Yasir Qadhi – Being A Muslim Kid In The USA
AI: Summary ©
The importance of Islam is highlighted, including its power to make life easier, provide meaning to life, and allow for a sense of reality. It is also emphasized that one's knowledge and wisdom are linked to one's trust in God and that one's actions and values are linked to one's trust. The speaker advises parents to focus on their own values and not waste their youth, and emphasizes the importance of learning to be successful and not give up hope. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of faith in helping children grow and produce success, and the potential for suffering and evil to be more positive.AI: Transcript ©
Alhamdulillah,
all praise is due to Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala.
We praise Him, and we venerate Him, and
we worship Him,
and we seek refuge in Allah
from the evil of our souls and the
consequences of our sins.
Indeed, whomever Allah guides, none can misguide,
and whoever is misguided cannot be guided except
with Him.
I bear witness and I testify
that there is no God, there is no
Creator, there is no Sustainer,
there is no deity worthy of worship other
than Allah
And I bear witness and I testify
that the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
is his final Prophet
and his most perfect worshiper.
As to what follows,
know that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has advised
us, nay He has commanded us to be
conscious of Him. When He says in the
Quran,
aamanutaqollaha
haqqatukati
walatumutunnaillawantumuslimoon.
O you who believe, have the taqwa of
Allah, be conscious of Allah, the way that
it is befitting you are conscious of Him,
and do not die except in the state
of Islam.
Dear Muslims, you're all aware
that this week is the 1st week of
our holidays, the summer holidays.
And so our masajid
are full of our youth, our middle and
high school students, they are coming to our
masajid.
And so I ask the elders for an
indulgence that today's khutba is meant primarily
for our youth. It is meant for them
to encourage them and to speak at their
level. So I ask the indulgence of the
elders to allow me to do this opportune
khutbah in light of the week that we
are in. And my message to my young
brothers and sisters
will comprise of 7 basic points,
very simple points. You don't have to take
any notes, you can watch it online later
on and take notes from the online video,
Insha'AllahHu Ta'ala. I want to remind all of
you of 7 very
simple points
that I want you to understand, to memorize,
to digest and to appreciate.
The first of these points,
we must be thankful
that Allah blessed us with Islam.
Dear brothers and sisters, dear youngsters,
the biggest blessing Allah has given you and
me is the blessing of Islam.
And you know, when you have a blessing,
you take it for granted.
When you have something, you don't appreciate it.
So it needs to be reminded,
you need to be told sometimes,
you need to be prodded.
There is no blessing
bigger in your lives right now than the
blessing of Islam, and Allah has gifted you
this blessing without even you asking for it.
Allah has blessed you with families that are
Muslim, so you have been born into Islam.
There are so many people and you know
them around us, they have to search for
the truth, they have to find the truth,
they don't know the purpose of life, they
don't know why they are here, They don't
know how to live their lives. And since
your birth, and since your childhood, and since
your upbringing, you have been taught a code
of life. You have been taught some basic
Islamic theology,
basic Islamic manners, and you take it for
granted. But Allah
reminds us that the biggest blessing He has
given us is the blessing of Islam. Allah
says, Allah
has chosen you. Allah chooses who to guide,
and some of us are born into the
faith, and others they have to struggle and
find the faith. And those whom Allah chooses
to be born in, we should be extra
appreciative,
we should be thankful to Allah because you
and I don't know
if we were born outside the faith, would
we choose? If we were born in another
faith, would we take the courage and the
intellectual curiosity,
and the explore, and to actually make this
very difficult decision? Allah lifted that from us,
and Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala blessed us. And
you know some of the people converted at
the time of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam, but they weren't strong believers, they were
weak in their faith. And so they came
to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam boasting, Hey,
we were the ones who converted to Islam.
Allah revealed in the Quran,
They think they are doing you a favor
by converting to Islam.
No. Balillahuh
yamunnoalaikum
anhadakum lil iman. Rather
Allah has blessed you by guiding you to
iman. This is a blessing from Allah. It
is the biggest blessing,
far bigger than any other blessing. So appreciate
this blessing, and understand that Allah gifted you
all of this without even you asking. So
then what do you think He's gonna give
you if you actually ask Him? He gave
you the biggest blessing, and you didn't even
ask for it. So imagine if you turn
to Allah, and you asked Allah, how much
more would He give you? The second point
that I want us to reflect over
is that for us as Muslims,
religion
is not meant to make life difficult,
It is meant to make life noble.
Religion is not meant as a set of
rules
so that you don't have fun in life.
No. That's not the purpose of religion.
Religion
is meant to give meaning to our lives,
to tell us why we're here, to tell
us where we're going, and to tell us
how to get there.
Without religion,
life becomes without value and meaning. Can you
imagine one day if you woke up in
a beautiful luxury car, luxury jet, luxury yacht,
and there was nobody else there. You're getting
all the food you want, all the water
you want. You're having all the fun you
want, all your video games are there, but
you don't know where the ship is going,
and you're just living your life day by
day. Wouldn't you be totally perplexed? What's going
on? I have everything I need, but what
is the purpose? Why did I end up
over here? Well imagine life is even more
precious than some luxury yacht, and Allah has
blessed you with this life. And since you
were born into the faith, you are taking
for granted the questions
and the answers the faith gives you. But
somebody has to remind you, if you didn't
have Islam, you wouldn't know why you're here.
You wouldn't know who created you. You wouldn't
know where you're going. We're going to Jannah,
InshaAllah, wa ta'ala. You wouldn't know how to
get there. So Islam
is not meant to restrict your life. It's
not meant to make less fun for you.
No. Islam is meant to provide meaning to
your life, to make sense of why you
are here, to make life noble, to give
you a higher purpose.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions in the
Quran,
He didn't make the religion difficult. Wama jaaalaalaykum
fiddeenimin araj Allah says in the Quran,
I want to make things easy for you,
not to make things difficult for you. So
religion
is there so that we understand the biggest
questions. And what are the biggest questions? Why
am I here?
Who created me? Where will I go once
this world finishes? What is the purpose of
my being here? How do I live life
to the maximum?
These
questions you and I take for granted because
we know them, and we know them because
of Islam. But I'm here to remind you,
if you didn't have Islam, you wouldn't have
answers to these questions, and you would be
searching, or even worse,
you wouldn't even bear to ask the question,
and you would just live your life like
the animals live their lives. But we are
not mere animals, we are more noble than
animals. Allah says in the
Allah
all the other creation. When Allah created my
mother and father Adam and Hawa, when Allah
created Adam and Hawa, He even told the
angels
to bow down to our parents, to honor
them. We are honored. How are we honored?
Because Allah
gave us a mind to think, He gave
us rationality.
He gave us a spirit to live our
lives with. He gave us what He didn't
give any of the other animals and creatures
around us. So to honor Allah, we need
Islam, and Islam provides
answers to the most difficult questions of life.
Islam tells us right from wrong, good from
evil. If we didn't have Islam, how would
we know good from evil? Look around, every
few years society changes what is good and
evil. Every few decades morality changes. That doesn't
make any sense. So Allah has told us
what is good and what is bad. Allah
has told us what is pure and what
is impure. So we have a code of
ethics and a law to live by. This
leads me to my third point.
Sometimes some of us come
and they ask a very deep question, and
that is, but okay, I was born a
Muslim, but how do I know Islam is
true? I was born a Muslim, but I'm
just taking it for granted Islam is true.
And this is a very good question, it's
a very profound question, and I will answer
it in my 3rd and my 4th point.
We know Islam is true, point number 3,
because Islam
is the most reasonable
and common sense religion, and it appeals to
our notions of logic and rationality.
There is no other religion
that is as easy and as comprehensible
and as in tune with our nature than
Islam. And I challenge you, when you get
older, to read other religions and you will
see, even a cursory reading you will understand.
We believe there is 1 God, All Perfect,
All mighty, the creator of the heavens and
earth. We don't need complicated proofs to tell
us He exists.
Our existence
means He exists. The world is so beautiful.
Who created that beauty? The world is so
perfect, who made that perfection? When the creation
is so perfect,
how much perfect do you think the Creator
must be? And Allah tells us in the
Quran, look around you. Do you see any
flaw in the design?
Look around you. Is there a crack in
the world and the heavens? Look around you.
Do you see any any problem in the
creation? No. Allah Azzawajal says, He is the
khalak. He is the fatr. He is the
ram. He is the one who fashions al
musawwir. He gave us our shapes. He made
the shapes of the bodies. He breathed life
into all of the creation. We need an
all perfect creator, and it doesn't make sense
to have multiple gods. Look at what happens
when you believe in multiple gods. Look at
the mythologies of the other religions out there,
gods fighting each other. Allah says in the
Quran, if there were multiple gods, you would
see the creation itself fighting. You would see
civil war between the gods. There is no
civil war in the world around us, in
nature. Nature is perfectly symmetrical. This means there
must be one creator who has made nature
fully systematic.
Allah is the one who has put the
laws of biology, the laws of physics, the
laws of chemistry. You study them in your
middle school and high school. Who created
Newton's equations? Who put all of these structures
into place? Who was the one who made
osmosis? Who was the one who made the
plant that it absorbs carbon dioxide and gives
out oxygen? And then we are the humans,
we absorb oxygen, give out carbon dioxide.
This perfect synergy,
Everything fits into place, more complicated than the
most complex puzzle, and Allah made everything seamless.
We don't need
very complicated proofs for God's existence.
Allah's existence is evident. Open your eyes. You
are a proof Allah exists. Now what other
religion has the simplicity of 1 God who
is all perfect, who is above us? He
is not like us. He is unique. We
don't believe in a God that is walking
on earth. We don't believe in a God
that comes down and eats and drinks and
has children. That doesn't make any sense. Allah
says,
Allah doesn't have uncles and aunts and cousins.
Doesn't make any sense. And the Quran tells
us,
There is nothing like Allah. Allah is absolutely
unique. Belief in 1 God, belief in prophets
to communicate. How does this God communicate with
us? Surely, there must be people who communicate
with Him, and that is the role of
prophets. So Allah sent
message. This is another fundamental belief of Islam.
No other religion believes this. You look at
any 2 religions they're contradicting. For us, we
say no. Every religion had one kernel that
was true. Every religion that came from Allah,
it preached the same concept of 1 God
and Prophet and day of judgment. And if
you look historically, we find this to be
true. So we know Islam to be true
because
it appeals to our conscience, it appeals to
our common sense. Allah gave us a brain.
Allah gave us common sense. And the religion
makes sense to our common sense. The religion
appeals to the intellect Allah created in us.
And if we look at any other religion,
we say politely, we're not being rude, we
say, your religion doesn't make any sense. How
can 3 equal 1? How can God have
a son, and then the son dies on
the cross, and then were there 2 gods
when the son died, and then the son
it doesn't make any sense. Politely, we're not
trying to be rude, but it doesn't make
any sense. How can there be 50 gods,
a 1,000 gods? They must be fighting one
another. So we say to other religions, your
religions don't make logical sense. We have a
simple religion, one God, same line of prophets
with the same message, and then there must
be a hereafter.
Why must there be a hereafter?
Because we see this world is not fair.
We see this world, things happen that they
shouldn't happen. Sometimes the thief gets rewarded. Sometimes
the evil person gets away with the crime,
and the poor person or the the the
the
the righteous person dies a miserable death. That's
not fair. There must be a hereafter.
Hereafter
is where ultimate justice will be demonstrated.
So these are the 3 main beliefs of
our religion: 1 God, prophets, and day of
judgment. This is the simple belief that we
hold. But that's not our only reason to
believe in Islam. Point number 4.
We know Islam to be true
because we have an amazing,
amazing miracle.
We have a miracle
that we can turn to anytime we have
any doubts,
and that is the miracle of the Quran.
We know Islam to be true
because there is a miracle
that we can all listen to, we can
all recite, we can all experience, and that
is the miracle of the Quran, the power
of the Quran, the message of the Quran,
the impact of the Quran, the memorization of
the Quran, the very fact that this book,
600 pages, it is memorized by a 10
year old, our own epic masjid produces
huffad in the Quran, the very
fact that this book, 600 pages, it is
memorized by a 10 year old, our own
epic masjid produces huffad constantly, they don't even
speak the language, and they memorize the whole
book of Allah. There is no other book
on earth that is memorized even a fraction
of how much the Quran is memorized by
people who don't even speak the language. If
this isn't a miracle, then what is a
miracle? So every aspect of the Quran is
a miracle, Its revelation is a miracle.
The life of the prophet upon whom it
was revealed is a miracle. The seerah is
akhlaq is a miracle. The revelation of the
Quran, the impact the Quran has. And you
know, every one of you knows this, when
you listen to the Quran,
the impact of that recitation,
even if you don't understand Arabic,
no other recitation
has that impact on your qalb. This is
a miracle, and Allah mentions the miracle in
the book. Allah says in the book, in
the Quran itself, they come to you asking
for miracles.
Allah says,
Isn't it enough of a miracle
that We have revealed to them this book
that they listened to and tilawah is done?
The book is a sufficient miracle. So, dear
youngsters,
anytime shaitan comes to you, you get any
doubt, I am telling you, turn on the
Quran.
Turn on to a recitation of the Quran.
Listen to the Quran. Read the Quran. And
I guarantee you, if you listen to the
Quran with your heart and your soul, any
doubt will go away, because the Quran, Allah
says in the Quran, that it is a
healness for the disease of the heart. Walunaziruminalqurani
maahuashifaunwarahmatulil
mumineen. Any disease of the heart, spiritual disease,
any doubts that you have, listen to the
Quran, and it will go away. So this
is my 4th point. 3rd point, we know
Islam to be true because of rationality, because
it appeals to our soul. 4th point, we
know Islam to be true as well because
of the Quran. Both points together. We have
a natural proof, and we have a supernatural
proof. We have a logical proof, and we
have a religious
religious proof. Both of them come together when
it comes to Islam. The 5th point that
I have, now
now that we've come to the conclusion, Allah
has blessed us with Islam, and Islam is
meant to guide us, and we know Islam
to be true.
What if
you come across a ruling, a commandment,
a verse of the Quran, a hadith,
and you ask yourself, or your friends ask,
a non Muslim friend, or you listen to
a
allow such a
Why would God allow such a thing, or
why would God prohibit such a thing?
And you don't know the answer to that
question.
What if you cannot explain
why something is halal or why something is
haram?
My response to this is actually very easy,
and that is,
just like you understand
that sometimes the wisdoms of commandments are beyond
you, and the more you grow in knowledge,
the more you will understand the wisdoms,
So too you have to understand
that sometimes the wisdoms of commandments will be
beyond you, even if you have a lot
of knowledge, because the knowledge of Allah is
infinitely more than your and my knowledge. Let
me give you a simple example that even
you will understand. When you were a young
child, when you were 5 years old maybe,
your parents would say to you, don't watch
too much TV, don't eat just sweets. Maybe
when you're 5, you're wondering, why can't I
eat I I don't wanna eat any any
any, fruits and vegetables. I just wanna eat
cake. I just wanna eat, you know, cookies.
Maybe when you're 5, you're irritated. I just
wanna watch TV. I don't wanna go to
school. But now that you're 10, you're 15,
even you
understand, of course, I can't just live by
sweets. I need food. I can't just watch
TV all day. I need to go to
school. With age comes wisdom. With more knowledge
comes understanding.
So the question arises,
do you think your knowledge and wisdom is
infinite,
or is it finite?
If you know that it is finite,
then there must be a level of trust
you give to the infinite.
There must be just like you trust your
parents when they told you, you
don't fully understand?
So be it. You don't have to understand
it. You have to have trust in Allah.
In fact, the Quran tells us there are
certain things that I have made,
allowed for you, and you don't like them.
Waasaan wa taqarahushinwawkhairulaka.
Allah says, sometimes
you don't like something, but it is good
for you. And sometimes you like something, and
it is bad for you. This is in
the Quran.
So my point number 5, you have to
humble your own mind. You are not all
knowledgeable.
I am not all knowledgeable.
Allah is all knowledgeable.
So once you come to the conclusion, points
number 34, that Islam is correct, and you
come to this conclusion by answering the big
questions. Who is God? What is the nature
of God? What is the purpose of life?
These are the big questions. Then you come
to a smaller question. Why do we pray
5 times a day?
Well, maybe I don't know the answer. Why
5? Why not 6? Why not 7? Why
do we do wudu, and we just go
to here and not over there? Why do
I must rub the wipe the hair and
wash the hands? Maybe I don't have a
good answer for that. But are you going
to base
the claim that Islam is true based upon
you understanding wudu?
No. That's not how you make a judgment
about Islam.
So any halal that you don't understand,
any haram that you don't understand,
you must understand one point, which is, Allah
says in the Quran,
Everything that is harmful for you, I have
made it haram. And everything that is good
for you, I have made it halal.
Allah has made that which is harmful
haram.
Just like the parent, when the parent says,
you can't just eat cake. Maybe you at
5 don't understand this point. Well maybe when
you're 50, you won't understand every ruling of
Allah, but you must trust Allah, because Allah
does not make the good haram,
Allah does not make the pure haram, Allah
only makes the evil haram. Anything that is
harmful to you or to society, anything that
is dangerous to you or to civil order,
Allah has made it haram. Therefore, I'm telling
you from now, you're not gonna understand
every single ruling of Islam.
You're not.
Because that's not the purpose.
There will be rulings you might be confused
by. What is the wisdom? So find out,
is it an actual ruling? Is there something
that because you have to differentiate, some things
are culture and some things are Islam. And
if it's culture, well then you're at an
easier thing because cultures change. But if it
is Islam, and it's in the Quran, or
it's in the sunnah, it's something clear cut,
well then, we must hear and we must
obey, and we must submit, because that's what
faith is. We put our trust in Allah.
Even if we don't understand, well, we know
Allah wants what is beneficial. So this is
my 5th point.
Everything in our religion is meant to make
life better, wholesome,
pure, not just for us individually, for all
of society as well. My 6th point,
especially in light of the fact that we're
beginning summer, but not just about summer. This
is a point especially at your age.
I advise you as your older brother
to understand
that
time will fly by.
And before you know it, right now, you're
10, you're 12, you're 15. Before you know
it, you're gonna be 30, 40, 50.
Take advantage of your youth
before you become older. Take advantage of these
3 months of the summer. You have 3
months with absolutely
no assignments from school, and I understand
you wanna play. Xbox is calling you. PlayStation
is calling you. Your friends are calling you.
By the way, I hope it's your friends
actually calling for physical playing and not just
just games at home. It's healthy to go
outside and play. I understand.
And wallahi,
no problem. Play a little bit of Xbox.
Play a little bit of PlayStation.
But
my sincere advice says your older brother,
don't waste 3 months having accomplished nothing.
Don't waste this whole years of your youth
doing nothing.
When you're older, you will not be able
to get this time back. And if you
want to be successful,
and by successful, I don't just mean religiously
successful, I even mean successful in this world.
You want to be a good businessman, a
good lawyer, a good engineer, a good doctor,
you want to have a healthy family, you
want to have a good career?
Every successful person takes advantage of his or
her time. So I am advising you, as
your older brother, no matter what your age
is, whether you're 7 years old, whether you're
10, whether you're 15,
Do something at your age that is useful
and productive. And I have a task. Maybe
the parents won't like this, but you can
mention my name and say you heard it
in the khutbah. Go to your parents today
or tomorrow. Go to them
and write a contract with them. Say the
sheikh said to do this in the khudba.
Say that
give me some assignments that are good for
my age level.
Give me some tasks, some books to read,
some lectures to listen to, some surahs to
memorize.
And if I do, you have to give
me a prize by the end of the
summer.
Mention my name and say to your parents
the Sheikh Hasso and the Khutba. I'll deal
with the anger. Don't worry. Say to your
parents,
if I memorize this many surahs, what will
I get by the end of the summer?
If I read these books, what gift will
you give me? And you can, as I
said, use my name, and I'll deal with
the parents. But I want the parents to
assign
useful,
productive
things that are for your age that will
make the summer good for you. Yes. Have
some fun, but do something productive. And by
the way, parents, it's halal to incentivize with
the dunya as well. Nothing wrong here. Let
them do it for Allah and also for
the gifts that you will give them, because
I said you're gonna give them in the
khutbah. But make sure they take advantage of
their time so that they benefit in this
time that Allah has gifted them with. This
is my 6th point. And my 7th and
final point for the first khutba is,
dear young brothers and sisters,
you're not gonna be perfect.
I'm not perfect.
You are human.
You will make mistakes.
You will fall. You will get dirty.
Remember,
when you go right or left from the
path,
when you take the wrong road,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will always accept you
back.
Allah will always forgive you.
Allah will always cleanse you of no matter
how much you have done.
So never ever give up hope in Allah.
If you fell down, you have to stand
up and continue walking. If you got yourself
dirty,
take a shower, change your clothes, and I
mean physically and spiritually. If you did something
you shouldn't have done, turn to Allah
as fast as you can.
And
if you need some help, get help with
your parents. If you need to tell somebody
something, tell them something, but do not remain
on the path of error. Let me give
you a simple example, suppose you're riding, you
one day you'll have a car, you're gonna
be going on the road. Suppose you took
the wrong turn, instead of going straight you
turned right, and you realized you went on
the wrong turn an hour down the road.
What are you gonna do? Continue going forever?
You have to turn back and find the
right path. If you understand this for this
world, know that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will
accept you coming back to the right path
at any time, and the faster you come
back, the better it is for you. But
my message to you, don't lose hope if
you go right and left, and you find
yourself where you shouldn't be. Do not lose
hope in Allah. Sometimes you might do something
you shouldn't do. That's bad, you shouldn't have
done it. But as soon as you realize
that, cleanse yourself. How do you cleanse yourself?
Raise your hands and say, O Allah, forgive
me and guide me. O Allah, I made
a mistake, let me come back to You,
and turn back to Allah, and make the
effort, and make the effort again, and again,
and again. And it is in that effort
that Allah will forgive you. You're not gonna
be perfect. I'm not perfect. Allah didn't create
you to be perfect, but you cannot give
up.
You cannot accept status quo as being something
that's wrong. You have to try to be
good, and in that trying, insha Allahu ta'ala,
that is where your blessings will come. Dear
youngsters, dear younger brothers and sisters, I want
to say to you on a personal note,
as a parent to some of you literally
right now in the audience, and as an
elder brother and sister to inshallah, all of
you, Sometimes,
us parents, we are a bit too strict.
We come off as too harsh. But I
want you to know, we do it because
we love you, and we care about you.
We do it because we want you to
succeed.
We want you to flourish. You might not
understand,
and sometimes we might actually be too harsh.
By the way, sometimes we're not too harsh.
You think we're too harsh. But sometimes, maybe
you're right, we are too harsh, but we're
not doing it because we want to make
life difficult for you. We're not doing it
to restrict your freedoms and pleasures. We're not
doing it because we don't want to see
you happy. No. We are strict because we
want to see you happy. We are strict
because we want to see you succeed.
Dear youngsters, a day will come when you
are parents that you will realize how much
we love you. At this stage, it's too
much for you to understand, but all that
we do is out of love, out of
concern, out of care. We want to see
you flourish. We your happiness, wallahi,
is more precious to us than our happiness.
You don't understand that right now. These are
words to you, but every parent knows to
see you succeed is our success. We will
gladly
give up our happiness for your happiness, and
you need to understand that you are our
future. Everything we do, even our worldly stuff,
why do we go to work? Why? It's
for your happiness and to protect you. You
might be too young to fully understand,
but understand this point, and that is we
love you, and we want to see you
flourish. We want to see you succeed. You
are the future, and we are here for
you. Understand this point, and when you understand
it, appreciate, and try your best to live
up. And if you don't live up initially,
keep on trying and trying and trying, and
in that trying will be your success and
our success as well. May Allah
bless me and you with truth to the
Quran. And may He make us of those
who, its verses, they understand and apply its
halal and haram throughout our lifespan. I ask
Allah's forgiveness. You as well ask him for
he is the Ghafoor and the Rahman.
Alhamdulillah.
All praises due to Allah, the one and
the unique.
He it is whom we worship, and it
is his aid that we seek.
He is the Lord of the oppressed, and
he hears the prayer of the weak. As
to what follows,
before I finish my khutba for today,
I must mention the reality of what is
happening in Gaza.
A young sister of ours in middle school,
15 maybe years old, came up and asked
me,
how do we understand
this pain? Why is Allah allowing this to
happen to children?
And
my response
was,
I can't explain to you, dear young sister
of mine, in 5 minutes. And perhaps even
as adults, we're struggling to understand.
I wish I could shield you from that
pain. I wish you didn't have to try
to understand at this age of your lives
how evil the world can be, how cruel
the world can be. And maybe I'm not
qualified to try to explain. Maybe even I'm
struggling, and the adults are struggling.
But
Allah has tested the children of ghazah,
and Allah has tested them in ways we
cannot even comprehend.
They are not shielded, so you also should
not be shielded.
They have had to mature
way beyond their years,
way beyond their years, And so perhaps Allah
is using them to cause you some maturity
even as we sit 5,000 miles away.
I don't know how to explain to you
the complexity
of the situation,
but I do know, I do know that
this is a wake up call. It is
a catalyst that will force you to mature.
You cannot
remain the same when you see the evil
that is being perpetrated.
And I have given many khutbas from this
mimbar, you can find them online, to the
adults trying to rationalize and explain, how do
we understand the pain, the suffering, the divine
wisdom?
So if you wanna listen to that, listen
to those lectures as well. But in a
nutshell,
this is where faith comes the most essential.
It is faith that keeps us sane. It
is faith that gives us hope when there
is no hope. It is faith that gives
us courage. It is faith that causes us
to look forward to the day of judgment.
This is where faith really makes the most
sense and the most need, so we turn
to Allah. We might not fully understand the
wisdom, but we must trust there is a
higher wisdom, and we comfort ourselves. How do
we comfort ourselves that Allah is watching, and
there is a day of judgment, and there
is a hereafter?
Every pain that the children of Ghazah are
suffering,
every pain that their parents have had to
bear, every single person that has passed away,
they are not dead. Allah says they're alive
in Jannah right now. Allah says they are
being provided by Allah. We have to take
comfort that what is prepared for them in
the hereafter is better for them. This life,
how long is it gonna be? It's a
short life, and the hereafter
is the real life. So whatever is happening
of
the to the day of judgment.
Also
during this time frame, when we see how
evil some people can be, we are reminded
what happens when you don't have fear of
God, when you don't have love of God,
you become worse than animals.
No Muslim can ever do what the evil
people are doing to those children of Gaza.
No Muslim, no matter what group has done
whatever,
no Muslim would ever resort to that type
of evil. Why? Because we have belief in
God. When you believe in God, when you
have faith, then automatically
your morality, your akhlaah comes to a higher
level. What happens when you don't believe in
God? What happens when you don't have faith?
We see how people can act. So we
go back to my first point. Thank Allah
for having iman.
Thank Allah for being Muslim. Thank Allah for
understanding,
and understand as well. When you don't have
that faith,
you can hate,
and you can be full of so much
evil
that the mind cannot comprehend.
It is truly
terrifying,
and I hear you, and I sympathize with
you. It is terrifying
to see our own politicians,
and to see our own media pundits
justify what is happening, and the massacre of
children.
It is absolutely terrifying, and I wish I
could explain to your young 15 year old
mind how to make sense of this. But
just like the children of Ghazza are forced
to become adults,
perhaps this incident will force you as well
to become more mature. It will force you
to realize the world is not fun and
games. The world is not just play. The
world is full of evil and also full
of hope. And religion forces
to happening in ghazah to think, to ponder,
to reflect, to study. Use what is happening
in ghazah as a catalyst for you to
rise up and become more mature, and in
the process
rediscover your faith and come closer to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And if you do that,
then perhaps, perhaps we automatically see some of
the wisdoms of what is happening. Allah has
tested them and chosen them, and
ummah. The whole ummah is now rethinking through,
and so much good is also coming out
of the evil, and this is what we
come to firmly, that the net result of
every single pain
is more positive than negative. That's what we
believe. The net result is there's more good
than bad. So we ask Allah
to give us courage, to give us hope,
we ask Allah to guide us through these
difficult times.
Aqbam.
There's been an, ask for a dua. 1
of our brothers, he has brain, tumor, and
there's gonna be a surgery in a few
days.
So he's made a special request to make
dua for him and for all of our
sick brothers.
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