Late Night Talks (2024)
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The Gift of Istiqama (Steadfastness) | Late Night Talks
In the last 10 nights of Ramadan, Dr. Omar Suleiman and Sh. Yaser Birjas reflect on the book “The Disease and Its Cure” by Imam Ibn al-Qayyim.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. So, I just want to make sure that you guys really understand that we really, really and truly appreciate the sacrifice that you're making over here. Alhamdulillah, Rabbi Amin. And I believe personally, the community over here in Valley Ranch, mashallah, created a trend. I remember when these gatherings were very rare in the DFW area, and everybody was just coming to Valley Ranch, at Valley Ranch North, when it was very small. We went out of space, and subhanallah, people sometimes, because of the crowd, and it really gets really difficult to continue the evenings. But alhamdulillah, then we grew into this space, mashallah. And now, alhamdulillah, Rabbi Amin, a lot of people in the community around the DFW area are having these kind of activities and these programs. We're very happy that, mashallah, people are picking up on this beautiful tradition to keep the nights of Ramadan alive, alhamdulillah. And I'm very happy that we are part of this tradition. Alhamdulillah, thank you very much for continuing with that. May Allah bless you, bless your families, and bless your gathering, Ya Rabbil Alamin. Alhamdulillah. JazakAllah. Ready? We're good to go? Bismillah. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salamu ala Rasool Allah, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wala. So, subhanallah, our Ramadan started with shahada, and it's been every single day and night. We've been giving shahada after dhuhr, after asr, after isha, after taraweeh, before the late night. And alhamdulillah, in our last night, we had Joel join us. Brother Joel join us. Is he still here, by the way? Or did Joel go home? Alright, so we had Brother Joel take shahada with us at isha. And inshallah, we have our last, maybe our last, shahada for Ramadan. Brother Jeremiah, who is here. So inshallah, I'm going to ask you, actually, if we can stand up, inshallah. Stand right in the middle. Bismillah. Alright, are you ready? Alright, alhamdulillah. So, if you'll just repeat after me. We're going to go in Arabic and then English. In Arabic, very slowly.
Say, ashhadu an la ilaha illallah wa ashhadu anna muhammadan rasool Allah. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah. And that Muhammad is his final messenger. Ashhadu anna muhammadan rasool Allah. Congratulations, that's it. Welcome to Islam. May Allah bless you. Keep you firm. Forgive you for all of your previous sins. Accept all of the good that you've done prior to this and beyond. So we want to welcome you home, inshallah. This is a box, a small gift from us to you. And everyone, all these brothers are going to hug you after we finish the class, inshallah. So, if you don't want to be hugged, I suggest you get out of here before 2. Welcome to the community, Jeremiah. Thank you so much. And Sheikh Yasser has an office for you. And a parking spot. Anywhere you see Yasser Birjas is yours. Congratulations. Welcome to the community. Welcome home. On that note, Sheikh, someone gave me a Eid gift. How come I didn't get one? So, my new favorite sweater. Are you going to zoom on this thing? Can you see it? So they can see for real. MashaAllah. The only thing missing is an arrow that points to you. Because in Islam, we don't believe in ambiguity. So, it's he, him. Sheikh Yasser. That stole my office. I thought my Trump jokes was bad.
JazakAllah khair, Sheikh. We've, alhamdulillah, enjoyed our time together. And I ask Allah to join us in Al-Firdaws Al-A'la. And everyone who's here. Tonight is the last night of this month of Ramadan. It's the 30th night of Ramadan. As we come to the conclusion of this beautiful series from the Valley Ranch Islamic Center. We were discussing the book of Imam Ibn Qayyim, the disease and the cure. We went through a lot of these, I would say, symptoms of the disease. And how it happens. And why it happens. And we spoke about so many subjects, Sheikh. In regards to the disease, how it occurs in the heart. And why people continue to go into the same old habits. And what we can do to recover. So, I believe that tonight, the best we could do. Is to give the people, inshaAllah, a message of hope. A message of hope in regards to, okay, alhamdulillah, I understand now. I know what the problem is. And I know that the cure is going to be, maybe a little bit, requires a lot of discipline. Huge sacrifice. And to remain steadfast. Which is what we call Al-Istiqama in the Arabic language. And I believe that everybody understands that when it comes to the Istiqama. That's the soul of truly being a Muslim. A man came to the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam. And he says, Tell me something about Islam. That I don't have to ask anybody after you. And I believe, subhanAllah, it's very interesting now that we begin with this hadith. With Jeremiah right now giving his shahada. So, this is the message from the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam. To him and to everybody else over here. So, the man is asking, ya Rasulallah, I want to ask you a simple question. I don't have to ask anybody else after that.
So, tell me something about Islam. That I need to hold on to and no one else. I haven't asked no one else. So, the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Say, I believe in Allah. And then remain steadfast. What does that really mean, in essence? He's telling him, say, I believe. And then prove it. Like, basically, as the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam says, I challenge you. I dare you. Like he says, say, I believe. And then prove it. How would you prove to be a believer here? Is by remaining steadfast. Having that sense of istiqamah. It's the thing that we all ask Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, every single rak'ah in our salah. Guide us to the straight path. So, istiqamah is the essence of the cure for all the disease that we talked about over here. So, I want to hear from you, inshallah wa ta'ala, on the recap of these sessions. And what is istiqamah? How can we explain istiqamah to the people? It's actually, subhanallah, one of the most profound concepts in Islam. Because Islam anticipates the challenges ahead. It doesn't sell you a false hope. It doesn't tell you, hey, you just believe and everything is going to evaporate. All your problems are going to go away. Nothing bad is going to happen. You're going to get rich. You're going to find ease in every single element of your life. Islam tells you, أَحَسِبَ النَّاسُ أَن يُتْرَكُوا أَن يُقُولُوا أَمَنَّا وَهُمْ لَا يُفْتَنُونَ After you say you believe, Allah is going to test you in your belief. Tests are going to come to make sure that that belief is sincerely for Allah. So, the opposite of istiqamah, and sometimes this is what our scholars of tazkiyah do, is that they introduce a concept by its opposite. The opposite is what Allah mentions in the Quran, وَمِنَ النَّاسِ مِنْ يَعْبِدُ اللَّهَ عَلَى حَرْفٍ There are some people that worship Allah on an edge, like literally standing on a cliff. If good things happen, they stay on. Bad things happen, they jump off. So, you're not just on a slippery slope, you're literally on a cliff,
which means you put your faith in such extreme trepidation and instability that it's either all or nothing. You either jump off the cliff or you stay on the mountain. So, they're testing God. Right. They're not being faithful to Allah. They're dealing with Allah on their terms, not His terms. Like being on the edge, if God is good to me, I'm going to be good to Him. If God is not so good to me, then I'll leave. Right. So, that's, I guess, that's like I said, that's completely opposite from the istiqamah. And when the man asked the Prophet ﷺ, Ya Rasulallah, what is it I need to know about Islam that I need to hear it from you? He goes, say I believe, and then just prove it. Prove it, of course, but through the actions of istiqamah. Now, when people ask, okay, so how can I be mustaqim? Right. I need to have that path of istiqamah. What is it exactly? How does it look like? So, it starts with the heart. The Prophet ﷺ's most frequent dua, his most frequent supplication was what? This is the most frequent supplication of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Oh, turner of hearts, make my heart firm on your path. If there was anyone that wouldn't have to worry about his heart, it would be the Prophet ﷺ. But he kept on saying and he taught, Oh, turner of hearts, make my heart firm on your path. The Prophet ﷺ described the heart in multiple ways. Right. In general, the word qalb, of course, means that it turns over. Right. It's constantly turning over, upside down, upside down, upside down. The Prophet ﷺ described the heart like a feather in the desert. The wind blows it and it goes this way and it goes that way. It turns over this way and turns over that way. So, the idea here is, number one, you got to ask Allah to make your heart firm. Number two, make sure that you don't keep exposing your heart to a tornado. Right. So, you can't control the volatile nature of the heart,
but you do control the type of environment that you put your heart in. So, if the wind, if it's constantly storming, it doesn't matter how strong the house is initially, eventually, a tornado is going to take it out. Eventually, the heart is going to flip. So, if you start from the heart, put the heart in the right place, and that's where, subhanAllah, the ilmah mentioned, like the scholars mentioned, it's deeply profound. I've been... If you've been Muslim for 60 years and you still have to ask Allah 17 times a day, guide me, guide me, guide me, guide me. Someone says, well, I'm already guided. But what does Surah Ali Imran come up with? So, Surah Al-Baqarah is value guidance. Don't sell your guidance for nothing. Right. Don't sell. Don't purchase misguidance for guidance. Don't take your religion for a few pennies and just get rid of it like that. Right. Take guidance as the most precious thing in the world to you. But Surah Ali Imran is Oh Allah, don't let our hearts become crooked after you've guided us. Because sometimes deviation comes after guidance. Sometimes crookedness comes after guidance. So, Sirat Al-Mustaqim is a constant straight path. Now, all of us are going to... Like if you tell someone, walk in a straight line, or go from here to there, go straight. Yeah, you know, your footsteps are going to be a little bit here sometimes, a little bit there. But if I tell you, walk from that door to here. Right. You know, think about a cop doing one of those tests. Not that I've ever had to take one of those tests. Right. You know, like getting pulled over. Like if the variation is too far off, that means you don't know where you are anymore. You've lost it. So, it's natural that you're going to step a little bit here, step a little bit there, that you're not necessarily, you know, tippy-toeing on a tightrope here. You're trying to walk as straight as possible. But if you're all over the place, you have no aim. You're not going where you need to go. So, Istiqamah starts off with knowing the goal, and then setting the structure, setting the environment in accordance with that goal.
Then after having a firm heart, subhanAllah, this is where I think it ties in beautifully to the book, Sheikh, is like every other element that you have, like the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam described every part of your body as having the potential to wander. It's like when he described the tongue, he said, don't have a tongue like the tongue of a cow, like slaps in different directions, or something like that. Right? Like, keep your tongue firm. Imprison it. You know, Abdullah bin Mas'ud radiAllahu anhu, I believe it was him who said that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la did not create anything without purpose. He said, Allah created two gates for the tongue, your teeth and your lips. Keep your mouth shut sometimes. Don't let your tongue slip right and left and just say whatever it wants to all the time. Allah talks about the wandering eye in the Quran, talks about the aimless listening. Right? So all of wasa'il al-ma'arif, these things that you're supposed to come to know Allah by and make firm and have discipline with, you just let them go all over the place. And so it's the most attractive seller, and at any moment you can be a vulnerable buyer. And so the shaitan will take your heart somewhere, take your eyes somewhere, take your ears somewhere, take your tongue somewhere, take your head somewhere. So keeping it firm, starting with the heart and constantly knowing where you want to go and then asking Allah to help you get there while you put everything in place so that you can get there insha'Allah. You know, the best example for what you just said, Sheikh, summarized by the Prophet salAllahu alaihi wa sallam in one single hadith. When he said, DarabAllahu mathalan siratan mustaqeema Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la has set forth an example for the believers in terms of istiqama and steadfastness. He goes, a straight path. Obviously when I say istiqama, something mustaqeema, you can see alhamdulillah, I'm not going to say the end of it, but at least it's clear, the path is clear. If it was crooked, you're going to always be anxious because you don't know what's behind that curve and that turn. But it's straight, so everything's supposed to be clear as you walk, it's still clear. So the Prophet salAllahu alaihi wa sallam says, Allah Subh'anaHu wa ta-A'la set forth the example of istiqama, steadfastness, the example of a straight path. Because that's what you ask Allah all these days and all these salawats, ihdinas surat al-mustaqeem,
guide us to the straight path. He says, on the side of that straight path, there are walls. So there are fences and walls. He says, these walls have open gates. And these open gates, they're only covered with a sheet, not even actually a door. Just like saying it's not even blinds, it's just simple like a curtain. Which means when the wind blows, it's going to open it. So these walls now have all these openings and they're covered with these curtains. And as you walk through that path, there are two colors come to you. The color from above and the color that is ahead of you. He said that as for the straight path, that's the path that leads to Allah Subh'anaHu wa ta-A'la. As for these gates, for these doors or walls actually, or these fences, these are the limits, the boundaries of Allah Subh'anaHu wa ta-A'la, which we've been talking about all these past nights. These holes or these openings in these walls are maharimullah, the sins. That all Allah has made Subh'anaHu wa ta-A'la haram and prohibited. And look at the metaphor over here. These are open doors or actually openings in the walls and there are no gates, which means it's easy to go through. If the wind blows or even if you just pull that curtain, you can easily go through it. This is how temptation can take the person away from the path of guidance. He said ﷺ, as for the caller from above, that is a caller that keeps telling you, لَا تَفْتَحُوا إِنَّكَ إِنْ تَفْتَحُوا تَلِجْهُمْ Now he said that's your conscious. That's your conscious keep telling you, don't open the door or don't pull that curtain because if you try to sneak a peek, you're going to go through. It's so tempting that even trying to test yourself, you might think of yourself too strong for this. No, alhamdulillah, no, I don't do these kind of things. Be careful with that thought. Be careful. Don't let the shaitan deceive you and say,
no, you're too strong, you're good. You're okay, you can do that. It's fine, you'll be fine. No, you're not going to actually get involved in these things like everybody else. You know your limits. Shaitan can deceive you with that. Because if you're going to pull that curtain, certainly you're going to go through it. And the caller from above, at the head actually of that path, he said that's al-Quran. So al-Quran is keep telling you, keep going straight. Don't take these turns. The Quran is telling you how to go straight on this path. And you have the caller that keeps reminding you every time you slow down because I hear something interesting behind this curtain. Wow, this is fascinating. Oh, that's a beautiful voice. Let me check what's going on there. Then that caller says, don't do it. Just don't do it. Yeah, it sounds very appealing, so sweet, so nice. But if you open it, you're going to get off that path and you're going to go somewhere else. And God knows how long this person is going to take in there before they go back again to the straight path one more time. And when they come back, Shaykh, like we said in the hadith, they're going to come back to that path with whatever is left of their iman. So the Prophet summarized the meaning of istiqamah in one single hadith. And the opposite is taqwa. Like the analogy of taqwa, of piety, God-consciousness, which is what Ramadan was supposed to develop in you for the last 30 days, is a person walking between thorny bushes and making sure not to get pricked by a thorn. So you got one guy that's like, I wonder what's behind that curtain. And you got another person that's like, I don't even want to get pricked by that thorn. And so this kind of goes to the motivation of pleasure and pain. So the pain of disobeying Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the hereafter is greater than the pain of restraining yourself or enduring harm for obeying Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in this dunya.
The pleasure for worshiping Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the hereafter is greater than any type of pleasure that anything else can give you in this life. So you have to kind of sometimes hear the pain. You've got to hear the pleasure. So when the Ansar said to the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, look, we're going to lose our alliances. We're going to, you know, people are going to try to kill us. We're going to endure this. We're going to endure that. What do we get in return? Jannah. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said paradise. One word, you get Jannah, the pleasure of paradise, right? Paradise is always the answer. Jahannam is always the answer, right? To where you need to be motivated by those two things. But at the end of the day, what's the driver? And this really brings it back subhanAllah. Because if you were to draw that out or create a plane, right? Ibn al-Qayyim rahimahullah gave the most famous example. He said that you have the wing of hope and the wing of fear. But what's the body? What's the actual plane? What's the engine? The love of Allah. Remember we said the worst thing you can lose is Allah Himself. The best thing you can gain is Allah Himself. Even more than Jannah, even more than An-Nar. Allah Himself. So the body of the plane is the love of Allah. The wings are hope and fear. And you've got to use them accordingly to keep yourself balanced. And so when the turbulence starts to hit, you move in the right way. And we deal with a lot of turbulence. Every example with planes just resonates with me these days. Everything has to do with the flight now. Because everything about taqwa, everything about ihsan, you can learn it from a plane. But Shaykh, can I say one more thing subhanAllah? Just so we can introduce this as part of the discussion. We said the Prophet ﷺ was the person who had the least of fear. But one of the most famous hadith of istiqamah or narrations about istiqamah is a narration of Ibn Abbas ﷺ when he says that Abu Bakr as-Siddiq ﷺ noticed that the Prophet ﷺ had some gray hairs. And it wasn't, you know the Prophet ﷺ died and he had 17 gray hairs. Like he wasn't someone with a lot of gray ﷺ.
Suddenly he had these patches of gray here and here. So Abu Bakr who loves the Prophet ﷺ noticed and he said, Ya Rasulullah qad asra ilayka ash-shayb, I see you suddenly going gray. What is it? And he said, shayyabatni hood wa akhawatuha. Hood, surah Hood and its sisters. In the Arabic language akhawatuha means those that are like it. Like Maryam was called ya ukhta Haroon, oh sister of Aaron. Right, Mary the sister of Aaron. Not because she's the biological sister. But because Bani Israel considered Aaron, Haroon to be the fallen one. So they were likening Maryam to Haroon. So Hood and its sisters. What are they? In another narration the Prophet ﷺ said, al-waqi'ah, al-mursalat, surah an-Naba, surah takwir. These surahs, these chapters that speak about the hereafter in such vivid detail. Such vivid detail. And some of the scholars said, what verse was it? The verse in surah Hood, fastaqim kama umirt. Be firm as you have been commanded. It's one of the most comprehensive verses in the Quran. Fastaqim, be firm as you have been commanded. Bima umirt means everything that's been given to you, oh messenger of Allah, you have to be firm upon it. Everything, of its good, of its hardships, everything be firm upon it. Fastaqim kama umirt. As you have been commanded. Meaning what? You're not in charge of yourself. Allah is the one who commands. Waman taaba maak. And those that have turned back with you. Wala tatghaw. Don't swerve. Don't swerve, don't crash. Innahu bima ta'maluna baseer. Allah sees you. Doesn't that tie in so beautifully to like the last nine nights, if you think about it. We said the vision of Allah, the sight of Allah upon you should be your greatest motivation. To obey Him and to not just obey Him, but to glorify His sight upon you, to want to do even more. Don't just like be afraid, to have shyness from Allah and then to honor Allah's sight upon you. This is the graduation from taqwa to ihsan. Taqwa, you're aware of the sight of Allah upon you
to the extent that you'll be uncomfortable disobeying Him. Ihsan, excellence, you glorify the sight of Allah upon you to the point that you start to do extra good deeds because you're loving His sight upon you. So it's a graduation of sorts, right? From taqwa to ihsan. And this is such a comprehensive verse. Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam is saying, that's what gave me some gray hairs, like it stressed me out because that's a heavy command from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Be firm, stay the course. No matter what happens, you have to stay the course. So staying the course doesn't mean that you can't make mistakes. Many people probably might think that, look, this seems to be very difficult. I mean, how am I going to be able to graduate from taqwa to ihsan? I'm barely even, not even close to taqwa to begin with, right? Alhamdulillah, we have hope in hadith of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam who says, So the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam is guiding us. He says, Which means he knows that we're not going to be perfect. He knows that we're not going to always hit the target every single time. But he says, Which means you need to aim at your target and hit as close as possible to the center, which is basically the bullseye. As close as possible. This should always be your way of achieving things in this life. You want to start, alhamdulillah, after Ramadan, a path of Ramadan lifestyle. What does that mean? I want to fast regularly. So I fast Mondays and Thursdays instead of fasting every other day right away because that might be too much for me. I'd rather go actually every other day. Maybe every other day is too much for me. In this case, I would do Mondays and Thursdays. Maybe that's still also too much. So then I would start maybe with three days a month, building the habit towards that. Similarly, when it comes to the subject of salah, tahajjud, that doesn't mean you're going to start making tahajjud every single night because, alhamdulillah, I have a momentum from Ramadan.
And similarly, if you do something wrong, part of it is returning back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with tawbah and try to make it as sincere as possible. To return to Allah as close as possible to hit the target. So because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, of course, He knows that you're not that perfect human being. You're not that perfect creation. But what He loves from you, the perfection that you bring into your ibadah is actually returning to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with repentance. So that gives us hope. So that everybody can get that level of istiqamah, but we just need to do our best. Just do our best. And doing your best requires, of course, knowledge, requires for you to learn how to do it right. You don't just guess and then say, well, I was trying, I did my best. How do you know this is your best to begin with? What can't you reach your best potential by getting yourself up there inshaAllah wa ta'ala, by thinking better about yourself inshaAllah wa ta'ala. And that's so the hope and the fear. The fear part is what Uthman radhiAllahu anhu said that if faith and alcohol exist together, one of them is going to expel the other eventually, if they coexist, right? When he's talking about major sins. So he said, if you leave al-iman wal-khamr, one is just going to knock the other one out eventually. You're going to have to make a choice. Al-iman wal-zina, you're going to have to make a choice. Faith and adultery, you're going to have to make a choice. When it comes to like the major sins, one of them is going to overcome the other if you let them coexist. Shut those doors, and then you have the natural stumbles, right? But you shut the doors of major sins and expect that you're going to make some mistakes. But then here's the hope part. There's no such thing as like a salvage title in Islam on a soul. So you could come back from the most catastrophic major sin just like that, right? If your tawbah is sincere enough, as Ibn al-Qayyim rahimahullah said, istighfar cuts the long journeys quickly, right? You just astaghfirullah wa atubu ilayk.
You know, when a GPS reroutes, right? You're not in trouble, you know? Like you can get ahead because it literally takes a moment of sincerity. I mean, subhanAllah. By the way, I thought of my Eid khutbah. The title of my Eid khutbah is stop being a baby. I'll talk, but I'll have to do it then. So anyway. I'll explain it, yeah. Sorry, man, it's an inspiring answer. But this idea of coming close to your Lord. Are you going to wear that sweater on the number? I'm thinking about it. But you know, subhanAllah, we talked about this man and there's a reason why he's so emphasized, the man who killed 100 people. There's no major sin worse than murder. Nothing. SubhanAllah, he did it a hundred times and all he had to do was show Allah that he was willing to reroute and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgave him. So Ramadan is like expressing the intention to reroute. That's from major sin. For everybody else, again, where if you aim for 80%, you're going to fall to 60. If you aim for 60, you're going to fall to 40. Aim higher. So I want to have istiqamah with reading the Quran. That's a lofty goal. It's different from someone, I want to have istiqamah from quitting something terrible. But it's still istiqamah at the end of the day. It's can you stay the course? Can you stay the course? Can you stay the course? And you need Allah to make your heart firm to be able to do that. But you've got to give Allah your heart before you can ask him to make it firm. So present your heart to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and say, yeah, Allah, make it firm on your path. And then I will do everything I can to have the right wind around it so that it can stay stable and I'll feed it the right things. You know, Ibn Qayyim explain what you just mentioned. Also, again, something beautifully visual. He goes, look, when it comes to the subject of istiqamah or hidayah, guidance, there's three levels of guidance. There are three levels. He says, hidayatun ila al-sirat. To be guided, to go onto the straight path.
Like the beginning is that you start right now, you move from outside of the path, the straight path, onto the straight path. So some people, they lived a completely sinful life, ignoring Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, completely neglecting Allah azza wa jal so their heart was completely detached. And then, like I said, they rerouted themselves, alhamdulillah, in a moment of sincerity, and now they're jumping back again to that straight path. Maybe they were behind these doors. You know, those walls that we explained in that straight path? They went in one of those walls and God knows where they went through that. And then somehow they find their way back again, alhamdulillah, they saw the light and they went through that wall, through that door, and now they're back on the straight path. So he says, some people, the first step for them is to go from outside of the sirat to be on the straight path. But then, is there any guarantee for them to stay on that straight path? The answer is no. And that's why he said the second level of guidance is hidayatun ala sirat, that Allah will guide you to stay on the straight path. So the first is to bring you to the straight path. So Ramadan could be, alhamdulillah rabbil alameen, is the opportunity to reroute yourself and say, you know what, alhamdulillah, I find it so sweet and beautiful to be like this. I wanna continue in this path of my life. I wanna continue to fast, I wanna continue to do good deeds, I wanna continue to come to the masjid, I wanna continue with this. So now you're on a straight path, you're enjoying it. But trust me, the shaitan is not gonna let go of his ways and attempts to take you off that path, because that's what he said, he vowed. He says, thumma ala atiyannahum qalu wala qudana lahum sirataka almustaqeem He says to the Lord, subhanahu wa ta'ala, I will sit on the straight path. Like, on that straight path that you're showing them, I'll be sitting there. thumma ala atiyannahum, and I will come to try to seduce you, to try to tempt you, to try to take you away from there. qal thumma ala atiyannahum min bayni aydihim wa min khalfihim wa'an aimanihim wa'an shama'ilihim wa la tajidu akhtarahum shaykireen He says, I'm gonna come from the front of them, from behind them, from the right side, from the left, like I'm gonna be surrounding them with all these temptations
and all these evil thoughts and waswasa. All of that stuff, to take you off that straight path. So just because you're on the straight path, don't fool yourself and feel, this Ramadan was exceptional. Alhamdulillah rabbil alameen. Really, I enjoyed it, alhamdulillah, I think this is it. I found my moment, so from now on, I'm gonna be, inshallah, doing well. And may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala accept that from you and make it true. But, the shaitan is clever. He's not gonna let go of this. So the third level right now, Imam Ibn Qayyim rahimallah says, qal hidayatun fis sirat So you have guidance to the straight path, guidance to stay on the straight path, and now guidance to go through the straight path. What does that mean? In order for you to stay balanced, if you ever actually exercise, you know, bicycling for example, how do you stay balanced? How do you stay actually moving forward? You keep pedaling. If you stop doing that, what happens? You lose balance and you fall. The exact same thing. You're on the straight path, you found your way back, alhamdulillah, in Ramadan, and now, mashallah, you wanna stay on this, what do you need to do? Keep pedaling. What did you do in Ramadan to make you feel so great? What did you do in Ramadan to make you feel, alhamdulillah, the light of guidance is coming back to me? What did you do? What are these beautiful actions that made you feel that way? You need to continue with them. Because if you don't, you're gonna lose the balance and you will fall. And eventually, easy for you to go and say, let me take a break or go through this door, for example. And that's it, you're out of that straight path. So be careful. Bringing you from outside to the straight path. Keeping on the straight path and going and growing through that straight path. Sheikh, if we can reflect for a bit. Actually, if I was to ask you, who's the one companion that this hadith does not apply to?
The shaitan having a bunch of doors open and calling them from each door. Umar al-Khattab, radiallahu anhu. Amazing. The Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam said, Umar radiallahu anhu has reached the level, shaitan, not only will shaitan not show up on his path, shaitan won't even be seen on the same path as Umar. Umar goes on a path, shaitan takes another path altogether. He's like, no, I'm not messing with that guy. What happened? And it actually manifests these three levels. Like, you know, subhanAllah, for those of you might remember I used to teach behind the scenes with Al-Maghrib, I used to say, Umar radiallahu anhu was the most successful task experiment in like history. Like if you just study a turnaround, this guy was all over the place. I mean, shaitan had him under his reigns. He had him, right? Umar radiallahu anhu used to go out and drink every night. One night he couldn't find his drinking buddies. He said, let me go do tawaf. Shows up, sees the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam. He says, let me hear what he's trying to say. He goes behind the Kaaba cloth to listen to the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, reciting, let me hear what he's saying. And Umar radiallahu anhu goes to himself. He says, this is beautiful. He says, he must be a sorcerer. And the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam recites, wa ma huwa bi qawli kaahim qaleelan ma tu'minoon. That this is not the words of a sorcerer. Little do you believe. He says, how did he know that? Right? Maybe he's a poet. Wa ma huwa bi qawli sha'ir. Sorry. First he said, these must be the words of a poet. SubhanAllah. May Allah accept you, O Lord. Bismillah. As the rain is coming down, we ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la to bless us and accept from us. And we ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la to reward us and to have mercy upon us. And we ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la to be pleased with us. And we ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la to grant us acceptance on this night of Ramadan and accept our entire month of Ramadan, all of its ibadah, to grant us forgiveness and to grant our brothers and sisters victory in Palestine. Ameen.
Alhamdulillah, as we're witnessing all of this, it's obviously good for us to interact with this. Umar radiAllahu anhu, here's the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam recite, these are not the words of a poet. Little do you believe. And he says, he must be a sorcerer. How could he tell what I was saying on the inside? And then, wa la bi qawli kahil qaleelan ma tadhakkaroon. These are not the words of a sorcerer. Little do you remember. Umar radiAllahu anhu, at that moment, he could have come out from under the cover of the Kaaba, hugged the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam and said, I believe. But instead, first, he had a conversation with Shaitan. What did Shaitan tell him to do? Shaitan told, like he basically sat with him. He said, this religion stuff is really starting to mess with my mind. You know what? Let me go kill Muhammad SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. Let me just get rid of him. Problem solved. If I kill him, I won't have to think about this anymore. And we know what happens next. He goes out to kill the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la sends him a distraction. He goes and he gets into this whole brawl, right? With his brother-in-law and his sister. And he reads the Quran. He takes the time to read the Quran with a different heart, with a different perspective. Now at that moment, when Umar radiAllahu anhu read the Quran, and he read Surah Taha. If Umar said, you know what? Let me go home and think about this for a few nights. There's a possibility, right? That Shaitan would have got back in his head and said, man, this guy's really got you deep. This Quran is messing with your head. But what does he do? He says, take me to Muhammad SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. This time I'm going to go and believe in him. He goes to him. He believes in him. And the same man that was going out to kill the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam now comes out to Quraysh and he's like, who's the social media guy of the day? Like, how do I get this out? Word quickly, I became Muslim. Like, he's like, go ahead and shout to everyone that I became Muslim. He goes and he knocks on Abu Jaha's door. Tells Abu Jaha that I became Muslim. Like, he's like looking for a fight. It's like, anyone have a problem with me being a Muslim? Come fight me. You know? Now here's the thing. That could have all just been an emotional thing, right? He became Muslim.
He got guided to the path. He had a moment. No. From that day onwards, Umar shut every door of the Shaytan systematically. To where Shaytan completely lost his impact on Umar radiAllahu anhu. To where he was so dedicated to the truth that even when the truth was against his desires, if Allah said it, right? So the same one, he was coming to the Prophet SallAllahu alayhi wa sallam and asking the Prophet SallAllahu alayhi wa sallam, is Allah gonna say anything about drinking? Like, I know in my heart, drinking is wrong. He's pushing for the prohibition because he knows that his soul desires it, but Allah doesn't want me to do it. I know that Allah doesn't want me to do it. So he becomes Al-Farooq. The one who distinguishes truth from falsehood naturally because his natural intuition is to want good. And the Prophet SallAllahu alayhi wa sallam says to him that when you take a path, the Shaytan just takes another path now. Shaytan's like, I'm gonna go mess with someone that I think I can actually win. This guy is gone. Why? Because he's never interested in what's behind the curtain anymore. He's always interested in the caller ahead. The curtain is not appealing. The voice is not appealing to him anymore. I'm not gonna waste my time with this man anymore. Let me go disturb other people who I can maybe win over and get them to come to my shop because he's gone. SubhanAllah. I love Amal al-Khattab, radiyAllahu ta'ala. SubhanAllah, since I was a young kid, reading the story of the Sahaba, I've never felt so much attracted to someone's personality and charisma like I did to Amal al-Khattab, radiyAllahu ta'ala. So, which is why I named my, not you, I named my son. You love me that much, right? That's why you love me so much, because I'm named Amal al-Khattab. You remind me of Amal al-Khattab, right? Greatest compliment. Wallahi, subhanAllah, Amal al-Khattab, the qualities of Amal al-Khattab, radiyAllahu ta'ala, to be mulham, that Allah subhanAllah inspires him, really to that level, radiyAllahu ta'ala. His bravery, when everybody, during the hijra time, when everybody was going secret, they were traveling to Madinah, they're going secretly.
They don't want to be caught when they're traveling. Omar, radiyAllahu ta'ala, he gets himself ready. He gets his food and stuff, and he cuts his sword with him, and he goes out in the center of Mecca, and he calls the people. He says, qal man sha'an tathkaluhu ummuhu falihaqbihi fihadhalwadi. If anyone desires his mom to lose him, let him follow me in this valley. Like, meet me in this valley. Like, he's going opposite. I'm muhajir, I'm leaving. If anyone wants to die, follow me, right? What kind of man is that, subhanAllah? The kind of level of trust and iman and yaqeen that he has in his heart. But that same man with such bravery, he was, yes, he was sometimes seen as being tough in the discipline he created for the ummah, but his heart, his softness, his care, his empathy for the ummah is just unbelievable. Unbelievable. Like, one time he was walking, people, they fear him when he walks, subhanAllah. So one day he was walking, and then people, they were walking behind him. And as you know, you cannot walk like an entourage, but they slow down. They don't wanna come too close. So sometimes as he was walking, he suddenly turns around to the people. That they freak out, and he's like. And they go like, arabtuna ya ameer al mu'mineen. Oh my God, you scared us off. It was bil haq and bil batil. Was that the truth or the falsehood? He goes, no, bil haq, wallahi. He goes, zadini allahu haybatan fi qulubikum. If that's gonna cause you to see the truth, then may Allah increase that fear in your heart. Like to that level, radiyallahu anhu wa radha. But that same man, that same man, subhanAllah, who Allah gave him power, he became like the king of the entire world of that time. The most powerful man in the world. Absolutely, the most powerful man in the world. The riches of the world became under his care and his control. Persia, for example, was completely destroyed. Under his care. All of this, subhanAllah. And then still, though, when he was so concerned
for the believers who were fighting on the battlefield, that every single day, he would wait outside of Medina, waiting for the barid, which means the mail. Back then, the mail, they created a system, the horseman system, that would run quickly in one day to get the mail to Umar ibn Khattab. So one of those days, he was sleeping out there in the desert, under the shade of a tree, using his clock as his pillow. And when the emissary and the envoy from the Persian Empire came looking for Umar, they brought him to Umar ibn Khattab. So they took him outside and they, he looks at Umar ibn Khattab sleeping, and he's wearing normal clothes, no entourage, no guards, nobody. He looks at him and just like, so amazed and mesmerized. Like, this is Umar? This is the one who shook the whole world? This guy? Hakamta. Yeah, but he said those beautiful statement where he goes, Hakamta, fa-adalta, fa-aminta, fa-nimta, ya Umar. You ruled, and you did justice, so you felt safe to go and have a sweet sleep. You know, ya Umar. No doubt about it. Like, with justice, you find that peace, subhanallah. But again, I can't stop talking about Umar ibn Khattab. Last one, inshallah ta'ala. One of those most beautiful things that remind me of Umar radiyallahu anhu warda, when the victory in al-Qadisiyyah, the news arrived, and he'd been waiting for the news all these days, because it took very long for the battle to continue until it was over, subhanallah. So Umar ibn Khattab radiyallahu anhu was waiting outside, obviously. So the man who was bringing the good news to the khalifa, he was going in his camel, he wants to go and give the good news, a glad time to the khalifa first, to Umar ibn Khattab. Umar sees him from afar. He chased after him. He goes, yurhamukallah, wait for me. Just wait, please. Did we win or lose? He goes, I'm sorry. I have to go and give the glad time to the khalifa, to Amir al-Mumineen. And he's Amir al-Mumineen. But he didn't want to tell him that. And the man kept going faster, and Umar calling him, please wait, wait, tell me. What happened?
Until subhanallah, when they arrived into Medina, and the man now was slowing down, trying to see where the khalifa is staying, the people, as they were walking the streets, seeing Umar behind them, and they say, salam alaikum, Amir al-Mumineen. Salam alaikum, Amir al-Mumineen. And he's going, salam alaikum, salam. And the man is looking, where's Amir al-Mumineen? And he looks behind him, the guy was chasing after him, catching his breath. And he goes, anta Amir al-Mumineen, yurhamukallah. Why didn't you tell me so? I could have waited for you. He goes, no, no, you're fine, you're fine. It's okay, tell me. What happened? And he gave him the good news. So he takes him home to feed him. What food Umar had, subhanallah, to feed him? Nothing, olive oil, salt, and bread. And he started asking him, tell me more. What happened? Who did we lose? This and that. So he said to him, we lost this person, and that person, this person, by name. Because they were martyred on the battlefield. And then he says something profane. He goes, qal wa-unasun akharoon. And many, many others, Amir al-Mumineen, don't know about them. That broke Umar's heart. It really brought him to tears. He goes, what matters? What matters about Umar knowing them or not, if Allah, the Lord of Umar, knows who they are? It's like the 30,000 casualty count, the 40,000 from Hazza. What are their names? Their numbers right now, subhanallah. But it doesn't matter if we don't know them, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala know these people. So tying it to the subjects of istiqamah, Shaykh, like Umar was really like the manifestation of this. And he's not a prophet, he's not a messenger of God. So he's not masoom, infallible. But he, subhanallah, like you said, upgraded himself in his ta'a, in his ibadah, in his yaqeen, his certainty, to the level that he becomes the manifestation of istiqamah, that the shaitan doesn't even dare walk on his path. From the moment he became Muslim to the moment he died, you can see a traceable form of progress
at the individual level, at the level of governance, spirituality, in every single year of his life. He kept getting better and better and better and better. More spiritual refinement, more spiritual refinement. Subhanallah, initially, you know, when you think of Umar radiyallahu anhu, and that was a fear. It's one of the, subhanallah, the way these companions had like a few words to describe someone. One of the fears when Abu Bakr radiyallahu anhu was appointing Umar to be khalifah radiyallahu anhu is that he's gonna be too tough. He's gonna be too tough. He was tough on himself, right? He wasn't unjust to others. He was tough on himself. And Uthman described him in the following way. When Abu Bakr asked Uthman about Umar, Uthman radiyallahu anhu praised him and said, and what people don't know about him is even better than what people know about him. So like the good qualities that everyone knows about him are not only there publicly, they're even better if people knew what he was like privately. And so as the khalifah, the spiritual maturity, the compassion, the care, never losing that fire for justice, he doesn't wrong a donkey in his ummah. He won't let a donkey or a child, a Muslim, non-Muslim, subhanallah, even the old Jewish man, when Umar radiyallahu anhu was an old Jewish man and he was begging on the street, he said, so what happened to you? What's going on here? And he said, it's just become too difficult. And Umar radiyallahu anhu was like weeping, like, we use you in your youth and we're not taking care of you in your old age. He's like, no, we got to take care of these people, non-Muslims, Muslims, humans, animals. He never let his fire for justice make him callous or cruel. He just keeps getting better and better and better. And I think Sheikh, the way we can end this, subhanallah, istiqamah, the most beautiful thing you can hear about a man and a person's life is by their end, may Allah grant us a good ending.
With all of those lofty achievements, like if Umar radiyallahu anhu had a trophy shelf, that'd be the most loaded trophy shelf. And with all of those achievements, when his head is in his son's lap, as he's dying, he says, oh, my son, put my head in the dirt so that perhaps when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sees me returning to him, he'll have mercy on me. I want to die humble. Put my head in the dirt. Like, don't even keep my head on your lap. Subhanallah, what type of faith is that? What type of istiqamah is that? Like, that, I'm not trying to meet Allah with my chest out. I know I've got flaws, and I've been working on them my whole life. So let me meet Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as a man whose head is in the dirt, as a man who is trying until the very last moment. That's why he is who he is. You know, Sheikh, one of the, of course, I would say endorsement of his character, and I would say, subhanallah, like a badge that was given to him as an award, and reward for what he's done, is, radiyallahu ta'ala, Aisha. Aisha, when she sacrificed something very precious for her, to give it to Umar radiyallahu anhu, the space where he's buried right now. Because in her room, she had the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, her husband buried there. And then her father, when he passed, he wanted to be buried next to his friend. So they did put them next to each other. There was only one space left for a grave. And she wanted this to be for her. To be hers, to be next to her husband and her dad. When Umar radiyallahu anhu was injured, and he was stabbed, and he knew that it was the moment, so he said permission, he sent somebody to Aisha, seek permission from her, can I take your permission to be buried next to my friends? And Aisha, no hesitation. She goes, absolutely. Can you imagine, she was saving that spot for herself, to be in that place, subhanallah. But when Umar came, and she said, you earned it. Absolutely, no hesitation.
She gave it to him, radiyallahu anhu. Wallahi, every time I go to Medina and visit, subhanallah, the masjid of Rasulallah, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, and just walk that walk and see, and knowing that Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, Umar bin Khattab, Rasulallah, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, in that place, what an unbelievable journey. What an unbelievable story, subhanallah, of righteousness and istiqamah. It just, the manifestation of all of it, just symbolism of it happening there. Shows you the U-turn. He started off wanting to kill the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, he ended off being buried next to the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam. Talk about a U-turn in life. And that's istiqamah, right? It's not just guidance, it's after committing to guidance. It's not just the zeal of the initial moment, it's the commitment that comes with that zeal. That we all seek Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's favor, and we seek his blessing, so that we could be able to walk that path too. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant us all istiqamah. And by the way, that's a du'a. Sheikh Yasser, mashaAllah, has been teaching the du'a every day after Asr. Imam Hassan al-Basri, rahimahullah, when he would read the ayah, fastaqim kama umirt wa man ta'aba ma'ak, he would say, allahumma anta rabuna farzuqna al-istiqamah. Oh Allah, you are our Lord, so grant us istiqamah. So just say, allahumma razuqna al-istiqamah. Ask Allah for istiqamah, ask Allah for steadfastness, just as you ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for guidance. Ma'a Allah, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give us all istiqamah, Rabbil Alamin. So the first question here that people, they ask about istiqamah, I'm being inconsistent with it. Like, inconsistent with istiqamah, like I find myself, alhamdulillah, in those moments, my heart is in it, and I feel myself motivated, and then I go a mile or two on the path of istiqamah, and then suddenly, I don't know, it just seems that I'm gonna keep getting off that straight path. What's going on here, Sheikh? So you know, you do strength training initially in certain ideal conditions. Here you're doing spiritual strength training, so that eventually when you're actually in the elements, you can handle the elements. But you have to develop that spiritual muscle.
The masjid, Ramadan, the Quran, the companionship of righteous people, all of that is where you build your spiritual muscle, right? So that you can weather the elements when you get put back into the elements. And those are the people, it was ironically enough, Umar radiyallahu anhu commented on the verse, ulaika allatheena abtahna allahu qulubahum li taqwa. They are the ones who Allah tested their hearts for piety. And he said, the one who is tested and succeeds is better than the one who is not tested. You know, meaning, by the way, let this be a glad tiding to you, a Muslim who lives as a stranger in a difficult environment. That Muslim that grows up in a Muslim country, everyone, everything and everyone around them tells them to be a good Muslim. They don't really ever, they never feel, you know, being ostracized for being Muslim or being the outsider or being the stranger because everyone around them is Muslim and everything around them is Muslim. So it's not really that hard, right? Umar radiyallahu anhu was saying that the one who's tested and succeeds is better than the one who's not tested in the first place. That's what the ayah means. ulaika allatheena abtahna allahu qulubahum li taqwa. They are the ones who Allah tested their hearts for taqwa. You see, you've been using Ramadan, kutiba AAalikum al-siyam kama kutiba AAala allatheena min qablikum laAAallakum tattaqoon. Fasting was prescribed upon you so that you could develop God consciousness. But Allah says, there are some people I test for God consciousness. amtahna allahu qulubahum li taqwa. I test their hearts with that God consciousness. So you build that muscle in Ramadan, then Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la tests you, puts you through the test to see if that taqwa is actually there. And if you got knocked over, if you crashed, again, there's no salvage title on your soul. There's no distance that is too large between you and Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Just come back. The inconsistency means put yourself in a consistent environment until you can handle inconsistent elements more often. That means you need to be really, really dedicated
to creating a consistent connection to the masjid, a consistent connection to a halaqa, a consistent connection to good friends, a consistent connection. That's part of the question. Someone asking practical tips on to stay on the path of istiqamah. So what you're saying right now, always adjust for them, the consistency of being with friends. Make every structure around you as consistent as possible until your heart can be more consistent. Now, Sheikh, many people, they say here that when it comes to the subject of istiqamah, what's the level where you believe that, alhamdulillah, you have a good level that makes you feel comfortable, you're on the straight path. Is there any moment that you can make you feel, this is it, alhamdulillah? You're never complacent. That's the thing. So what made Umar radiAllahu anhu so consistent was that he was always worried. So it wasn't like, well, since shaitan's not on my path, I'm just gonna be okay. No, it's like, no, there's always a potential of him getting right back in there. If I weaken in my pursuit of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, then shaitan will find a willing buyer to his market. So eventually he'll just start calling me back to it. So you're never complacent, but you never despair. You're never complacent, but you never despair. You always know that you have the possibility to fail, but you have a Lord who wants you to succeed. And so you keep depositing, keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. But at the same time, you're never too complacent. You're never too comfortable because you know that once upon a time, shaitan was up in the heavens and look where he fell to. May Allah protect us. A question, Shaykh, about social support. It says like over here, how do you find accountability group with a group of small friends or with shuyukh and murabbis to have istiqamah in every way so we can keep the course? So look, there are some people and even some people that are watching subhanAllah that live in remote towns. We get these messages that come in from people that don't have a masjid within 90 miles of them. It's really interesting, subhanAllah. We literally get messages from people on islands.
I was gonna mention one email that I got today, but subhanAllah, just leave it, but it was crazy because people live in these remote areas and they're connecting online to these things and it's giving them something. So look, ittaqollaha mastata'atum. Be conscious of Allah as much as you can. If you can't connect to a physical structure, connect to a digital structure. If you can't connect to a large group of people, connect to one or two people, right? There's one thing about Islam not having that spiritual hierarchy. You don't have to have a shaykh that's with you all the time, that's telling you how to make tawbah, make tawbah this way or make tawbah through me. You don't have a priest, right? So you just gotta have like two or three good brothers, two or three good sisters that you keep up with and they keep up with you and you hold each other accountable. And I always tell people, subhanAllah, and we talked about this early on, that one of the ailments of the time is that people don't challenge each other because they don't wanna lose them as friends. Your best friend is someone who cares more about you than your friendship. And so they'll give you hard truths in the best way possible. They don't wanna alienate you on purpose, but they'll give you hard truths because that's what you need to hear. And tawasal bil haqqi wa tawasal bil sabr. You're not gonna get, you're not going to get like nasiha in the comments section of a social media post. It's not gonna really hit you that way, okay? But a one-on-one with someone that you trust wants good for you, if they give me a hard truth, I welcome it. And that's the blessing, subhanAllah, like look, Umar needed Abu Bakr. Umar needed, not just the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Abu Bakr and Umar had this beautiful relationship. They fought sometimes, like good brothers do, right? They had arguments, they fought. By the way, one series, one day I'm gonna do it inshallah, is bayna Abu Bakr wa Umar, all the narrations of Abu Bakr and Umar.
Maybe when I finish the first, I'm just gonna do that for a long time. Because you could literally, you could find like hundreds of narrations of like the most, the smallest things, they're eating together. They get into an argument with each other. They make up, they reconcile. They praise each other. They get mad at each other again. That's what good brothers do, right? So subhanAllah, you need that brother, you need that sister, you need someone to be that accountability partner. It doesn't have to be a whole community. Obviously, all of these things are to promote virtue in society and to help keep us grounded. But you just need that, you need those two or three people that are in your life, inshallah. You try to connect to them. And alhamdulillah, one of the blessings of the internet, it is actually a blessing, alhamdulillah. One of the blessings of the internet is that it's connected so many people to a community of faith that otherwise would be completely isolated from it. And we hear this all the time. The types of people that become Muslim and that stay Muslim, that don't see a masjid for the first one or two years of being Muslim. Like that story sounds crazy, but I actually know people like that, that in the first year or two of being Muslim, like they physically could not access a masjid because of how far away it was. But they learned salah, they learned siyam, they learned their religion, they learned how to read the Quran, they made use of these things. And that shows you, and, you know, والذين جاهدوا فينا لنهدي أنهم سبلنا We talked about this ayah. Those who try, we'll make it happen for them. This is another way to look at the verse. Those that strive in our path, we will open the pathways for them. Sometimes that pathway is gonna be digital. Sometimes that pathway is gonna be from a place you didn't expect. يَرْزُقْهُمْ مِنْ حَيْثُ لَا يَحْتَسَبْ Allah will provide for you from places that you didn't expect. So pathways open up to come close to Allah. But if you try, Allah will help you. Allah will open up doors for you if you try to seek Him. And that's really the way that we start to think creatively in this world that we live in. How do we find those pathways back to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la So a question he says that if it's impossible
to become like a prophet, is it possible to become like a sahabi? I wanna comment on this if it's okay, Sheikh. So wanting to be like a sahabi. Here's the thing. First of all, as sahabi, no matter how much you try, no matter how much you try, you would never ever be able to surpass the reward for being sahabi. Because they brought to us something we could never compensate them for. And that is to strive and struggle when it was extremely difficult and hard. At the beginning of the establishment of faith, they put all the sacrifice for us to enjoy today, 1400 years later to say, لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله As the prophet says, إلا فَلَوْ أَنَّ أَحَدَكُمْ أَنْفَقُ مِثْلَ أُحَدٍ ذَهَبًا مَا بَلَغَ مُدَّ أَحَدِهِمْ وَلَا نَصِيفًا If you go to spend the size of the mount of Uhud in gold, you wouldn't even come close to the little of handful of deeds that they do. So in that perspective, so we can never surpass them at that level. However, we also need to know that the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam has given us hope. When he says, لَيْتَنِي أَلْقَى إِخْوَانِي I wish I can live long enough to meet my brothers. Another narration says, قَالَ أَحْبَابِي My beloved ones. As Sahaba, they looked at him, قَالَ يُرَسَلُهُ أَلَسْنَا أَحْبَابَكُ أَلَسْنَا إِخْوَانَكُ Don't you consider us your brothers? Don't you consider us your loved ones? قَالَ أَنْتُمْ أَصْحَابِي You're my companions. Like you got your share, you got your reward for it. You have the ranks already. قَالَ وَلَكِنْ أَحْبَابِي Or إخْوَانِي My beloved ones, my brothers are those who will come after me, believing in me, even though they've never seen me. He said, their reward for what they do will be double of what you do. So one of the Sahaba come and said, قَالَ يَرَسَلُهُ You mean one of them? He goes, no, one of you. Like you're getting double the reward for what the Sahaba already did. Why is that? Because what we do today for us is غَيْب. We're doing it based on what? Based on belief, really, and conviction.
They saw the Prophet ﷺ. They saw the evidence. They saw the proof. They had visuals for the reality of the faith itself and the life of the Prophet ﷺ. So you might say it was easier for them to comply and follow. But for you, you guys just trust the word and you follow that. So you're still having so much reward, alhamdulillah, for what you do. It's way higher than the reward that Sahaba used to get back then. However, no matter what we do, we will never surpass that level of the Sahaba for the biggest sacrifice they've done. The other thing as well too is that the Sahaba themselves, we have to also keep in mind they were different ranks. Meaning not all of them were ulama, scholars. Not all of them were hufadh of the Qur'an. Not all of them were at that level. So you have the Bedouin who just come to the Prophet ﷺ and he says, look, salah, fasting, hajj, that's it. I'm not going to add. I'm not going to take anything away from that. Is that okay for me? The Prophet ﷺ says, if you tell the truth, if you hold on to this, you'll be successful. I mean, that's considered Sahaba. Right? Sheikh, you know what my first halaqa on Tuesday is going to be? No. Abu Sufyan. I was going to name it The Curious Case of Abu Sufyan. Subhanallah. Because his whole biography is trying to undermine the Prophet ﷺ. Then somehow the man dies a Muslim. Subhanallah. Like there's like no chapters of his time in Islam except like his whole time trying to, but somehow, subhanallah. Not just a Muslim, Sheikh. Also a leader in Islam. Yeah. Subhanallah. But the idea is that Sahaba, not all of them are at the same rank. So, yeah. Some people who came after the Sahaba, radhiAllahu ta'ala anhum, they probably surpassed the Sahaba in terms of knowledge or some of the Sahaba in terms of knowledge of the deen. Really. Because they learned from Mu'adh ibn Jabal, Zayd ibn Thabit, this and that. Not like the other Sahaba who just kept living their lives normally. However, again, don't you ever try to compare yourself to any Sahabi to the least of the Sahaba. Because their reward and their privilege and their ranks as being Sahaba is way higher than anything you can imagine of yourself. But you can still do a lot, inshaAllah ta'ala.
But one more interesting thing. Can you become better than angels? Yes, MashaAllah. That's a very bold answer, man. RadhiAllahu anhum. Like seriously, if you cannot surpass the Sahabi, how about the angels? Can you? You guys went quiet. What's going on here? We had a whole chapter on this. Ibn al-Jawzi. Ibn Taymiyyah rahimahullah ta'ala, he answered this question. He goes, look, in essence, the angels are way better than human beings, of course. There's no comparison. Like in terms of the creation itself, they're way better. They never sin. They never do anything wrong. They always obey Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala as Allah described them in the Quran. لا يعصن الله ما أمرهم وإفعلون ما يؤمرون. They never disobey Allah whatever He commands them. So they fulfill the commandments. But here's where it becomes better for the human beings. Ibn Taymiyyah rahimahullah says, in this dunya, yeah, the angels are probably better than us human beings. But in the akhira, probably some humans will surpass the grades of angels. Why is that? Because the ibadah of the angels was what? Was not optional for them. They didn't have a choice in it. But for the believers, when you abandon all these desires and you abandon all this fitna like Umar ibn Abdullah did, subhanAllah, and upgrade yourself from Islam to iman, to ihsan, the huge sacrifice, when the drive to do otherwise is even strong, and probably stronger, and you still chose the path of guidance that would qualify some people on the Day of Judgment to probably perhaps surpass some of the grades and the ranks of the angels. May Allah make us among them. Sheikh, you also have the ayah, مع النبيين والصديقين والشهداء والصالحين Right? So with the prophets, with the truthful ones, الصديقين, and then the martyrs, the شهداء, and the righteous ones, the صالحين. Each one of these ranks is greater than the one
after it in some way. So every one of these is a صالح, is a righteous person, right? May Allah make us from the صالحين. Ameen. But the صديقين, the highest trait of the companions is Abu Bakr الصديق, الصديق, the truthful one. And we have the ability to be صديقين, meaning to gain the quality of the best companion. And hence, as a category of people, gain that rank. The صديق is independent of circumstance because he's always going to show that he was truthful. So whether Allah tests him with a situation where he's going to lose his life, he's going to be a شهيد, he's going to live up to that شهادة. Or Allah spares him and puts him in a situation where He tests him with his desires. He's going to win that battle over his desires because he's truthful in his pursuit of Allah سبحانه وتعالى. So الصديق is the highest category after a prophet, and you can aim for that. And that's why the ayah doesn't say النبيين والصحابة والصديقين والشعبين. No, aim for being a صديق. Aim for the highest level, and that is to be a person of صدق. May Allah make us truthful in our pursuit of Him. Ameen. There's somebody insisting to know what is my epic routine? What was my routine for my epic beard? What should I tell this person? Tell him the truth, man. Tell the truth? Tell him the truth. The truth is, where's Abu Ahmed? Is he here? Abu Ahmed, Muhammad, where is he? We just watched it happen live. It was a sight to see. Shaykh has a whole, like, you talk about privileges, man. Hey, man, come on. He's got a guy that grooms his beard every single night, mashallah. I was like, what is going on here? Hasad. Mashallah. Mashallah. You want me to read on your beard, Shaykh? And I'll throw up. No, seriously. Brother Muhammad Al-Ahfad, mashallah. He owns, fades his barber shop or barber actually services. The beginning of the end of the last 10 nights, he came to me, he says, you're not gonna go actually on screen without fixing your beard. I'm like, man, don't do this, please. He goes, no, I'm gonna have to do it
every single night. So he brings his back and he fix it in the office before I come out over here. So if you need your beard fixed, bismillah, talk to him, mashallah. Jazakallah khair. He should run an ad on the bottom of the screen. Right, right, huh? Commercial. Commercial for him, yeah. Muhammad will be back, mashallah. Final advice, Shaykh. We want to conclude this series with a serious note, inshallah, to Barakah, what people carry with them, bismillah, to Barakah, for the rest of the year until next Ramadan. Because I know a lot of people that keep demanding, saying, hey, guys, please keep doing this once a month. Keep doing this series, one more series, inshallah. And I know that, alhamdulillah, there's a huge demand on these beautiful spiritual sessions. But sometimes the value of it in Ramadan is unique, really. And sometimes the anticipation to the next year, in itself, is much more, probably, motivating for you to keep on the straight path than having it much more regular. So your final advice to our brothers and sisters before we conclude this series, inshallah ta'ala. Love Allah and your desires will have less pull. Love the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and you won't fall to the trends of the day. Love the righteous and you'll never desire the company of the wicked again. From my side, my advice, really, is never, ever cease to seek forgiveness from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. No matter how distant you think yourself from Allah azza wa jal. Never, ever lose hope from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala because if the shaitan can win this from you, this is it. If he can win this from you, that you're not deserving Allah's rahmah, Allah's mercy, Allah's forgiveness, then this is it. That's what he wants, that you lose that moment with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So never, ever cease to seek forgiveness from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And if you would like to have that very intimate private communication and connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
then wake up 10 minutes, 15 minutes before Fajr Adhan. Do that. If you truly believe that this is something that you need, that you desire, that you truly, your heart craving regularly because I really wanna have those moments with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, then what's stopping you? What is stopping you from waking up 10, 15 minutes every single day before Fajr, just for the sake of having those beautiful, sweet moments with your Lord subhanahu wa ta'ala, when you tell him, my Lord, I bring all my burden to you and I seek your forgiveness. Ya Allah, forgive me. Can you imagine having that opportunity every single night? Wa bil-asharu min yastaghfiruun. And during the time of Saha, the pre-dawn hour, they wake up and seek Allah's forgiveness. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgive us, oh Lord of the worlds. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to accept from us our best deeds, oh Lord of the worlds. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to accept our Ramadan, O Allah. We ask Allah to conclude this Ramadan for us with Rahma and mercy and forgiveness, O Allah. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make us among those who will be witness of the right of the qadr. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to write among those who witnessed the right of qadr. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to help us seal this month of Ramadan with the best of our deeds, O Lord of the worlds. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make us among those whose dua was accepted, O Allah, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, we ask in this very special moment as we come to conclude this month of Ramadan, as we come to conclude the last night of the month of Ramadan, O Allah, we ask that you accept the best of our deeds, O Lord of the worlds, that you overlook our mistakes, our sins, O Allah, O Lord of the worlds. O Lord, we ask you to cure our hearts from all the disease of the heart, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, we ask you to fill our hearts with love and mercy for one another, O Allah, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, we ask you to remove any ill feelings from our hearts towards any believer, O Allah, O Lord of the worlds. And fill our hearts with love and mercy, O Allah, O Lord of the worlds. We ask in this very special moment, the way we all gather in this place, we gather together in Jannatul Firdaus Al-A'la with the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
as-salihin, O Allah, we ask you for our brothers and sisters in Gaza, O Allah, be there for them, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, deliver them out of that situation, O Allah, O Lord of the worlds. Bring them justice, O Allah, bring them justice, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, protect them from the harm that has been imposed upon them, O Allah. O Allah, provide for them when everybody deprive them of your mercy, O Allah. We ask that you provide for them, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, accept their martyrs. We ask you to heal the wounded among them and bring them to their absence, O Allah, and have mercy on those, O Lord of the worlds. Feed them from your provision, O Lord of the worlds. Provide to them from your provision, O Lord of the worlds. O Allah, we ask you in this very special time to protect this community, O Lord of the worlds. Protect our community, protect our students, O Allah, O Lord of the worlds. We ask Allah to fill our hearts with mercy and tranquility in this world and together in the hereafter, O Lord of the worlds. And all praise is due to Allah. And peace and blessings be upon the Prophet Muhammad and upon his family and companions. And peace be upon you. And the mercy of Allah be upon you. And the mercy of Allah be upon you.
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