Suleiman Hani – 4 Tips To Be A Strategic Muslim
AI: Summary ©
The importance of strategizing and setting goals for one's life is discussed, particularly in regards to health and success. Prayer and prioritizing one's life is emphasized, and small and small actions are encouraged. The importance of praying for the Prophet's guidance and avoiding past mistakes is emphasized, and a framework for thinking about life is provided. The speaker also advises against living in the past and learns from mistakes made in the past.
AI: Summary ©
For our own salvation and happiness and success,
Allah ﷻ commands us what is translated as,
O believers, be mindful of Allah as He
deserves.
Meaning worship Allah on His terms as is
His right upon you.
And do not die except in that state
of submission, of obedience to Him.
May Allah ﷻ allow us to consistently live
upon Islam and to die upon Iman.
Allahumma ameen.
The Prophet ﷺ, when he fled for his
life from Mecca to Medina with Abu Bakr
رضي الله عنه.
Instead of going the direct route physically, they
took a route that would not be expected
by those who would be chasing them.
They actually went partially south.
As you know in the famous story in
the narrations, they hid in the cave along
the way as they were being pursued.
But when we look at this scenario, we
find that within the seerah of the Prophet
ﷺ, he was someone who strategized.
There was deliberation, there was wisdom, there was
thought put into his life, put into the
mission.
And we have many other examples as well
amongst on the treaty of Hudaybiyyah.
The strategy that went into that specific moment
in dealing with Quraysh.
You find in these scenarios in the seerah
of the Prophet ﷺ, like commanding the companions
to go to Abyssinia al-Habasha, that the
Prophet ﷺ was very intelligent and was a
strategist when it came to everyday life.
But oftentimes when we talk about these scenarios,
we experience in some part of our personal
lives or in the community efforts something that
is missing of strategy.
And by missing out on one facet of
strategy in any area of life, we may
be missing out on ripple effects of goodness
or righteousness or justice in the world or
your own potential that you want to fulfill.
How does a Muslim live a life in
which they are strategizing?
And what is the importance of this?
When you look at different analogies, you have
the analogy in sports, you have this in
business, you have the analogy in one's education
for the university semester or particular program that
a student is pursuing.
You have this in mundane and insignificant things
even like games.
In one of the most universal games in
the world, the game of chess, you have
two players who have no chance.
There's no dice.
There's no luck.
There's strategy in very specific ways in which
the pieces move.
You don't have to really know about chess
to understand this analogy.
If someone were to tell you, I'm playing
the game of chess and I have no
strategy at all, you would probably assume they're
not going to win.
What are you doing with your moves?
But in reality, they are still making moves.
Their moves are all reactive to their opponents.
Their moves are a reaction to what's happening
in the world around them.
And way beyond something mundane like a game,
like the game of chess, our lives are
not limited to two variables, to two individuals.
Our lives are not limited to 64 squares
on a board.
Our lives are much more complex and they
requires to put in a lot more thoughts
and a lot more strategy and a lot
more deliberation and a lot more connection to
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala hoping for some
reward for the effort of strategizing.
If you apply this to business, you'll find
that you cannot really succeed in your business
without having some kind of plan.
And this is why many businesses, in fact,
do fail.
You'll find if a student starts the university
semester and there's no plan to study, they
may struggle.
And oftentimes, they may push themselves at the
last moments and put themselves at risk of
not passing or possibly failing.
And when you think of your life in
all these different dimensions, you start to realize
from the Islamic lens, it is in fact
an obligation upon every one of us to
have deliberation, to have plans, to strategize.
And so even for your personal health, if
you know you're struggling with something and you
are required to change your lifestyle in terms
of eating or exercise, what are you waiting
for?
A five-year plan, a 10-year plan?
You start today.
You start with the end in mind.
This is what I want.
And you work your way towards it with
your family, your quality relationships, your education, your
business.
And oftentimes, when we talk about this, we
have a lot of people who say, I
don't feel like it's that important to strategize.
But you see the impact of one person
who strategizes and one who does not.
You see the impact of a political party,
parties in general that strategize.
You can't have an effective political party that
does not strategize in many Western countries.
They are planning and they are plotting and
they are working really hard and spending a
lot of time and money in order to
achieve certain outcomes.
So how can we as Muslims not strategize
for our lives, for our communities, for reforming
the world around us?
How can we neglect something like this when
the Prophet ﷺ tells us, احرص على ما
ينفعك.
We shouldn't have a feeling of being passive,
that I'm just reacting to my life circumstances.
Whatever comes my way, I'll do it.
I'll deal with it.
I'll barely, you know, aim for a job
or aim for an income or aim for
education or marriage or children.
You have to strive.
But you strive for the things that will
benefit you.
So there's a connection in terms of effort
to the outcome being connected to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala's pleasure.
احرص على ما ينفعك in one of the
most famous narrations and commands from the Prophet
ﷺ.
He emphasizes to us the lifestyle of the
strong and therefore smart believer.
The Prophet ﷺ with all of the narrations
about deliberation is connecting it to the purpose
of life.
And so if you want to strategize in
your life and you ask, where do I
even begin?
We go back to the basics.
Why are you here?
Why do we exist?
الذي خلق الموت والحياة ليبلوكم ايكم احسن عمل
The one who created death and life in
order to test you to see who is
best in their actions.
So part of the strategy, the end in
mind in terms of the pleasure of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala is that every single
day part of the tactics of my life
is that I'm pleasing Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala and that's what this temporary life is
about.
But there's another element of the future which
is not just this world that is not
guaranteed.
It's the part in which you are meeting
Allah now there's a final destination.
So you start with the end in mind
and you work your way backwards.
هَلْ جَزَاءُ الْإِحْسَانِ إِلَّا الْإِحْسَانِ You know if
you put in the right effort and you
strategize and you spend time and you sacrifice
that it's worth it.
And what Allah gives you is much greater
than what you put in.
لِلَّذِينَ أَحْسَنُوا الْحُسْنَةُ وَزِيَادًا You put in effort
for a temporary life as Allah commanded and
He will give you a life in which
you'll have excellence and reward and happiness and
ziyadah, the meeting with Allah subhanahu wa ta
'ala.
That's number one.
Number two, when we have an end in
mind in any area of life, even if
we're planning just a year ahead, we look
back, may Allah grant us fruitful lives.
We look back and we say, now I
need my short-term milestones.
How am I going to get to that
destination?
If you really care about your goal, you're
going to set something of a strategy to
accomplish that goal.
And so oftentimes when people ask, what do
I do along the way when there are
challenges?
We can mention a few general life principles
with a short time that we have inshallah
ta'ala.
Number one amongst them is that you don't
want to spend all your energy and excitement
and time in life on literally just planning.
There are people who get stuck just planning.
There are people who get excited planning for
changes in life.
But when it comes to the actual effort,
there's very little action.
And so you may find in certain contexts
like basketball or chess or a university semester,
there's an end in sight.
There's limited time.
There's a clock.
When the clock runs out, your time is
over.
Your opportunity is over.
The game is over.
But unlike these contexts, we have no idea
how long our time is for.
We have no idea when the clock runs
out.
It's very abrupt.
And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to grant us a good ending and to
protect us from a sudden death as the
Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam made this dua.
So when we think of this particular point,
we say plan, but do not live only
in planning phases of life.
When you make it to the morning and
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grants you life,
do not assume that evening is guaranteed.
إِذَا أَصْبَحْتَ فَلَا تَنْتَضِرِ الْمَسَاءِ وَإِذَا أَمْسَيْتَ فَلَا
تَنْتَضِرِ الصَّبَاحِ As Abdullah bin Umar radiallahu anhuma
told us.
So if you make it to the morning,
take advantage of this day that Allah gave
you.
It's another opportunity.
You made it to the evening, take advantage
before the evening is over and your life
runs out.
Take advantage of the moments that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala has given you and strive
with passion, strive with ambition.
The second reminder here is not to neglect
managing what we are striving for.
Oftentimes we do have good plans, alhamdulillah.
In some area of life you have clarity,
you have a mentor, you have a doctor,
somebody told you exactly what you needed to
get to your goal.
And then you neglected the management phase, overseeing
what you're actually doing.
So there's a brother who literally once said,
I don't feel like this applies to me
because I'm not a strategic thinker.
And he's a business owner and his business
is doing really well, mashaAllah.
May Allah put barakah in all of our
income, Allahumma ameen.
But when I asked him about his business,
he started talking about everything he invested of
time.
He started talking about all these terms and
customer acquisition costs and cost of goods sold.
And I'm like, mashaAllah, you really know your
stuff.
You are a strategist but only in certain
domains that you find valuable.
A couple that came once and they said,
I want to have a really rigorous homeschool
curriculum for my children.
I don't want them to go to a
school that's going to hold them back.
I want them to excel beyond their peers.
And they put in so much effort with
almost 150 pages of ideas and notes and
istishar, a consultation from others.
And I said, you have a lot of
information to work with here, mashaAllah.
Why do people do that?
Because you value the outcome that you desire.
So if you say, I'm not going to
strategize for something, it might not mean much
to you.
Or maybe you are so proficient in it,
you don't need to plan.
But in reality, if you value your life,
you value your afterlife, you value your health,
you value the state of the ummah, strategy
is necessary.
And part of the strategy is to manage
it as well.
And as you plan, you're not doing this
on your own, you're putting your trust in
Allah.
وَتَوَكَّلْ عَلَى الْحَيِّ الَّذِي لَا يَمُوتُ وَسَبِّحْ بِحَمْدِهِ
You put your trust in the one who
never dies.
We may at times find disappointment in social
constructs, in structures of injustice, in people sometimes
disappointing us or failing to be reliable.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is ever present
and sometimes we forget to turn to Him.
As you plan, you ask Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala for help, you ask Him for
barakah, divine blessings, you start in the name
of Allah, you stay optimistic, you stay optimistic
regardless of the outcomes as well.
And that is a part of tawakkul and
we ask Allah to grant us that.
Allahumma ameen.
The third advice is to recognize that every
single move you make in life, the tens
of thousands of moves you make per day,
subconsciously and the major ones that you make
consciously, every single move in every day is
a unique opportunity.
And so like the analogy once again of
the game of chess, just as an analogy,
you look at the first few moves that
people make in the game of chess, by
the third move, by the time two players
are making their third move, you have over
120 million possible variations for that limited game
of chess.
After the fourth move, it's over 80 billion
and after the fifth we can no longer
count.
And that's to tell us that yes, life
is very complex, but every move you make
matters.
They have ripple effects.
Sometimes we belittle the small habits that add
up.
Sometimes we belittle the good deeds that are
important and weary on the day of judgment.
لَا تَحْقِرَنَّ مِنَ الْمَعْرُوفِ شَيْئًا Prophet ﷺ tells
us do not belittle any good deed, even
if it's to see your brother and you
have a cheerful face.
And of course on the other side, make
sure you are not belittling what people see
as minor sins, what people are desensitized to,
what people see as insignificant, no longer feeling
remorse.
Because the Prophet ﷺ warned us about this.
The minor sins are like a group of
people who go out, they're traveling.
They stop somewhere for the night and they
decide they need to kindle a large fire
to stay warm.
And every single person in this audience goes
and gathers a firewood, something to benefit them
with.
But once they accumulate, you have a massive
fire.
This is the analogy of the Prophet ﷺ.
Sometimes we do belittle certain things.
Your small habits, sometimes with your health, the
way you decide and the time you decide
to wake up, the exercise, the time you
spend with family, the quality time, your energy,
where it's going, and your energy management.
These habits do accumulate and add up.
But every single opportunity is unique.
We do not believe that this Jumu'ah
prayer is like next week's Jumu'ah prayer.
We do not believe today's Salatul Asr and
Maghrib is like tomorrow's Asr and Maghrib.
Today is its own opportunity.
The problem with thinking that you always have
tomorrow and you always have next week and
that there's repetition, I'll always spend time with
family later, is that as we all know,
that's not guaranteed.
And if you live a lifestyle of always
procrastinating and thinking every opportunity is endless, it's
limitless, it'll always be here.
We all recognize the reality that one day
it gets cut off.
One day it changes.
One day a particular door of opportunity may
close.
And so someone may ask in that case,
how do I make moves in life if
it's more complex than something as simple as
the game of chess?
And once again, we start by asking ourselves,
is this move, this job, this project, this
time, this hobby, this habit, is this part
of my long-term strategy?
Is this connected to the akhirah?
Is this beneficial long-term?
Will I stand on the day of judgment
and look back and say, Alhamdulillah, even in
the time in which there was leisure or
entertainment with family or friends that it was
pleasing to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
The second is that we ask ourselves about
the opportunity cost.
Because when we decide to make a move,
for every move you make, there's another move
you're not making.
So saying yes to everything is not a
reasonable lifestyle.
If you say yes to everything, you are
saying no to your existing priorities, some of
which are extremely high.
And oftentimes our struggle is one of prioritizing
at a personal level, at a family level,
at an organizational level, and for the sake
of the ummah as well.
That we prioritize what are the most important
things.
And then we focus on the moves that
will lead to those outcomes.
Because every time we say yes to something
of a low priority, we are hurting our
potential or the potential of that family or
the ummah.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reminds us
not to be distracted.
When He tells us in the command in
the Qur'an, Al-hakumu takathur.
You have been distracted by mutual competition for
more.
More of what?
More of a dunya.
It's not in the positive sense.
Allahu in the Qur'anic language to be
diverted or distracted is a negative thing.
Because by definition, you are choosing something of
a lower priority over something of a high
priority.
And the believer recognizes that this is a
world of distraction.
So one part of the test is to
know how to say no to things, and
to filter out the things that will distract
you.
And so if you have a smartphone, a
very practical example is to filter out notifications
that will not help you on that day,
will not help you in your productivity.
Focus on a task and avoid other tasks.
Focus on the projects that matter most.
It's very easy for us to say yes
to appealing opportunities and projects and ideas.
But we have to remember, we're saying no
at times for the sake of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala so we can have ihsan
in the things that we are doing.
Another part, another way to accomplish this particular
task is of course through istisharah.
Sometimes people rush into life decisions that have
ripple effects, but they don't ask enough for
advice.
They don't ask people who are trustworthy, somebody
who will give you something of wisdom in
that particular area of life, or someone who
knows you really well.
So ask, don't be shy, and don't have
any pride.
Ask, especially when you know that it can
benefit you inshallah ta'ala to have multiple
opinions that will inform your decision.
But right as you are about to decide,
and you're inclining to move forward with a
decision and a move, that's when you pray
istisharah prayer.
Cannot possibly live your life not utilizing the
essential thing that the Prophet ﷺ told us
in our decision making is key, which is
to pray two rakahs and to ask Allah
for blessings in this thing that you are
pursuing if it's good for you.
And if it's not good for you, to
prevent it from happening and to distance you
from that thing and that thing from you.
But of course, all you can really do
at this point after you've done your research
is to proceed until something arises of a
challenge or an obstacle, and then in that
case you reconsider.
The istisharah prayer is not to decide between
A and B, but rather you've already done
your research, you are proceeding now, and if
something comes up and stops it from happening,
that is the response for the istisharah prayer.
Don't expect some kind of divine sign or
a supernatural thing or a dream.
You just proceed as the Prophet ﷺ taught
the companions.
There is a narration reported by Abdullah ibn
al-Mubarak rahimahullah.
It's found in some of the earliest compilations
of hadith.
It's not a very well known report in
which the Prophet ﷺ told us about this
issue of opportunities.
مَنْ فُتِحَ لَهُ بَابُ خَيْرٍ فَلْ يَنْتَهِزْهُ Whoever,
for them, a door of opportunity, a goodness
opens for them, let them rush towards it.
فَإِنَّهُ لَا يَدْرِي مَتَى يُغْلَقُ عَنْهُ For you
do not know when that door will be
closed for you.
And in reality, if we really believe as
the Prophet ﷺ advise us, that every salah
is our last salah, every interaction with family
or friends is a final interaction.
We'll find our lives changing significantly.
You'll find your opportunity in that moment is
perceived as a final opportunity.
That is a farewell hajj, that is a
farewell tawaf, that is a farewell qira'ah,
that is a farewell salah.
فَصَلِّي صَلَاةً مُوَدِّعً As the Prophet ﷺ said,
pray the prayer of the one bidding farewell.
Sufyan al-Thawri rahimahullah, one of the earliest
of scholars in the early generations, he said,
if you intend to give a charity or
to do a righteous deed, then do it
immediately before the devil obstructs your path or
diverts you.
So in other words, if you're thinking, I
want to do something good, I want to
pray two rak'ahs, I want to do
qiyam, I want to read the Qur'an,
start on the act of worship.
Don't delay it till later.
You'll find that the moment that gap of
overanalyzing should I do a righteous deed or
not may end up preventing you from it
altogether.
We recognize this reality.
And finally advice number four, don't live in
the past.
You see people making mistakes at times or
things will happen to them out of their
control.
If all you did was think about the
past difficulties or the mistakes that you made,
it'll be difficult for you to adjust and
focus on the present.
The past cannot be changed.
And so learn from the lesson you have
to learn, but move over to the present.
Imagine someone's playing basketball and they missed a
shot in the first quarter.
Now the rest of the game, they're upset
and angry and they're just throwing everything away.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.
It's not a very stable thing to do
in terms of efficiency.
But we are human.
And because we have emotions, we have to
be reminded at times to redirect that emotion,
that pain, the sting of the moment in
which there was a mistake into making up
for it in other ways.
But it cannot be by living in the
past.
How else are you gonna move on to
the chapter of the present?
If a player in the game of chess
is stuck on a mistake in the first
moment, they won't move on to improve in
some way.
If a student is upset, they messed up
on an assignment, did not receive full credit
or points, and they're upset, so they discard
and throw away the rest of the semester.
It's not a very efficient strategy.
And the same applies to every area of
life, one's marriage, one's children.
So focus on what you do have control
over, which is the present.
And alhamdulillah, for a world in which even
when we do fall into mistakes, and even
when we know that we've done the worst
of things, that if we are sincerely returning
to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in a
spiritual lens, there is room and there is
hope, but it has to be right now.
It has to be in the present.
This is the opportunity.
Tomorrow is not guaranteed.
So when the believer recognizes that outside of
my control, outside of my influence, there are
things I cannot be stuck thinking about, I
cannot deliberate over, they start to focus on
changing their lives in the present, and therefore
having a ripple effect in the future.
And why does Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
tell us about qadr in general, the things
that we cannot change, so that we are
not as affected emotionally as He tells us
subhanahu wa ta'ala, لِكَيْ لَا تَأْسَوْا عَلَى
مَا فَاتَكُمْ وَلَا تَفْرَحُوا بِمَا آتَاكُمْ So that
you are not as upset, you can be
upset.
So you're not as upset, you're not depressed
because of something of the past that you
cannot change.
So you're able to cope and move forward.
You're able to understand that there's something you
need to do today.
And so that if you are given a
blessing, you are not overly elated, so you
become prideful.
So then you become neglectful of the blessings
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
The story of your life, and for your
family, and for our ummah in general.
The story of your life is written with
the choices that you're making today.
So choose wisely.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgive us
for our shortcomings and bring down His divine
justice and swift mercy for our brothers and
sisters.
Seek forgiveness from Allah.
He's the All-Forgiving, the Ever-Merciful.