 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillah, Lord of the worlds. Allahumma salli wa sallim wa barak'a la sayyidina Muhammadin nabi al-ummi wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa sallim. Rabbi Sahih Sadri wa Salli Amri wa haluqtatim al-Nisani wa Qaulihi. Wa sallallahu wa sallim wa barak'a la sayyidina Muhammadin nabi al-ummi wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sallim. Alhamdulillah, Lord of the worlds. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullah. Hope everybody is doing well. Alhamdulillah. So sorry that we've been on a much longer break than I expected. But inshallah we'll go ahead and resume. And so we last left off maybe a month ago. We were talking about different aspects of kindness and charity in this book that we've been covering on practical spirituality. The book is titled, The Book of Assistant. So inshallah we're going to continue in that book and we have just about seven chapters left. So my intention is for us to inshallah finish right before the end of July, at which point we'll do like a khatim of the book. So what we were discussing and what we'll continue to discuss now and we'll do kind of a recap since it's been a while, is in addition to the outward spiritual acts that we all do in our day-to-day lives, it's also just as important, sometimes if not more important to also invest in making sure we treat our fellow believers and the fellow members of human society in a very, very kind way because Islam has two components to it. You have what's called the rights of Allah and you have what's called the rights of people. And Allah can forgive the rights that you and I ignore maybe that Allah has imposed on us. But Allah does not forgive the rights that we transgress against other people if those people don't forgive us. And so treating people with kindness, treating people with gentleness, treating people with mercy, making sure to look after each other as believers, as Muslims, as a community is really, really important to our spiritual progress in Islam. And you cannot have spiritual progress in this religion without being a good human being. It's impossible. If you see somebody who does a lot of worship but they don't treat other people kindly, it's you can't, they would not be considered as someone who's progressing spiritually. Something's wrong with their religion. You need to have, you need to have both, right? And so there are different aspects to kindness. What we'll start with today is one of the ways in which someone manifests this good character and manifests this merciful character is to make sure that if you see another believer in a situation that they could be harmed, you remove that harm. And so the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he says that I saw someone traveling in the garden in Jannah because of a branch of thorns that, that he had removed from the road of the Muslims. And now that can be taken in a literal way. It can be taken in a metaphorical way that this person was looking out for his fellow believers or her fellow believers. They saw something that was in, in, in, in their path, in their spiritual path and their physical path and they removed it. And because they removed it as a result of that, Allah gave them Jannah. And so when you see a brother or sister struggling with something or you see harm that they're going into a harmful situation, it's a responsibility to gently guide them or to remove that harm from their path, right? And that could again be physical. If you and I are walking on the street, there's a lot of rewards for removing, you know, we're in Oakland, there's a lot of bottles and glass and broken things on the road. Many times to remove that from the road for everybody, it brings reward. And then if you see someone about to do something spiritually, that would impact them to remove that or to guide them away from it. That that is of the utmost importance. And that leans into this, this other concept of relieving the hardship that other people have that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us that if you see someone in hardship and you ease their hardship, Allah will ease your hardship and our hardship. So Allah said that He Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us that Allah grants ease to the person who eases the hardship of another and will conceal in this world and hereafter the one who conceals the sins or the mistakes of other believers and he will relieve on the day of judgment a hardship for that person who relieves for the Muslim a hardship that they might be facing in this world. So what does and then the Hadith continues actually will finish it that he says and Allah will fulfill the need of them of the person of the man or the woman who fulfills the need of their brother or sister and Allah is in the assistance of his servant as long as you and me are in the assistance of our fellow believers Allah is in our allies assisting us. So there's a lot. There's a lot here. Let's start with the first the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam if he's mentioning something first, it means it's of the utmost important importance. If someone is struggling with adversity, they have someone in their family who's sick. They're struggling financially. They're struggling to get a job. They're God forbid struggling with not having a home to live in or not having a roof over their heads or they are in a very very difficult or traumatic situation. It is amongst the among the highest acts of Ibada to go and help that person to remove the hardship that it's more important than praying all night and fasting all day extra super arbitrary fast. It's more important to help someone who is in need who's in a state of hardship than it is to do all these other things. And many times you have to make that trade off that someone could you could focus on yourself, but Allah wants you and me to focus on other people and Allah will keep hardships away from us. What this hadith is telling us if we are in the service of helping other people remove their hardships. So if times are good for us and everything's you know, peaceful and you know, we don't have that many difficulties going on in our life. That's actually an indication that sometimes a low put people in our in our in our life or in in our path who will be struggling with something and he wants to see I made everything good for you. Are you going to take time out to help that person? Are you going to take time out to talk to them to counsel them to assist them or are you going to just watch another you know episode of your favorite show like or whatever else it is like what what types of ways are you and I going to carve out time our precious time in order to serve other people in order to help other people. And so that's the big question that we have to ask ourselves and so if you see somebody struggling if we see someone struggling take out at least a few minutes and just see if there's any way to help not not like a formality like a fake question like a really sincere. Hey, how can I help? What can I do and go out of our way to assist them and then this gets into the second situation where if you see someone slipping up and someone who's in a state of sin Allah will conceal your faults as long as you concealed their faults. The Muslim community now what we do is we see someone making a mistake and we go back and we tell our friends and our family. Oh my God. Yeah, I saw that person. He was walking with a girl. I don't think that they're married and we let go and we gossip about all of it. If you and I get into habit of doing that we have to be very careful that at some point all of our faults Allah starts to reveal to people. He starts to reveal the people if you randomly start to notice faults being opened up and revealed to other people that's in this life. It's usually because you and I don't do a good job at concealing other people's faults. If someone makes a mistake and you're the only one who saw that mistake zip. You never mentioned it unless it's a like societal threat or issue what I mean by that if someone is like publicly doing something wrong or is an abusive person to their family or engage in domestic violence. You don't just zip up about that. You obviously do something about it but we're talking here about like you know someone flips up. You don't go and and tell everybody about that slip up right and Allah conceals on the day of judgment the faults of someone who conceals the faults of others and that's a day when any fault that we have that we can get concealed we're going to want to get concealed because all of the mistakes that we made Allah might start to show humanity or him himself and humanity those mistakes and we don't we don't want that to be happening right and then the third area he the Prophet sallallahu sallam told us that Allah fulfills the need of the one who fulfills the need of his brother or his sister and that Allah's in your assistance as long as you're in the assistance of someone else. So what does that mean if we are in a state of where we could be helping or let's say we're in a state of privilege. We should seek out people who are in need and try to find some portion of time every week or every month that we can help them and this book is about practical spirituality it's about things you can do consistently in order to attain the highest stations of nearness to Allah that you cannot attain these stations if we don't follow the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu sallam and it is noted that the Prophet sallallahu sallam even though many times his his life would be one full of financial struggle and struggle to have basic things he would feed it is estimated sometimes 70 to 100 people a day every single day he would feed them multiple meals a day and so you're talking about hundreds of meals that the Prophet sallallahu sallam would be responsible for giving out every single week it into the thousands per month and this is not it's not like he's getting food sent down to him from heaven you know and and and then he's distributing it this is him sacrificing what he could have or what his family could have right giving from his own wealth to assist other people but Allah is an assistance of the one who assists other people so when you and I see someone in need this doesn't just have to be a Muslim anyone in need someone of less someone who it does not have a home someone who did not get a meal to eat you see someone you're at a coffee shop and like somebody you know you could clearly tell they haven't eaten or they haven't had coffee or whatever or they haven't had anything to drink or eat in a long period of time by them something right just go out of your way to assist someone else because the Muslim society was one of selflessness constantly unfortunately where we live Western society is usually one of individualism and selfishness many times we prioritize only ourselves instead of thinking about hold on a second I'm eating and there's a bunch of people who don't have food how do I offer them food right and food would be one need but any need that your brother or sister has that that anybody in your family or friends or community might have right and then we get into the next category here that he mentions so he's mentioned removing harm he's mentioned assisting people who are in hardship and going out of your way to fulfill someone's need right then he mentions the importance of just showing compassion to those who don't have others to show compassion to them specifically the orphan and in Islam the orphan is emphasized a lot in the Quran you'll see often the allies emphasizing the importance of taking care of those people who don't have parents or who don't have one or don't have a father who don't have a mother right and in our community where we live that's that that happens a lot there's people who grow up without parents whether their parents are physically they're they're not alive or if their parents are that's incarcerated or something like that right and so taking care of them is of the brings the utmost spiritual reward in our tradition the Prophet said that when someone strokes an orphan's head Allah records for each hair that his or her hand touched 10 good deeds just for showing some compassion and showing some mercy right and so that's that's like another example these whether or not these are specific things you can do in your community today or whether these are things you go online and you find out how can I support an orphan every month right or someone or a family who doesn't have much much many resources and how do I just give 30 40 $50 whatever someone can afford right and if you and I think that with this economy we're being hit hard with gas prices and inflation imagine people who already didn't have enough to make ends meet now imagine how difficult it's getting for them right and people who are already living paycheck to paycheck how difficult it might be getting right and so this is where we go out of our way to assist those who are in in circumstances that are not as privileged and then he mentions here that any time you can make someone happy make them happy in a way that's not sinful that's the only caveat so if someone you know that there's some type of you know sin that makes someone happy you don't you don't engage in that but any other way to make someone happy it's brings the utmost of good deeds and sometimes we forget this that like making this could be your children this could be your spouse most importantly it should be children and spouse first right parents siblings but you're you know your friends your community members you know that either some food that makes them happy you invite them over you make that food right you know that there is a specific type of place that they want to go so you take them and you take them to that place right but what he's saying here is that there's a lot of reward for gladdening the hearts of the believers and it is part of the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to just make people as happy as possible and to try to keep them in a state of expansiveness right because life has a lot of difficulties so when you get a moment and when you get chances it's important to spend time to make to make people happy right and this can Muslim we should have moments not our whole life but moments where we just keep things light our religion is not one of seriousness and intensity all the time there should be moments of seriousness where you're like if you're going to a funeral funeral is not a time of joking and laughing and it's a time of reflecting on death and praying for the deceased and making sure to be there for the family and and and keeping it light if the family would benefit from that but not making it into a very very light situation but then there's moments where it's you know some major event happens for somebody at someone's birthday or at somebody's you know graduation or whatever else it is you keep it really light you want to keep the atmosphere it's actually one of the traits of the Prophet ﷺ to keep the atmosphere around him very jovial and light when when the time calls for it not all the time right but when the time calls for it and that that lines up with this idea of keeping making sure that people around us are happy and this is when you know that Muslims today especially some of these these groups that have emerged around the world how far they've strayed from the Sunnah right when people are doing crazy extreme types of activities that we're in the Sunnah would you find the Prophet ﷺ who's so focused on making people happy and on joking with people and I'm keeping that mess for your light like operating in this harsh stern way calling everybody a cafe and like trying to you know destroy communities and so on it's so it's so far from the Sunnah so we should try to bring in our life starts with our home and then continues with our community moments of lightness and moments of expansiveness right and that and whatever little we can do to kind of make people happier to make people you know laugh if someone is a you know has a funny personality lean into that right the humorous side of your personality and to make to make people laugh right and to make people happy and then he says and right now he's just kind of listening out a variety of different things that will bring reward right as someone progresses on the spiritual path that he says try to if you know someone is struggling with something and there's any way you could intercede for them right try to do so with people who are influential right that would mean that you know you know that that somebody could use your help and there's some person of authority that you have to have a relationship with you try to say hey is there any way that you could lessen whatever you know but as a punishment or whatever see or whatever it is that someone is being incurred is incurring and to try to get in this situation where you intercede for them right example would be like if you your little brother sibling gets in trouble with your parents right and you know that you have a good rapport with your parents say let me you try to get involved in saying hold on no no he didn't mean it he didn't mean to do it don't ground him whatever else it is you try to make sure that if you can be of assistance in some way or another and then of course you handle kind of explaining to that person what they did was wrong and whatever else it is but you try to go out of your way to assist you know there's some difficulty or constriction that's about to come in someone's life the lesson here is if you can do something about it without like doing something haram you do something about it right and you try to go out of your way to do something about it but again this does not apply to if someone like there's something out right wrong or haram or something like that right and then he's even getting into the next thing he mentions is always be smiling smile as much as possible right this is the sunnah of the prophet sallam that he would be walking on he'd be smiling so much like cheek to cheek smile it's mentioned in the books of of shamael in that in the description the beautiful description of the blessed prophet sallallahu alayhi salam that smiling is a huge sunnah and we've lost in Muslims we like walk around and we're just these angry people now like we should be smiling gentle merciful kind people that's when someone thinks of you as a Muslim that's what that's what they should think they they brought some some joy into my life right rather than what was up with that guy like or what would they what was on what was going on in their head that there's the frowning all the time right so that the smiling is actually a charity for the prophet sallam he told us that even smiling to someone's face or speaking friendly to them or he says that speaking kind words to someone you get rewards of charity for that right charity is not only donating a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars or whatever it did that's one type of charity but not everybody has that kind of money or not everybody donates that kind of money so what if someone just made it an act every day that you know what I'm just going to try to live and create a very happy positive environment around me and again why is why would that be charity think about it because today especially every other person is struggling mentally someone is struggling mental health there's a lot of depression there's a lot of anxiety there's a lot of stress and most of the time we hang out many times environment unless someone is like talking about the Warriors winning or something is like a stressful environment most of the time right people are kind of stressed and on edge about all my work or this or that is something is off right but if you can be the person who brings some lightness to that environment that's a lot is giving you rewards of charity because you are may improving the mood of people around you and you are improving their spiritual state and usually most of the time people tend to do better spiritually when they're feeling better psychologically right that the two are very much linked so if you can help somebody with that you are also helping them spiritually right and the two are very much linked and so the Prophet Muhammad told us that you should or rather it's mentioned in the Quran to lower your wing to the believers what does that even mean right to literally humble yourself and come from a place of how can I help to the believers you see a believer and you see again that they're in need of something how can I help right and the approach them with kindness with gentleness and with mercy lowering your wing encompasses a state of gentleness a state of mercy a state of kindness a state of desiring to help and all of the other kind of traits in between right and that the opposite of that don't be someone who kills the mood with people that's not Islamic at all right if you like even if someone is doing something that's questionable you do not need to be the person we should not be the type of people who like ruin the entire mood of everybody there because we disagree with the way someone is doing something if there's a difference of opinion out there right we go with the with the difference of opinion right if there's some someone doing something outright Haram right you can show a level of disapproval but not a level of arrogant judgment the two are very different right but definitely we should not be the people like everyone's hanging out having a good time and then we walk in the room and we're just frowning and stressed and we completely ruin ruin the mood that's that's far from from belief and like it's time to pray Lord everybody and we're just like what's up with this dude like why is he so so mad we can pray lower in a happy way as well right but sometimes people they they misunderstand religion and they think that religion is this harsh serious approach but that's that's not that's not there's a there's a seriousness for sure but definitely not a harshness and definitely not a an intense strictness that has to come with our with our religion and certainly is not the way of the of the Prophet's O'Ala Salaam that there was a lightness to to him that would be there and then he mentions that don't break off relationships with other Muslims we talked a few classes ago about not cutting off relationships with family members don't cut off relationships with fellow Muslims right if someone is um if you get in a disagreement with somebody there is a way to and um to resolve that disagreement or to say hey we're going to we're going to kind of take a break but don't just cut someone off entirely someone you had a relationship with and we just like cut them off of the Prophet's O'Ala Salaam says that the one who deserts his brother or his sister or her sister for more than three days Subhan Allah will be driven by a lot into Jahannam into the fire unless Allah rescues him through their mercy and this is for the one who cuts somebody off who just is like up I don't want I mean anything to do with you anymore that's their fellow believer off imagine the people who kill other Muslims or or who you know hurt other Muslims and all these types I mean imagine the type of of punishment that that could be coming in um in that situation right and so we should do it if we absolutely distance between somebody not in a way that like I'm cutting you off never speaking to you again right there's many many many other ways to approach it but it shouldn't be in a in a complete cutting off type approach and then he mentions that when good good things happen to your fellow Muslims or to to people in general um show delight and pleasure it could be something in their life that's good like good news someone they are getting married or they got a they found a place to live or or rent her or or they're having a child whatever to to show delight at that is from your Eman that someone who's happy for other people your sign of your faith is strong that you're happy for other people someone who when you hear good news you're like oh I had a lot of bad news why you get good news right that's that's a sign of sickness in the heart that someone who could become jealous of someone else's good news someone hiding in the university and they're like really deep down inside jealous that the other person got it right that's that means we have a lot of work to do we should be happy for other people but we can still pray that we get that type of goodness so we should never be upset when someone shares good news yes yes I'm not sure that we we we we we we're rich and superior then we're happy with other people's successes yeah beautiful way to put it if if we have a rich spirit and almost like an abundance we spiritual abundance right that we we we don't feel that there's constriction Allah is not doesn't have any limits to how much he gives out we actually rather operate from mentality of richness and spirit and abundance and spirit which is a great point thank you for sharing that and we um feel good when other people achieve good or when other people have a you know a delight or something like that in their um in their life so um and then same thing when in society let's say that it's a drought right which we are in a drought and we need rain um and a rain comes right it's a it's a moment of showing happiness and showing um elation right he mentions your lowering of prices not knowing that where we have uh gas prices right now um right when when those things go down yet you show a state of of happiness and then when hardship happens right to be empathetic and to show state of sadness when people are going through difficulty right and difficulties before them epidemics rising prices seditions it's like he's speaking his book was written like 300 years ago but we're going through an epidemic and rising prices and we have a lot of sedition um it's I guess times don't really actually change much right you always have some same same flavors of difficulties going on um but when difficulty before somebody right you show like a concern and these are these are like very I know some some some of these things we're saying like obvious these are obvious ways to just function as a person but sometimes we delink these things from faith that these are actually part of our practice as Muslims and they are ways to increase in reward their ways to increase in nearness to Allah when we exemplify these types of things and the you we've many of us might have heard this hadith before um but the Prophet sallallahu sallam said that the believers are in their mutual affection and sympathy as one body that when one organ falls ill the rest of the body is mutually affected with fever and sleeplessness and whatnot right if anyone's ever been in any type of pain we ask Allah protect us and keep us in a state of afia but anyone is sick or the throat's hurting or their head is hurting or they got sick or disease or whatever else it is the whole body feels it right your head could just be hurting but you need to lie down doesn't really make sense because the rest of your body is fine but the whole body is feeling that pain right um and the belief says the umma is similar in that if if some people in the umma are hurting it should it should hit us right and we should be concerned and that's also something that even though we live in this state of globalization sometimes we've become immune to different things that happen right like today our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan had a tragic tragic earthquake or maybe maybe I guess yesterday for for our time right but in the news today right so but we when we read the news we shouldn't just scroll past it and move on to the next thing if we'd read about something tragic happening to our fellow believers no we should think like oh man like these are fellow Muslims they already did Afghanistan has been going through difficulty now for decades they're already in a state of famine in a state of poverty with a problematic issue in from a from a government perspective and now this that falls them what's our state in terms of how we feel bad we might not be able to do much maybe all we can do is donate maybe we're making do ah but at least some concern should exist for people in the umma who are struggling our concern should be beyond just ourselves and it's a sign that we're getting closer to the Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu sallam when our concern goes from ourselves next now it expands to our families next it expands to our communities next it expands to the broader Muslims in our area next it expands to that the Prophet sallallahu sallam's concerns was it was his concern was for all of humanity he would be concerned deeply and would weep at night for them right we might not be able to do this but at least once a year in Ramadan or something we should really make significant doaa for all of the umma ideally we try to do that every every week or you know or month or whatever hey you know schedule we can get on for just sitting down and thinking about the difficulties Muslims are going through it doesn't mean we have to become depressed that's not what I'm saying um that that Allah can have some people in a state of ease and others in a state of hardship and it's up to him but at least the concern should be there and we should try to do what we can to help and then he mentions that when someone does good to you someone wants to do you a favor right you should you have to accept it you have to you you shouldn't neglect or or ignore someone who's trying to do some good for you right and thank that person that again these mutual human relationships sure to thank them trying to do some some extra good for them right trying to repay them with some type of goodness in the future right the idea that like you know someone does something good for you and you owe them something we have that idea right if you have someone who's constantly looking out for you and helping you and assisting you with things when they're in need a lot of our way or when you know um that they are uh about to have some major event happen in their life let's say someone's having a kid and you know they need help with something right going out of their way to say hey or they're moving can I help you with something doing doing whatever little favors you can these things really really add up they really really add up and then he says never break a Muslim's heart by refusing what he or she offers you when you know that anything that comes to you through that person is in reality from Allah and that that person doesn't have any actual means Subhan Allah what does that mean that means that um if someone's giving you something right don't break their heart by rejecting it by rejecting it I do that these are someone wants to give you a gift you accept the gift with gratitude even if you don't need the gift right and you know that oh this is actually coming to me from Allah that person is not the one but you thank that person right and he's specifically commenting here um that you that there there are groups of people who like um just refuse everything that comes to them out of a state of like I have no need for anybody I just I just need anything everything from Allah he's saying that's not the way you want to live because in reality everything coming to you through people is coming through to us from Allah Allah yeah the Islam is also the sense of if it's coming sometimes just rulers you know that this wasn't if you don't want it it's it oh yeah yeah this would not qualify thanks for the point right this if it's coming from like a corrupt ruler or you know someone's uh source of income is Haram right um or that they are in a position of of tyranny or whatever else it is of course in that situation you don't accept it right you you completely reject it we're talking here about like you know your your cousin gives you a gift or something like that are you accept it and you you show gratitude for for that right um yeah yeah he so he hasn't gotten to that section but in general if someone invites you most of the time it's um your invitation right if you have no other reason to miss um for for many of the invitations it would be considered um for sure it's from the Sunnah in some rulings it's considered Wajib to accept so like if someone wants to like eat with you or whatever else it is right that that's that's part again of being Muslims we can't just only be um uh operating kind of by ourselves in our families we have to make sure we invest time in building relationships with with our community with friends with friends and so on yeah a little um so yeah he goes on to mention that if someone is committing you know um injustice and then they give you a gift of some sort or they're bribing you you don't accept that right like if they know that you're in a position of power and you're the judge and you're about to rule on something and then they're like oh here's a gift right don't be like the united states congress um where you accept all types of gifts no matter who lobbies you um and then he says that beware so now he's gonna shift to the next to this next section he says beware of praying against yourself your children or other Muslims right um so specifically you do not want to pray for your wealth for your prayer may coincide with one of the times in which prayers are answered sometimes someone in a state of anger may say something that comes across that that is like um a curse or a prayer against their family member or their child and that prayer could get accepted right someone might be super angry and say um I mean I don't have some examples maybe we've seen maybe we've read maybe we've watched we've heard whatever else it is you don't want to pray against three things yourself don't pray against yourself that includes your family your children and your own circumstances or your own wealth you don't want to pray against that and then in general you want to avoid praying against other um against other Muslims against other Muslims and and um then he says that do not really harm them so the prophet said that whoever hurts anyone who hurts a Muslim has hurt me and the one who hurts me has hurt God and to insult a Muslim is immorality and to fight a Muslim is kufr if if we as a community just follow those to hadith 95% of the global issues that Muslims are going through wouldn't exist we are hurting each other we are um uh creating animosity between other Muslims Sunnis are fighting Shias Shias are fighting Sunnis there's all of these problems um simply because we don't know how to live and coexist together as a community so to us it starts with with some people making a firm intention to try to live these prophetic principles in their lives and then that expands so that eventually you have a family and a community and a society and the next generation of people who come that they implemented the teachings of the prophet in the way that they were meant to be implemented and now society begins to reform that's how society changes these teachings that we have in our religion they are a light they are a way of guidance they are a way that we can change but we have to um apply them right and so what is this idea um through someone's words and this is serious in the Prophet's Islam saying you heard a Muslim you heard me and you heard me you heard God you can't actually heard God and you and I actually can't hurt the Prophet's Islam but it's this idea that Allah for example asks on the day of judgment that I was sick and you didn't visit me right and I was hungry and you didn't feed me and there's other examples and someone will ask Ya Allah you can't be sick you can't be hungry and he said no no no you can't visit him or her and I had a servant who was hungry and you didn't feed him and you were able to right and so it's this idea that Allah takes offense when you and I don't take care of other Muslims Allah takes offense to that and of course the Prophet who is the prophet of this community he takes offense to that and so we want to be really careful with our words and we want to be really careful with our actions we want to be careful on social media we want to be careful on text we want to be careful and we make sure we don't hurt other people's feelings because it's actually a big big deal to break the heart of a fellow believer and then he says that don't curse other Muslims animals other people just don't don't spend your time cursing other people right because curses can end up and the idea of this means that someone is like constantly spending their time just kind of you could say literally cursing someone you know with like curse words or any other any other form of of lewd speech right and and then and then he mentions that it's important to reconcile between the hearts of believers you know that two people are fighting right that you it's a huge deed in our religion to get them to make up big deal big deal right you know two people have had an issue to get them to reconcile has immense immense immense reward right and this would be he's saying he's saying that restoring good relations between people is more meritorious than extra enough though prayers than extra fasts especially if these damaged relationships are between family members that's an even bigger deal it's already a big deal because Allah says that the believers are brothers and sisters and so you should make peace right between between each other so how do we apply that practically if you know that two people are in an argument or beefing or are haven't spoken to each other in a while right you get created and you get creative in how you're going to get them to reconcile you're even allowed to say you're allowed to you could say stretch the truth in these circumstances about someone's opinion of someone else let's say two people are in an argument right and third person comes in he goes and tells my brother that oh he said this and such and such he thinks really highly of you even if that person doesn't think highly and vice versa and you try to find a way to reconcile them and to just get them to repair relationships it's a huge deal to not have soured relationships and if anyone has ever been in an environment or a family where there's dysfunction to the point where people cut each other off or people don't speak to each other anymore it creates like dysfunction throughout the whole family and throughout the entire community it creates dysfunction because people are affected by how could two people who used to love each other and grew up together or whatever else it is just not talk anymore right and so that should be something that we try to do and on the opposite side he says avoid sewing discord and being the person who creates problems between people don't slander people don't backbite them and don't create situations in which people will that will result in antagonism aversion by Allah if you and I are the are the people who create rifts between others we're like oh did you know that he said this or she said this or did you know that they are thinking about doing this and they didn't invite you right and like just creating this unnecessary tension between people that's a big deal that's a big deal right I remember somebody I knew like these these group of friends were going on a trip somewhere and then next thing you know someone is telling someone else in another friend's group like oh did you know they're going on a trip and they didn't even invite you and then somehow that gets back to the people who are going on the trip and they're like what and then now there's like drama between them all because of something so silly and because one person just couldn't mind their own business it's not it's not your business what someone else does whether someone invites us to something or not it's not our business and if we feel affected by it we have an open conversation like hey I was hurt that you didn't invite me but you don't go around someone's back and start to create drama between like five friends in a group and now everybody is like confused and you and I were the source of that drama that's that's like a major sin in our religion right you might as well go drink like that's that's how serious of sin of creating please don't go drink it's as serious when you're creating the animosity between people and you are the source of that and so if you and I are in circles where there's a lot of gossip or a lot of backbiting or a lot of he said she said oh did you hear when you like when you're in a circle which knows the latest news about everything going on in every other social circle you should I would highly advise separating yourself eventually from that circle because that circle is the type of circle that creates these types of issues eventually when you're always on top of everyone's social dynamics you usually have an opinion about them there will usually become a point at which someone will say something antagonistic and there's different there's certain types of people right usually when someone's younger they're more into this as someone gets you know older and more mature they tend to not worry about these things but there are people who might be in their like 40s or 50s and immature still and still thinking about these types of things and it's not it's not anybody's business to create animosity or to talk about other people that are doing yeah I would just friendship with have residence oh yeah because I want you to in righteous circles you just have good lives and it's nice to know what you would have before yeah definitely no that's a good point the point that's mentioned is that if you're living in a circumstance of righteousness and you hang out with people who they're actively trying to get better righteousness in this situation you're just hanging out with people who like actually care about their dean and their iman 99.9% of the time those people will never spend time on these types of trivial things because their heart has been purified in a way that they don't care about this type of stuff the sign it is a sign of impurities in the heart which if we all have impurities but it's a sign that we have a lot of work to do if this is the majority of the discussion points when we're hanging out with people and if that is the case we should remove ourselves from those environments before we like have a family and have children and start to now corrupt that environment as well because usually if the parents have created or the parents themselves have an environment which is not a pure environment that eventually is passed down to the rest of the family right and so slander what is slander he says slander is to report the words of one person to another with the intention of creating discord between them as the Holy Prophet said a slanderer cannot enter Jannah cannot enter Jannah and this is serious words that he says the most abhorrent amongst you to Allah are those who damage relationships between brothers or sisters by slander and create rifts between fellow brothers and sisters it's as a pretty serious the most abhorrent among you abhorrent is like the worst people among you that the most disliked by Allah he's interesting about adulterers or people who drink or other categories here he puts this to a pretty significant level where he's saying this is among the most abhorrent traits that Allah hates the people who create rift between other people so there's two practical things we should do here one is if we've ever been this type of person we should go back and fix any of the problems we created between others and apologize and rectify and if we don't have the ability to do that or the courage to do that yet we should pray that Allah forgives us because this is a serious sin and then we pray for the people who we created problems between that's the first thing the second thing is if we already mentioned if we see people who are starting to have this type of discussion we switch the topic immediately and this can be a very this does not have to be I would not advise doing it tactfully I would just switch the topic like dude this not our business bro like that nothing to do with you nothing to do with me let's talk about something else because if someone tries to dance around and is like oh I don't want to hurt the person's feelings the damage the evil that they're about to do is much worse than someone being direct with them you don't have to do it in a rude way but I would advise be direct in this circumstance don't let someone because the minute they open their mouth to the rumors and slander and gossip a whole room can be affected by those right and pretty quickly that stuff do that is if they say you know I'm not supposed to tell you this so promise me you'll keep it a secret and then they tell you someone else's secret right that and you know that person is someone you want to avoid being around and never tell them private information about your life because you know that they can't keep it to themselves and that eventually that it's just in their personality and in their nature to just spread spread rumors and this is essentially spreading rumors is what the prophet was talking about right backbiting right which which was the topic of the khutbah this past week that the Imam gave he said it said here that this is now also a way of creating rifts between people right to backbiting is to say something about someone that in their absence they would not like and had they been present right they also would not like right and so an example of this would be that if you know someone is maybe a little bit large right let's say that they've gained weight you don't say yeah yeah man like he really gained weight you don't say that it can be 100% fact he could have weighed 140 pounds and now he weighs 170 pounds it's not your business how many pounds he weighs so it's not your business to come home after a gathering and to be like yeah she really gained a bunch of weight or like he really gained weight what the minute you say that action the minute you and I say those words our good deeds are given to him or her their bad deeds are given to us right the minute we say something and these are small things I think this is one of those things that they're the smallest comments we make but they have the largest spiritual impact because we don't think about the words that we're saying about other people the advice here that the scholars give is just don't think about other people like just no need to mention much about them right because 99% of the time people get into saying something that that other person wouldn't like right you ask how someone is doing do it with a good intent don't do it with the intention of I want to know what's going on what are the problems in their life whatever and then now we get into saying something bad about somebody right even someone just saying I don't know commenting on their fashion choices it's considered bad they wouldn't like it right anything they wouldn't like the criteria is as soon as you speak you're about to say something about somebody you think hold on a second would they like would they like it if I said this about them if the answer is yes say it if the answer is I don't know don't say it if the answer is no definitely don't say it right it's as simple as that and as soon as you're about to even think about discussing someone else or someone's family to avoid saying it and there is a hadith where the prophet Salaam said that backbiting is worse than adultery right if you knew someone in your family or yourself was about to commit adultery adultery is what that committing infidelity and having sexual intercourse with someone who you are not married to right that's adultery and that's a huge deal the prophet Salaam here is saying backbiting is worse than adultery there's various hadith which indicate how serious the sin actually is and say Salaam says the one who died having repented of his backbiting will be amongst the last to enter the garden and the one who dies persisting in backbiting will be the first to enter the fire this is not a statement of the prophet Salaam but a statement of Salaam so again very very serious the the dignity of a believer of any human being a sacrosanct it's we're supposed to respect it and the reason why backbiting is so serious is because you are now damaging the dignity of that person and they don't even get a chance to defend themselves right and that's why we have to be really really careful Salaam so we have just one more paragraph here and then we'll get to the question is that okay and so really the last thing he says is just don't be don't be a crude person don't be a rude person and don't be an unjust person if you are given a state of authority over people get make sure you treat people with fairness and with justice right and you and I should not be those people who we wrong people when we are given a state of authority over them and the prophet Salaam told us the bankrupt of my ummah is the one who comes on the day of judgment with a bunch of good deeds with numerous good deeds but who has struck someone insulted someone taken the money of someone else and so on and that they will take their good deeds one by one by one until their good deeds are exhausted then they'll that person will inherit the other persons evil deeds until he says they are cast into the fire after which they are cast into the fire so we should just be really really careful the summary here is like we should be really careful about people be really mindful about not hurting other people's feelings about not treating other people wrongly or unjustly about not being rude to other people about being really really just overall a kind human being Hamdan la love bless you Hamdan la that kindness is manifesting Hamdan la and so that's essentially the main the main kind of take away here right and to to prevent ourselves from hurting other people is one big big goal and then to actively go out and help other people and do good to other people and to be kind to other people and to go out of our way to assist them and to remove difficulty from their life that should be another main area what that essentially is a framework for how we deal with with with fellow people in society and our fellow Muslims right prevent harm and and bring benefit we do those two and we keep things good with Allah inshallah we'll be good that is a productive spiritually productive and healthy life you worship Allah maintain a good spiritual state treat other people with kindness and with goodness and prevent ourselves from doing the harm that we just mentioned because we'll be avoiding all those good deeds we do for us and Allah we'll be avoiding people taking those good deeds because we wouldn't have done harm to people inshallah and then of course more importantly we'll have brought benefit to society inshallah and benefit to other people and then that will increase us in nearness to Allah and we see this as one of the chief traits of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that he he said in hadith that he was sent to perfect noble character that's one of the main reasons he defines why he was sent was to complete noble character just make sure that he has good character and that other people around him have good character and so that really is if we can attain that state we will be spiritually content and inshallah and all the other ways we will be content sallallahu alayhi wa sallam about the sayyidina Muhammadin wa la alihi wa sahbih sallam alhamdulillahi rabilalameen so Maghrib just entered I think like a minute ago so we'll just take a few questions and we'll pray inshallah did you have a question? yes yeah good question so it's like either the question is how do you basically pick between if someone is backbiting and slandering others then on one hand you can like really distance yourself and cut them off but then you're also not supposed to do that so how do you reconcile that's a really good question so so there's a couple of ways to approach this right one is if you are the first is if you're comfortable talking to them about it right which might not always be the case but if you're able to just say hey like what's going on that all the talk when we're hanging out is negative and it's about other people and do you know that like how damaging that is even if they're not a believer it's just psychologically been studied that that damages someone's personality right and so you can approach it in that way that would be the first thing the second thing is if they're not receptive or you feel like they would never listen to that then you maintain distance between them but you don't cut them off entirely right so let's say that you're you every time you hang out with them they do this thing what you do is you avoid too much one-on-one time but you try to see them in group gatherings where maybe you talk to them for 20 minutes 30 minutes and hopefully of that 20 or 30 minutes very minimal amount of that would be considered back-writing if that still doesn't work and every time you see them they're bringing the only creating problems and essentially bringing you into haram then it would be fine to kind of avoid them but it's a big difference between avoiding them and cutting them off cutting them off would be like never want to speak to you again I hate you etc right I know someone told me once someone told them that I never will talk to you again I'll see you in the day of judgment and they've never spoken to that person for decades like that's cutting someone off right in this case you could just kind of keep your distance they text you kind of just don't you know they always want to hang out I'm sorry I'm busy I'm not able to and they'll eventually get the message but then every now and then you check in on them how are you doing how are things give them a call try to be the one who guides the conversation don't let them always the first thing that you know you pick up when they pick up the phone they're like why don't you hear about this or hear about so and so and start slandering your back buddy and then finally and probably I should have said this first don't discount the importance of making dua for that person and if you can make dua before you're talking to them before you're about to hang out with them and make dua that Allah opens their heart and if you can read the Surah ألمنا الشحلك أصدرك وَوَدَعْ مَعْنْكَ وِزْرَكْ before you see them that that also some of the scholars have mentioned insha Allah will expand their heart and make it easy to have a positive relationship with them rather than it always being filled with you know negativity and slander and things like that so insha Allah that hopefully it helps any other questions yes that's a fantastic fantastic question really good question okay so the question was if anyone didn't hear it we mentioned that there are certain values in the West right like a very selfish sometimes approach or heavily individualistic approach that don't always line up with our tradition but many times in our communities we will try to be selfless but in the in the pursuit of being selfless we kind of lose ourselves right and we like forget to prioritize our own self our own health or our own mental health or our own families and we or we don't set any boundaries really good question so I don't have like the I don't have an answer but I have some thoughts right a couple of thoughts first is that most of the time it our religion is a religion of balance right and usually when I say things or when things are mentioned in texts that go to one end it's only because a lot of people in society are on the other end and they're just trying to bring people back to equilibrium equilibrium here would be you take care of yourself you take care of your family you prioritize spending time with your family over spending time always in service right but then when you have time you give time to take care of other people you have moments or weeks of time where you sacrifice and you give to other people right but you do it in a way where you don't harm yourself you don't harm your family relationships you don't burn out right and yet you take care of the community that balance is very tricky and difficult to find because the nature of the human being is we're usually imbalanced in one way or another right and then we have to try to go back to the sunnah and see okay how do I achieve balance so the first thing to remember there is the priority actually in our religion is ourselves and it's mentioned in the Quran Allah says that save yourselves and your families from the fire he starts he doesn't actually say go save everybody else and let yourself burn he doesn't say that save yourselves and your families from the fire if you have yet to save yourself and your family from the fire don't worry about anybody else right so actually many times it's just our community this is just my thoughts on it we might not apply it properly right where we have yet to take care of ourselves and our families our own children our own family is just kind of drowning and really struggling and yet we're like out there activists and doing all these types of things so it would be important to start with yourself and your family the second thing is to find a balance of how much you can do and how much you can't do and to draw lines when necessary but gently I think the big the main difference between the Muslim approach and the Muslim ethos and the Western ethos is we're supposed to do things even when we draw boundaries we do it with gentleness and kindness and we don't do it with selfishness and arrogance and many times in Western society selfishness and arrogance come first it's like it's my life I'm going to do whatever I want it's like hold on a second no one's saying it's not your life but there is a gentle way to do it there is a kind way to do it there is a merciful way to do it right and there's a way to do it such that if someone draws it and says hey look I have no bandwidth I just have no time I'm not able to I would absolutely love to help I'd absolutely love to be there I'd absolutely love to do it but can I not do it this month and do it the next month right and we do it in a state of and even that person still might not like our answer but at least we've drawn the boundary we know that's better for ourselves our mental health our families mental health our children and so on and we have to kind of model that behavior the third is as soon as we see ourselves going in the wrong direction either to the extreme of where we lose ourselves or to the extreme where we like are only thinking about ourselves we check how am I doing how much of my time is just for me and how much of my time do I do things for other people and that's just a balance to check okay in 24 hours a day how many times and throughout the week do I only do things that benefit me and how many times throughout the week do I do things that will also benefit other people and then we try to just gradually tip the scale in whatever direction we're off till we reach a state of equilibrium and a state of balance but completely agreed that it is part of our religion and our tradition to do things where without burning out and without without completely losing ourselves in it or losing our mental health so that's not what I mean when I say selfishness and arrogance what I mean in that situation is more like we forget everybody else and it's only about me, me, me and that's not like many people in our society are wonderful but the dominant philosophy that created this society is a heavily capitalistic consumer focused self focused society enough focused society versus our society the Muslim society the way it's supposed to be done is supposed to be about other people but in that you don't lose yourself so hopefully that helps a little bit so we've it's time for us to pray inshallah maghrib if we have any other questions afterwards just we're happy to answer are there any questions so I know afterwards I don't want to delay the prayer okay if any questions just feel free to come up to me afterwards inshallah we'll go and inshallah inshallah inshallah inshallah inshallah inshallah really good point right that you have to like first invest in your own abilities and then you go out and save other people thank you for mentioning that really good point zakat al-khair inshallah If somebody could just do the adhan, then we'll pray.