Suleiman Hani – Revival of the Ummah #05 Balancing Hope and Fear in Faith
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Oftentimes when people share
their final remarks, their final remarks are remembered
by their loved ones. They're very very impactful.
You remember perhaps some of the things that
are said at the end of one's life,
like the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, a
lot of the advices that he gave at
the end of his life are things we
reflect on all the time, like for example,
as salah, salah, the prayer the prayer. It's
one of his advices sallallahu alaihi wasallam. So
one time the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam visits
a boy and this boy was dying at
the end of his life and he asked
him how are you doing? How are you?
And he said You Rasulullah, o Messenger of
Allah, I'm in between
the hope of Allah and the fear of
my sins.
I'm in a state between these two things,
hope in Allah and the fear of my
sins.
And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said,
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said these
two qualities, these two characteristics
are never
united in one place in the heart of
a servant except that Allah will give that
person, that servant,
what he hopes for and protects him from
what he fears, as is reported by Tidmidi.
In other words,
if you are in a state
right in between, perfectly in between,
that hope in Allah, that you never lose
it, you have the right dose, the right
quantity,
and you have fear for your sins, you
never lost it, you're not desensitized,
but also it's not extreme.
If you are in between these two states
as a way of life, the Prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam is saying that Allah will
give you what you hope for, meaning forgiveness
and reward, and will protect you from what
you fear, which is the punishment for a
sin. And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
also said no one should die except while
thinking good of their Lord.
And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala reminds us
They arise from their beds, the believers, and
they supplicate, they make dua, like the one
who gets up at night for Tahajjud,
they supplicate Allah with fear and hope,
balance of the 2, and they spend, from
what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given them.
Fear and hope when it comes to Islamic
psychology are very interesting, and the overlap and
the intersection between psychology and theology, and the
impact on how you live your life, how
you see the world around you. You can
think of, of course, many examples
where we are in need of this equilibrium.
Like, again,
easy example is a university student. University student
who has hope that they'll pass without being
too extreme in their hope or false hope,
and also some fear that if they don't
work hard enough, they may, they may fail
or they may not reach the goals that
they have in terms of their education or
their careers. So the balance between these two
emotions helps them, and they fluctuate. They rise
and fall. But the balance of these two
states helps them to continue to persist, to
put in effort when things are not going
well or when they're slacking off with their
studies. But this requires us to start with
one side of the balance. Every human being,
every single believer, every one of us here,
and everyone who's listening, everyone has
some quantity today
of hope
and some level of fear for their sins.
And we will all know ourselves, and Allah
knows us best. We all know ourselves where
we are in the journey to Allah, That
there are some symptoms.
If you see these symptoms in yourself today,
you know that you're in a state of
excessive or false hope or you have the
right amount or you have no hope at
all. And with fear as well, that you
have an excessive extreme amount or it's the
right amount or you have no fear for
your sins at all. And you will notice
the symptoms that we will cover inshaAllah ta'ala
that are external and internal.
What does it look like if at this
stage in my life
I'm actually desensitized
to sin? I no longer feel bad. Or
what happens to the human being, the believer,
for some reason, who's given the wrong
over and over and over so they have
no hope in Allah whatsoever? What happens to
them? All they're thinking about is hellfire and
fear and there's too much and they will
never be saved and there's no point. So
they start to have these negative thoughts,
on a downwards downward spiral, and this is
very problematic. Let's start with the element of
hope, something we're always in need of and
remembering.
The first thing to emphasize,
there are different types of hope. An example
of this is the most relevant to our
conversation on riba'at.
When you do a good deed, when you
do an act of worship, you're hopeful you're
hopeful that it will be accepted. You fast
Ashura'at Way you're hopeful for the reward, the
blessings you fast the day of Arafa you
fast Ramadan you pray Qiyamulay you pray your
5 prayers you're doing it with iman and
you're doing it with a hope for reward
and protection. Iman and wahti sabah in the
hadith of fasting Ramadan. So this means that
we are hopefully going from one good deed
to another, from the first prayer to the
second to the third to the 4th to
the 5th, from interaction to interaction with your
family, your friends, community, Muslims, non Muslims, you're
hopeful the things that you're doing that Allah
commanded you to do, that you are being
rewarded, that you are being forgiven.
When people go for Hajj and Umrah, the
very end of Hajj and the very end
of Umrah, people are begging Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala for acceptance. In the final tawaf, tawafilwadaa'a'a
farewell tawaf, people are begging Allah Subhanahu wa
ta'ala accept, oh Allah accept all these du'a
that you did, all these acts of worship,
the sacrifice, the time, the money to go
there and do all this, you're hopeful that
it's accepted by Allah. And of course the
same applies to many other acts of worship.
This is a hope we can't possibly lose.
You should always hope as you're doing acts
of worship. As long as you did it
correctly and you're sincere, that it's accepted by
Allah, and you will see some signs. One
of the signs is that you don't stop.
So after Ramadan, people always ask, like, how
do I know if my act of worship
is accepted? Did you continue with some good
deeds? Did you continue with Quran, triamulayin, something
else? It's a sign of
acceptance. Number 2 is hope when you repent
from a sin that you are actually forgiven.
And this means that tawba is a lifestyle.
This is like the example I think I
shared this many times before,
years ago. I remember between Maghrib and Isha
here in this masjid,
somebody came to the masjid. He's, somebody who
had lived in Michigan for a long time
but has never been to the masjid here.
And long story short, parents are Muslim, raised
him Muslim, he left for college
and he said he went astray. He started
committing major sins, had really bad friends,
and one day as they're sitting and they're
chilling and they're joking with each other he
makes a joke or somebody makes a joke
something like this about the hellfire.
Sometimes people who mock religion will mock the
idea of being in *. Oh I'll see
you in *. Anyways he said something like,
like you know, by the time he dies
he'll be better and so somebody said to
him you think Allah will forgive you? He
started laughing. You think Allah will forgive you
for what you did? In other words, you
did so many bad things. There's no way
you're gonna be forgiven. He said that's the
first time since I started straying, that's the
first time I actually felt my heart, like,
dropping, like I felt fear.
So he said I looked after they left.
I looked up nearby Islamic centers. He's like,
and I'm here to ask. He was walking
down the hall before we had a sign
that said masala this way, in the very
very beginning. So walking down the hall, I
said are you looking for someone? Like, do
you need help? And, he said I just
need to talk to someone. I said what's
going on? And he told me his story
and the question is will Allah forgive me?
So will Allah forgive me? Like is is
what my friend is saying true? Like there's
some things that can't be forgiven?
And of course, we know the answer to
this. We we all know, I hope there's
no doubt whatsoever, that if your heart is
beating and you are sincerely sincerely repenting to
Allah, you can't lose that hope Allah
commanded you not to lose that hope that
he wants to forgive you
How much mercy do you want more than
the explicit statement of Allah that there's always
hope? So Islam does not have room for
hopelessness
from a psychological standpoint. We don't have room
in Islam when you read the Qur'an, when
you read the theology. There is no room
for hopelessness. There's always hope for someone to
improve their state, to repent to Allah, to
be forgiven.
How many times have non Muslims entered this
building and massajid all over the world and
turned to Allah and Allah forgave all of
their past sins, so what about the one
who is already Muslim and trying sincerely to
repent? And they might say okay but I've
done this so many times repent again, try
harder, try better, try stronger, but you can't
possibly lose hope in Allah and Allah tells
you do not lose hope in the mercy
of Allah
Allah forgives all sins, the condition is you
turn back to Allah. There's also the hadith,
the famous hadith Qudsi in a Tirmi from
Anas
As long as you have hope in me
and you ask me for forgiveness, I will
forgive you. And I do not mind. That
Ubari means I want to forgive you. Allah
wants to forgive. We just have to turn
to him. My point is when you look
at just these two examples, the one a
and this one hadith, and we have hundreds
of examples,
you can't possibly, as a Muslim
or someone looking into the lens or into
Islam,
can't possibly know these verses and a hadith
and ever say I actually completely lost hope
that I will be forgiven. It's not possible
if you know what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
is saying. You can't reasonably lose hope. So
as long as you have life and you
are trying to repent, you are actually doing
your part, do not give up, persist, there
is always hope and we have seen people
from all walks of life, every one of
us has experienced some change in life and
some hope. So Islam is a worldview comes
with a worldview of optimism with an emphasis
on action.
We have a religion of optimism with an
emphasis on action. This brings me to the
3rd point, which is hope without any action
whatsoever.
And this is the type that is to
be condemned. This is the type that is
blameworthy.
This is called wishful thinking. None of us
have ever seen I hope. None of us
have ever seen a university student on the
1st day of class take the syllabus and
say I will refuse to attend a single
day of class, submit a single assignment, take
any exams and I expect and I hope
that the professor will give me an a.
Unless you bought your a, nobody's expecting that.
Nobody at all would do something like this.
Nobody who has a job, as long as
things are a typical job, you just disappear
and say I will never show up to
work again, and they will continue to pay
me for the rest of my life. We
don't expect something like this. That's called false
hope. It's wishful
thinking. So if we don't have wishful thinking
with everything we do in life,
why would we have wishful thinking with what
Allah tells us very clearly? Do this and
don't do that. This is an obligation and
this is a prohibition.
Sometimes people say, but he has a good
heart or she has a good heart, as
though that's enough. And that comes obviously from
secularism, comes from liberalism, and actually also comes
from Christianity, many denominations have watered down what
it means to believe in God and practice,
as many Christians themselves have stated, many academics
and scholars, that's the idea of just a
good heart, that's all that matters. But what
is a good heart? Who defines what is
a good heart? We spoke previously about iman,
that it's internal and external. That if somebody
says I have a good heart but they're
going around committing crimes, well are you sure
you have a good heart? I can't see
into your heart but you're doing the wrong
thing we don't judge what's in people's hearts
but we also cannot claim that someone's heart
is good because we cannot see in people's
hearts Long the long story short is this,
when we say we have hope in Allah
there has to be some action to prove
this.
I gave an example of this before in
a prior khutbah.
I mentioned that I had attended a program
before where there's I thought I was the
only Muslim and they told me there's another
Muslim there
and the reason I didn't know is because
the person they told me is also Muslim
was drinking alcohol, more alcohol than anyone else
at this program.
This is years years ago. Anyways long story
short
I said, are you sure? They said yes.
She said she's Muslim. I said okay. So
I thought, you know what, I may maybe
I'm not in the right place to say
anything, but I'm curious.
So I'll I'll be polite and I'll ask
Yani, Yani some questions. So I said salaam
to her. She responded. I said I heard,
you're Muslim. She said yeah. She was very,
like, sad about it. Yeah.
Oh, okay. I said,
do you mind me, like, asking, like, about
your your upbringing, your background? Amy, long story
short, we got to the the topic of
alcohol.
I'm like, just out of curiosity, do you
know if, like, the alcohol is prohibited in
Islam?
She said, yeah, I know. Of course.
I thought every Muslim pretty much knows. Non
Muslims know we don't drink at times.
Okay.
What's the reason you're still drinking?
Said Allah is merciful. Allah will forgive me.
That's it. That was the response. I thought
maybe there's more. There's just stories, something. Obviously,
alcohol, by the way, it's not a joke.
Like, there are people who are physiologically addicted
to it, so this is why oftentimes somebody
comes to the machine and says I'm addicted,
I need help. We are supposed to help,
we are supposed to give resources because sorry
to say this, there are many Muslims that
drink alcohol and they are in need of
that help and they have, alhamdulillah, many of
them overcome their addictions.
So I asked her if she knows, she
said she knows Allah is forgiving.
I said I know Allah is forgiving, I
agree with you, but Allah also commanded us
to stay away from certain things.
Allah knows what's in my heart.
So this is a misunderstanding. Alhamdulillah, the conversation
continued
months or maybe years later, Allah stopped
drinking alcohol,
but this is a misunderstanding
and there's an influence from liberalism and Christianity
especially
that the idea of a good heart that
God just wants to see that you have
a good heart but what exactly is a
good heart? So many times people conflate this
with kindness,
character
and oftentimes the most evil people in the
world
can be the nicest people to you The
most vicious people in the world can smile
at cameras and do great PR work. Some
of the most evil people in the world
today are supporting the massacres and the Haza
but they have some great character and they
smile at people and they're kind and they
say nice words. So how do you know
if somebody has a good heart?
What's the measure of goodness? At the end
of the day it's not what I assume
externally or you assume externally and as we
do not see in people's hearts all we
can say is this is a good action
this is a bad action as defined by
Allah. So if an action is good or
bad we go with that. Now of course
with our brothers and sisters I'm not getting
into the topic of assuming good of others,
giving people benefit of the dua, knowing how
to give advice, nasiha has its etiquettes and
guidelines,
and sometimes you may even pass by somebody
like Ibn Khayim Mahruwala says there's alcohol on
his beard and assume that maybe he was
in an argument somebody who threw it at
Adam, you didn't see him drink, so assume
somebody threw it at him, give the benefit
of the doubt, verify things, that's a separate
matter. But as for the state of the
heart, you can't say someone has a good
heart or bad heart, we we say we
assume based on external actions and Allah knows
best. Allah knows best. When we talk about
hope, there's a lot more to say but
at the end of the day, there are
countless studies that found that people with higher
levels of hope and optimism when it comes
to spiritual things and religious matters and theological
beliefs tend to also be impacted,
yes, in their mental health, but even physically.
They tend to to to be able to
move about more, do more. They tend to
have less stress, less depression,
Yani. There have been a lot of different
studies, that have been cited but this is
a summary of the topic of hope that
we are all in need of to some
degree
as long as it is not false hope.
The second and the the heavier to talk
about is the topic of fear
that as we find in many books on
postmodernism
people don't like talking about fear
and this has impacted the Muslim community. This
has impacted imams and teachers and scholars as
well. That we live in a society that
if you were to talk about fear too
much, and too much is very subjective, but
if you were to talk about fear, to
an extent, you will find there's a lot
of backlash.
And this might be because of a reaction
to how religion is covered and conveyed in
other countries or in other places where some
people are only talking about hellfire, only talking
about,
fear, only talking about punishment. There's no balance.
At the end of the day, we look
in the Quran, we find there's a perfect
balance. In every passage of the Quran, you
will find either there's a reference to both
or it is mostly about Jannah, very little
about hellfire like Surah Al Rahman, or you
will find a lot about the hellfire and
very little about paradise, but almost always both
are mentioned.
This reminds us that we are in need
of both emotions and that today, literally today,
as we are talking about October 25, we
are in some place some place in our
journey to Allah, we have some amount of
fear.
It may be a lot, it may be
a little or almost non existent.
While fear is classified as a negative emotion,
generally speaking,
and usually people talk about fear because there's
like fear of a threat of some harm.
Past, present, or future, think about different types
of fear, but fear is also used in
everyday life as a deterrence to stay away
from certain things. Deterrence in criminal law, it's
used all the time, like, you know, many
people don't speed only because they don't want
to get fined $200. They don't care about
actually putting their lives in danger. You know
what I'm talking about. If there were no
cops, they'll speed. If they see a state
trooper, they slow down. So it wasn't about
the actual law. It wasn't about the safety
concerns. This is an example of deterrence.
If you knew the the citation is going
to be $1, more people would speed. We
have this across the board. Every single place
we've surveyed, more people with speed if there
was no citation, no fine, no consequence.
So so consequences sometimes and fear does serve
as a deterrence.
But then there's another aspect to this, which
is in your practice of everyday life, every
every single person here has something they're working
on or towards.
Your school, for some people, they do really
well in school because there's a fear of
shortcomings. And I don't mean only fear because
their parents will get upset if they don't
get straight No. A fear that if I
don't do well and study well, I may
end up limiting my options in the future.
There are people who work really hard on
their their their physical health and they're like,
if I don't take care of my health
today, I may regret it in the future
and I can't take it back once I
experience, you know, x, y, and z. There
are people who do really well with their
jobs and they have a fear of shortcomings.
They don't wanna get fired or they wanna
get promoted or the next time there's a
layoff, they don't wanna get laid off. So
all these types of fear play a role
in our lives. So it's not true that
fear inherently is always a bad thing. It
depends on what kind of fear and how
you're channeling that fear and is it excessive.
For example, sometimes we think about fafirru illallah,
the command of Allah to run to him,
flee to Allah.
We know in Islam that
when it comes to, like, human beings or
animals or anything that might frighten us, whoever
fears the creation runs away from that thing,
runs away from the creation. But whoever fears
Allah Subhana Wa Ta'la with regard to His
Majesty, His boundaries, our shortcomings, our guilt, what
do they do? They run back to Allah.
And this is a reminder of who Allah
is to us. So what are the types?
We'll talk about 3 and then I wanna
share a quick story insha'Allah and then some
practical advice. As for the first,
it's the fear of,
punishment
fear of not having done the right thing
so you didn't pass the test of life,
you worry about what happens in the grave
and on the day of judgment, this is
a natural fear. And also, in some cases,
fear of the punishment being expedited for this
life. The second
is a fear
of the plan of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
or fear of repercussions and consequences if you
go against what Allah wants. That if you
are intentionally
committing major sins, you are intentionally straying and
you have shortcomings. And the third is a
fear of a bad ending.
The fear that you might leave this world
and you actually did not die in a
good state, that you follow the traps of
shaytay, may Allah protect us all. I want
to share a story
about Umar bin Abdul Aziz it's a beautiful
beautiful beautiful story and Umar bin Abdul Aziz
many people know he's considered like the 4
khulafa who are rightly God he's considered like
the 5th of these khulafa because of how
righteous he was. He was the khalifa for
only 2 and a half years approximately.
2 and a half years approximately from year
99 to 101 after the hijrah and then
he was assassinated
because he had actually reversed a lot of
the laws that were unjust,
in the Umayyad,
dynasty. Anyways, is reported from Aqdul alhamah, he
said I came to Fatima
Rahim Allah, the wife of,
Umar bin Abdul Aziz, and this is sometime
after he passed away,
And he said to her, oh, daughter of
Abdul Malik, tell me about the leader of
the believers. Tell me about him. She said,
okay. But if he were alive, I would
not share this. Meaning what? Some of the
piety that she sees in her husband, she
doesn't want to share it while he's alive,
but now it's, it could inspire.
She said, Omar was a man who dedicated
his soul and his body to the people.
He would spend the day dealing with their
affairs. And by night, if there was any
work left, he would carry on
until late into the night, And then he
would final finally finish from what he was
trying to accomplish. 1 night, he asked for
a candle,
that was brought to him from his personal
wealth, not from the treasury, And then he
stood to pray. And then he placed his
his head and in his hands and started
to cry excessively.
She said he cried in such a way
that I worried this would be his last
breath. Like he was crying a lot
and he stayed in that state of salah
and crying until the morning time and then
he fasted that day. So I came to
him and I said, oh, leader of the
believers, what happened to you last night?
Like, meaning, why were you crying so excessively?
And he said, leave me to my worries
and, you know, you to yours. And she
said, maybe there will be some benefit for
me. Like, if you tell me what affected
you, maybe I'll benefit. There's a fa'idah. So
he said, I I I reflected on myself,
and I found that I'm now in charge
of the affairs of the entire ummah, the
people of this ummah who are old and
young, the light skinned and the dark skinned,
meaning all believers.
I then thought about the lost stranger,
the impoverished needy person, the forgotten
prisoner, and others
in faraway lands and other places around the
world, and I realized that Allah would ask
me about every single one of them and
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam would speak
on their behalf, meaning the ummah's behalf.
I feared that I would have no excuse
before Allah and no argument for myself in
front of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and
I was so afraid of this that it
made me cry and made my heart tremble
and the more I thought about this the
more afraid that I became
rahmatullahi alaihi. Rahmatullahi alaihi. Rahmatullahi alaihi. Rahmatullahi alaihi.
Rahmatullahi alaihi. Rahmatullahi alaihi. Rahmatullahi alaihi. Rahmatullahi alaihi.
Rahmatullahi alaihi. Rahmatullahi alaihi. Rahmatullahi alaihi was truly
a man of justice,
afraid of accountability.
I want you to think of this scenario
and apply it to any position that a
Muslim has anywhere in the world
whether as a politician
in an Islamic organization
or for students in MSAs or for a
father who has a family, a mother raising
her children, that you have a responsibility
and with it accountability before Allah.
Are we not afraid
of oppressing our family members? Are we not
afraid of violating the rights of others? Are
we not afraid that we have shortcomings with
our duties or responsibilities?
Perhaps there's someone more qualified to step up?
So this is an example
of holding yourself accountable, thinking about the day
of judgment, thinking about what will I say
to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And every one
of us, we we always need to ask
this question. With everything Allah gave you in
your life, with every privilege and blessing and
test you have, what will you say to
Allah? What can you say to Allah, subhanahu
wa ta'ala? Do we have excuses?
Especially when it comes to harming others or
not speaking on their behalf, not defending the
rights of others. And this is why, wallahi,
it's so scary and frightening at times when
we say look there's a very clear injustice,
it's not a complicated issue. Innocent children are
being killed and massacred, 1,200,000
people displaced. 50% of the the homes destroyed.
It doesn't take a lot of effort to
say something bad is happening, something unjust is
happening.
So it's very concerning when someone is
afraid or silent, refusing to defend those who
are being oppressed.
What will you say when the prophet speaks
on their behalf, sallallahu alaihi wasalam? What will
we say when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasalam
speaks on behalf of the people of Gaza?
What will we say in front of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala? What can we say?
This is a reminder for us to really
take advantage
of the blessings and the privileges and the
freedoms that we have.
The question
at the end of the day is how
do we increase our kashiyyah?
As for how to increase our hope, go
back to the ayat and ahadith about hope
and they are plenty. They are very easy
to find. And most people who have an
imbalance between fear and hope in this day
and age have an excessive amount of hope
and very little fear. And if you find
yourself in that state, then you will need
more hasya. If you find yourself with very
little hope and a lot of fear, you
will need an emphasis on hope. So there's
no one prescription for everyone, but we all
need both.
So how do we practically increase our hashiyah,
our fear, a legitimate type of fear here,
a positive type of fear? Number 1 is
to seek knowledge consistently and learn about who
Allah is. To learn about what taqwa is
and kashyah and the afterlife and the grave.
So some of the tabireen would say fear,
kashyah, so that it's not misunderstood. Fear is
what prevents you from disobeying Allah. If you
had to summarize kashyah, it's what prevents you
from disobeying Allah. It's not something that paralyzes
you in everyday life. So if you have
a fear of worldly things because you don't
want to break the law, fear is what
prevents you from disobeying Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Ibn al Qayim
he says
the level of fear that is praiseworthy
and it is appropriate
to have is the type in which you
don't want to transgress the sacred limits of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And if the fear
passes that limit, there is the risk that
it will lead to despair. There's a risk
that it will lead to something that is
prohibited.
1 of the famous scholars, he said true
fear
it is the type of fear that prevents
you from sinfulness
both external and internal. This is healthy type
of khashiya. And finally as a definition of
Ibn Taymiyrahamullah he said al hofulmahmoo
they praiseworthy fear notice they always added this,
qualifier, this adjective because sometimes Muslims say oh
no no don't talk about fear' no there's
different types of fear as we said before
this is the the praiseworthy type he said
is a type of fear that prevents you
from breaking, transgressing the laws of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. This is point number 1. Practical
advice number 2 is to really study the
names and attributes of Allah. Really know who
Allah is. We spoke about this last week
and it becomes a very liberating study. To
know who God is liberates you from misunderstanding.
And if you don't misunderstand, it'll protect you
from oppressing yourself or other people. So one
of the scholars, he said the more a
person knows who Allah is, the more khashiyah
he will have, the more praiseworthy type of
fear this person has. Number 3
is that we reflect on how we want
to leave this world. This is a very
fast paced, short life. So So how do
you want to leave this world? Sometimes people
have told us at the end of their
lives, on their deathbeds as well, that a
fear of a bad ending
helps them to do the right thing today.
I mentioned before I had a friend
who had traveled for knowledge and some humanitarian
works, and he stopped on the side of
a road to help some people. This was
actually in Madinah.
And he was hit by a vehicle, Rahmatullah
halei, and he died on the spot. He
was only
23, 24 years old. And so what kind
of ending will we have? We study the
lives of the prophets and messengers. We study
the lives of all of the righteous who
came before us, and we reflect on our
loved ones who passed away as well. What
does the last week of your life look
like, the last month of your life? So
if there's a fear of a bad ending,
then it should cause us to do the
right thing today. How do you want to
leave this world? One time, Imam Ahmad Rahmullah,
a famous scholar, was asked,
when will a person when will a servant
of God feel secure,
at ease?
And he said that the Arabic wording is,
like the taste of rest or relaxation.
When will we experience that? He said as
soon as they take that first step into
jannah. As you take your first step into
jannah, that's the real ultimate
permanent relaxation.
May Allah grant us and our loved ones
the highest levels of paradise. Number 4 of
6 advices, and I will wrap up with
this inshallah,
is a reflection on what happens when we
leave this world, where are we headed, the
afterlife, the inevitable for all human beings and
that there are healthy ways to channel any
kind of sadness or fear or guilt towards
something that is productive, something that is beneficial.
So you have examples in the Quran
that some people say we fear from our
Lord, we fear the day in which we
will be standing before Him but what does
that fear do? It leads them to helping
people who are poor, helping those who are
suffering,
praying their prayers, taking care of the acts
of worship they're supposed to take care of.
As for the one who has a fear,
a praiseworthy
legitimate type of fear of standing before their
Lord, standing before God on the day of
judgment. So therefore, in this life, they do
what is good, what is moral, what is
upright. They do what is good and it
leads them to a place in which they're
standing and they're rewarded for their actions. Number
5
is a fear of
leaving this world before being able to repent
to Allah, thinking that one is going against
the plan of God,
transgressing and sometimes obviously with mockery or with,
even with pride, with arrogance so they are
challenging the one who created them a
group of people who said did they feel
secure against the plan of Allah?
No one would feel safe, secure from the
plan of the Creator, from the plan of
Allah except the one who is in loss,
because the one who knows who God is
doesn't think they got away with violating the
rights of their family or community or people
around the world or oppressing others or hurting
others you know there is going to be
a day of accountability so you take actions
today. The prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam,
he said verily the believer
thinks of his sins
that the believer
thinks of his or her sins
as if this person is sitting beneath a
mountain that he fears will fall on them.
So there's a healthy type of channeling of
this fear towards what? Staying away from something
bad. We spoke about hope, now we need
the other side of the the balance, the
equilibrium.
But the evildoer thinks of his sins like
flies that pass in front of his face
or his nose and he swats them away.
He just swats them like that's not a
big deal. They're just sins. What do you
mean they're just sins? Not only did you
disobey God with regards to what's between you
and him, but also the rights of other
people. How can you become desensitized
to harming other people,
to insulting, to abusing
your parents, your wife, your husband, your children,
Muslims, non Muslims, old or young from all
walks of life? How can you ever feel
desensitized?
And this is why many scholars like Ibn
Qayyim
he says the fear of Allah that is
healthy, the praiseworthy type, it stems from 3
things, it stems number 1 from being aware
of how bad a sin is, like why
is why is this thing considered immoral in
the sight of Allah? What is it about
insulting other people, hurting other people, why is
it so bad? You may see a sin
as minor but think of the majesty of
the one that you are disobeying. Number 2
is, another way to he said to have
praiseworthy,
khashya, is to believe the warning of Allah
that there are consequences for your actions. And
finally number 3 remembering that you do not
know if you will end up returning to
Allah, repenting to Him or if you will
die in that state of habitually committing that
immoral act, may Allah
protect us all. This is the 5th point.
The 6th point, the last one is surround
yourself with good people in good environments, people
that will impact you in a positive way
and consume in terms of media and social
media the things that will help you, the
things that will help you in your journey
to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala with the right
balance of hope and fear. We consume a
lot of things, some of these things are
harmful to us and some are beneficial
And in this day and age, the age
of information, we are more in need than
ever before to be very conscious and mindful
of what we watch, what we use of
social media apps and general consumption of entertainment
to make sure that it's not damaging
our
equilibrium, our balance in the right type of
praiseworthy fear and the right type of hope
that is not arbitrary, false, or excessive. And
ultimately at the end of the day, this
topic of hope and fear ties into Taqwa,
God Consciousness,
which we will cover as a separate topic
inshaAllah ta'ala, but I will ask next week
as well inshaAllah ta'ala about what we covered
today. Again, different types of hope, different types
of fear, but these are some practical things
that we can do.
Again, if you find yourself
with an imbalance, desensitized
to something or excessive,
grief, you will know that you are in
need of the other elements, the other emotion,
the other thought. Alhamdulillah that we have so
many resources and access to so many things
today, for us to continue moving forward in
a very balanced optimistic manner and to also
be a source of optimism for others.
One personal advice in this in this, sensitive
time as well,
we will notice
a lot of people have expressed this. We'll
notice sometimes people are struggling with something
and there may be an underlying reason for
it. So it may look like there's excessive
fear or excessive hope, but that might not
be the issue. There might be another problem.
It might need to be some conversation. They're
not there might be a connection that needs
to be made. 1st, you talk to this
person, you connect with them before you try
to kind of like, you know, give advice
or analyze what's happening. So oftentimes people are
struggling with one thing and and the symptoms
are very different. We need to always
build sincere genuine connections of listening and receiving
as we are trying to help one another
and to know that personalities are different within
one family. Personalities are very different. So we
need to figure out the best methodology, the
best delivery method to help someone reach that
right balance of hope and fear. May Allah
grant us the right type of hope and
the right type of fear and protect us
from shortcomings, and may Allah alleviate the affairs
of our brothers and sisters in every land
and place and may Allah
make us a source of justice and relief
for all who are oppressed anywhere around the
world
And may Allah guide us and guide others
through us.