mine.
She keeps asking me for this,
but I know if I give it to
her it will corrupt her.
So because I love her, I kept it
from her.
That's tough.
That's why scholars say you can't study the
names of Allah like Allah is the giver
without studying what?
He's Al Mahdi and he's
Al Mana.
The one who gives and the one who
what?
Withholds.
One of my teachers used to say the
scariest subject is the names of Allah.
Because it forces me to like
balance myself, balance is hard.
But the greatest manifestation of Allah's love theologically
is when a person
is guided
to understanding
that they have no power except with
That's tough.
And that doesn't come necessarily,
you
know, in the way we want it. Maybe
it does come through like happiness and joy
and
something like mashallah
times 10.
Maybe there's other ways, the idea of,
you know,
Disruptive Hidiah.
We have the theory of Disruptive Education, people
vlogging man, talking about the Smithsonian and like
vlogging in the streets.
Disruptive education.
Hidayah oftentimes is disruptive. That's why the great
Urdu poet, he said,
if you doubt Allah's plan for you,
look at Musa.
He went to get fire, he came back
a prophet.
So we're gonna unpack a little
this kind of understanding of mercy
and the value of La ilaha illallah. And
how sometimes through our life,
Allah's love manifests itself
in disruptive
moments,
as well as,
you know, the salt bath moment. You know
the salt bath moment?
Yeah.
First, a very beautiful hadith, because when we
talk about La ilaha illallah,
we're talking about purpose.
Is synonymous with life.
It's the secret to everything that exists.
Nothing happens without Allah.
You would have no will. I would have
no will if it wasn't for God. Let's
not get into the but what? Let's let's
leave tough theological questions for Friday night, For
our study on trauma and pain.
So we believe that we're compelled to try
and make efforts,
but nothing happens without Allah.
That's the secret to everything.
Some scholars call
it You know, like the great secret.
What they mean by secret is something that
most people won't really recognize, most people won't
see.
That balance is everything.
The hadith of the prophet this isn't just
one. It's like really beautiful.
He said that a person on the day
of judgment will be brought
in front of God, and that person's deeds
will be presented in front of him.
And he said,
like 99 like books, like huge books of
this person's deeds. This is a metaphor, of
course.
And he said every one of these books,
like, will will will last to the horizon,
this hadith of Sahih from Al Hakim.
No matter how far he looks, he'll see
the pages of this text
that has his record of good and bad
deeds.
The prophet said, in it will be his
sins, like his mistakes.
And then,
they will be put on one scale.
Then a small piece of paper will be
put on another scale.
And this person is gonna be like freaking
out,
man. Like terrified,
because he saw his evil.
And then, like, it will be weighed and
that small piece of paper will be heavier,
and then he will be entered into state
of bliss and grace.
And then Allah will say to him, did
you wanna know, saw on that small piece
of paper? He say, yes.
We'll open up. It will say.
Muhammad
Rasoolallah. The prophet
The prophet said the best thing I and
any of the prophets before me ever said
was
So the purpose
is to get into that
that place of
what's called the Maqam of Ihsen
to worship Allah's, though you see him.
And it's not something hard,
like when a mother feels mercy to her
child, who has colic, for example.
So that mercy compels her to, like, sacrifice
or the father
sacrifice.
That's a form of
The is the person who acts
on
reciprocating
what they feel
their understanding of God's grace in their life.
They reciprocate that to people. So like we
have one sister here, she's I haven't seen
her in a while. She goes to Rikers
and teaches people. Like, she's compelled
by the blessings of Allah in her life
to to do something.
So it's not just about like spooky stuff,
you know. Like we like to go spooky,
because spooky is like a great red herring.
Because most of us can't go spooky.
But Mashallah, all of us can be nice
to people.
All of us can show like Ihsan to
people.
So,
that's why some of the scholars used to
say
that the most important knowledge
that the early Muslims, the companions and their
students
would focus on,
what do you think it was?
We think like, the most important thing to
them was?
Character.
Character. Okay, good.
Tawhid.
Tawhid is halas, everything is tawhid.
Good.
But turn that into
a policy.
I get the theory, Tawhid
How do they understand Tawhid?
Iman?
Iman, trusting.
Excellent.
They would want to live up to Islam.
Exactly.
So that's good. So,
Imam Al Maqdis he said,
Like what what they were busy with was
the knowledge of how to act
on Tawhid.
Understand,
be able to
somehow, you know, understand Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
is best they could through the prophet and
through Quran, hamdulillah.
But then, like, calibrate that, translate that into
actions.
You know, when I came back years ago
to to America, someone asked me to, like,
a question.
They wrote me this long email, and they
asked me at the end of the email,
like, what's the best translation of the Quran?
I wrote back one word, you.
Like where can I buy that? No, man.
You, like you.
You be a translation of Quran.
After 7 7 in England,
had a friend,
He lived in East London. It's an awesome
place.
And, he had a non Muslim neighbor who
after the the bombing, the the bus bombing,
he asked him for a translation of the
Quran.
So he gave this guy a translation of
the Quran.
And this guy, he did it in 2
weeks, and my friend, he's Desi, so he
did, like, the Quran party for him even
though he's not a Muslim. He had like
the chauvani and stuff
on, and they like, you know, started Ru'afsa
and like Gulab Jaman, like, this is awesome,
man. Like, they did the Quran. I was
like, you didn't do a Quran party
for me, man. So, so these are awesome
sweets.
So
at the Quran party,
he said to my friend,
I got a question about all this. Like,
I'm glad that we had the party,
but I have a question.
And he's like, what? He's like, where's the
second book?
Where's part 2?
I said, what? Said, yeah, like where's part
2 of the book that you gave me?
It lived in a Muslim neighborhood.
He said we don't have a book too.
He said no because the people in this
neighborhood, they don't live they don't they don't
live on this book.
They're reading a different book.
She said like at that moment I realized
like the power, the actions of the Muslim
community have
in people's lives.
So we're gonna talk about the purpose
as an extension of Allah's
love. Because
if the world was created for worship,
if the world's great secret is la ilaha
illallah,
then the greatest awakening that someone can have
is the ma'rifah of la ilaha illallah.
And that's why the Sufis,
for those of you in
social justice and stuff,
The first Maqam
in classical tasawaf,
the first station
that Imam Al Harari
wrote about in the 5th century
is being woke.
I was really sad when I saw like
Angela Rye and all these awesome people talking
about being woke,
and I was like, man,
when's a Muslim gonna talk about being woke?
Then I said, what about you dummy?
Like you know about it. Right? So I
did this podcast on it. But the first
the first station
is awakening.
And that awakening is considered the greatest,
one of the greatest manifestations
of Allah's love for a person.
And that empowers us to do one thing,
to calibrate
our guilt
as a sign of Allah's love.
Often times we just feel guilty, and then
it becomes counterproductive.
But we quoted Al Ghazari many times.
He said, guilt
is good
as long as it leads to hope.
Right? True guilt should lead to that
moment of needing,
not like retirement.
So we'll talk about different ways that Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
out of his love intervenes in the lives
of people
to get them
woke.
1st is by speaking to someone directly.
Of course, this can only happen to the
prophets and only happens to special type of
prophets.
So Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala says in
Surat Nisa, 4th chapter verse 164.
Allah spoke to Musa.
The second is Revelation.
So in the same chapter verse 163,
of course, this the first three are only
for prophets. So
indeed we have revealed to you
and to those prophets before you.
So it's pretty dope. Right? If if the
purpose of revelation
is to achieve this wokeness, when you and
I are holding the Quran in front of
our
eyes and we're reading it,
that we're understanding now that the Quran can
be at times a spiritual agitator.
At times it can be a spiritual
personal trainer. Give me one more mountain climber.
Right? You could do it.
So we frame our relationship with Quran. And
we have in this year in Ramadan, we
have really awesome program
on to the Quran, like how to ponder
on the Quran in English.
But
as I'm engaged in the Quran, I'm thinking
about it as
a social, political, economic,
spiritual
instigator,
but also motivator.
The third is through angels.
You think about what happened to sayna Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
I can't read.
So the first three,
as a framework,
feel free to differ, like don't worry.
I would advise not though. But, like, feel
free to but, like, scholars would say, of
course, this is the realm of, like, prophethood.
Right?
The 5th?
4th.
The 4th, sorry.
Inspiration.
A person's heart is inspired.
And this can happen to anybody.
So know that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam, he said, you know,
There are people that came in previous nations
before you who spoke the truth like their
hearts spoke the truth. They were inspired to
speak the truth.
Allah
inspired their soul.
He says,
And an example of this in the community
of the prophet is Sayna. The prophet like
Sayna Omar.
Sometimes would say things and later on the
Quran would agree with it.
There's a rule for this because we wanna
protect people from spiritual abuse, man. You know,
someone tells you, first of all, no one
should ever say
Like I'm somebody that god has given it
to.
Now obey me.
What?
Right?
So most scholars say like, the only time
we could consider this as being relevant or
real is if what someone is being inspired
to say agrees with the sacred
and agrees with the common sense of the
community.
So if I came tomorrow, I was like,
yeah, I had this inspiration that, you know,
you should all buy me Bitcoin mines. It's
kind of a problem.
But if I was like, you know, we
should all start fasting, like, twice a week.
Okay.
The third is cognition.
Allah
So like a fourth, an example would be
maybe someone is like
lost, man. They're out there.
But somewhere in their heart, it's like, yo
man, you need to pray.
You need to give back to Allah.
What the prophet called Lemma Tol Merik also,
there's a narration that says there's an angel
that's job is to inspire you.
Sound hadith. Yes? How does inspiration and cognition
differ?
We didn't explain cognition yet. Oh, I thought
cognition was what you're No. Still inspiration.
Wait. We're still under Yeah. Inspiration.
So
we haven't no. We haven't got to cognition.
I went back.
Be inspired.
I was inspired to go back.
So under inspiration, there's a hadith of the
prophet, salaam, I'm sorry. Thank you for stopping
me. There's a a narration of the prophet,
sallam, sound hadith that talks about and
how at the end of
there's someone calling you.
He said, this is lama to malik, meaning
an angel whose job is to
inspire you at times to do good,
to encourage you.
We talked about angels before last year, like
nobody can, with any degree of certainty, say
they met an angel, although angels are shape
shifters.
So maybe you're at Whole Foods and you're
shopping for, like, I don't know, half your
checkbook for an avocado.
And like, someone comes to you and they're
like, you know, you should pray Fajr.
And they walk away. Yeah. 5
5 avocados,
pray Fajr.
Then you go home, you're like, I met
an angel. No, you don't know but
maybe maybe not.
Right?
But the point is, like any higher we
consider from Allah
without affirming it without affirming it.
The next is cognition
and understanding.
And that means why you're engaged in reading
the Quran,
or you're studying sacred text, or you're praying,
and you have a higher level of understanding.
So my teacher from Senegal,
one time, he was teaching us the explanation
of Surat al Fatiha.
And he said to me, subhanAllah,
every time he was at that time almost
50. He said every time, you know, since
I reached an age where I could understand,
whenever I deeply studied Fatiha, I've always uncovered
something I didn't uncover before.
An example of this is Abu Bakr,
when the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam said,
there is a servant of Allah, Akhtarahu Allah,
Allah has given that person the choice between
the next life and this life.
And that person,
chose what what's with god. And then Abu
Bakr starts weeping.
And the Sahaba, they're like, what's wrong with
him?
Why is he weeping?
Because Abubakr understood the prophet was going to
what?
He's gonna die. So his level of understanding
is different than everyone in the room.
So the level of cognition that someone may
experience,
and that's why I tell people whenever you
read the Quran it's like an adventure man.
It's an opportunity.
It's a chance.
It's it's it's a place where you can
in any language by the way.
Right? Where someone has an opportunity
to discover something.
But like, what if I discover something that's
gonna change the ummah hashtag you're not that
important.
Like, just relax man. Like like like, we're
not none of us are that important. Right?
That's why we can go ask people like
Imam Khalid,
Sheikh Fayaz,
Sister Amira,
Aziza,
Hannah. You know, we have people here that
we can ask.
That's why I said before the imam's job
is tech support.
So hey, imam. Like, last night I was
reading the Quran,
and it's scary when you find people say
I went to a religious leader, I told
him I was reading the Quran, they're like
way haqq.
Like why are you reading Quran?
What it's supposed to read, man? Like what's
wrong with that? The majority of the Sahaba,
they weren't scholars.
They had profound understanding, but not to level
of scholarship.
There were only 30 Muftis
amongst the Sahaba
out of a 100,000.
So that moment of being able to have
clarity and understanding
is an opportunity for, alhamdulillah,
divine intervention.
Then there's also what's called general guidance.
And what that means is like the life
around us becomes
the canvas by which we see the signs
of Allah
outside of the text.
So over and over,
people
delve and think about the creation of the
heavens and the earth.
Allah, you didn't create this for nothing.
So general guidance meaning
outside of the sacred text.
In that regard,
if we look at the Quran and we
look at cognition in the Quran,
we find something very interesting.
We find there are times when people will
use, like, the the the Quraysh
will use
nature as a means to prove God doesn't
exist.
Then we'll find the believers,
the prophets
will use nature to show that God does
exist.
There are places in the Quran where Allah
says the Quran is a guide.
Quran
is a guide.
But for some people it's not gonna be
guidance.
It's the same book.
In fact, we find something really
Mudathir, Sultan Mudathir is a very important chapter.
It's very small it's very short, but Sultan
Mudathir is really about being
a spiritual agitator.
Oh, prophet who's covered,
you know, stand and warn and magnify your
lord and purify your heart.
Most scholars said, tiyab means kalb.
It's like purify your heart.
So it's about being a warner.
But then later on in the chapter, we
find the story,
who comes to the prophet sallaihi sallam
is taught, he hears a large portion of
Quran.
And then basically from verses 16 to verses
25,
his process of cognition is described in detail.
Allah says,
said he's very stubborn
talking about Alwaleed.
So
he will, like, eventually be in *. Then
he goes through his process of cognition.
He thought and he measured means intellectually
like what was engaging
him.
And like it's hard to translate this being
as like, man the worst, he thought the
worst to the point where he's dead.
Then he stopped and he thought even more.
And he goes through his process
in his his his,
you know, his assessment.
Man, it's just a statement of some guy
who's hit with magic.
So he sees the prophet, he engages the
prophet,
but his cognition
is different.
In the same chapter, a few verses later
also,
Allah mentions the number of the angels in
* as being 19.
Then he says, you know,
like, you know, this is for those people
who came before you from the prophets and
yourself and your followers.
This will increase their iman, their understanding of
these angels. But then there's other people,
who they're gonna read that and say, ah,
this just nonsense.
So there's the Quran and there's understanding and
engagement in cognition.
So it gave 2 examples. Right? We talked
about in the text, there's the text. Some
people are guided by it, some people aren't.
We talked about nature outside of the text,
some people are guided by it, some people
aren't.
The next is deep, man.
And that is that a person is able
to see beyond the physical.
Woah,
does that mean?
I knew he's gonna get spooky.
Nah.
And sometimes the opposite,
their physical faculties won't work.
That man isn't blind in his heart.
He's blind in his eyes.
But the aristocracy of Mecca are blind in
their heart, but they can see with what?
So there's something deeper there. In that chapter,
there's a message
about the material
versus the immaterial
versus the divine power
that reminds us
In the end of the 7th chapter,
Allah says
Allah says to the prophet you see the
people of Mecca, they're staring at you, but
they don't
see
you. Doesn't mean that they physically don't see
you.
It means that they don't recognize the purpose.
Who you are.
What you're supposed to be.
That's why when Omar becomes Muslim, Allah says
we resuscitated him. He was already alive.
He was dead
and we resuscitated
him in front of you.
Ibn Qayyam said, Omar wasn't physically dead,
but his faculties were dead.
So Allah brought him to life where he
saw the purpose.
That's why Allah says,
so people will see
beyond the material,
the purpose.
That's why when they asked Sayednari alaihi salam,
he said to them, you know, if I
saw
the heavens crack open, my iman is not
gonna increase.
If I saw the arsh,
my iman is not gonna increase.
He wasn't saying that to, like, boast, man.
He was saying that was called
Meaning that my heart saw this, not my
eyes.
Unfortunately,
because of the petrodollars that have been spilled
into our community,
we have to understand something,
that there's an effort to secularize us in
the name of religiosity.
So when you take away the art, when
you take away the experience, when you take
away the beauty, you take away the mercy,
when you take away the pastoral care, when
you take away the fact that Muslims are
on a monolith, when you take away the
diversity, what do you have left?
Brutality.
Has Shaltabhi said, the worst thing that a
Mufti can do When I was training to
be a Mufti, we studied this. The worst
thing that a Mufti can do is be
so harsh on the Muslims that he leads
them to disbelief.
And to be so soft that he leads
them with no deen.
So he said
So the job is to carry people like
a physician. If you over medicate, what happens
to the liver?
You have a problem, but if you under
medicate,
there'll be sickness. So he's saying, the job
of the yeah. The job of the teacher,
and the activist, and the faith worker
is to be a physician.
In order to be a physician, you have
to what?
You have to have an examination. You have
to know people.
So there's an effort within the Muslim world
in the name of hyperreligiosity,
and this is a trick of shaitan
to take away any of the warmth.
I told you this story. The first time
I was training,
my first day at work,
answering questions.
And, this girl came and she's dressed like
a religious person, you know, in Egypt. She
had on the style. Allah forgive me for
being, you know, someone who allowed my gaze
to dictate who someone is.
And she said to me
I have a friend and she like basically
met out with a dude.
And I was like,
what did you just say?
So, So I started going in
because I'm like young super sheikh.
Young super shek has a problem.
God forgive me for the damage I did
in that stage,
and then she was like,
I don't understand this guy.
There was a Mufti, he's a old man,
he was like,
stop.
God bless him.
Then he said to me,
this your first day here?
You know, when someone says that, you know,
it's like
it's like,
you never wanna hear that in a marriage,
you know what I mean? It's like, it's
1st down the job.
I say, yeah. He say, yeah. That's how
could that for him too.
He said, yeah. That's what I thought. He
said, all you you first dares, man. Y'all
come and do more damage than good, man.
Got the way, man. Sat down with her,
then he asked her the first question, are
you part of a sexually trafficked ring?
Yo, look where he took it.
And my righteous indignation,
doctor West.
I'm ready to try this woman, find her
guilty, and cast out of the community, and
feel good about it.
His thing is like, let me open up
these doors man to get you
out of this problem.
Without having to know. So he said to
her, how are you being sexually trafficked?
And she's like, no. And he's like, are
you are you forced into prostitution?
It's like,
no. Have you been sexually abused?
No.
She's like,
I did it.
And she started crying, man.
And then she said, like, what am I
she was very young. She said, what am
I gonna do? He said, you're gonna go
to Allah.
So Tajidini
Rab Bakhtawaba Rahima.
And he said to her, do you need
me to get you an appointment at the
hospital for any type of medical examination? Like
that's a Sheikh.
That's Lebron.
You know what I mean? That's like jumping
from the free throw line.
That's like Mozart.
That's genius. That's that's art. That's Picasso.
That's Pete Rock. That's Lupe.
Right? That's not just, hey Kalenda.
That's like,
I'm a try to help you.
Then after she left, he said to me,
he said I need to talk to you.
So I was like, alright this is my
first day at work, man.
And he was like, you know the books
that you've read the blood in those veins
is blue and cold,
but these books the blood is warm and
red.
You have to be different with them.
Right? I learned a lot like from that
moment, man.
And I know how religious people No, we
we can't just let people, Yeah. But then
you may break people and never come back.
It's the point of the Sheikh. You gotta
weigh when a guy urinates in the Prophet's
mosque.
The prophet understands, I gotta weigh who this
person is.
But we've been inspired by a hyper,
we have a problem with a taso of
which is like spiritually abusive and then we
have on the other end, the hyper liberalism
that takes any of the emotion out of
religion.
So it's just harsh and
tough.
There's a time to be tough of course,
but like
people need help man. People are suffering. Modernity
is a monster.
And in the name of reacting to modernity,
hyper literalism
has really led a lot of religious people
away from the deen and good people.
Where they don't even feel they're religious, where
they might be the best lover of Allah.
So the ability to see beyond
the material.
An authentic hadith. He said be careful of
the inside of the believer. They see with
the light of God.
In the Allah's light has cast itself on
the jahl and showed them the hakiqah.
Of course, that has to agree with
you know,
religious principles. Not like on a wild goose
chase like sitting on a mountain in Santa
Cruz and lighting blunts and saying you know,
the light has been shown to me.
Of course not. Going to Coachella like on
40 days, Jamat.
No. You ain't going to Coachella on 40
days, Jamat, brah.
But the idea is
to see beyond just the material.
The worst kind of Dua
is the dua which someone uses to self
serve themselves.
To feel that they're better than other people.
The next
is blessings.
Imam Malik was asked, what's the greatest blessing?
He said to do good. Like Allah has
blessed you to maintain goodness.
And as he used to say, the sign
of an accepted Hajj is that you don't
don't go back to the sin that you
did before the Hajj.
So the higher comes,
the good comes
and it continues to come and it's easy.
It's not hard.
It's not difficult.
I
remember when I converted, there was his brother
Masha'allah. He was Buddhist. He converted.
He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He's a really
cool guy, man.
And it was our 1st Ramadan together, and
I was in Tulsa, and he prayed the
whole night. So I started thinking man, this
is like, what kind of convert is this
man? He converted like a month ago. Homeboy's
praying all night, like, he knows all that
Quran.
Because he would just pray, like, he just
dropping rakats.
So I was like, man, I'm like horrible
convert dude. I like pray for 10 seconds.
It's like, Wa la sir Allah Akbar.
You know, how you start? Haameem Allah Akbar.
Because you can't say it, you can't say
it. Right?
So then like I went to him and
I was like, man like, man how did
you learn so much Quran and like such
a short time. He's like, no dude, I
just love Surat Al Khilaz dude.
I like the whole night you just praying
the.
He's like, yeah
You couldn't even say it right,
but like
a lover doesn't feel pain, man.
You know, a lover doesn't mind changing diapers
at night.
Lover doesn't mind, you know, staying up late
waiting on people to come home.
You know, like love
inspires.
So seeing that blessing.
The next,
so Allah will bless someone as a means
to wake them up.
We'll talk about this, inshallah on Friday.
The next is test and trauma.
Now we can frame our life when we
understand
the deep secret of life.
And the greatest
is
to Allah.
Maybe perhaps tests and trauma are means to
get me back on track, man.
People always say, do you think this happened
to me because I'm a bad person?
Like, no, I think this happened to you
because Allah wants you to come back to
him.
Like, but I'm so bad. I say, yeah,
but where's the first place you wanna run
when this happened
To Allah.
It's hard though. Like, I'm not saying like,
I wish I could just be the one
that gives blessings.
I mean, for real.
But sometimes we need to be made weak
in order to appreciate strength.
And sometimes we need to feel pain to
appreciate bliss.
It's how we are as people.
Yes.
If we get better at the attainment of
strength. So when
be tough because the namah, the blessing doesn't
is not eternal.
It's it's only a glimpse of a moment.
Do you possess
that or learn to possess a level of
toughness
over time? I have no idea. I'm still
trying to answer that question.
That's a life question.
Everybody heard what he said, like, how do
you learn to, like, translate sometimes all those
things? The the simplest way is that the
prophet said, trust Allah, like, have a good
suspicion.
All who wonder aren't lost.
Right? Maybe
and, like, there are some teachers don't anyone
could take this the wrong way, but, like,
when they became older, they're like, alhamdulillah that
I fell into this one sin
when I was younger because I learned compassion
because later on I ran into those sinners.
Like if I hadn't experienced it,
I wouldn't be able to treat or engage.
So it was like there was great mercy.
Ibn Qayyim said how many good deeds led
people to *? How many bad deeds led
people to heaven?
Sometimes like good, people get full of themselves.
So every once in a while they used
to say, arachma to Allah lilwali.
Like one of the blessings of God to
a great person is like sometimes they slip.
Not like
Bernie Madoff stuff, you know what I'm saying,
but like they slip. Right? They make mistakes.
They may make major mistakes.
To remind them that your religion doesn't rest
in your hands.
Your Iman doesn't rest in your hands.
Don't get that twisted.
And and we'll talk about
trauma on Friday. We continue we'll continue al
Munfarija.
What are some things we can do, inshallah,
we'll finish. Everybody's okay?
May Allah make us lovers inshallah
and loved.
What are some of the things that are
signs that Allah's love is like engaging our
life? What are some things we can know?
So divine intervention comes through test, through trials,
through success. We talked about other things that
may happen that are means to like push
us
to actualize the purpose.
To worship Allah as though you see him.
And there may be different levels of tests
and trials depending on where a person is.
Right?
But what are some signs? Number 1 is
that a person feels drawn to obedience and
caution.
So they stay away from the doubtful,
as best they can.
They care about worship, man.
One time I saw this lady, she was
talking to one of our teachers. She was
like, you know, I feel like my relationship
is so bad with Allah. I feel like
everything's falling apart. Like, I feel like I
have no relationship with Allah. I said, well,
you certainly care about something you don't have
a relationship with.
Then she said, oh, that's true.
Really?
You care about it.
Yeah. Fact that you are exhibiting that that
that kind of emotional attachment
obviously means,
it's important to you.
Quran says Allah loves the people who obey
him.
Struggle to obey him. Right?
The form is like a struggle to achieve
it.
Next is repentance.
Allah allows people to turn to him.
The Quran says
is the one who always returns, not just
once.
Not.
An example of this, perhaps some of our
sisters heard that you can't go to graveyards.
That's some nonsense, man.
People mention the hadith, not
Mozawar
is the one who goes all the time.
Like Taweb,
Fa'al.
So I'm always up in the grave to
the point where, like, I may be culting
it out.
But it didn't say, Zayirat.
And the Hadith that says women can't go
to the graveyard is daiif anyways. But this
authentic hadith and bukhari, some people the same
form as taweb, the one who always repents,
because The change in the word means it's
more intense. So it's the one who always
goes to the grave,
to the point where they neglect their life
and other things.
Not the one who goes
for Janazah or goes to say dua for
the family,
and so on and so forth. Say now
Abu Bakr, he kissed his wife after she
died. He washed her and kissed her. Now
we tell people they can't even see their
spouse after they die. In the name of
sucking all the emotion from the religion, in
the name of puritanical thought,
we turn away people's natural inclination to God.
One of my teachers, he told me the
example of this, I used to love biryani,
masha'Allah. Before I got married, man. Because then
it was like, yo brother, you eating too
much Biryani.
But who can eat too much Biryani?
Nobody.
Jackson Heights,
but kebab king baby.
But the chapli kebab is fire. But
the point is,
my teacher used to tell me like, you
like Biryani. Right? He's like, what if I
took Biryani and I shoved it in your
face?
Would you like Biryani?
I was like absolutely not. He was like,
well then what about Dean?
So
can I see my husband? He died. No.
You guys are divorced now after he died.
I've heard people tell women this.
What? I didn't divorce my husband. He he
died yesterday.
No, sister. I'm sorry. This is called a
spiritual talaq.
After death you
were Man,
that stuff would drive people out of the
religion man.
You tell you grab young brothers and, like,
give them, you know, you young brothers no
good, blah blah blah blah talk. That's gonna
drive them out of the religion.
You're gonna push Tibiryani in their face.
Whereas the dean as a shalatebi said,
be a doctor, be a physician,
treat people.
And also we we go after people that
you know,
they they wanna practice their religion in a
more passionate way. That's good.
They're not bad people.
Our community, that's one of the things that
came out of the Obama experience. A good
Muslim, bad Muslim.
That was structurally created.
That was structurally created through CVE.
So good Muslim, bad Muslim. Oh, sister got
on the Kaab, she must be a bad
Muslim. In America, if you got a niqab,
man,
the address that you get, may Allah bless
you.
Well, what do you think about it? I'm
not a woman, it's not my job to
tell women how to dress.
That's what I think about it.
I'm try I barely can dress myself.
I wore some black shoes with a brown
suit.
Yeah. Sorry.
You guys asked me about that.
I say, love all the believers until they
do you wrong.
Welcome all the believe what if they don't
have it, I don't care, I don't I
don't think about this stuff. These are grown
people. Well, what about the brothers, the dead
had beards, wearing a Michael Vick. Okay, Michael
Vick. Yeah. Maybe that's a bad team, but
still
the Eagles. But like,
I'm sorry. Yeah.
To each his own.
Well, you know, this brother walked in with
some Beats headphones, I'm sure, like you know
what I'm saying. He's listened to 21 savage
and blah blah blah blah. Like, maybe he's
in 20 1 out the boss dude. I
don't know, like that's not in my realm.
Why can't you just love people back to
God?
Why you gotta hate them out of it?
So,
Taweb is the one who constantly repents.
It's always coming back.
So that means if they're always coming back,
they're what?
Always find out. They're always making mistakes,
or they're always introspective.
So they're humble.
You learn a lot from that verse.
The third
is emulating the messenger of Allah, following the
sunnah.
Allah says
If you love Allah, follow me.
Allah will love you.
So emulating the prophet in character.
The 4th,
justice.
In fact, it's more than justice. We have
Arabs here, you can try to translate
is
justice.
Is like a level above justice, man.
Allah says have like
hyper justice.
Allah loves the people of justice.
The next is to
reciprocate the blessing of Allah to others.
Allah says
Allah loves those who show the Ihsan.
I like to translate it that way. People
say it's excellence.
It It means more than excellence. It means
to see Allah in your life and translate
that to others.
The next, resilience.
Resilience on what?
On the cause, man.
Resilience on the purpose.
That's tough.
It's hard.
You guys go do some research. I mean,
my my hope I think is this Friday
on
prison industrial complex.
So if corporations are making money off prisons,
are they conditioning certain components of
society to go to prison?
Since it's profitable.
What kind of country we live in, man?
Where it's an investment opportunity
to invest in a prison.
So if I can make money off prisons,
let me give them gangster rap.
Let me magnify being a drug dealer and
a murderer.
Let me give them death metal, dude.
The heck is death metal? If you like
death metal, no offense, I'm sure you're not
listening for that reason.
But the social conditioning of a community to
encourage
3 strikes,
3rd felony, the majority of people in this
country that are serving life sentences are doing
so for nonviolent crime.
Why are they there?
Target gotta have t shirts.
Like look into this stuff man, I'm not
some far
Left out there, you know what I mean?
I feel religiously compelled. I'm a moralist, I'm
not a liberal or conservative, I'm a moralist.
That's where I hope I could be,
and I'm not perfect at it. But that
kind of stuff man, that's a problem.
Like Rakim said, why they call it the
projects? Because it's a project.
What will happen to people?
If I'm someone who
is about resilience
and I'm living in a world where that
kind of stuff is being played out around
me, I better have a relationship with Quran,
man.
I have to have a strong relationship with
community
because I can get played.
Fake news.
The first example of fake news is Shaitan.
Allah doesn't want you to eat from the
tree because you'll live forever. That's fake news
Or you'll become an angel. Fake news.
What's the opposite?
Is to have a strong community, to be
loved and valued emotionally,
and to have a relationship with my faith
as best I can.
The next, and we'll finish, sorry we went
a little longer,
is trusting Allah.
Talk about that in the future.
The 8th is wholeness.
So I see religion as a whole.
So Allah loves those
and he loves
those who are internally pure and physically pure.
It's not just one or the other.
Yeah. So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says he
loves people who make Tawba, that's an internal
purity, but he also loves people who are
physically pure. So if I'm like super saintly
and my trash is all over my front
yard, and my house is a mess, and
I'm like super dirty,
you know, and I'm like purposely filthy,
I ain't got it right.
You know what I mean? If I'm on
time to pray, but I'm always late for
work,
there's something wrong there. Unless it's the r
train
or the l. The l is still open,
man.
The 9th is economic justice and purchase and
price. Oh,
We talk about that for a long time.
That's real theology. I tell you guys, when
I make dua, it's funny you say, oh,
Allah bless this country, bless Aameen,
Aameen. Aameen. Oh Allah, don't make us a
gentler fire.
Nobody says Aameen.
Oh, let us go 0 waste.
People don't say, I mean.
But when you do like the typical, you
know,
bless us all, I mean.
Right? Or you start to pray for stuff
that we really have to do, if we
say, I mean, then it's like,
working on that one.
They give you an
Right?
Let us refrain from injustice.
Amin. Right? Prophet used to make
You know, I seek refuge from being someone
who harms or is harmed.
It's both.
Misguiding or being misguided.
So
we can talk about that one maybe in
the future, but the prophet said that Allah
loves the person who is a business person,
who is compassionate and honest,
and a person of fidelity.
Pray on time.
So when asked the prophet, what's the most
beloved deed to
to pray on time?
Number 11, looking after the needs of others.
Allah loves those who look after others.
Number 12 is just slaying for the sake
of Allah.
It's how I translated it. Being successful and
working hard.
Being successful doesn't mean,
you know, I got everything, but just I'm
trying, working hard. Trying to trying to grind
it. Trying to get it. That's a better
way to translate
it. The prophet said that Allah loves the
strong believer.
Strength here means like who's trying to achieve.
The number 13 is to show
righteous
swagger. Meaning to be proud of Allah's blessings.
The prophet said that Allah loves
when Allah blesses somebody.
Like, Allah loves to see the signs of
his blessing on a person. That could be
through worship. That could be through public service.
That could be just like, yo, alhamdulillah, my
life is so good right now.
The 14th is to avoid
excess in this world and the cult of
opulence. Like, honestly believe it's like commendable to
buy used clothing, man.
Like for real.
The situation is such, you know, the global
economy,
what's happening to the environment, environmental resilience is
a form of tasoorwolf,
you know. Unless you live in a Muslim
country, you're getting your clothes made, masha'Allah.
But when that man came to the prophet
and said, tell me something I can do.
Allah will love me and the people will
love me.
And the prophet said be indifferent to opulence
and Allah will love you.
Be indifferent to what people have and people
will love you.
The next is to take the dispensation. When
Allah makes it easy, take it.
People don't like to do that.
Yeah, man. I'm getting ready to walk across
America. I'm a fast the whole time, dude.
Why why would you do that? He was
like, man, I'm going hard, bro.
Right?
The prophet said that Allah loves
that people take the rusah.
The pit people take when there's a legitimate
need for dispensation, they take it. The last
3, inshallah, we'll finish. Sorry, we went long
today.
Is to love others.
The prophet said that Allah said my love
is an obligation for those who love.
The 17th is to bring happiness to people.
Allah, what a deen man.
All these hadith are authentic.
Sometimes you quote these hadith like, is this
authentic? No, man. Be mean to people. Don't
love people.
17, to bring joy.
The Hadith says the most beloved act to
Allah. Is
the happiness that you bring to a fellow
Muslim. Yeah, Allah.
This hadith has 14 asanid, masha'Allah.
It came to our masheikh. Inshallah, we'll give
you when I do the 40 hadith, inshAllah,
we'll give Ijazah. Maybe also we'll go to
the Musa Salat and give Ijazah. But Ijazah
is not what we study.
But
The last is consistency.
There's more than this, but, like,
we have time.
And that is that Allah a sign of
Allah's love is that someone is consistent, someone
is bringing happiness to people,
someone is loving others, observing dispensation,
avoiding opulence,
extolling Allah's blessings in their life,
and so on and so forth. But the
hadith of Sayed Aisha,
in the prophet said, was asked, what is
the most beloved act to god?
And he said the most beloved act to
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the one which
is most consistent.
One of the narrations said, like, even if
it's like a small thing.
So I'm sure some of these things we
mentioned, like some of them we're doing,
some of them we're not doing. Most definitely,
we can't do them all
unless we're, like, super lucky.
But,
the ones that we're doing, we can try
to improve.
And over time, we can try to, like,
build our repertoire.
Next week, inshallah, we'll continue. Are there any
questions before we,
pray salah? Sorry that we went longer than
normal today. Yes, sir. Do you need to
know who that narrations about love? How do
you feel like they can, like, still stand
out as much in, like, you know, scholarly
tradition or, like, the topic of
or do you feel like
they do stand out, but is it because
of my journey or some other recent factor
that you've been?
I mean, love is love is something that's
talked about a lot in the classical tradition.
I mean, the imam ibn Hazm wrote a
book, Love of Pigeons.
He talks about these pigeons but he means
people.
And he talks about, like,
how they love each other. Anyone read that
that story about the guy that becomes a
cockroach?
Then he feels abandoned
by his whole family. It's kinda the opposite.
Now it's like love and pigeons.
As French a French writer, but, like, the
idea of love is deep. Ibuprokaim wrote a
book about love. Al Ghazali writes about love.
Theologians
so I don't know, man. I think I
think we're in a tough time. Right? And,
you know, people are trying their best
and the community tends to be fractured,
and there's a lot happening and I think
also the way we teach people,
we don't teach them EQ first.
We give people like a lot of religious
knowledge, sometimes they begin to argue and fight,
divide. Right?
There's one one lady, she reached out to
me. She's from a a country that was
like like how it was going through China
now.
And she's like, you know, I wanna come
back to Allah. Where should I start? I
was like, start with loving your mother
and start with your heart. And she's like,
what about music?
I was like, no, we're gonna get to
music. Right? But let's start in this process
of building the internals,
and then slowly get to that. We've kind
of inverted.
Yeah. We've kind of Exactly. Right? We've inverted
like I wish when I first became Muslim,
hamdulillah, I don't say if like that, but
like for the sake of teaching, like I
was lucky like my first teacher like he
loved me man.
You know, like I wish that experience,
you know. That's a very, it's super awesome
West African guy, man. Just like
made good mint tea and hang out and,
like, you know, taught us Quran.
I think that that there's a lot that
we lost.
And in America, you know, we don't have
as many teachers. Imams don't have time. There's
patriarchy. They don't spend time with people. There's
spiritual abuse.
All kind of crazy stuff happening, man. You
know? So communities have to be deliberate,
but it's out there.
Yes,
sir?
Yeah. I mean, I'm not I'm not a
relationship counselor, but personally, like, with my brother,
I gave the example earlier. Right? God bless
him. We cool now. We're cool, bro. I
see you.
It's probably blowing up Facebook, trolling me.
I mean I've always learned I I didn't
learn this when I was younger. I learned
this, my wife taught me this,
that
when people begin to hurt you, you need
to pull back.
Because that's not love anymore. You know what
I mean? When people begin to break you
down or ask you to change who you
are in ways that aren't the authentic you
or manipulate you or
that's where it's kinda even religious teachers,
they don't have that right.
That's why I'm like I'm out.
Or if it's gonna harm people around me.
It's hurting my life.
That's not like that's not balanced. Right? That's
not fair.
Anyone else? What do you guys do? Like
if you feel like, where do you draw
a line?
Could love someone to the point where they
begin to hurt you or harm you.
That's why I draw a line. Yes. You
just have to love them from a distance.
What does that mean? How do you love
someone from a distance? I mean, if
interacting with them is going to be negatively
affecting you, like, you can still have that
love for them, like, still pray for them
and all that, but, like, you just can't
interact with them 1 on 1 if that's
gonna be different. Sometimes loving people by stepping
back. Yeah. Wow.
That's powerful.
Yes.
So frame the relationship
on some
foundations.
Wow.
Okay.
Anyone else?
Any other questions before we pray, Isha, and
go home? It's great to see everybody. How's
everybody feeling?
Good.
How's everybody's week going so far?
Anyone, like, really struggling, you need dua? Anyone
need anything?
Don't be shy, you can hit us up
on the email here as well if you
need something.
Make sure you take care of your soul.
Make sure you're happy. New York's not a
good place to be sad in, man.
Right? Because you tell yourself, I'm supposed to
be happy. I'm in New York.
Why was so sad? And like, compounds the,
so we pray for those people, you know,
who may be going through some things. We're
here for you. If you need us, you
can reach out to us also.
We pray for you. Your
challenges Yes. You had your hand up. Sorry.
Yeah. Yeah. So, when we talk about, like,
the signs the first set of signs of
how Allah awakens people, and then you mentioned,
like, through
angels.
And you said that one is reserved for
prophets. Yeah. What about,
Maryann?
Yeah. I mean, I believe Maryann was a
prophet. You open that can of worms for
yourself.
There's a difference of opinion, of course, but
I believe that Miriam and,
even,
Khadr were prophets.
Yeah. Because
like we reveal to her. That's why ibn
Hazem has an essay on the fact that
Miriam people just differ on this. Right? This
is not like someone's going to * or
heaven. Right? But with my daughter, I prefer
telling my daughter, yeah, Miriam was a prophet.
And she's like, oh, okay.
I love Islam.
And that's a legitimate opinion. That's not like
something I'm just making up right. Yeah.