 Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh, everybody. Alhamdulillah, hope you all are doing well. So we'll go ahead and continue, inshallah, with the second class for this one. Alhamdulillah, we actually got some books. The masjid was kind enough to purchase some books. Yeah, so for whoever two requests I have, one is, I think there are, let me see, about 10 of these. So whoever, inshallah, is going to make a niyah to kind of be consistent. It would be best if, you know, they got books, and then from there anybody else who doesn't not get one, you can order from Amazon, it's like $10 or $11. And yeah, city fencing, or actually, you know, you could sit, sorry, could you be, you would mind giving up? So if you just want to kind of raise your hand, city fencing, let's start with the sister side, inshallah, yeah. You just want to raise your hand for anybody who would like a text. Please do so, inshallah, we can start with that. So for today, we're going to be, and so this is the text, as I mentioned, that we will do our absolute best to follow. Mashallah, sister's already all purchased it, alhamdulillah. So yeah, inshallah for the remainder, let's pass it to the brothers. We're going to be doing our best to follow along in the text. The one that we're going through is the Book of Assistance by Imam Abdullah Ibn Alwi Al-Haddad. And then we're bringing in some other insights, inshallah, as well from some of the other scholars. So we're going to be covering two main topics today. First, we'll start with a review of what we discussed last time, and then we'll go ahead and get into our discussion for today. So what we discussed last time was around this idea of spirituality and what exactly does it mean for somebody to embody spirituality. And we talked about a couple of different categories and a couple of different things you'll start to feel. And one of those will be that someone will start to see a reduced amount of anxiety, right? And so you'll start to see tranquility increase, and you'll start to see anxiety reduce as you start to implement some of these different aspects of spirituality. That will be one core trait to look for. And your character begins to change, and as your character begins to change, and as the bad leaves the character, and as the good enters the character, the darkness leaves, right? Allah says in the Qur'an, Allah is the protecting friend of the believers, and He takes them out of the darknesses, the plural of darknesses, the trepidation, the darknesses, all this kind of constant anxiety, depression, so on and so forth that we feel, into the singularity of Nur, into the singularity of light. And so God is always taking his believers and those who believe from these difficulties and from these darknesses into light. Maju and I have to be aware of that. And so all of the practices that we do ultimately are to help us accomplish this. And that then results in, again, as we mentioned, more tranquility, reduced anxiety, and an overall certainty and trust that Allah is taking care of every single thing that we have going on in our life, and that He is never going to leave us hanging. He's always going to be there for us. And so that then goes into this first concept that we talked a little bit about last time. We're going to do a deeper dive. And so today we'll be aiming to get through certainty and kind of how do we practically gain certainty? And then we'll be able to get through intentions. What are intentions and why do they matter in the path of spirituality? So when it comes to certainty, Imam Al-Haddad, he mentions a couple of different things. He mentions that certainty is at the essence of this entire matter. Yaqeen is at the essence of this entire matter. That somebody who has certainty has a power and a firmness and a stability of faith so great that it becomes stronger than a towering mountain. And that it's so strong that nothing can shake your faith. So you meet people at the likes of maybe our grandmothers and others that had such strong faith. And it wasn't necessarily that it's always accompanied by an intense amount of extra practice. You could be doing a lot of the basics and you could be applying it correctly and have your source of food and income and so on and so forth to be halal and be pure. And the certainty then can come even with just doing some of the core basic obligations. But generally speaking, you'll need to do extra deeds in order to increase the certainty. And so the certainty becomes so strong that that person, they won't be inwardly phased by things. You might see them outwardly. Yes, the impacts will happen. But inwardly, as we mentioned, they are at the eye of the storm. They're totally calm and collected as they go through these tribulations. And as the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he mentioned that he said that if Omar was to take one path, Sayyidina Omar, if he were to take one path, shaitan would take another. And why is this? That Imam al-Hadad, he mentioned that Omar, Sayyidina Omar had such strong certainty, had such strong yakeen, such strong belief in Allah that shaitan couldn't get near him. So the ultimate manifestation of this is that the shaitan won't even try to, he knows he's not going to be able to mess with somebody who has such strong certainty. He's going to prevent you and I every step of the way as soon as he realizes someone is starting to tread the path of spirituality, you'll see the satanic presence increase in your life more and more. You'll see them that the satanic presence meaning like the attempts, I should say rather, not the presence. The satanic attempts will increase. The shayatin will try to get at you more. They'll whisper more. They'll come at you in different directions because they know all this person now. Maybe before they weren't praying, now they're starting to pray. Maybe before they weren't following the religion and they weren't implementing the rules of the religion, now they're beginning to do so. And they say that the thief only goes to places where there's an actual, you know, into a shop where there's something of value. The thief is not going to go into an empty store. He's kind of come to the heart and going to come to the person that actually has something of benefit. And yes, Siddhi Fenton? You could let the people know there's a series on Omar. It has English subtitles. And if you just look up Omar series, it's a very good series on Omar as he was young coming up until he was assassinated. Right. It'd be very beneficial. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. And so Siddhi Fenton mentioned that there is a series, I believe it's a television series on Sayed Naoma, Radio Ho'an, where it kind of documents his life. So anybody wants to check that out. And so he mentioned that Shaitan, again, is afraid of the shat, not just he walks a different path, but he's literally afraid of the shadow of Sayed Naoma. And that Omar never takes a road. Sayed Naoma never takes a road, Radio Ho'an, except that Sayed Naoma takes another road. And so we want to try and have this level of certainty increase. And so then he gets into, we covered this last time, we'll review it briefly, inshallah, this time around. So then he gets into how do you go about acquiring this certainty? Why does it matter? And so the whole rest of the classes that we'll be talking about will be linked towards achieving this ultimate state of yakin and certainty. Naoma Haddad, he's giving you a guarantee, essentially. If you follow this path, that is the path of the Prophet ﷺ, you will achieve this, inshallah. That's the whole goal of the path, right? Allah says in the Quran that worship Allah, that until you achieve the state of yakin, that many of the commentators, they mention it means death, but some of the others, I believe they've mentioned that it could actually be this actual manifestation internally of yakin, of certainty. So this is a bar now where you should measure your progress, where we should measure our progress. As I increase in my practice, what's going to happen? Tests will also begin to increase, because God wants to test you. You said that you believe, he says in the Quran, that do they think that they will say that they believe and that we will not test them? Rather, we will test them just like we tested those who came before them to see which of them are truthful. You can't just make this claim that he, I'm a believer, and I want all this goodness associated with being a believer, and expect it to just be smooth sailing. And I think this is one of the main issues in the time we live in, that a lot of us, especially growing up in the West, we assume that if you do good, only good things, quote-unquote outwardly, will happen to you. Our religion is that that's kind of Christian prosperity gospel. We have nothing to do with that. Our religion says that as you do good, you will begin to see more difficulty. And it comes in the Hadith of the Prophet's Assam that the prophets are tested the most. And then those closest to them, and then those closest to them. So it wouldn't make any sense that the Prophet's Assam, the greatest person to ever walk the face of the earth, and then all the prophets, that they had the most amount of tests. The Prophet's Assam had to bury almost all of his children while he was alive. He had the most amount of difficulty when it came to outward levels of poverty. He had significant amount of difficulty when it came to persecution. There were over a dozen assassination attempts on the life of the Prophet's Assam. And so on and so forth. He had a very, very difficult life. And the Sahaba Ikram, they had a very, very difficult life. So it wasn't easy, and it's not supposed to be easy. So that's one thing to keep in mind that as your certainty increases, or as, sorry, as you tread this path, your certainty generally is a bar, okay? Am I trusting in God more? And this is hard to measure. You only, you can kind of really calibrate. Like, okay, do I really believe that God is going to take care of me in this situation? Or am I losing my, my losing it? And he's kind of losing my cool and really worried and panicky all the time. And that's one way that you begin to measure it. And that's one way to know, okay, is the dhikr that I'm doing in the Quran that I'm reciting and the prayers that I'm doing and so on and so forth. Are they having benefit, or am I just going through the motions? You still have to go through the motions. We're required to go through the motions, but that's not the point. And somebody who missed, who just goes through the motions has missed out on a huge treasure in life. Because all of the wealth that people have, all of the billions of dollars of the billionaires and the power of the rulers and the tyrants and so on and so forth is absolutely nothing compared to the feelings of yakin and tranquility that the people of Allah are feeling. It's absolutely nothing compared to that, because all of that will perish and many of them, you can live your entire life in the pursuit of dunya and you can achieve a lot of dunya, but you might not end up actually benefiting from any of it. You'll always be in a state of anxiety and worry. Like the lyric, more money, more problems. It actually is something you begin to worry about more. During the time of the financial crisis in 2008, I remember reading about different hedge fund managers and investment bankers that were thinking that they were at the top of the castle and their net worth might have been three to five billion dollars before the financial crisis and after the crisis, maybe it went in half. Maybe it became a billion dollars or 750 million dollars. They committed suicide. Even though they still have all this money, it was cut in half, but it still have a lot. But because why? They were going after the wrong things. And that's where the believer, we generally speaking, the Muslims, the righteous Muslims, they never sought money for money. They never sought power for power. Those are all considered blame-worthy things. To seek money for the sake of helping this religion, establishing masajids, centers of learning, so on and so forth is a good thing. But just to seek money so you can have all the nicest cars and the nicest clothes and the nicest watches and the luxuries of this dunya, that's not considered something that would be of the path of spirituality. Especially because it comes with a lot of other stuff associated with it. And it comes with a lot of trouble associated with it. And so that's the bar that we will then begin to measure. The next thing, we'll get to the next one. The next thing that he mentions then is how do we begin this path of increasing certainty? So he mentions three main practical steps that we take. First is you begin to listen to verses from the Quran. The Quran is the source. The Quran is the source. The other thing you'll generally start to see as you tread the path of spirituality that your guidebook, the human being, I remember Sheikh Hamza said this recently, that he said that the human being you're kind of born and you have a default setting. You know when you get your phone there's a default setting that you have and then you have to read the manual of the phone or read the manual of whatever device it is to know how do I adjust the setting. The human being is born in a certain default setting and then the Quran is the operating manual for the human being. And God will give you, he says, if you do everything that's in this book and then of course if you follow the Prophet s.a.w. You can't, there is no way to understand the Quran without knowing what the Prophet s.a.w. went through. You will have your manual for what you need in life. We won't need any other, and there's nothing wrong with self-help books and these other things, but we won't need anything else because we'll have our manual. And so generally speaking, Yaqeen is associated with pondering, studying, and really benefiting from the Quran. At one level reciting and listening is good, but that's not the end game. That's very, very early. The end game is to reflect and deeply ponder these meanings of the Quran because it's an ocean that we'll never be able to fully understand. So he says, begin to listen to verses and hadiths about the majesty of Allah and the perfection of Allah and the perfection of his decision-making. And so you read these verses about God's like awesome perfection and how he makes decisions and you'll automatically start to realize, oh, so he made every other decision perfectly, but it's just the one decision in my life that I'm worried about and am I wrong? No, that's not how it's going to be. This is God who I'm talking about. This is Allah who I'm talking about. This is not somebody else. We don't have a concept of Allah could ever make a flaw. It's impossible. He's absolutely perfect. And he knows everything that's going to happen and he is Al-Haqeem, he's the most wise, so every decision he makes is going to be wise. So you reflect upon these verses. Then he says that you look at the kingdom of the heavens and the earth, meaning you look at everything around you. And this is not the dunya around you. This is what's called the alam, the worlds, the world. You look at the beauty of the mountains and the firmness of the mountains and the beauty of the ocean and the beauty of nature. Everybody, whether they have a faith practice or not, when they go into nature, they feel something that grounds them. Whether when we have our friends that are not Muslim or people of faith, they know when you go into nature, there's something that grounds you because nature is bringing you close to your fitrah. You and I are created from Torah. We are created from dirt and you're going back into the setting at which dirt is predominant. And so you contemplate and you ponder and you look at these different... at the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and it increases your certainty that, Allah created all of this. He created everything perfectly and you look at the stars. Ideally, we should have a time at least once a month or some portion, some cadence in our life where we just try to get away from the light polluted areas and we just go somewhere and we just... I just have to grizzly peek here in Berkeley and we just try to look at the stars. And you'll see as you look and reflect that like, well, this cannot be... that just created by human beings. There is a divine authority out there. When we're all caught up in the day-to-day and our computers and our phones and just at work and at school, we don't have a chance to get a chance to look up. The phone has made... one of the main tricks of Shaitan is to get us to never look up. We always like this, always looking like this, always looking up and you have to reflect. That will allow the yakin to begin to increase because all of the things going on around the world the creation of Allah's creation is a... it's meant for us to take Ibrah, for us to take lesson from, for us to be people of insight and take insight from it. And then he says you behave according to what you believe. So you begin to actually implement what you believe. Belief is not just like, it's in my heart, all the faith is in my heart and I don't act accordingly. Our religion is one where you have to believe it and you have to act according to it. You can't only think about it in your heart and then never act. Oh, I'm never going to pray because... but I'm a good person. This is a very common saying amongst Muslims these days. Oh, you don't need to pray, just be a good person. How? How do you be a good person? Allah himself links being a good person with prayer. How are you going to... that prayer is a prevention from fahshah. The prayer is a prevention from doing lewd things. And foul things, right? And it's okay if we're not there yet. We might not be ready to pray or we might not be ready to pray regularly but we have to work on it. We have to work on it. And on the same end, right, you can't just like pray and then be like a drug dealer on the other side. And then you'll be surprised how there's actually many Muslim groups, their source of income is the drug trade and then there are like these Muslim groups that claim to be doing things according to Islam. It's a very, very strange thing when our concepts get inverted. But that's where this path is a path of simple, follow the simple, simple things and we'll start to achieve. And then Imam Haddad gets into the fruits of certainty. He says these are the things that you will start to see benefit from. When you start to become a person of certainty, you'll start to see the following things in your life, right? He says you will begin to trust Allah and have such a confidence in Allah and you'll begin to turn to Allah with longing. You will actually desire to earn Allah's pleasure. You will turn to him longingly. Ya Allah, I want to be close to you. Ya Allah, I want to obey you. I want to be near to you. That is amongst the fruits of the levels of certainty that starts to happen. And you will abandon everything that distracts you and waste your time and you will spend all of your energy seeking God. This is what he's saying. He's talking about lofty stations. Imam Haddad, one of the things he's going to do is he's going to give you the like shortcuts to go from here to here immediately, right? To really, really quickly ascend, rather than having to go through all of the laborious steps. It's like, okay, here's what you need to do and you can get very close to Allah very, very quickly. And that is an affair of the heart that only Allah knows how deeply his servant is longing for him. That how badly his servant wants to be with him. How badly his servant wants to return to him or wants to meet him or wants to get away from whatever they're doing and go and spend time remembering him. What is dhikr? It's remembrance. You're who you're remembering. You're remembering the one that you love. You're remembering the one you want to be close to. And Allah says, In the Quran, I will remember you. And so this dhikr, the path of dhikr is very much related to the path of certainty as you start to tread the path, you will start to see your dhikr increase. You'll generally start to remember Allah more and it comes in the hadith where the Prophet ﷺ said that certainty is the whole of faith. Yakin is all of faith. Because essentially, if you have yakin, you've achieved the realities of Iman. And then we mentioned last time in the beginning, right? You'll start to worry less and stress out less and you'll start to place your affair and trust in Allah more. Okay, I'm just going to turn this over to Allah. Allah is going to take care of this. The one thing just to quickly mention on this point, this does not mean that you stop taking action or that you stop doing things. It's very, very important. We'll talk about this more at the end of the book. He's going to talk about trust in Allah specifically. He begins with certainty as the goal, but then he will get to this lofty station of trust, which is there on the path of certainty. It doesn't mean that you're just like, oh, I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to trust in God. Or I'm not going to obey the sharia and trust that Allah will take care of things. You have to be very, very careful. If you're not obeying the rules that Allah has set forth, you can't just say, oh, God will just take care of the situation. That's not certain to your trust. That's just a trick of shaytan. He might get us to say, oh, yeah, you don't have to do this thing. You don't have to obey. You don't have to follow this specific rule or stay away from this specific thing. But then when it doesn't go right, you just say, oh, yeah, God didn't will for it to go right. That's not certainty. And don't be fooled by thinking that you attributing all of the things that you and I should have done wrong. Allah says in the Quran, when something is bad attributed to yourself, attributed to your nafs, and when something is good attributed to Allah. So you don't just attribute all of the things that could have gone right had you and I implemented the rules of the religion or followed the religion and then say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Allah is the one who, yes, Allah enabled all of it to happen. He gives you choice. Human being has, you and I have free will to be able to make choices. Yes? Are you going to read the text? No, we're not going to read the text. We're just going to go through. We're going to just try and take some of the insights in the text. And so one of the things that we can do if people would benefit is that you just read the, well, I'll let you know what chapters we'll be doing in which class and then you just read that beforehand. That would be very beneficial, inshallah. So we'll go ahead and continue. So that's the section on certainty. Actually, I'll pause here before we get to the section on intentions, which is chapter two in the text. Does anybody have any questions or if anybody online has questions, feel free to post them as well. If anybody has questions about anything we just mentioned, Yaqeen or the steps? Yes? Are certain people who are predisposed to having more Yaqeen or did you hear anything with more Yaqeen or is it just like everyone with the normal one? Excellent question. The question was are certain people more are born or more predisposed to having more Yaqeen, essentially stronger faith, or do we all have kind of an equal chance? Is that the question? That's an excellent question. I don't, wouldn't say I know the answer to the first part, that if Allah chooses certain servants, I mean you would argue that yes, the prophets, of course, that they're born predisposed, they have the completeness of their, of Yaqeen, and then you would also say by extension some of the elect, elect servants of Allah, the Siddiqeen, perhaps they have a certain predisposition to it. I'm not, I'm not entirely sure, but generally speaking, the path is open and available to everybody and it's kind of available in a fair way to everybody, right? So it's not like somebody who is sitting in like a Muslim country who has access to certain types of people will have more access to these things than you and I would, because while we may not be able to sit with the scholars, with the men or women scholars that have inherited this religion, while we may not be able to necessarily sit with them and benefit from them, we can benefit from their teachings, we can benefit from the books, and of course we can go directly to the source which is to the Quran and to the way of the Prophet SAW and then we can benefit. So that's one thing to mention. The other thing that I heard one of our teachers mention is in the West there's like spiritual boosts available, you know, like in Mario when you jump up and you get the star and you become this like giant Mario for a portion of time, there's like boosts like that available that are not available to people elsewhere because of how much haram is going on, somebody who remembers Allah even a little bit will get all of the barakah that could have been distributed to that land, right? So you imagine like you're like walking, let's say that we ever take Bart again if that is ever a thing or you take the subway again and you're like on subway and everybody is watching a show and you know, just reading the news and going through their phones on Instagram and so on, you're remembering Allah, you're reciting the Quran and you are the one who's doing dikkah or you're doing your daily dikkah or whatever it is. All of the barakah that could have been distributed to everybody, you're channeling it towards yourself, right? And so I remember one of our teachers mentioning that you have to do like one-twentieth of what people in the lands where a lot of dikkah is happening have to do to get the same amount of benefit because there's so much benefit available and so few people availing that benefit if that makes sense. And this is supported by the Hadith of the Prophet ﷺ where he mentions that at the end of times, right? Holding on to your faith will be like holding on to a hot coal and then he also mentioned that one of somebody who practices in that time will have the reward of 50. And the Sahaba said 50 of them, Ya Rasulullah, or 50 of us, he said 50 of you, 50 of the Sahaba because they will have, he said this, how? He said they'll have nobody to support them, right? The Sahaba, if you think about it, as they're struggling through their faith, they have each other's back. Whether it's husbands and wives, whether it's the sister Sahaba helping the other sister companions, whether it's the brother companions helping the other brother companions, they're helping each other out. Their dialogue was like about the afterlife. How many funerals have you visited since this morning? That you see in the hadith when they talk, you get an insight into their conversations so they're talking about how much charity have you given today? How is your yakin, how is your faith? What verses of the Quran were you pondering in your tahajjud last night? They're like supporting each other. Oh, I didn't wake up. Oh, you didn't wake up? You got to wake up. Prophet ﷺ encouraged us to wake up, right? They're supporting each other. We don't get that necessarily, right? It'd be amazing if we have friends, companions, families who help us with that support. But generally speaking, we might not get that. And so this hadith of the Prophet ﷺ, we know we're living in a time where it's very difficult, right? It's very difficult for our sisters, those who practice hijab. It's very difficult. I can never understand. My wife has tried to explain to me. I still will never fully understand how difficult it is that everybody around you is not doing it and you have to do it. Every second that you are wearing that, you are getting the reward of a fired obligation. Well, everybody around you might not be getting that reward. And so all of this, all of this, and the same goes with dressing modestly and so on and so forth. But anybody, anyone who's trying to practice their faith, and so there are like boosts, you could say that you get. And that's why I actually think it's a blessing when we're living in the West, because we get a chance to do things that people at other places don't get to do. You contribute to the building of a masjid. You get all these things that in the Muslim world, all of the masjids are already built and the government builds them. You don't get to really contribute or to the building of a center or so on and so forth. Yes. I was just going to mention when you talked about the prophets get the most tribulation and you know, sometimes being righteous, it doesn't mean everything's going to grow easy. You can get more tribulation. I would just mention that that can be because of keeping integrity. When you have integrity, and even the prophet peace be upon, you just kept this integrity and everybody was trying to challenge it and break it down to follow the traditions. But just keeping your integrity for any one of us. If you just keep integrity, the evil forces want to fight it down. If they get challenged and their ego gets challenged and they want to fight down that integrity. So just by keeping integrity all the time, it's great because you only fear God, but then you will get a fight. Like you've been in, I mean, you've been hung up. Remember they put you in jail and all this just because you wouldn't capitulate and grow against the demons. Right. Right. So the phantom mentioned that if you have a person of integrity, you will get tested more but you have that integrity and you are ultimately placing your trust in Allah and inshallah as a result of that, all of the tribulations that are coming your way or the attacks that are coming your way. Because you are a person of Tohid, you are a person of Yaqeen, you are a person of certainty, inshallah those will be warded off. Does anybody have any other questions on this before we move on to intentions? Somebody asked online, inshallah what is the, does Yaqeen mean faith? Yes, Yaqeen, Yaqeen, no, Yaqeen means certainty but it is very much linked to Iman, it is very much linked to faith that somebody, Prophet ﷺ said in Hadith that certainty is all of faith. So you could say that Yaqeen and faith are essentially the same things. Although from a legal jurisprudential point of view, like no, they would be considered different things. Because you have the tenets of faith which are not exactly linked to Yaqeen. Allahu Alam. Okay, so we'll move on, inshallah, now to intentions. So this section on intentions is absolutely beautiful. This is like a manual that we should revisit from time to time. This, by the way, is not a book that you read like, you know, one time through and then like, I got it, time to move on, I've achieved sainthood and now I'm good. This is like a manual you revisit from time to time and you try to implement every single line. He's distilled it into the point where every line is a benefit. And so he mentions that in this section on intentions that you should improve the two aspects of intention. Number one, the soundness of your intention and number two, the sincerity of your intention. And he says that intention is basically, these are the basis of your deeds. That every action is by its intention. We know this famous hadith, إنما العمل بالنيات that every action is by its intention. It is the beginning of the famous books of a hadith. Many of the grades chose to begin their books of a hadith with this hadith. That every action is by its intention. And so there's a couple of things before we get into further in the intention. I just want to mention. Intentions are shortcuts. These are shortcuts to get you from benefitting like you can get five points for something and then you can get like a thousand or a million points for something in our religion simply by intentions if you want to look at it that way, right? So like, okay, my intention to, let's say you have an intention to recite put on, right? He mentions a couple of the different intentions associated with that. But you might not even have it. You might just open it up and start reciting and there's a lot of reward in that. You might make an intention that I intend to benefit from this recitation. My eyes to benefit from the purity of the words and from any haram I looked at from my eyes to be removed as a result of this. My ears to benefit because I will be, they will be listening. My tongue to benefit because it will be reciting. My heart to benefit to extract the secrets and knowledges associated in the put on. And for me to gain knowledge from this book. And for anybody who is around me who just so happens to listen for them to benefit as well. And I intend everything that the Prophet's Salaam and that the righteous predecessors that the Salaaf intended. You can just that intention alone and you've now gone from one simple, you know action where you earned a couple of points you could say to now significantly magnifying and multiplying intentions. They say that the righteous predecessors the generations who came before us the Salaaf they would teach their children the intentions like we teach our children the Fatihah. That there's an immense amount of emphasis on teaching children the Quran which as it should be hamdallah teaching the children the Fatihah and the other and the rest of the Quran at least how to read the Quran and the Fatihah and a few key surahs of the Quran. That they would teach their children intentions like that. So okay you're going to do this what's your intention for putting on your clothing to cover my nakedness and to look presentable and because Allah and I want to look good Allah loves beauty and so on and so forth and you teach them in this way. Oh you're going to eat what's your intention to eat? He mentions this one as the example in the book that by intentions it's the secret to turning this is why it's a shortcut because the secret to turning a very very simple act into a religious act and so that way your whole life becomes Ibadah because I don't think anybody these days is literally and that's not usually how we should be doing things anyway but it's literally spending their entire life in outward acts of Ibadah. Right? It's difficult to do that it's not like every single minute we can be praying or fasting or reciting foot on or serving people or so on and so forth but by intentions everything can become Ibadah which is why it's a secret. So when you eat okay I intend to eat so that I can gain strength to worship Allah every more soul of food that you eat becomes barakah or becomes a good that you get Allah I intend to eat so I can be grateful to Allah because he said in the Quran eat of the good things from your Lord and be grateful so I intend to imply that verse when I eat I intend to eat so that I can share let's say you're with your brothers or your sisters or your family so that I can have beneficial conversation and build bonds with my family because food is something that brings people together as it should so now with one simple action of eating which everybody does at least three times a day maybe in our snack prone society like six times a day every single thing that you eat becomes something that is of Ibadah of course the basis of it has to be permissible you can't go and like eat a giant in and out burger and then make a good intention there and that would unless it's like what's it called cheese or something but like it has to the basis of the food has to be permissible permissible and halal and then you make that intention and if we're not there yet it's all good we just work our way to get there but generally speaking we're talking but you can't make so one of the things he mentioned is that bad deeds can't have intentions associated with it so I remember this was common in college people would be dating non-Muslims they're like oh my intention is dawah I just want to do dawah I want to call them so if I date them it will you know maybe they'll learn about Islam and then as a result maybe they'll convert and that will be a good thing you know it's understandable where that would come from but that's just enough getting in the way it's just the the lower self getting in the way because you can't you cannot have a good intention for an evil deed intention is cut off as soon as sin comes as soon as a sin comes so be also very very careful Shaitan what you have to do is you'll try to say that the end is permissible and so he'll try to make you say corrupt means to get to the end which is where intentions come in because for the Muslim the means have to be allowed and the end has to be allowed right so like in this attempt and you'll see this again with Muslim groups that are doing things in not in accordance with the Sharia that oh we want to implement the Sharia we are going to allow us to implement the Sharia okay well clearly you didn't understand the whole method by you getting there was Haram how is what you're doing at the end permissible and a surprising amount of people are confused by this lack of logic in this approach but a simple understanding of your Deen will be like no you can't do that that's not how the religion works if all of your means and the majority of your means were impermissible and they're not valid forms of struggle then you can't actually say that the end is permissible right so that's one thing he mentions that good deeds are amplified number one number two bad sorry not bad deeds permissible normal things become can turn into good deeds the normal thing that you do eating drinking wearing clothing he says intention for example to get married you're fulfilling the Sunnah of the Prophet's Salaam that you intend to have children that it becomes a righteous action and then there is the intention for bad deeds which you can't have a good intention for bad deeds that's not how it works and so why is the intention so important comes in hadith that the intention of the believer is greater than his or her action why is that why could how does that work it comes that the Prophet's Salaam mentioned to us or that the scholars mentioned in commentary in this hadith that when you have an act associated with the heart it is far more weightier than an act associated with the limbs what does that mean it means that for example you going through a difficulty I'm going to use the example of difficulty here because it's a very applicable example I think to many of our lives right you going through a difficulty and you trying to be patient through that difficulty or trying to trust that difficulty can anybody outwardly see you going through that as it's happening can anybody outwardly see let's say you're an immensely patient person generally speaking would anybody outwardly be able to see that patience would that be an outward act that you're doing sorry right maybe like someone knows you're like at the hospital and you're really going through some intense thing and you're trying to just keep it not let the difficulty become overbearing so possibly but generally speaking they won't know if you're patient you could be inside losing your mind just completely what the heck why is this happening why don't deserve this all of the things that we're not supposed to be saying right and if we say it again it's a path of progress we work on ourselves right it doesn't mean that we stop trying just because we're doing that but you might be saying all the things should be on the other side of it just completely Allah is sufficient for me Allah is taking care of me and you might be completely tranquil that is known as an act of the heart the heart has deeds just like the limbs have deeds so when I when I pray or I do dhikr or you read Quran those are deeds of the limbs the heart also has deeds that it does amongst the deeds of the heart are the fire burns wood so you seeing something especially let's say these days on Instagram and you're like oh he got this or she got this oh he got this big promotion or this big house and you feel jealous towards that why did he get it I deserve it that is burning your good deeds burning your good deeds burning your good deeds just that act of jealousy and that act of envy now you have to resist it you have to say no I shouldn't feel that I need to make the ah and say masha Allah and that's the whole concept in our religion of hasad of evil eye that's where it comes from when someone is feeling envious and jealous and they direct a negative energy towards us which is why it's so important to be protecting ourselves from that so that is an example of a bad action of the heart and an example of a good action of the heart so the Prophet said that the intention of the believer is greater than the action and Imam Ghazali he mentioned this is because the action of the intention is in the heart and the actions of the heart are more weighty than the actions of the limbs and so then Imam Ghazali gets into very very specific practical advice so he mentions in a sentence that you must utter no word or undertake no action and decide no matter in your life without the intention of drawing near to your Lord he's getting again into like the highest levels quickly he's trying to say you want to go from here to here here's what you have to do examine everything you do before you speak before you act before you make a decision and think is this going to help me get closer to Allah and we might wonder like there's so many things we do that have absolutely no relation to religion quote unquote but that's the mindset shift we have to go through that for the one who's treading the path of spirituality everything becomes away to get near to Allah because you start to see everything not in any physical anthropomorphic way in a metaphorical figurative way you start to see what would Allah want me to do in this why would Allah put me in this situation not like a questioning God's decree but an introspective asking what is the wisdom behind this and you begin to see that and then you begin to make the intentions accordingly speaking to somebody about getting married and they're mentioning that yeah when I make the intention for the sake of Allah and for the sake of for righteous intentions I feel different things towards the person I'm speaking with than when I make the wrong intentions and you'll actually the intention is a reality to it if you make the wrong intention you'd say you're you're not married and you set out on the path to find somebody and your intentions are wrong the intention is all about you care about all the how much money that they have and you know beauty only beauty nothing wrong with looking for beauty and good looks that's all you care about the way you approach it will be vastly different than if you care about the religious religiosity of somebody and the character that someone has and that their level of taqwa and then of course also all the other things that are important for two spouses to be able to to be compatible so intentions as a result become a shortcut for us right and then he mentioned that it is required that the behavior that you undertake matches the intention that you make so this is where sincerity comes and remember at the beginning he mentioned the soundness of intention and the sincerity of intention so you if you make intention like okay god if I get a million dollars in this job I intend to build this room in this masjid and intend to give this much and charity and intend to take care of my parents and so on and so forth and then god gives you the million dollars and then you don't do any of that you were insincere you would fall into the bucket of being untruthful and you don't want to be the reason why said in Abu Bakr Siddique was given the name of Siddique was that he had achieved the highest state of affirming truthfulness complete truthfulness in every single aspect of his being in his innermost core he had affirmed and he was truthful in affirming Allah's that Allah is one and that the prophet is his messenger but that's where if you make an intention it has to be followed up then when you actually get the ability to do so with this subsequent action otherwise you would be deemed insincere in what you're doing right and then he mentions that this is an amazing gift that god has given us and we'll finish this up and then we'll take questions and end is that anybody who intends a good deed but doesn't do the good deed get the reward as it comes in our deed anybody who intends the good deed and does the good deed you get 10 up to 700 times the reward 10 up to 700 times the reward you intend the good deed and then you actually follow through with the good deed anybody who intends an evil deed and doesn't do the evil deed they don't get punished they don't even get it written that they intended it but anybody who does intends the evil deed and then they do the sin they get one of those sins it's not like they're getting 700 written for them it's a beautiful aspect of our religion which is why intentions are shortcuts and this is one thing that it would be good for everybody to do either right now or at some point this week is just sit down and think about all the good intentions that you could make for some aspect of your life if it's too overwhelming to do so for your entire life do so for some aspect of your life just let's say your specifically something related to spirituality or something related to your family or to your parents or so on and so forth just make intentions big intentions false the intentions if I had this I would do this I intend this I intend this I intend to become somebody who tries to get as close as possible to Allah and his messenger I intend to become somebody who tries to call as many people to Allah and his messenger as possible I intend to become somebody who devotes as much of my time as I can to knowledge and to goodness all you have to do is make the intention as Imam al-Junaid one of the great imams of the spiritual path said that one righteous intention opens 70 doors of Taufiq 70 doors of enabling grace from Allah when you make a righteous intention so many times we might struggle as we're going through work and as we're going through our jobs or taking care of children or whatever it is that we're doing how can I learn about the religion or how can I start to increase my religious practice it just begins with a simple intention it doesn't begin with an elaborate 70 page document plan of everything I'm going to do and then we might not get around to do it make a couple intentions it's good to jot them down of course but I want to do Allah will open up doors you'll inspire here's 20 minutes a day here's 10 minutes a day your friend will randomly send you a podcast that they found really beneficial and that podcast will be something you listen to while you're these days maybe we're not commuting but while we're cooking or while we're walking or doing something or commuting and that becomes a source of immense spiritual benefit but it's because the intention that we made we made an intention and we'll start to see goodness come we intend to serve Allah we intend to serve the Deen and Allah opens up doors for the service to begin taking place and then lastly Imam al-Razali he gets into a separate this is not in the book but Imam al-Razali on his book and intentions he mentions that intentions have a lot to do with sincerity so we'll get into this in a later section but like you want to be careful about intending good deeds and then mixing that with bad intentions so for example I intend to pray so I can get closer to Allah and then you're subtle at your heart level it's like yeah so that the people next to me can know that I do extra prayers and then when they say Masha'Allah look at you and then you like it that's not sincerity the sincerity would be I don't care what anybody knows about what level of worship I'm doing I'm only doing it for Allah and Allah is always watching so why should I care if somebody says Masha'Allah or look at you or so on and so forth that's at a high level of sincerity it's at the point where you negate it all for ostentation that comes in but he mentions this because he says your intention can be polluted such that you'll get 30% of the reward of the good and then the other 70% you actually did it for someone else and you didn't do it for Allah so you won't get that portion of the reward so you have to be very very pure with sincerity and with intentions it has to be like something you really and when we say many times we'll hear the word check your intentions or refresh your intentions one of the things that that could mean that means is at the beginning before you do anything really why am I doing this what is my intention behind this and then you make lofty intentions and I kid you not that many of the scholars they mention attending one gathering of goodness one gathering of vicar or knowledge or whatever it is or juma there's so many good intentions you could make that by means of the gathering you could achieve eternal felicity because of how many intentions you made and how Allah allowed those intentions to be fulfilled that people make intentions that by doing this gathering we want goodness to come such that the reins begin to enter the lands and such that all the people in that area are forgiven and such that such a divine outpouring of mercy occurs because Allah likes gatherings of knowledge and goodness and vicar that are happening that Allah's mercy begins to manifest in our lives and so on and so forth this is some of the intentions we've heard our teachers make when they are doing some type of gathering that would just be like again something that we can do in our life so it's important again that the main point here is before we do anything we intend we make intentions we know that intentions can uplift us in ways that the actual action cannot then we know that with intention you get the good deed just by intending and then when you do the good deed you get 10 to 700 times more right and that good basic deed and this is the best shortcut that one of the best shortcuts I ever learned I feel was this idea of turning normal mundane things into good deeds I thought it was just it was like a huge mindset shift I never thought about it like that and it's like this idea of going to work right if you're earning a halal income you make the intention to earn a halal income and especially for if you were the primary red winner for your family especially for men this is a religious responsibility once you get married it is part of the for somebody to be earning money that is an obligation that you have to do that right and you make the intention so the entire time you're at work and all the meetings and all the people you deal with that you don't want to deal with and all the difficult conversation with your manager and so on and so forth you're getting ibadah you're getting reward for ibadah because you made the intention that I'm intending to fulfill a farred action that Allah has made obligatory on me and so on and so forth and this can be done if I'm making food I intend to serve my family and serve my children or whoever I'm making the food for and I intend for that to be a means of them to be nourished every minute I'm cooking I'm getting the benefit of the intention and again I intend to visit you're kicking it with your family you're kicking it with your cousins your parents, whoever I intend to enjoy family ties and I intend to be my family because it's something the Prophet ﷺ would also do I intend to follow the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ and I intend to give myself a chance to be engaged in something that's permissible but that's also refreshing and you can go you can make so many intentions when you are doing those things provided that that thing we're doing doesn't have some haram associated with it Alhamdulillah we'll go ahead and end here if there's any questions and then we'll we'll end for Isha InshaAllah we'll see if any questions online if anybody has questions just post them in the chat InshaAllah yes when you make an intention do you have to say I intend? no no no you can do it in your mind like you I mean like you don't have to articulate anything you could just think like I'm intending I might not be actual declaration from your mouth is that is that the question yeah no no you don't have to say the word I mean it can be it can be like some other euphemism for that word it can be some other some other word as well right like I hope to do this right like I hope that by going here this will happen this will happen this will happen there's a lot of other words that you can use but it's the concept of the intention which is which is important yeah yes yeah I missed the last part of that it was that if we have a good intention and then the result is not what we were what we were hoping for if you have the answer for that one let me know if you intend something good and then we end up kind of maybe making the situation worse right and so if this is in relation to your like a situation with people most of the time it's going to be in relation to people you start with that good intention but this is where we have to be really really careful because the action has to be measured in accordance with the in accordance with the religion so what I mean here is like really really slipping and they're slipping from the Dean and your intention is I want to help them I want to help them get back up on the path right maybe they stop praying or you know you catch them like slip in a drink or something or they're smoking or something you just do you know that they're doing up to something and your intention is I want to help them but now your approach also has to be correct in order for that because before you the in order for the intention to be actualized let's say take on that type of thing so one of the things the scholars mentioned is that you have to make sure you are approaching them with wisdom with love with humility with like you know I know you might be going through a challenge we all go through this but I notice you're struggling is there anything I can do to help and you kind of slowly work with them on that situation until they get to a point where you can actually address and bring up you know I noticed they know it's around everybody knows what we're doing 99% of us when we do harm we know it's around but the intense way oh but well that you push them further away from the religion someone asked do you know what you did oh my intention was good I was enjoying and good forbidding evil Allah says or the Prophet said if you see something bad stop it with your hand and so you you say you're applying the hadith but you didn't do so with wisdom because Allah says call to the way so that would be like an example right but then let's say you actually sincerely do your absolute best you approach the situation two or three brothers are getting an argument or sisters getting an argument you're trying to fix the situation you really sincerely want to help you make the ah the forehand the Allah please help the situation and then it ends up becoming worse you did what you were supposed to do you intended you get the reward up to what you intended because Allah could have had a different plan in mind does that answer the question was there another yes ah sorry I I still couldn't hear you define Ibadah yeah Ibadah the way that Ibadah would be defined with his worship and worship in this sense is any action that you undertake that you have the intention to get closer to Allah and then there's the formal Ibadah praying fasting reciting Quran doing zikr going to Hajj doing zakat and then there are the more um let's say the informal Ibadah that you good actions you turn into Ibadah through intention does that make sense yeah ah yes and for the person who is saying if they have good intention and then you've got a bad result a bad outcome another thing you could say to that is the actions are judged by their intention so as long as you have a good intention you know you're okay alhamdulillah that's what I would say JazakAllah Khay ah one more did you have a question are you gonna really ah no most likely we'll move on from this one yeah yeah good question so the question was that if we're intending to do something good and then something negative creeps into that intention let's say that we're intending to do a good action and then something a bad thought creeps in and that maybe we do so for the sake of people instead of for the sake of Allah that how do we correct it and rectify it the most important thing here is and this is like a long topic books have been written just on this subject but essentially that first is you hate the action you hate that that feeling came right you're like ah why did that happen I don't like that that happened number two is you do your best to make toba that that actually took place so you turn to Allah in repentance say Allah I'm sorry that my sincerity was compromised by ah letting this other thing corrupt me I know I have not reached this pure state of sincerity and the third thing is that you that you intend after that that I will do my best to fix that situation moving forward right ah that those would be a couple of like very very quick steps then there's a whole other section that I think he might get into on ostentation and what to do there's a du'a specifically the Prophet of Islam would encourage us to make when it came to this specific one of bad intentions creeping into Ibadah that if you remind me until we can get to it in a future class yeah is it a question city we'll take one more question we'll end because it's just any more questions any questions online okay just for the sake of time I know it's getting late if you can just let him know after that would be that would be good yeah for the sake of time we'll go ahead and close the door Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim Alhamdulillah Allahumma salli ala sayyidina Muhammadin wa alaihi wa sahbihi sallam Rabbana atina fiddan ya hasnah dumwafil haakhirat ya hasnah dumwakina adab al-naar Rabbana takabal minna inna ka anthasamiyul alim wa tubalina inna ka anthasawab al-rahim la ilaha illa anthasubhanak inni kunsum minna baalimin ya hayu ya qayyum la ilaha illa