Suhaib Webb – Finding the Path Part Two Three Ways to Harvest Your Soul
AI: Summary ©
The speakers stress the importance of finding the truth in a situation and finding evidence to uncover it. They stress the need for unity, understanding, and faith in love in the transformation of the world. They emphasize the importance of trusting and faith in love in the transformation of the world.
AI: Summary ©
So we begin with praise Allah, peace and
blessings upon our beloved Messenger, Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam,
upon his family, his companions, and those who
follow them until the end of time. We're
gonna start with a a quote, and I'm
just gonna ask you to think about it,
internalize it for a second,
and
then ask you kinda what you think it
means within,
our current context. This is a statement actually
of,
it's kinda like a statement
of scholars that was said
a really long time ago.
And, they said,
like, if what is sought
is, like, hidden from you.
And the evidences that will direct you to
what you seek, and here they mean in
a relationship with God.
So the context is like
having a relationship with faith.
So they said,
So, like, what you seek
is hidden from you. Same word as hijab.
It's covered.
And like the evidences that will help you
find what's covered are missing.
And there's a lot of differences
amongst people.
Then it's gonna be hard to find the
truth.
Like the truth will be hard to be
uncovered.
And like when that situation exists, like when
it's hard to find the truth, people like
will become confused.
So again, I'll repeat the statement, and
you can just kind of internalize it for
a second. I'm sorry. Trying to hurry so
we can get to halal dining.
Because that's definitely not mahjub,
or mahkud inshallah.
But he said
So, like, what you seek
is covered. It's hidden from you. You're not
able to find it.
And like, things that would direct you to
that
are not there, like you can think about
it in a number of ways. Like a
hint will be like,
you don't have access to like ask people
about your religion.
It's not
like a proper, like We don't look at
our community even though we say we're a
system like an Umma. We don't function as
a system.
So, like, one of the systems would be,
like,
access to scholarship.
Right?
And then there's like a lot of differences.
So in those kind of situations,
it's hard to find the truth,
to be uncovered if you will.
And when that happens, people become confused.
So it'll take, like, maybe 20 or 30
seconds just to kinda think about it. And
then
those of you who would like to share
kind of a reflection,
contextualize with where we are now.
That I think will be like a really
good way
to start. What we plan to do in
the future is like you would find this
in front of you when you walked in
and you'll be with a group, and, like,
you would unpack this together.
But today,
we didn't have time. We don't have time.
Maybe next time.
So again, the statement
says,
Right? So what you seek is hidden from
you and evidence to it are missing.
And
there's a lot of differences
in those type in that type of context,
the truth won't be uncovered.
And when that happens, people will become confused.
Alright. So let's get some reflections inshallah
on
how that just made you feel. There's like
no wrong right or wrong answer. Like, you
don't you don't have to agree with it.
Like, don't worry.
But let's get some thoughts
on that statement.
Yes, ma'am. So
I was thinking about the part where,
if there's a lot of dispute about it,
then it'll be hard to find the truth.
And
out of nowhere, it just reminded me of
when I was in high school, and starting
to get more into practicing for myself. And
so, I didn't really
have people or, like, a teacher to ask
these questions to, so I was googling a
lot of it. And those websites can mess
you up because, like, every other hit, it
will say something different about the same thing
and it's it's really easy to get confused
and not really know what you're doing.
Yeah. And it may, like, even be inadvertent.
Right? It's it's It may well, but then
you just make it really hard for people
to like practice.
It's hard to answer questions for people that
you don't know. Especially like social, cultural issues,
marriage, conversion.
But that's true. There's like the stage of,
like, religiosity where someone's like really passionate,
and then that passion drives them.
And and, you know, admittedly I can speak
on my own behalf. Like when I was
religiously passionate, I didn't really know what to
look for.
So you're very it's like very vulnerable. It's
a very vulnerable situation. And then
there's a lot of stuff out there.
And you get like conflicting answers.
It becomes
hard. It becomes confusing.
Nice. Yes,
sir.
Yeah.
I mean, the farther that we are from
the prophetic model, the greater disunity you are
going to experience.
That's reality. Right? So one of my teachers
used to say like, everybody's worried about the
sunnah of
their clothes,
the sunnah, like how they look,
but nobody's worried about the wajib of unity.
He didn't mean it like to disregard those
things. He was just saying, like, there's this,
like,
lack of priorities.
1 of the great scholars, he came into
a mosque, and the people were fighting over
to pray tar we are not, like 20
rakat or 8 rakat. At the end of
the day, we're
all concerned. We don't have
one basic goal, which is worship Allah.
And towards the end of that process,
it dispel all those
conflicts and problems that we see in our
communities.
Yeah. It helps, like, put them in the
right place. Like, conflict will happen. Differences are
gonna happen. Like, we have unity without uniformity.
Right?
A scholar said, like, just because we come
at things from different ways within the framework
of, like, orthodoxy
It doesn't necessitate that our outcome, like, our
goal is different.
It may come
to it from different perspectives. I may take
the train, you may take Uber, but we're
still going to, like, the same place.
Anything else?
Yes, ma'am.
So like a developmental process. Right? Where maybe
maybe not having answers is
the answer. Right? In fulfilling us and making
us more.
Whole There was once a teacher in hadith
that
a friend of mine, he went to study
with him in Skanderia
from Cairo, so like he took a train.
And when he got there the teacher wasn't
there, and then he was like really upset,
but then he met someone who said like
but what did you learn on the way?
Like what did you learn on the way
back?
There's this article on the medium called The
Power of Doing Nothing. It's like a really
good article.
It says like try to do nothing and
see what you uncover in yourself. Like we're
so like I'm doing this, I'm doing this,
I'm doing this.
So sometimes not doing something is
like
finding ourselves. Right?
And that process is important.
And there there is a famous hadith of
the prophet that we'll talk about in the
future,
where Allah says basically like
if I gave this person the answers, it
would lead them astray.
Like if I gave them the understanding at
this time, it it wouldn't be good for
them.
If I made them rich at this time,
that richness would corrupt them if I allowed
them to be poor. So like we trust
the wisdom. Right? Trust the process. Masha'Allah, it's
beautiful.
So, alhamdulillah,
what I decided to do,
just based on some feedback I got from
people
is
to just put a text together that talks
about
the signs of the friends of Allah.
Because if we live in an age where,
you know, there's confusion, and we live in
an age where, like the religious discourse,
it's either overly curated or it's chaotic.
It's like either overly curated,
can't engage, we can't be critical thinkers,
or it's like just chaos.
And that's a tough situation to be in.
So what I decided to do is to
take
the different narrations of the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam
about
the steps to Allah Subhanahu Ta'ala.
Like really practical things, man.
So that like we can have clarity
in our lives. We can have clarity in
the face of confusion. Because
what happens when
we lose focus
is we lose our sense of agency.
And when we lose our sense of agency,
we begin to blame
like others. And we begin to live like
vicariously through others.
But like for example, maybe
like you're a very helpful person.
So you hear this hadith that says like,
those who are helpful are close to God.
Like it's gonna give you like a You're
gonna feel good, man.
You're not gonna be feeling like, oh man.
Because one of the goals of, like, secularism
is very smug
and and modernity is cold.
It's not warm.
Right? The the metaphor of homeless people
being in Wall Street is kind of emblematic
of modernity
and postmodernity.
Like, brutality.
Right? And a faithless life,
we believe is a cold
a cold place.
So that's a battle that we all struggle
with because we're exposed like we all live
in that world. We can't escape that world.
So sometimes,
when we're faced with those kind of challenges,
it's just good to hear like, man, that's
actually a quality I have.
Or like, that's something I can work on.
So through this this semester, inshallah, we're gonna
go through that. And then on Thursday, we're
gonna start another class. It's just a textbook.
It's a classical textbook on theology,
at 7. And if you we'll have sign
up information inshallah. We can send you like
the broke PDF, not the fixed PDF
for for the class on Thursday.
So first of all, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
in
the 20,
second chapter of the Quran
verse 257,
basically says that anyone who believes is a
friend of God. So everyone here insha'Allah believes,
man,
to a certain level.
So we have a very important principle in
in in our tradition. This is really important
because these kind of things protect us from
like spiritual abuse.
Like we were talking about earlier, the initial
stages of like religiosity
or religious conversion,
I'm really vulnerable.
I'm a very vulnerable person.
And
like I remember, this is how vulnerable I
was. Like my first
my first Ramadan,
like that's the first time I started going
to the mosque,
was in Ramadan. It was next to the
university that I went to.
So like, of course at Maghrib it's like
packed because we had iftar,
and it was a Desi community, so the
iftar was like, masha'Allah, man. It's like really
really nice food.
And,
keema and paratha, like all that stuff. Right?
So it would like students were just like
flooding the masjid. And then I'm this convert,
I was a freshman in college, and I
was saying like, man, Masha, look how adherent
and passionate Muslims are.
And then after Ramadan,
the the brother, like, took me to the
mosque and there was nobody there.
So I said to myself, oh, they must
have gone to the other mosque.
Like that's how naive I was. I was
like, oh, the party's at the other masjid.
Like the party ain't popping here. It's at
Masjid salaam is now popping. It's like, Masjid
Al
Right? That's like how naive I was.
So
this principle will protect us from looking for
the holy man or holy woman
that we're gonna live vicariously through, that's gonna
take us by the hand and drop us
off at the throne of God,
either through a pool or on our own.
That's some nonsense, man. That's one of the
greatest tricks of shaitan,
is that he causes us to forget our
own agency. And I'm using agency in the
sense of within the realm of submission to
God. Right?
Not absolute agency.
But what happens is we start to look
for saviors.
But we're not a community that believes in
that. We're a community that believes, first of
all, the only savior is Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
And then secondly, I gotta work for it.
There is no no one can carry the
burden of your soul.
At the end of Surat Baqarah.
You know Allah says that upon every soul
is what it earns.
And and there's something interesting here in Arabic,
if it's complicated I'm sorry, but it's really
cool.
The form
it has a ta and you can hear
it. Ta always means to seek something.
Like I seek Allah's forgiveness.
The word means to seek.
So if you put it in that form,
it means like, I'm super seeking.
Because the word already means to what?
To seek. You don't have Like I don't
know if you have something like this in
English.
So honestly, I can say
like I earned something. That's how you say
it in Arabic. Nobody in Arabic says
In fact, if you go to a dictionary
you can't find that word.
It's a word the Quran invented.
That's why Imam Al Razi said, and that's
why we should be careful of panic. You
don't know about me?
So
so to affirm that everyone who's is like
is a waliyah of Allah.
But it is not allowed to affirm it
specifically for someone, meaning like the certain, like,
degree of their wiliya. Like this person is
so amazing, masha'Allah.
This person has reached a great station with
God.
Allah
says
no
Quran.
Allah knows
who fears him.
And oftentimes we confuse this with fashion and
filters.
Right? Imam Abu Hanifa Rahim Hola one time
is a great scholar. He was sitting in
mosque and this guy walked in. He had
a big turban, nice flowing stove. He had
he looked the part.
And and then he when he came, Abu
Hanifa was sitting down and when Abu Hanifa
saw him, he stood up like, oh man,
snap. It was like Sheikalur.
So he got to Sheikalur going and then
the guy asked a really ridiculous question. You
guys can move that if you want to
as well.
It's I'm pro choice. It's up to you.
I don't I don't have a right to
tell women how to how how to sit
and where to put themselves, so I'm just
letting you know. So, Abu Hanifa,
he
he he realized like, man, I was deceived
by how he looked.
Because when he asked a question, he asked
like a really bad question, like a very
unethical question.
Ahmed Chopin is a great Egyptian poet.
He he has a story about this, that
we shouldn't get played by appearances
or degrees, it's okay, or
ejazet or
anything like that.
We we
we know people by living with them, man.
Like we know people by
how they really are.
Until that time we assume the best, but
we don't make ourselves vulnerable to get played.
We have to be very careful.
So Ahmed Shoki, he says it's, like, really
funny in Arabic. He says,
He said, you know, one day the fox
came out dressed like a
Sheikh.
And this fox, like he started walking through
the village and he was like, oh people
fear Allah.
You know, the fox talking to the other
animals. You know,
oh animals fear Allah.
Come back to God. I'm a fox.
Yeah. Repent and like seek Allah's forgiveness.
Then he said,
and can you please ask the rooster
to call the adhan in my mosque at
Fajr?
Because like what's a fox
gonna do with the rooster of
fajr?
They ain't gonna pray.
They're gonna pray Janazah.
And leave the Hinns alone, let them flourish.
Because we are a people of zud.
We don't need dunya.
Just let these fat hens run around my
lair.
And at
the end, Shirki says,
mistaken as the one who thinks for one
day a fox had religion.
So like,
we need to be very careful
of
either way, like looking down on people
in a way that's unhealthy
or also
putting people in a place
where
it's unhealthy, like it allows that imbalance where
we're vulnerable and we can be hurt.
And that happened to the Sahaba
in the second chapter of the Quran.
Allah said, you know, because this man, he
came to the Sahaba in Medina and he
had the lingo.
He had the style
and they thought it was a great person,
but then he burned their crops.
So he was actually like from the Quraysh.
He was someone trying to harm them, but
he played the part.
So in general, we should have a good
assumption of people,
but at the same time with everybody we
should have like limits, man.
Healthy limits.
Yes. How would we understand,
I think relevant to this discussion, the quote
that scholars are inheritors of profit, and we
understand profit have a certain station, and I
think some people use that to kind of
elevate certain people in certain ways.
Yeah. But what did they inherit from the
prophets? They didn't inherit
perfection. They inherited their knowledge.
Right? We didn't say they inherited el isma,
and so we don't believe that they're perfect.
To believe that they have prophetic knowledge, and
we know that there's etiquettes. We talked about
it last year. Ghazari
mentions the etiquettes of knowledge. The etiquettes of
that inheritance.
And one of them is I shouldn't become
a cult member,
or someone takes advantage of me,
or someone in the name of haram,
in the name of their spiritual state justifies
being wrong.
Right? Those are the etiquettes of knowledge.
So there's a difference between, like, what the
inheritance is,
which is knowledge,
and then also respect should be earned.
Right? Like,
we don't really know each other here.
So when the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam
dies,
what what did the Sahaba ask about when
they come to say to Aisha?
What did they ask him ask her?
They asked her,
how did he treat you
and his family?
Because that's the one thing that they they
didn't know about.
And she said, kanafi ikhitmati ahlii. He used
to serve us.
So we believe that everyone it's very beautiful
and you should like that's something that at
times can make us feel responsible like,
don't do that, man. You're a friend of
God. But then there's other times where I
may be broken and I'm hurting, and I'm
I'm trying to come back, and I remind
myself like, you know, you say La ilaha
illallah and you're trying,
then there's that relationship. So it's a very
beautiful thing.
It's very reciprocal,
but it protects us also from
looking down on people. Right?
And also like embellishing people's noble qualities.
Just be normal. If people ask how should
we act, just be normal. Just be who
you are. Like if I'm around people that
force me to curate myself in a way
that I'm not being the true me,
then that's not a situation I should be
in.
Our scholars when they commented on this verse,
this is so cool man. Allah is the
Waleed.
The word wali means to be close to
something. So like we say,
Beit wali al bayt bayti, like the house
is next to my house.
Like that's the literal meaning.
So the idea is that something has
like like they're so close that they almost
touch.
So it's like a metaphor. The
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
is that nearness.
How do you think
when the scholars
of Tafsir from the early companions
and, like, the early generations
when they were asked
about what does it mean that Allah is
your wali.
How do you think to explain that?
Like, what do you think the first thing
that came to their mind like, came to
them was?
Like, you know, when they were when they
were asked by someone, like, what does it
mean Allah is, like, my?
How do you think they explained it?
Yes? Like a friend?
Friend is close.
Beautiful.
Why do you say that?
Okay. So you're like cheating back there. Alright.
It's cool. No problem. We'll give you we'll
give you a
that's awesome though. That's that's that's what you
thought it meant. Yes, sir.
Homeboy?
That that that's your embellishment. Homeboy? Okay. Home
deity, maybe.
Home deity to avoid
the problematic aspect of it. Okay.
Nice.
Yes, ma'am.
Protector. Some of them actually said protector. Yes.
Yes, ma'am.
Companion? That's beautiful.
Yeah. Some of them said that.
The the one who looks after things for
them. Yes, sir? Overseer? Like an overseer, so
that's like what I just said. Nice. Nice.
Imam Al Baghawi, he's a great scholar. He
said he loves you.
Subhanahu Wa'ala, man, it's beautiful.
Most of them their response was love.
Like Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has
extended divine love to them.
We we believe that
achieving wilayah
is not something that should be hard
in the sense of improving. So we believe
that there's a basis of that relationship, that
friendship with God.
Muhammad Rasoolallah.
Just that struggle. It doesn't mean you gotta
say it perfectly,
like, oh, I have to like, you know,
I have to have like some kind of
sense of gnosis when I say it. Whoever
worships Allah for a feeling, worships the feeling.
Talked about that before.
And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says in numerous
places in the Quran,
like, he created people weak.
Allah is Kareem,
the one who accepts the struggle.
So
one of the things that's important, and we
mentioned this last year,
is like everything we're talking about should be
understood in moderation.
We tend to like go to like really
far out places. The moderation can be subjective.
Right? But that subjectiveness is what God has
given you the ability to understand.
But there's a general pattern of orthodoxy that
we'll talk about in the future.
But we believe that the beginning of this
relationship starts with faith.
Muhammad
And it is improved
with taqwa,
and it is weakened with sin. So there's
a part of it that's always there.
That's the part of
my iman.
And then my taqwa, my ability
to obey God and avoid evil,
that's always in flux. Like, every single day,
you know, we we may do better, we
may struggle.
So there's a component of taqwa that's like
foundational.
Excuse me. That's foundational. That relationship with God,
that friendship.
Then there's a component which is in flux,
and that's my practice,
my adherence,
my passion.
So there's a poem, he says,
which means, like,
to us, this relationship with the most merciful,
is reached with taqwa, meaning obedience and avoiding
evil
and faith.
And some people's
opinion was that
the foundation, as I said earlier,
is iman.
So, like, if iman is there,
it's solid.
And then
observing and avoiding sin and increasing obedience, it
fulfills this this idea of wilayah. So we
understand it in 2 parts.
One part is like theology,
belief.
Another part is practice
and adherence.
And in the middle, emotions,
feelings.
And all of the believers.
And all the believers we believe, regardless
of where they are in taqwa,
right, their heart and their practice
are
And then, like, of course, how we become
better in that taqwa is to increase our
submission
and our obedience to Allah.
And then, of course, like studying and reflecting
on scripture
and practicing scripture.
Last time, I'm just reviewing because I know
a lot of people didn't know, like, what
we went through, and then we're gonna add
some things tonight.
We said that there are, like,
some foundational
qualities.
Imam al Qushayri,
he said there are like foundational qualities
that
should kind
of revolve through your life.
That are signs of, like, working on improving
taqwa. So what we're gonna talk about is
iman,
and we're gonna study iman again on Thursdays
in detail.
And then we're gonna talk about those practices
of taqwa,
like charity, standing up for justice,
environmental resilience.
All those things fall under taqwa. I mean,
there's a person
who will be Muslim
in the sound Hadith who will be punished
in the grave, and he will be at
he will ask like, why are you punishing
me? They'll say
Like, you saw oppression and you didn't stop
it.
So we wanna expand
the idea of taqwa.
Not to just be like this kind of
myopic vision of like, I'm in the mosque,
I'm praying.
I mean, if you're in the mosque and
the world around you is falling apart, eventually
your mosque is gonna fall apart.
So there are 7 kind of qualities. What
what he said are
the Hasa'il Saba.
Imam al Qusayri
says these are, like, the 7,
like like,
things that should be stored in in your
life. You should find them every once in
a while, like, you run into them.
The first
is Sidq,
is truthfulness.
If you're like a truthful person.
And and truthfulness
has like 4 components.
Number 1 is that I'm true in my
heart.
I'm true in what I say.
I'm true in what I do, and then
I'm true in my dedications.
And truth in my dedication implies submission and
humility.
And the process
says,
be truthful
because truthfulness brings
piety,
bir, righteousness,
purity.
Doesn't mean, like, the
the kind of fake piety that people exhibit.
Means to be, like, real, man.
One scholar said, I would rather be around
a truthful sinner than a fake saint.
Because these are truthful.
They're honest.
So honesty and integrity.
And and there's a reason why maybe our
communities struggle to be truthful, because we can't
be vulnerable with each other.
Like, we can't talk about our pain.
We can't even talk about our successes. I
remember
one time I was at a person's house,
and I'm not saying this to make fun
of anybody, but it was weird. And they
had this really, really nice TV back in
the days when, like, they first came out
and they were on the wall. And you're
like, wow, that TV's on the wall.
And then, like, they had people coming over,
so they covered the TV, man.
So I
thought, again, the naive convert, oh, those people
must be like mad religious
and if they see a TV,
this is Tasvir,
this is like idolatry,
and then they left. And I was like,
Masha Allah, again,
those people are so pious man, like, thinking
about TV.
And then he was like, la la la
la la la la. We're scared they're gonna
crack the TV
with the evil
eye.
I was like, what's the evil eye? That's
a whole another conversation to be had. Right?
But like,
really? Like, you don't trust people to see
your TV? Like, dang. What about your cat?
Like,
you know, like, there there's a a problem
in us
and that's because I believe I mean, overseas,
first of all, we can't judge anyone overseas,
man. The level of autocratic dictatorships, Western intervention,
western hegemony, I mean, everyone there gets a
pass.
We need to talk about us here.
Right?
Western
exceptionalism can also be extended by the western
Ummah,
which is rooted kind of in, like, white
supremacy and stuff. Whereas like, let's just talk
about in this room, in this place,
just like caring for each other.
And and curating over time, it has to
be curated in a healthy way,
a place of trust, man.
So I can't be honest
if I can't be real.
And that's why when people get in relationships,
like, man, I ain't gonna tell her that
I like this. I'm gonna change this. I'm
gonna I'm gonna change this for him. I'm
not gonna say anything. That's a bad sign.
You wanna be with the person that you
can communicate your realness to.
That's why dua is so important. At that
moment, I can communicate
my honesty to God.
This is where I am. It's okay in
your dua to say, God, I don't understand
it.
Get it. Help me to get it.
So truthfulness.
But truthfulness is an outcome of a place
of trust.
That's why the prophet is Amin
before he's.
He's trusted,
then he can function as a prophet.
The second quality he said
is is like strategically
you know how people do meal preparation?
That's what I see on Instagram nowadays. I
think they're trying to tell me something.
Meal preparation. Meal preparation.
Right? That and baby stuff.
And I said, these people are listening to
us. Alexa.
Yeah.
But to
means like
meal prepping your worship.
Like
like, scheduling it.
Facilitating your relationship. So, like, if I know
Fadriel is, like, really early, then I'm not
gonna binge watch The Office because we know
that's where we all end up on Netflix
anyways.
I'm not gonna binge watch The Office till,
like, 4 in the morning
and then be like, man, I don't know
why I'm miss Fodger, man.
I mean, why why are you thinking miss
Fodger? And who You hanging out with Dwight.
Right?
Where if I wanna make the I'm
gonna, like, plan for it.
So he means like, people take it seriously.
So like before Ramadan,
people always give the khutba about how to
welcome Ramadan
after Ramadan started.
No. Like the week before
or 2 weeks before. Then you wanna get
people like in so that's what he means
by tasabbu.
The third
is ma'rifah,
and that's a longer discussion. We've talked about
it before, but that means, like, knowledge coupled
with experience.
So I I'm learning, like, I'm I'm, you
know, in an active state of trying to
learn about my religion,
and I'm learning, and we say learning is
what I can practice and live.
And then I couple that with the backdrop,
the stage of my life.
So Allah is merciful.
How can I be merciful in his creation?
That's marifa.
The next is
sitting with someone
he says
like sitting with someone who knows God. Like
that's pretty hard nowadays.
So I would say
sitting with someone
who can motivate us
and help us in our spiritual trajectory.
That could be a group like mentorship. That
could be a group of people.
After that is a strong support network,
like a peer group.
Like, if you think about it. Right? If
you think about, like,
the level that it takes
to pull this off.
Like, to be a good person.
Right? And to be, like, on a spiritual
trajectory
in a very spiritually cold anemic world.
Like, I need people to help me.
And I need to also and by by
by the way, he means this also in
the sense of being reciprocal. Like, you're being
helped, but you're a helper.
You're seeking advice, but you're there to advise
others if they need it.
If, like, he seeks your advice, she seeks
your advice, you're there for them if you
know.
The next is, like,
penance and rep like, being aware of my
shortcomings and and seeking forgiveness is still far.
After that is being
I think about how I translate this,
averse to opulence.
If I get it, Alhamdulillah,
but like if I didn't get I don't
know. Like yesterday, if the Celtics lost to
the Nets. Right?
I shouldn't write, like, this is a total
disaster.
Like, that's not a total disaster.
That's basketball.
Right? A total disaster is like, you
know, losing an arm.
Something like intrinsic. Intrinsic to me.
So he's like
staying away from what's called a
means
like, unneeded excess,
and not allowing that to create my value.
So I'm I'm aware of what's intrinsic to
me.
What's that show we keep talking about?
No.
Maria Kondo.
Right?
When she says like,
the last straw is to tell them to
do what?
To get rid of what?
What's not like really important to you? And
they start like crying over like,
you know, like, Atari t shirts and stuff.
Because it's really it's my wife looked at
me, I was like, go look at me.
Right? I'm not ready for this. But like,
it really tells you a lot about yourself
and where your attachments are. Right? Although there's
some interesting social
critic critique that I show.
And then the last is to to
frame
my
life within the trajectory of the hereafter.
So like you see yourself as like Bilbo,
but you're headed to Jannah. You see yourself
as like,
you know,
Rabia Al Aduiyah, the great female saint, who's,
like, traveling to Allah.
So my life is that travel.
So everything else are like rest stops, man.
So the idea of spiritual trajectory.
That's why the akhirah is mentioned on almost
every page of the Quran.
Almost every page of the Quran, the hereafter
is there.
Because, like, we forget.
So
I'm able to because you know the irony
is that if I live for the world,
I can't live for the hereafter.
Like if I live for this world solely
as a narcissist,
I can't live for the hereafter.
But if I live for the hereafter,
I have to live for what?
I have to live for this world.
Because in order to be successful in the
hereafter,
I've had to do certain things here that
are
tied to responsibility.
Tied to being a good person. Tied to
being a good citizen. Tied to being a
good student.
Tied to being a steward of justice, tied
tied to being a good family member, a
good neighbor, good coworker.
So the irony of people who live only
for the dunya,
is that they're not whole man.
But when I live for Akira,
Yani, in in the way of ideally prophetic
living,
right,
then I have to
observe certain things in this world
that are important.
And that's why we say
All I give us good in this life
and good in the next life. When I
was in Egypt, the sheikh say,
and he like the dunya is like the
bridge to the
Like, you know?
Someone had their hand up somewhere.
Okay. Awesome.
Then he said there are really 3 core
disciplines that will help you
focus on these qualities? And this is where
we stopped last time.
These are, like, practices that we should observe.
These were practices of our ancestors. These were
like things that they did regularly
that we've kind of,
like, we've been through a lot as a
community, man. So a lot of stuff has
happened to Muslims, man.
And
as an extension of the Islamophobia in this
country, it's still, that's like the new remixed
iteration of this nonsense.
So the first
is hunger.
And what he means by hunger is fasting.
He doesn't mean, like,
hunger to the point where someone's physically harmed.
But what he means is like,
in here hunger could have 2 meanings, because
these people were deep.
The first meaning of course is like to
fast,
but also to be hungry for Allah.
One of our teachers used to say to
us, you know, you start Ramadan
hungry for food,
and you're in Ramadan hungry for Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
So,
you know, once,
twice, maybe 3 times a month,
sometimes maybe here. I know on Mondays my
father's like an awesome Iftar here.
Fast,
if you can.
And maybe if you can't fast because of
like blood sugar issues,
or you can fast from something else. Like,
fast from like, I don't know,
Fortnite.
Whatever. Like, I don't know what's out there
nowadays. Fast from something. Like, pull back.
The second is silence.
Again, like, read the article in the medium.
It's a really good article. Right? The power
of doing nothing. When I first saw it,
I got offended. I was like, what the
heck? Do nothing.
You know?
The old Protestant work ethic ethic kicked in
from back in the days. Do nothing?
But then I started reading it, I was
like,
yeah. It's kinda like when you're on a
treadmill treadmill, you're just like on the treadmill
and you're not listening to anything. You're just
on the treadmill and you're just walking and
you come your mind just kinda like we
did that as children. We don't do that
enough as adults. But you said the power
of doing nothing. The power of doing nothing.
I'll try to post it on Facebook, shameless
plug.
And the third is solitude.
Take some time out to, like, decalibrate.
And the best solitude is, of course, like
praying at night,
spending time before fajr. The best examples of
all these are the sunnah.
So the prophet he wasn't silent to the
point where it was awkward,
but he experienced moments of silence where he
would be in meditation.
Solitude, the process, and we know Prophet had
started with a cave.
Right? In order to serve humanity,
he experienced isolation.
Imam Ibn Tata Allah scanned that he said
means
dig your soul in a deep earth.
Meaning, like, take time out for
for that.
He said because what hasn't been dug in
healthy healthy soil
won't ripen and won't harvest. Like,
sometimes
and it's hard. New York City's no joke.
Right? It's hard. And maybe it's different. Like,
we can't go like we're in the mountains
in Tibet in New York.
But there are different ways we can experience
solitude.
You had you had your hand up, sorry.
So silence, he meant here, like, even amongst
people, be a good listener.
Like, I'll be honest though, in my marriage,
like, I love my wife, my wife's my
best friend. We could do a drop out
together inshallah.
But we wouldn't.
But like, I'm a talker.
So in the beginning, I talked so much,
I wouldn't hear things.
So I had to learn
right?
I had to learn
that listening was the best form of communication.
You know what I mean? So, like, that's
what he means by silence. It means also,
like, be present.
So it's not just like a selfish form
of silence where I'm alone,
Because that's easy.
The greatest form of silence, which is a
real good quality,
is to be a great listener.
So that's that's that's a great question.
And like, when when we listen to people
man, they feel valued. Right?
We're able to
like, really invest in what they say.
That's very powerful.
So
silos could be
and I would challenge all of you to
like extend these to other areas. Right? You
don't want to restrict it because he doesn't
know your life. He doesn't know my life.
So like silence would mean
presence.
Presence is a gift. We all saw
Kung Fu Panda. Right? That's why they call
it a present. It's a gift, that turtle.
The shek turtle.
So here, it's like
being there.
That's why the Sahaba in the Quran was
the first thing to say,
Well, I thought, like, he heard.
I saw this interview with Matt Damon and
some some black women,
and like he was just like talking over
them. They were trying to talk about race.
And one of them, she was like, can
you like appreciate me by being silent, man?
You're a white guy in the room.
But
he wasn't able to now he lives in
Brooklyn Heights. He wasn't able to, like, frame
that the best form of communication at that
time would have been what?
To be silent. So that's what he's saying
here. It's like a higher level
of being able to communicate
without being loquacious. Right? And then solitude means,
like,
take time out to heal your wounds.
I I think I mentioned the book last
time, The Resilient Clinician. That's a good book,
man.
Because we have this idea like,
you know,
and then we break ourselves and broken people
break people.
Now let's move on to some of the
first steps,
Insha'Allah,
and the first step in this
kind of
path to God. Like, I want you to
think about this week.
Like, see yourself in this path and just
struggle. I remember when I first became Muslim,
there was this brother. He used to live
by the Masjid.
So they told me, go visit him, and,
like because I was that hot convert. They
said, go visit him and yell at him,
Like the convert yell, you know, that passionate
convert yell.
So I went over there. I started talking
to him. He has a really beautiful brother
from
from Bangalore.
And he was like, man, I haven't prayed
in, like, 13 years, man.
I was like, we can pray now.
He's like, what do you mean? I was
like, we can pray Asar right now.
And he was like,
there's a lot. Want me to pray Asar?
I was like,
I mean, I think he does. I can't
tell you, but we're obviously thinking about it
for a reason. So, like, celestially, it must
have been preordained before creation that we're gonna
have this conversation. So, yeah. I think Allah
wants us to pray Asar.
And then we prayed Assur,
and then the brother, he started crying.
And he said to me, man, like, I
drink, man.
I was like, I didn't ask you what
you drink.
I just came to say hi.
Then he was like, do you think it's
okay
if I just start with Asr,
Like for the next year? I was like,
yeah, hamdullah.
Were you praying Asr before? He's like, no.
I was like, okay. We'll just start with
Asr. It's
like, through college, I would see him.
He would say to me like, now I'm
on Dor, man. Like I asked the door.
Then after a while he was like,
Y'all know what the last one was.
You know what I wanna guess?
Fudger. Right?
But like through college, he just slowly made
incremental steps.
So what's the first step? Like, where should
we start?
There's a very beautiful tradition of our beloved
Messenger, Mohammed, peace be upon him,
That basically we'll read it and then we'll
we'll we'll mention a few more things and
then we'll stop.
But basically, it's a very beautiful tradition. And
we know that it's really beautiful because this
is one of those special hadith where the
prophet is quoting God.
So it's Hadith Qudsi.
People may ask, like, what's the difference between
Hadith Qudsi and the Quran? Why you can't
pray with Hadith Qudsi? You're like
You
can't pray with it. Number 2 is you
don't have to make,
right, according to the predominant opinion
to read hadith Qudsi.
But that the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Salam,
he said that Allah who subhanahu wa ta'ala
said,
whoever
declares war with 1 of my
I have declared war against them.
And then here's the part that we wanna
think about.
And nobody,
the one who gave you your eyes, the
one who gave you your heart, the one
who gave you your limbs,
The one who gave you that good
old school
cry for people that you love.
The one who gave you the ability to
see children and and feel weak.
The one who gave you the ability to
care for people
and to feel
is saying and imagine that's just like a
drop of celestial love.
He's saying that
nobody comes closer to me with anything more
beloved to me
than what I have made
obligatory.
So that's the first step.
It's to struggle
to establish the obligatory.
Obligatory doesn't just mean prayer, like maybe I
have problems with my family.
Maybe I have problems
in other areas of my life.
And it doesn't mean, as I said earlier
with the example of the guy in college,
that you have to fix them all at
once.
That's how shaitan tricks us like, yo, you're
gonna change all that right now? No, that
ain't happening. You're like, oh, okay. I'm done.
Fine.
I give up. So who
won? I I didn't become Muslim for 3
years. I actually believed in Islam when I
was 15 because I was like, I can't
stop all the stuff I'm doing.
Like I thought I had to stop everything.
Then I met these guys, they're like, no
man, like, can like work on it incrementally.
That's, oh, okay. I'm ready then. Because I
knew, like, I wasn't ready. There's no way
I would have been able to maintain it.
So what it means here is, start with
the obligation.
Start with what you know to be non
negotiable
in that relationship with
Allah.
Maybe it's like that God just like praying
once a day, once a week.
Maybe it's just coming to the halakah.
Maybe it's trying to fix a relationship with
our parents,
or our spouse, or our, some of us
old folks, kids.
But start with something
that you and I know
is like obligatory. When I when I first
started memorizing Quran, and I told you this
story, I couldn't memorize. So I thought like,
man, white people are the devil. It's like
what minister Farrakhan said, I can't memorize the
Quran. I was like really confused, man.
So I went to my teacher,
Sheik Abu Mustafa from Senegal,
and I said to him,
man, I can't even remember. It's so like,
man, I think Jin got me, man. Because
I can't remember this, like,
It's like really hard. So I said, sheikh,
like I can't memorize even 4 verses.
First thing he said is, how's your relationship
with your mom?
I was like, man, why you asked me
that?
You know, he's like, no, no, brother.
How's your relationship with your mom?
I was like, it's broke.
He's like, that's why you can't memorize the
Quran. And my mother we're not talking about
now abuse. We're not talking about people that
have violated us. That's a very different discussion.
Right? We're talking about
the normal
stuff.
Right? Because there are times where being away
from people who are hurting us is the
fart.
And no one should say I can abuse
you because it's fart. That's
some craziness.
But in the normal, my mom and I
just didn't get along.
So the first thing he said to me
was like, how's that relationship?
I said, it's not it's not healthy.
He's like, well, man. I was like, she's
a kaffir, blah blah blah blah. I wasn't
going hard. She's not on the feet of
the Salaf. He's like, how is your mom
gonna be a Salaf?
Like, how does she know about that? I
was like, I don't know. One time I
told my mother like stop listening to music.
She's like, I'm not Muslim.
Right? And I was like, I was like,
yeah, that's true.
I was hardcore, but
the point is like, he told me like,
he didn't tell me the other stuff that
was going on in my life as a
new,
you know, convert to Islam. There was other
things that could have been worked on. He's
like, I need you to work on that.
So like each and every one of us,
there are things that we know we can
just try to work on. And just that
intention to try to work on it and
make little
effort, You know, one of the scholars, he
said if you're you should never fear
losing something for God because he'll always give
you something better.
That's like hard. Sometimes like, no, I like
it. But there's that process.
So the first is to think about the
idea
of focusing on the fard.
And the here means 3 things or 4.
Acts of worship,
right?
Belief,
acts of
worship.
My spiritual state
and my behavior.
Like 4 areas.
Those 4 areas we find, like certain things
are obligatory.
So like an act of worship,
like standing up for justice,
praying.
A belief,
god is
1.
An internal obligation,
attachments that may
be unhealthy for me.
And then behavior,
it's like I treat people.
Can you imagine?
Man, my wife sent this to me today.
That at the seventh Street Station,
a woman, a mother,
she died because she was trying to carry
her baby
and the, the stroller, and like nobody helped
her and she fell on the stairs and
died.
Like, this is the apex of Western
society?
Can't help people?
So just like,
we don't have to accomplish, like,
visions of grander moments in any of these
things. Right?
Like, I prayed tahajid on one leg for
10 weeks. That's not worth ain't nobody asking
you to do that, man.
Right?
Sorry. And that's not allowed anyways. The point
is, I read in the book one time,
they say Abu Hanifa prayed for 30 years
to Hajid with one leg. It's like, why
would he have 2 legs? Like, why would
he pray?
Right? It's kinda awkward. Rahimu Hola, it's not
a true story.
But it means, like, basic successes, man.
Like maybe I'm angry, so let me address
the causes of my anger. Can I actually
change those things? If I can't change them,
that's a different issue.
Maybe I'm jealous. Let me work on jealousy.
Maybe I'm not empathetic to people.
Maybe I'm insecure to the point where, like,
it really
is is harming my potential to shine.
Just things like
that. Just things like that.
Those are
things that we should work on.
So
belief,
acts of worship,
spirituality,
and behavior. And behavior is like inward and
outward. That's why it's called akhlaq and holok.
Right? Because that's the inner and the outer,
how I carry myself.
And as we go through this together,
gonna start to unpack different aspects of these
things.
For example, next week,
we'll talk about love.
And within that, I should look at my
life within the lens of Shol Tafatija.
Because the end of Shol Tafatiyha
provides me a GPS to understand
those four things and how I'm doing.
Number 1 is,
those who know and act.
So I learn and then I I I
try my best.
I may not be perfect, but I try
my best.
Exactly.
Number 2.
Interesting. That's kinda cool. Number 2
is
people who know but don't don't even try.
And the third is,
like, I don't know, but I try.
So I act out of, like, emotion and
passion, but it's not tethered.
Yeah. So, those
who know and practice,
those who know and don't practice,
those who don't know
and try.
So in
our salah, every day,
we're asking Allah for balance, man.
Help me to, like,
I said it before, like Kendrick Lamar, I
love this quote of his.
He said I wrote, like, 12,000
songs, but I only executed on 4 albums.
Like, execution is hard to know and execute,
to pull it off.
So we're asking Allah really
is about let me execute Hidayah.
That's the path of of sincere
execution,
responsible execution.
Number 2 is, I know, but I don't
practice.
Like, I don't care.
I'm just apathetic to it.
Not I'm struggling with it, that's different. And
the third is, I don't know, but I'm
just like, I'm just gonna go with my
gut.
I'm gonna straight George Bush junior this joint,
man. So go with my gut on it.
And there's actually an article. Again, a reference.
It's in the Academy of Beyond J a
story about, like, there's a psychological
empirical study on the dangers of going with
your gut.
Like, how many times people really screwed up.
Because it's like narcissism. Like, what the heck?
Why is my gut how is my gut
different than yours?
And and next week we're going to talk
about
the statement of faith.
Because that's the first that's the door.
But as we finish,
the sheikh, he said
in another work,
that the found like, the foundations,
you can add this to things we talked
about earlier.
The foundational behaviors
that are gonna help us as we try
to work on this path
are 9.
It doesn't mean we have to do them
all at the same time.
But as I said earlier, like, we should
run into these from time to time.
These are things that I wanna make habits.
And we'll talk about this one soon.
A toba,
repentance. They say repentance is the outcome of
awareness.
So repentance.
The next is resilience.
Because like if I'm aware that I need
to repent and I, like, I really try
to fix those things, then it's going to
demand resilience from me.
Resilience to do and the resilience not to
do.
I need resilience to pray in the morning.
I need resilience to stay away from something
wrong.
Sabr,
the next shukr,
thankfulness.
We're gonna unpack these,
as we go.
Thankfulness.
Yeah. I don't like patience.
Sabar because the word sabar actually means it's
literally in Arabic to hold back horses. I
don't know if In Oklahoma we used to
say my grandma used to say what? Hold
your horses. Hold your horses, boy.
Same thing.
To hold back the horse.
And shukr,
the word shukr is from a word which
means we gotta go, speaking of this.
A fat camel.
Because a fat camel is the sign of
a benevolent master. So metaphorically,
I'm not fat. I'm thankful
because I've recognized the benevolence of my master.
He's Allah.
That's why I call it sugar. Yes, ma'am?
Can I put you through all the sugar
again? Yeah. Resilience.
Yeah. Resilience to do,
resilience not to
do. Resilience to, like, you know, give charity.
Resilience not to, like, knock someone's head off.
I don't know.
I have no idea. I mean, that yeah.
I mean, again, I I'm just translating it
how I understand it, So it doesn't mean
that's right or this is right.
Arabic is a a a a tough one.
Shukr.
Right? So I'm I'm exhibiting
signs that God has been gracious to me.
So that's why they say the foundation of
so of Shukr
is what? Awareness.
Then hope.
And then fear,
And zud, zud means to be indifferent to
opulence.
I'm not caught up in the cult of
capitalism.
Y'all see Dave Chappelle 2 days ago on
TMZ? I don't watch TMZ, but I saw
this.
And they were
like, hey man, can you believe Tom Brady
made the Super Bowl? He's like, I'm with
Kaepernick, man. I don't know what you're talking
about.
Like, aware that's like being aloof from things.
Because you can't be woke if you're comatose.
Until that cool, the next is like trust,
responsible trust.
And after that is contentment.
Contentment is tough, man.
And in our next,
weekend course, part 2 of the mon fredija,
we're gonna talk about contentment.
And the last is Mahaba,
love.
So is it like
throughout this path,
these are the foundations of the path.
These are the foundations of that way.
And.
Again, I'll repeat them and then we'll finish
Insha'Allah.
And most scholars said something really cool. They
said this is the first, the middle, and
the last.
So the first, the middle, and the end
is repentance.
Metaphorically. Right?
Then resilience,
then thankfulness,
then hope,
then fear. And fear here means, like, the
fear
of God's punishment, of course, but also the
fear of, like, letting God down.
Like reverence.
And then zuhud,
to be
and zuhud, I I I really see like
Sufism
as a path of spiritual resistance against, like,
current
cult of opulence and, like, environmental resilience.
Imagine if we all passed it, like, twice,
twice a week, like 2 day 2 days
a week.
How would that impact our own personal con
contribution to consumption and waste? As long as
we didn't go nuts at the iftar bar.
But I'm saying seriously, like, how do I
see now, like, these acts
as not just being like individual acts of
piety,
but as being things that, like, better the
world around me.
So zuhod,
like, my wife, man, I love my wife,
that's what I talk about. You talk about
what you love, man. Wife's a really cool
person. She just wanna talk about it, though.
So don't tell her I did this.
So, like, when my I first got married,
my wife is like, where you get them
shoes? Like, I got these from Cohan. You
know what I'm saying?
Right? Paid, like, big money. She's like, why
would you do that? I was like, what
do you mean? She's like, we're going shopping.
So, okay, go shopping. Man, she took me
to Goodwill, man.
And I was like, I had like,
you know, that moment.
Right? And then she was like, oh, no,
you're gonna like this. And I was like,
oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Okay. When's my next
trip?
But then I was in California last week
and I was invited to this event, and
I wore tennis shoes, and it was a
banquet.
But when you get into the habit of
this,
and you see, like, how you can really
help people,
and then you're not, like, contributing to, like,
this nonsense, and you're not owned by
that
popular wave that tells you put up a
10 year picture.
Who told us to do that? Where did
that come from? We don't even know. We're
just doing it. Like,
I'm serious. I'm not making fun of anybody.
But I'm saying like, we don't even know
where that came from.
But we all doing it.
I love what,
this one rapper from Queens, Roxanne and Chante
put. She was like,
the FBI just wanted to update update their
10 year record of how you looked and
all y'all fell for it. I was like,
that's crazy. I never thought about it. That's
a little that's out there. But, like, where
did it come from?
And today, Facebook is like, yeah, people have
been calling you on FaceTime. I can hear
you, but you didn't know it.
Like, that stuff, how do how do I
I mean, I have an iPhone, but, like,
how do I not get, like, moved in
ways where suddenly from I don't know why
I'm doing things, but I'm just doing it
because it's like the current is going that
way.
There's value in being spiritually resistant and resilient
to things, man.
And we'll
talk about what that means, trusting in God,
man. That's a tough one.
Being content
and then love.
So today I wanted just to review what
we went through the first time because I
knew lot of people didn't know. It's my
apology.
And then next week, we're gonna start the
first
kind of point will be on faith and
then move into love.
And then Thursdays,
we have a basic primer on theology.
It's It's very important. It's gonna cover a
lot of the foundational principles of theology that
most people don't know.
So And these will be up inshallah online
as well as on the Facebook page and
on on YouTube. Any questions before we try
to run off to this?
Halal dining hall. So you said that toba
is, found in the beginning of the month,
so
could you just clarify the connection between Mahabhar
and Dovah?
Yeah. Yeah. So
if I love something, I'll be aware of
my shortcomings.
You know what I mean? Like if I
really love somebody then I always feel like
I wanna do better. Yeah. Right? Like my
children, I love them, so I always feel
like Not to the point that it becomes
counterproductive. Right? But like, I know I could
always do better.
So at the end so think about it
like
the prophet, he begins his prophethood with, like,
turning to God, then at the end,
It ends with toba. It's like it's sandwich.
So, like, I start to act. I ask
God to purify my heart. In the middle,
I make sure, like, I'm not doing something,
you know, crazy. And then at the end,
I'm introspective and reflect and say, oh, perhaps
I could have been better
in this or more invested in this.
Any other It's good. So many people. It's
great to see everybody,
How's everybody feeling?
You ready for this
winter vortex?
I have to go to Chicago
Saturday, man.
I have to go Atlanta on Friday night.
There's no hotels.
And then yeah. Because I have to work,
and there's a Super Bowl or something happening.
And then I got a Chicago
Yeah. Exactly. Airbnb that joint. Or just find
some brothers to stay in Masjid. And then
and then Yeah, you can. And then Chicago,
my friends are like, it's so warm. Can't
wait to see you.
Any other questions? How's everybody feeling? Does anyone
need any duas?
Anybody struggling?
Need some support? Need a hug? Anyone need
a hug today?
No, I'm serious, man. Anyone need a hug?
We used to do that in Boston, man.
Some people need Hey, you don't know, man.
It's tough out there.
People dying, stuff full on the train, you
know. And if you're in the city by
yourself,
sometimes it's hard. Right?