Tammam Alwan – Whats your vision
AI: Summary ©
The importance of Allah's guidance and forgiveness is discussed, along with struggles of individuals to achieve their dreams and a historical prediction about the success of the United States in achieving peace and justice. The speakers emphasize the need for individuals to have a vision for themselves and work towards their goals, citing narratives such as the destruction of a plant, realizing their goals and plans, achieving spiritual and physical transformation, and pursuing financial and social goals. They ask why am I now? Why do I stand? Why do I happen to be in this job? Why do I happen to be in this part of my life or pursuing this degree?
AI: Summary ©
All praise and thanks are for Allah.
We praise Him and we thank Him. We
seek His assistance
and we seek His forgiveness.
We take refuge in Allah from the evils
of ourselves and from the sinfulness of our
actions.
Whomever Allah guides,
none can misguide.
And whomever Allah misguides or allows to go
astray,
none can guide.
I bear witness that there is none worth
worshiping
but Allah
alone
with no partner and I bear witness that
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
is his servant and his final messenger.
Allah says in the Quran,
in the Noble Quran,
O you who believed, have taqwa of Allah
with the taqwa that is due to him
and do not die except as Muslims, except
in a state of submission to him. And
he also says,
O people,
have taqwa of your Lord who created you
from one soul and created from its mate
and dispersed from both of them many men
and women.
And have taqwa of Allah
through whom you ask one another
and the wounds.
Surely Allah is ever over you an observer.
When the Muslims were preparing
for
for the battle of the trench, the Nabi
salallahu alaihi wa sallam
had asked them to dig
a trench
Something that was so difficult for them in
that time relative to all the technology we
have nowadays to dig and to construct things.
And they were doing it with their hands
and with simple tools, spades
which are basically shovels
but they have pointed ends so that they
can break rock and get go into it.
And we know the famous hadith that reflects
the hunger of the
and
the
during that time, during that precarious situation
where they didn't exactly know what was going
to happen.
When so many tribes
from amongst the enemies of Allah and the
enemies of the Muslims were gathering
to attack them and lay siege to the
city.
Yet despite the hunger
and despite the fatigue, despite the exhaustion,
despite the seemingly desperate situation,
they continued digging
and digging
and digging
until in the famous narration and this comes
from imam Ahmed's Musnad and also in Nasai
mentions
it. Ibn Hajar al Asqalani in Fathulbayr he
says that this chain is hasan so it's
a good chain in terms of a hadith.
Al Bara'ubnu
Azaib
says, We came across a big rock like
a boulder. And in other narrations there's a
description of how huge it was, how difficult
it was. And he says, As much as
we tried to break it to continue the
trench, we couldn't.
And at a certain point we kind of
gave up.
And he says, We complained to the messenger
of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. We complained
to him. There's this big rock. What do
we do?
And so then Abi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
puts puts his clothes
aside.
He jumps down into the trench
and he picks up one of the spades.
And as he prepares himself
to strike it, he says Bismillah
in the name of Allah.
And the Arabic narration says Bismillah
With the first hit,
he destroyed about a third of it
and broke it into small pieces.
And he says, I swear to Allah,
I have been given the keys of the
Levant of ancient Syria, Bilad al Sham.
And I can see its red palaces
from my place right here. I can see
them.
And then he picked up the spade again
and he struck for the 2nd time. And
he said, Bismillah.
He hit a second time.
When he struck it a second time
he said,
wallahi, I swear to God. I've been given
the keys of Faris, the keys of Persia.
The Muslims are only in Madinah right now.
But he's talking about something so far away,
so distant, so grandiose, so lofty of a
goal. And he's saying, I've been given the
keys
of Persia.
And I see Al Mada'in, the ancient metropolis
of Al Mada'in. And I see its white
palace from my state right here in this
trench, I see it.
And lastly, he picked up the spade for
one last and a third time
and he struck that boulder again.
And he said, Bismillah
in the name of Allah.
And he says,
When he struck it for the last time
he destroyed the remainder of it into small
pieces of rock and dust.
And he said, By Allah,
I've been given the keys
of in Yemen and I can see its
gates before me now from my place here.
And one other narration says, In this time
at this very moment. And yes,
you know,
we can say of course and this is
true that the Nabi is Nabiun,
right? He's a Nabi. He's a prophet and
so he's giving us a prophecy here. He's
telling us a fact of what's to come.
But at the same time, what is he
doing to the Sahaba?
To their hearts,
to their emotions?
He's giving them a vision of the future.
He's giving them a grand plan. He's telling
them, yes, you may seem like you're in
a desperate situation now. You may seem like
you're tired and you're hungry and this is
just gonna be the end of it and
we're gonna be swallowed up because after all,
we're just in Medina right now and these
enemies are coming upon us to lay siege
to our city. We're gonna be destroyed.
But he's telling them that there's something else
that we're working towards. There's a long term
plan and there's a vision of the future.
And he described it so well with such
detail that it's as if they could see
it too.
And eventually this would happen because salallahu alaihi
wa sallam, he's giving us a prophecy.
And although in his lifetime
there were part Yemen also was opened
in terms of establishing peace and justice during
the time of Abu Bakr.
We had parts of Sham and during the
time of Sayyidina Muhammad radiAllahu anhu arba, all
of it would become a reality.
However, the key here is that he's teaching
us a lesson. And one reflection is he's
teaching us a lesson of how we can
have a vision for ourselves and the importance
of realizing it.
And that that requires
literally seeing it as if it's before your
eyes. And I ask the brothers to please
move up
to make room for others and fill in
the gaps.
To begin on our own personal paths
of our own visions, we have to ask
4 essential questions which are
where am I now?
What is my current status?
Where do I stand? What is my status
check-in terms of something? And we'll go into
different examples and different lenses by which we
can view ourselves and where we are in
our standing.
And the second question we have to ask
is
why am I here?
Why am I in the masjid today?
Why do I live in Dallas
right now?
Why do I happen to be in this
job?
Why do I happen to be in this
part of my life or pursuing this degree?
Whatever it may be,
what is the purpose behind it?
And the third question we have to ask
ourselves
is where do I want to be tomorrow?
What do I see for myself? And we
shouldn't just write down anything when we do
this exercise but we should actually sit down
and narrate where am I in the future?
What is the ideal state that I wanna
achieve? What is something lofty that I can
strive towards? And remember then Nabi said,
if you ask then ask for
Don't just say, You Rabb, give me just
a small piece of Jannah, I'll be happy.
Give me the lowest piece. Let me be
the last person who enters Jannah like the
hadith but ask for the best and so
strive for the best and have lofty ambitions
for yourself. And the last question is, what's
the next step for me to get in
that direction?
What can I do to get there?
Different angles. And we'll end here by just
stating
some different angles we can look at. We
can be comprehensive and include all of them
or just include one part.
1 is spiritual. My salah,
going to the masjid. My fasting, my recitation
of the Quran. My anger, my arrogance, my
envy toward others. A second is physical.
How much I can lift?
Bench press, dead lift, pick something.
My body weight percentage or even my body
weight, my diet, what I'm eating, my carbs,
my macros, whatever it may be, my sleep.
A third angle might be financial.
How much charity I want to give? How
much I want to save for my children's
education?
What kind of home I'd like to have
for the safety and comfort of my family?
Relationships
with my spouse or even getting married for
those of us who are single. My parents,
my children, my siblings.
Education in terms of a degree or a
skill set we want to achieve. Work in
terms of a raise, a promotion, a specific
role, working in a particular company or even
social in terms of the people that I
want to associate with, that I want to
be friends with. And then the 8 steps
that we can take practically to achieve this
are 1,
purify your intention. As the Nabi says
that all actions are based on intention. Let
it be for the sake of Allah
Anything we gain if we say I want
a nice car because I want everybody to
look up to me or I want this
position because I think it's really prestigious.
The moment that we lose that validation from
other people outside of ourselves,
we lose that trying to satisfy Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala is gonna be the moment when
we don't get up in the morning to
go work out. The moment when we we
see that donut before us and we're like
forget it. Forget the diet. I was doing
it for this person or that person or
this or that. But let it be intrinsic
and let it be for the self and
let it be only for the sake of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
2, set actual goals
and track those goals which is number 4.
As Umar says,
he says take yourself into account before other
people. So actually track. And what that does
is it helps us feel motivated and positive
about the work we're doing. 3,
begin.
Actually begin. Actually put in the effort.
As the Nabi sahih alaihi wa sallam says,
Just start to take action. Say, if this
is something I want to do for myself,
whatever you're thinking about, whatever you're contemplating about,
just start. And that's the very first step.
Next is 5, monitor the results
and track them.
6, be patient. It won't happen overnight. Just
like those palaces that the Nabi sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam mentioned, it took several decades. And
when he mentioned
Constantinople, that took centuries to happen. But still
the Muslims were striving for that from the
Sahaba to later generations.
7,
stay focused. As Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
When you make a decision and you say,
I'm gonna tread this path,
Then go ahead and be firm and rely
on Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And a) be
consistent. Whatever it is when you're working towards
this.
The best and most beloved actions to Allah
are those that are the most consistent
even if they're few. As some of us
stand here before, you know, before each other
today, we might have had New Year's resolutions
that have since fallen through.
You know, no progress on them or we
did something and then we kind of stopped.
And as we're preparing for Ramadan, we're thinking,
Okay, I want to pray isha in the
masjid every day. I want to do fajid.
I want to prepare myself for this. I
want to read the whole Quran
or do several
in Ramadan.
Let's remember these steps
as I remind myself and I remind you
all and just a cautionary remark which is
beware of publicly
announcing your individual
personal private goals.
Then a bee was functioning as a leader.
And a leader needs to make that vision
clear so that other people can have that
buy in and can join together.
But there are so many studies and just
anecdotally,
we know that when you say, oh I'm
going on a diet, it's not gonna last
very long because you get pleasure and you
get joy just from announcing it before anything
tangible has been done towards it.
And with that we say,