 as-salaamu alaykum. All right, so we're gonna get into the first obstacle today, so the class what started last week is the seven primary spiritual obstacles on the path to Allah. And it's based off of a very, very beneficial text written by the great scholar Hurjat al-Islam, Imam al-Razali. And so last week we just talked a little bit about the importance of having a deep motivation deep down inside to want to travel closer to Allah. It's really the first sign that we're one of the first signs that Allah really wishes good for somebody at the end of the spiritual path. They give them a sign at some point in their life and they give them feeling in this urge, this deep urge deep down inside of them to want to get closer to Allah. And then now Imam al-Razali is at, okay, once you know that you can do that, how do you begin to tread this path? And what are the different obstacles you're going to face? Because along when you want anything valuable as we covered last time, you will have someone who's trying to take it from you. If there's, you know, if there's a protected, something super valuable that's protected in a safety box or in a bank vault or back in the day, they used to have treasures because they didn't have money to bury their treasures in certain places. And that's where their wealth would be. And then they'd have to go and travel to get to those places. If anybody found out how valuable something was, then they would find ways to prevent the rightful owners from getting to that, and they would try to steal it. And they would make sure that no one else could get to what is a value. And the main enemy we are going to face on the spiritual path is Shaitan, the devil. And he is the primary enemy of the human being who is trying to make sure that this treasure, the valuable of knowing Allah and of living life of contentment and of worship and of peace and of tranquility and of trying to get closer and closer to Allah. He doesn't want the human being to get access to that. And so he would try to block the human being on the path. And he will come to those who are traveling the religious path more than he's going to come to those who are not traveling the religious path. What do you mean by that? If someone is in a state of kufr, meaning they don't believe in Allah, he doesn't need to work on them. He knows at this point whether or not they are doing all the other big sins out there. That is the worst sin that you can do is to not believe in Allah. And so he's not going to give devote extra attention to them. But if you know someone believes in Allah, and he can't get them to drink alcohol and take trust loans and smoke and disobey parents, some of the big sins that exist in religion is outlining the Quran. Then what's he going to try to do? He's trying to go and try to get them in their deen. You are practicing the religion. I'm going to try to confuse you and try to find ways to mess up your knowledge or mess up your practice or mess up your worship or mess up your relationship with your brothers and sisters or mess up community dynamics or get you to a place where you think you're doing good, but you're actually just all over the place. He wants to prevent consistent spiritual progress. And that's why we have guides The chief guide, of course, is Sayyidina Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And he is the one who Allah sent to guide all of us. He's rahmatul al-alameen, the mercy to the world. And then his companions. And he said, my companions, any of them that you follow, you won't be lost. He said something similar. If you, back in the day, they used to use the stars for navigation right now. That's not used as much, except in certain types of flight and ship scenarios. And so then the companions, they taught the next generation. And then they taught the next generation. And then so on and so forth until you get to a scholar like Imam al-Razali who has a chain, who has been tied somebody by somebody by somebody who is taught by one of the tabi'in or multiple of the tabi'in who then was taught by the Saba and then taught by the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And so they have a sense because they've traveled the path before. If someone's already gone through something before, they're going to know what the pitfalls are. They're going to tell you, hey, avoid this route. There's a pothole here. There's that this is a neighborhood. It's going to be hard for you to navigate. This is an area that's going to slow you down and so on and so forth. And so they're going to try to warn you of this. And so that's exactly what he's done. He told us on the spiritual path, what do you need to work, worry about. So the first hurdle and the most important hurdle that we have first cross is the hurdle of the hurdle of knowledge, which is what we're here today to learn, right, where we have all of us have the intention of trying to learn from this blessed book and this topic. And so what is knowledge so important? The reason my knowledge is so important is because you can't actually worship without knowing who you're worshiping and how to worship. It's not going to get you anywhere. And that's why there is a kind of basic knowledge that's necessary for everybody. And then for the one who's taking the spiritual path seriously, there's a deeper knowledge that somebody has to focus on acquiring. And so the first thing to remember is that the first verse by Allah to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was what? And then you could say recite to command to recite or command to read the first verse given to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So it's based on knowledge. Tell the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam to read and recite again knowledge at the center of our religion. Islam, there was not a single civilizing the history of civilization that produced or contributed to the advancement, the preservation of knowledge, then did the Islamic civilization. Our civilization has always been one of knowledge. There's a deep scholastic tradition and there's a deep tradition. Knowledge is not just facts and figures. You could have somebody who has a PhD and they know a lot, but if they don't believe in what they know or they don't practice what they know for the Muslim, that's valuable. For them, it may be it's valuable at an intellectual level. So knowledge is super key. And the knowledge that Imam Khazadi is referring to, he's referring here to spiritual knowledge that's going to help you get closer to Allah, not knowledge that's going to make you debate Muslims or that's going to make you angry at people or that's going to create confusion with you and so on and so forth. And this is why it's so important to know the types of knowledges and we'll get into that. So this is the first verse that was revealed it's about knowledge. And then Allah says in the Qur'an that when we discuss this last I did not create mankind and jinn except to worship me, he says. And then as this commentary on that verse by Ibn Abbas means that yabudun means liya'rifun in order to know me. And so again, knowledge is at the center of this tradition. You live a life where every day you are learning more about Allah because you are observing what is Allah doing to you in that day, which name of Allah is manifesting, which attribute of Allah is manifesting. Ibn is this kind of a constriction that I might be going through and maybe it's the attribute of Allah that where he is testing you and what are called the jilali attributes, the mighty attributes. Or am I having any blissful, excessive situation today where I should express shukr and be in a state of gratitude and that would be what's what are called the jamali attributes, the beautifies of Allah. And then the more gentle ones. And the heard who knows Allah, the what's called the a'billah, the a'rifin, they are people. Every moment they are experiencing something with Allah. Every moment they know what's going on. Okay, Allah is trying to teach me this. Okay, something happens. What's Allah trying to Okay, Allah is trying to teach me that Allah wants me to interact with him. Perhaps Allah wants me to do perhaps Allah is trying to increase my patience. Perhaps I need to have more talk and trust in him. And there's this constriction dynamic. And that in one day may advance more spiritually than somebody else who has no clue, who has no idea, who has no awareness, right? What is called? It's mindful awareness of Allah. They have no, and that's not, they're just for 20, 30 years there's no rest spiritually. They could even be Muslim, but there's very little progress because in every situation that Allah puts them through, they don't see Allah. They see this person or that person or this person. They just get angry and they get upset and they lose their cool and whatever else happens. And you have to, you have to see Allah. And this is why true spiritual knowledge is going to that assists somebody in living these living these realities. And so this is this is why knowledge is so, so important. And he goes on here in the in the variety of different you know, he goes out to list a variety of different proofs and different verses of the Quran and sayings of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that talk about why knowledge is so important among the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that the superiority of the scholar of the alim over the worshiper, the abid is like my superior over the most inferior member of my community. The superior of the scholar over the the worshiper is like the superiority of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam over the the most inferior member meaning spiritually the one whose least progressed in his community. Now that's over the worshippers not even talking about over the person who doesn't do any worship. This is like the scholar and the one who does a lot of worship, meaning the person who worships but they don't necessarily worship with knowledge, right? Where would the person that if we are struggling to any of these things would we would stand right? And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said a glimpse of the scholar, the alim is dearer to me than the worship year. It's fasting and it's Qiyam. And you'll see these these types of statements a lot emphasized in the books of spirituality where it's not just about and we're on page for anyone following on page 19. It's not just about doing actions. There is something called a connection that you establish from teacher to teacher to teacher to teacher all the way back to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And that's why we've ever been blessed to sit with the great shoe they have. We talked about this I think briefly last time Senat they have a it's not a chain and they can say I learned from so-and-so from so-and-so from so-and-so all the way back to I learned from Imam al-Ghazali and I learned from them up to all the way up to the Sahabahs up to the Prophet sallam they have a chain and in that chain in the Islamic tradition there's a light with each person they pass down a light. Now obviously the light is not as powerful as when the Prophet sallam passed it directly to the Sahabah it still remains right because you can never completely get rid of the light and especially when the source of the light is powerful that the source of the light of the Prophet sallam is more powerful than the sun his light is very very very very very very strong his light is very strong and so when we have a portion of that prophetic light we will have guidance and there's a there's an external guidance which comes in the sharia which we have to study and we're going to talk about this importance of fit and akhda and so on and then there's an internal guidance and Allah says this example is shara this indicates when Allah says verily those who strive in our way we shall guide them so Allah links you trying and putting in effort spiritually correctly and being guided he mentions in the Quran and surah kath that there's a category of people who he will never give them a wa liyan murshada a spiritual guide literally is how you would really translate that the one who does their tarbiyah that he the certain people who doesn't give access to that too but there's others who he loves who gives them access to that and that is really ultimately the goal so when the when the problem says here that the glimpse of the scholar really is dear to him which means it should be dear to us then the worship of a year and the fasting and the night vigilance because if gazing at a true true true inheritor of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam remember we said al-ulama al-warah al-anbiya the scholars are the inheritors of the prophet when you gaze at them you benefit from them the true ones and he said shall I not show you the noblest of the people of jannah and they said yes indeed yadus is they are the scholars of my community and this is really I mean we're in general these are referring to like the big the big the true the likes of mama ghazali the likes of mama shafi and imam malia mama hanifa and there are people like this that have this trait the scholarly trait it's not that somebody who really deeply exercises and practices what they have learned and so there's a lot of other hadith that mentioned imam ghazali has a whole book if anyone is interested in like we're going to cover in this book it's like seven pages he has a whole book in his um in one of his most famous texts he wrote the ahyalum adin on the book it's called the book of knowledge the book of knowledge the kitab al-egh 300 pages on the virtues of knowledge what type of knowledge to see how to follow and it's made anyone who is interested in that highly it's a fantastic English translation has been done and it's really really really I think she comes to use of wrote the introduction for it um or the preface and it's really really phenomenal in terms of its discussion about love knowledge and you learn you realize how much reward you get for learning and if when you see that you'll want to spend we'll all want to spend a lot more like learning for an hour or two is more rewarding according to sometimes than worshiping for a thousand rakat why because the knowledge is in an hour or two may be implemented over 50 years or 60 years perhaps the worship somebody does may or may not actually they may not gain necessarily the spiritual benefit that those who are really taking the spiritual path seriously and that the great Salaf al-Basri that he said seek knowledge in a way that doesn't mess up your worship and your worship routine and worship in a way that doesn't do harm to knowledge I think someone might have asked this question last time and we uh you balance the two right meaning that there should be a portion for extra prayers a portion obviously for the far the far prayers that's essential but a portion for extra Salat a portion for Quran a portion for doing your extra at the car and so on and then there should be a portion for knowledge and the beautiful thing in our time is we have to read it I mean reading is amazing but we can listen to a podcast listen to a lecture there's like online academies we can there's so much we can do while we're just on the go if we could just take one tenth the amount that we spend on Netflix the world cup nba any all these other things that were the news cnn everything else that we're caught up in and then perhaps if we're if we're listening to anything you know even if we're listening to the radio or Spotify or whatever it is and just take a portion of that time not even all of it and say I'm going to listen to something beneficial over the course of five ten years we will have learned like a lot because an hour a day 30 minutes 20 minutes on your community it really adds because when this when the thirst increases when you have it it's the highest desire in our religious the desire of knowledge it's higher for the soul than the desire of sex of food of power of fame of wealth of followers all these things are desires that the nus has but when the nus gets refined it begins to desire knowledge and that desire is the king desires the chief desire it wants it more than it when it's refined it desire it actually enjoys some and the people who enjoy it too much they actually have to reign themselves in a bit and make sure that devote time to their family and devote to working and so on because they're just like I remember one time not long I was blessed to go to Teddy and and the the blessed city of Tarim and Yemen and but there was one of the students who would be considered a scholar I mean he studied for at least 10 20 years in our age in our time at least but he was telling me about one of the other shoe there and he was just like sometimes they're so in their books that they're just up the whole night reading and then they just the next the day starts and they're teaching and they're with their family and then they they just it's not like they want it more than sleep they just the desire is so strong for it and so sometimes you have to make sure you give your body a talk because you need to rest a bit but there is a separate thing when someone spiritually begins to tread the path they the vicar have a light that can power somebody kind of like sleep camp you notice this in Ramadan where you don't sleep as much and so there is there is a constant someone is really pushing mean we don't sleep but if we reduce let's say we sleep eight hours a day and we say okay I'm gonna sleep seven hours a day and devote one hour to learning you won't see any you'll only see good in it but don't don't like start sleeping four hours a day and then you know starting to because you won't absorb the knowledge the knowledge won't stick that's all I said the knowledge is the action and the action is the follower the knowledge is the Imam the action follows the knowledge and this is why um that it is so important to know what we are doing and why we're worshiping and why our religion is so careful about what's called innovation about bidah in our religion and true that not the bidah that these people love to use the word that like to say these days but rather like I remember I met somebody one time and they were they were traveling and they were um yeah I just combined all my prayers at once because it's just easier for me I was like oh where do you get that from like there's like you know I just other than Fajr I just do lower as a Maghrib Isha like I just do it all at like 4 p.m. I'm like okay like you're not making you're pulling a prayer forward you're not making it up it's one thing if you do qada which is still sinful to do qada but it's then skipping the prayer entirely but they were just but they didn't know they were just kind of like um a person who never had really learned and and when I asked them like why why do you do it like this and just try to gently kind of say none probably shouldn't do it like they're like oh I just I thought it was fine I mean I just at least I'm done you know I'm traveling I thought it was fine you combine you combine that why not just combine them all yeah it just kind of makes sense for something and that's where their knowledge is so important it would it takes learning for 15 minutes and you'll clarify that and you'll never get confused about that again but that person had been worshiped they were like a worshipful person they'd be doing vicar and reading and they were like worshipful it wasn't like they were but they just didn't know this and it's like that worship isn't going to be potent when it's not accompanied by sound knowledge and um that's that's why it is so so important so that's actually the first thing he says my knowledge priority over extra worship but all Muslims in our time all Muslims in our time need to give knowledge priority over extra worship because we don't have knowledge anymore as an umma we've we've missed it we've learned we spend 14 years learning chemistry biology geometry trigonometry calculus statistics I mean that's all I just a few years of high school all the other stuff we learned you know we read all these books um the great speed and and all the other books that they made in high school and in middle school I don't even remember the names of the books and that's all good secular knowledge is good but we don't devote one one hundredth of that time to learning the dean and that's where we have to start asking ourselves this is going to benefit us in Akhira and in the dunya that knowledge you're not going to be asked about the plot of Great Gatsby or or to kill a mockingbird in Akhira that's not a question we will ask right and so we have to make sure we devote time to learning and if we have families and children and younger siblings that we inculcate this desire and his love for me and there's a direct opposing this media the one not used for beneficial things right so the more media that we're constantly absorbed in and watching and so on the harder it will be to learn so we have to from the ages we have to try to wean ourselves off of the media okay I'm gonna after this time like 7 p.m. I'm down campy on social media and tv and so on and so far that got to spend maybe 20 minutes 30 minutes learning and so he says order for your worship to be safe and sound you have to know you have to know what you're doing and you have to know most importantly who you are worshiping you have to know about the attributes of Allah and you have to know about that why it is that we worship Allah and so this has this is the first kind of formal science that someone starts to learn which is the belief so somebody learns who Allah is who Allah is not right who Allah is who is not what his attributes are what's what is that what is not allowed for us that we cannot believe certain things about Allah for example we don't believe that Allah has hands and feet and these types of things that anybody who reads it that some level of intellectual focus when you know you know that's figurative speech when it says the hand of Allah is over the hand when when by for example the hand of Allah is over his hand it obviously doesn't mean that Allah in any anthropomorphic way has you know has a hand but so you learn these you spend time learning these things and and this will give you a general sense of who is that you're supposed to worship give you a deeper sense ideal and inspire a deeper sense to begin to want to do worship of itself learning all these things in a very like textbook way that usually won't do the trick it might be for some people but usually one of the tricks really just devote yourselves to this deed it's kind of like okay i know this stuff now right that Allah is all seen and Allah is all hearing Allah is all aware he is the first and the last and he is eternal and you learn these things but there's an experiential aspect of it that one when they tread the spiritual path they begin to actually experience and so it's very very important also with knowledge and this has knowledge to know what's the goal of it not to stop at the knowledge the goal is because it's supposed to help you get somewhere it's supposed to be okay you know now where you're going you still have to travel the path some people they learn this and they just want to debate it all the time they're like well no this is what this is what this guy and they're just debating it's calam and they're just constant debates and inside they're getting angry at other muslims and they're yelling at other muslims and they're just and all the hadith and the verses about having good character and it's they all get thrown out the way because they're so focused on debating these fine points right that's not place for the for any of us any of us we're all considered just common folks we're not at the level of the kala the the kali moon and the great the great theologian on our place let them debate out these issues for us we have to implement the knowledge that we learn and so somebody asked online even we'll save questions for the end but generally how do you know what to learn that's the section we're getting into what do we learn we're going to talk about the three primary sciences spiritual sciences that someone learns and this is why you don't want to make you want to make sure you don't believe something false about a lot right so i'll give you an example in other religions there is a belief that god like cannot do evil or bad that it's impossible so so everything will be good according to the human spirit and so if it's not good well how do you explain this suffer and so this is called the problem of evil they struggle with it if if a muslim and so sometimes muslims because we haven't learned our own belief we start falling into this like well hold on why is this happening and then this and then why is there fear and hurt and we're just like hold on and we chetan gets to us and slowly our faith starts to decrease but we if we learn proper we'll know that Allah is the creator of all good and evil and if he's the creator then he's above all of aided including good and evil so you can't attribute that to Allah but you can say that when you say that i seek refuge the lord of daybreak and then that evil that he has created that Allah has created evil things and bad things and bad people i mean shaytan is a creation of Allah and shaytan is as bad as it gets but Allah then says seek refuge in me it's a way for the human being to run back to Allah and then he says in the Quran that perhaps you hate a thing and it is much good for you and perhaps you love a thing and it is much bad for you and Allah knows and you don't know so perhaps hate something you think this is so bad why am i sick why do i have cancer and it's just like oh someone might ask why did Allah create cancer but they don't realize that al hakeem the most wise and al aleem the all-knowing and ashafi the healer and there's infinite wisdom why he may make somebody go through a tribulation or problem that we might we won't understand till later in life or we may not understand till the day of judgment but there and so this is this is problems of the things a lot of people are in tribulation stress anxiety issues at home issues of thicknesses that you're not being able to have a job or losing the job all sorts of problems and so we think our usual assumption because of the the the framework of the society we live in is if something is happening something must be wrong but that was never the Islamic framework it's never this if something difficult is happening to the muslim can't could have done something wrong that's true we could have made a mistake and Allah is that a mistake or it's a sign of Allah's love because when Allah loves somebody he we know this but it's a very it's a very strange cause because for a human being that doesn't happen really you don't really like you love someone you're not going to test them not really but that's the sunnah of Allah that's the methodology of Allah and so when Allah wants to do that he says in the Quran and he says this is a way to see which one of you are true in faith than having a clear understanding of this framework will help someone with their verses when we don't know this we're just like completely confused and some people literally leave their religion because they can't understand why difficulty would be happening yes right right right right yeah it exists to a to a degree in creation but usually with regards to for example if you love your child the human being the way is wired is you're not going to give your child a sickness because you love them but Allah because he loves somebody may test them more in this life than someone he doesn't love you could have a believer who has no problems what's on you and you could have a believer who has a berry seven children alive who's who has over a dozen assassination attempts on their life who has all sorts of sicknesses and illnesses who has to carry the fever of multiple people and they get a fever who has people throw rocks at them when they try to deliver the mess we're just describing maybe a few percentage of five percent of the test that this is the test that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says he's the most beloved to Allah and he had this life in this world he didn't have there was time or there was no that fire burning in his house meaning that no warm food was cooked for two months it was just dates and water that they would eat to sustain themselves so to most people how would Allah do this to the one he loves the most when Allah loves he tests because he's giving them in the next life that cannot be attained until they go through those tests and they pass those tests because he has all the knowledge and all the information um so that is the the first type of knowledge that's important um the second type so we'll we'll get through the questions i'm gonna ask questions to save until i do a q and a break we have a few a few key points i want to cover um and also because those online cannot hear the questions it is a fair amount of people um online i'm the love so the um uh that that is the first type of knowledge now when it's useful that you have to know when what if i'm learning something is it useful the way to measure if the knowledge or learning is useful is it produces what's called the khashi of Allah and all of Allah a reverence of Allah a fear of Allah a deep deep deep that uh desire to want to worship Allah and they almost like uh a shining Allah that how can i let Allah see what i'm doing and you won't want to do something wrong that's how you know the knowledge you're learning is beneficial if the knowledge someone is learning is making them that angry and um or it's just facts and figures or it's making them proud and making them want to tell everybody oh how much i know the first thing when you learn something is you want to go tell everybody see i learned this i learned this it's not out of sincerity it's just out of a kind of bragging that's a sign that that knowledge is not of the pure sources or it means that the the vessel that's receiving has worked in terms of it's being purified and so the true knowledge will make you feel humble and reverential to Allah and when it hits you it will force you to want to make sajdah that's why these verses in al-qand there's a verse there's what's called the the sajda because if read properly meaning with a sense of reflection of the verses leading up to those verses kind of create a desire in the human being Allah says in is prostrating to Allah and then there might be a verse of sajda right after that and of course you're gonna want if you really read that reflection thinking that the heavens and the earth and satan and jupiter and all these billions of stars that are out there and all the plants and rocks and everything are all making sajda to Allah the internal desire is going to want to go to make sajda and so that's knowledge that hits you that's where the Quran is the primary source of knowledge that when it hits you it makes you want to worship Allah sincerely and it makes you not want to worship for anybody for anybody else and it makes you not care about people's opinions part so the obligatory then knowledge is so we mentioned the first right so this is the knowledge of tokhid and belief the knowledge of tokhid and belief so you have to know we have to know and we're not going to kind of into the full akida here for anybody who wants to i'll refer them to the to the page that they need to get into but it's important to get into that it's important to learn this information we're on a 21 or 20 and 21 page 20 and 21 so you learn akida and we'll get into what akida is shortly then you learn what's called the rules for how you worship so you know okay who you're worshiping why you're worshiping now how do you do the worship that's called fifth that's called knowledge of the law this is the stuff that's sometimes looked over meant by us the knowledge of okay how do you properly make wudu how do you properly pray salat how do you properly fast ramadan that how do you properly pay zakat that what is uh had the knowledge of the five pillars and then anytime someone gets into a situation when someone gets married you must now learn then the fifth of marriage of course it's it's it's important it's wajib it's obligatory now you have to learn it someone starting a business they have to learn the trans the knowledge of transactions make sure they're not doing something hot on we're not engaging in interest transactions without even realizing it or sometimes with realizing it and many other aspects of of the transactions and then the third big category of knowledge is the knowledge of pure fun heart what's what what's the knowledge of the then i'll be great but this is the internal acts of worship so you have the external acts of worship prayer wudu so on and then there's the internal acts of worship the example of an internal act of worship would be for patients being patient through a situation you can't really tell most most people only tell you're being you're trying to be patient through a situation that's called an actual an internal act of worship that Allah is giving you immense reward for only Allah can see if you have sabr with him or to walk in him or not sabr madisabr with the decree that or to walk in Allah and trust in Allah and that if you have the station of contentment with Allah and if you are sincerely repenting to Allah these are the internal acts of worship this knowledge is you could call it um that uh teski it's enough um you could call it uh the knowledge of the heart you could call it all of these these three categories are broken down into they were told about to the prophet's and by uh in the famous hadith jabriel i might have heard this where just to summarize as a haba and the prophet's a few of these companions were sitting with the messenger of Allah and then a man who is in pure white clothes and in a good state randomly comes into the gathering and sits down and now they're in the desert so if had you traveled you would have had dirt or something on you right he's in pure crisp white clothing and he comes in sit down and he puts his that kind of knees next to the prophet's or something like this and like as though he knows him and then he says to him oh muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam teach me uh uh that that tell me and he starts asking him questions that is very rare why would somebody ask the prophet himself questions right as though they're the teacher yeah he's like inquisitively so he's like tell me about islam and so the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said it that to believe in the oneness of Allah to take the shahada that to pray the five prayers and he lists the five pillars of the slum he says tell me about iman he says iman is that uh he could describe the pillars of belief belief in Allah belief in the messengers belief in the books the divinely revealed books belief in the angels belief in the grave belief in the afterlife belief on the day of judgment in the judgment and belief in heaven believe in the hell he tells him about the pillars of faith belief in the qadr and the divine decree and there's a few others he then says about ihsan he said ihsan is to worship Allah as though you see him but if you do not see him then know that he sees you to worship him but if you do not see Allah know that he sees you and so this is islam iman ihsan this is the framework for the muslim for what type of knowledge is we have to learn meaning this knowledge is these are the obligatory knowledge is everybody has to learn life he must so when and then he actually said he asked him one more question he says tell me about the hour when is the day of judgment he says the one asking the question knows no more than the one being question he said tell me about the signs of the hour and then he probably so as i'm going on to describe with a few of the signs of the latter days and then they finish up and he leaves and later the prophet asks say the oh my do you know who that was yeah oh my said Allah in his message know best he said that jabriel who teach you your deen so he came to teach you your deen this is that these summarized in this hadid the hadid jabriel is islam iman ihsan and the knowledge of the end of times very important the the way in which islam taught usually the the five pillars turn it eventually the terminology became known as fit so yeah the fit the the knowledge of fit so the rules the laws how how do you pray in order to pray how do you make we do etc right fasting we just talked about this god and so on so that's that's where you get why it's important to learn the rules of the religion because you don't have rules like yeah i want to do like this then we'll be in that situation you're just kind of making things up and you just whoever feels good and that's why so what's called extra here knowledge these rules are so then you have the next one when he said tell me about islam then he said tell me about iman iman the rules that govern belief that's pita belief so what do we believe allah what do we believe about the prophets what do we believe about the books and the akitha is different than the shia akida for example right and that the sunni akida is that there's there's there's differences which is why one of the reasons among any other political reason why there's differences in between the sunnis and the shias so it's important to learn to sound sunni akida ideally right and if someone is shia obviously they grew up learning that shia akida and they should remove any misunderstandings and rations from that then the third is asan the knowledge of asan what is the knowledge of asan how do you learn how to worship allah as though you see him how does that work and then if you don't see him and none of him to know that he sees you okay so you get there and say allah sees me allah i mean you could actually do that and that will help but how do you do it that is the crux of the matter it's the highest among the highest levels it's islam the muslim the mu'min the mu'sin these are the degrees of progress for the for the believer for for for those of us treading the path we want to try to climb the do not want to stop at islam meaning we don't hold too many people learn we learn the rules and they stop we need to get into deep belief experiential belief and then we need to purify and get into worshiping allah as though we see him and if we don't we which we don't we know that he sees us and that is usually known as the knowledge of asan spirit you out he the soul of khaski it's enough there's a variety of terms that the scholars from the time of the saba to the salaf have developed to talk about this knowledge except the knowledge of purifying the heart and so on and so we'll kind of we'll talk about the whole is about this third category the knowledge of asan that's really what he's talking about because it's treading the spiritual path it's writing the spiritual path so uh okay we'll pause here just to see if so far there are any questions okay nothing any questions online okay so we'll then continue the framework then that someone should use for all of these benefit me in the next life so you have to know enough to make sure you can get through this life such that it will benefit you in this life you don't want to learn so much in category that it's like beyond the point that in a point if someone is not actively um involved in you know uh some type of uh mufti work or fifth work they would not need to learn like the intricate rulings unless i mean they got of interest for themselves but let's say the like deep intricate rulings family law in islam and like family law and horse law and all the deep they should spend that they've learned when we'll talk about the far the ainar in a second they're obligatory on learning knowledge to purify their heart and going back to if they really want to learn these facts right because facts and informational knowledge need to be applied if it's not applicable in your life you don't need to learn it yet for example if you're not going on hutch you can learn the fit of hutch but you view it when you actually go on hutch you don't need to go into the deep situations of what would i do if i were on and then if i were um in a situation and i accidentally got out of ehram and then i was in was dalifah and then i hadn't gone to the arafat yet like right now learning that if you're not about to go in a position where you're teaching it wouldn't be essential but what's essential is knowing the knowledge of prayer and of wudu and of zakat because that we're giving being often and we're doing that often and so these are um that uh the the types okay so this is what's called when you take all of this knowledge it is bucketed into what's called the knowledge of the path of the hereafter because you to be awake about the fact that you're going to be in the grave and about the fact that we are going to stand for Allah and that it's all real and it hits you it stops being an intellectual concept the akhira stops being this thing that we like to think about but we actually realize it's real and we really start to roll apart and that's what he says that the deep motivation that goes into somebody that's when it um it starts is when this light into someone's um into someone's heart and so so this is what where he says why why knowledge is important he just got through one part of why it's important for someone to learn because it will prevent them from slipping up it's super important to know these categories because it will prevent you from slipping from messing up and then another reason that you learn is now actually develop a deep experiential relationship with Allah meaning its worship is not a burden anymore you learn because you want to learn about the one you love most if you love Allah want to know more about Allah and you want to go deeper and deeper and then you want to practice it want to implement it and then you want to help others and it just go becomes this this beautiful that experience sometimes it can be tough that's why the tools he's going to give us to help us on this journey and so this is why the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that learning knowledge is a far upon everything it's obligatory it's absolutely obligatory meaning we can't just claim I didn't know for what's called far the aim the far the aim knowledge is fit akhira and purification of the heart we cannot claim for the basic levels that I didn't know we have to know these things it's essential and we have to make sure that we know and if we are in position of responsibility meaning we have children or that any other position of responsibility we are in over other people we have to make sure they know because we will be asked about it why didn't you teach them you knew you taught them all everything else you enrolled them in school you did this but you didn't teach them these knowledges and ideally that we should at least from an early age teach them you know to an experienced teacher and the rest if we don't um that if we don't we don't know I know in the hadith what the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that sleep based on knowledge then sallah based on jahiliya based on ignorance based uh that for the one who acts without knowledge spoils more than he or she improves if someone what does that mean that the scholar who knows or the person who's spending time learning their sleep is better than the person worshiping a love at worshiping incorrectly just thinking that they're doing it's right because our our our knowledge is not based on false sincerity what is that what's false sincerity it would mean that someone is like well I really want to try and so I'm just gonna like but this doesn't make sense to me so I'm not gonna go with this but I'm just gonna go with what does make sense to me I'm gonna try it out and I think this is gonna work in my religion and we pick and choose parts and we leave what we don't like and we that is a very major sign that means that the nus is sitting on top of the intellect there's a whole separate internal spirit world we'll get into later in the book about how your world is governed in I didn't call the nus and how it's called the akka going south and then the intellect the intellect is supposed to govern the nus it's supposed to be on top it's the boss but for most human beings it's inverse with and it's telling the intellect do this now do this now don't do this now and it's the desires are governing the intellect but the one who looks the purity of knowledge will get to this that the akhl starts to be on top and it stops being um it stops being a uh the akhl starts to govern the nus and it stops being the desires that are um human being that are ruling human being so the the the the religious is just a kind of um closed that we need to make sure we spend time the first as we said is the knowledge of tohid and aqi at the basic level right he summarizes this is very very at a high level that you have a lord a god who is going who's aleem who's all powerful qadi is that uh everliving who's speaking that who is all hearing all simil basir who is one who has no partners who's completely perfect completely perfect no imperfections no deficiencies are possible that who is detached from every phenomena and then he goes on to describe and it can get much deeper than that but that's not the point of the book is not to talk about akhida and then he goes into that to know you have a messenger who is the most truthful salallahu alaihi salam and that everything that he has said is the most true everything that he has said is going to actually happen or has already um happened and then to know that we have a law in our religion and we have to follow that law and we have to follow the teachings of the religion and we have to make sure that we spend time learning this information and this the source of this information is the book of Allah and the sunnah of the prophet salallahu alaihi salam and that we must know that we cannot allow false doctrines or beliefs or practices or radical innovations seep into our tradition especially with regards to belief and describe a few more things but that now someone might learn that so we'll pause here someone might learn that you might memorize it but now you have to actually explain what does it mean just because you know Allah is all hearing and all seeing does it stop us from sinning you know if it really impacted you because if he's all seeing and he's all knowing and he's all hearing how could we sin how could we sin how how we so it has to go from the heart it must enter the heart and that's when you know it starts to benefit you it has to get there and that's that's really the goal of our life is to get to a point where we are actually commenting what we know and it really hits us and when the knowledge really hits us we're going to start to end up the next chapter as repentance we're going to really start to apologize Allah it hits us how serious this is and how important this deed is and how at real all of this we start to wake up and say Allah I'm so sorry I need to end you start asking forgiveness and saying forgive me and repentance begins repentance and for those of you who are recovering is minhaj al abideen by imam ghazali so that is the first category then second the second category is mention the knowledge of the sharia next time what we'll do is we'll talk about a few um types of hurdles that he doesn't cover these in the book but in the time that we live in that often we don't know about or we neglect we might neglect the other things it's important in the knowledge of the to learn sound knowledge from one of the four accepted madhhab in our tradition accepted madhhabs why is that the case many people in our time that they think go directly to the hadith and to the verses of the quran and you can extract knowledge from there you can if you are what's called the mujdahid mutlaka in our religion which means you have studied arabic for about three decades and you'd have mastered the verse of quran you memorize 200,000 hadith you've studied the sciences you've studied that the science of rhetoric you've studied the science of the pre-islamic and you studied all that you mastered the sciences and you've sat with the great and now you can actually go directly and pull out laws but since nobody does that and no one really has done that for the vast majority of Muslims you follow what's called one of the four madhhabs according to most of the ulama that's wajib it's required some of them say okay if you don't didn't know that as long as you're following one of the accepted positions in one of the madhhab it's fine but the four madhhabs that are agreed upon in our religion the hanafi school shahafi school maliki school and hanbali school and it's very important to follow one of these schools why because these are the scholars and there were dozens of others but these are the schools of thought that the umma converged upon and the scholars that sorted everything out because there's verses of the Quran and hadith that will confuse somebody if they look at them side by side how do you know which one to take you won't know because you we don't have the knowledge we don't know the chain we don't know how strong the chain is we don't know the context of the hadith the context of the verse and this is so why it becomes um that's super super super important to uh follow one of the madhhabs and once you pick a school of one of the madhhab you just all you need to do is you get the book there's like basic tests that talk about okay the rules of prayer according to the hanafi school and they're between the schools they're 99 percent the same but there's different small difference of opinion example for example in the hanafi school if you are making wudu and you forget one part of your wudu let's say i forgot to my head and i was here right now i could go fix that and my wudu would be valid still just one part and others some one of the other and some of the other schools i believe the maliki school your wudu must be done in order the whole time you can't just add something to the wudu later because you forgot it right so these these are the differences and it's not huge differences people think it's like this it's just but this is how the scholars interpreted the important thing is it's sound and we must learn from something that is sound right we must learn from something is sound so um someone says it's hanafi and selafi different yeah they're very very different uh that selafi is a term that's used incorrectly these days um and anybody who's kind of claiming to be uh selafi uh would generally advise um they're actually following the first generations meaning that they have one of the four schools um and they're following sound akida would generally advise staying away from that table um and from people who are associated with that label um so these are the four schools and so you must we learn then that the fifth according to one of the four schools and amongst the issues that in our time we make mistakes on often we'll do mistakes all in the time that are made mistakes with prayer we don't we don't often know what do we forgot something in our prayer if we if we added a raka or we forgot to make a raka what do we do do we have invalidate the whole prayer these types of things they take 10 20 30 minutes to learn but they're very very important what is the rule what the fasting do are we did we have we fast correctly our whole life i remember maybe a little bit ago i realized that some of the fast that i kept when i was younger were wrong because i just didn't i learned it incorrectly someone had told me once that if you wake up and you didn't eat sahur uh because you slept through it you don't have fast that day and so it was like a distant relative and i just was okay and i was young and i didn't know that and i was like okay yeah and that sounds you know you know what you're talking about probably right and it was and then i learned later that behind you have to fast regardless of sahur or not sahur is a sunna and the fasting obligation is for everybody that from the time that fudger first enters right little things like this at all sorts of um us and these are issues they think they seem small and thick it's kind of dry okay but it's so important it seems small enough another issue in our time um that anything that covers the nail nail polish uh usually this is the case for women that nail polish in thick according to the four schools if you've covered the nail with nail polish that's not waterproof your wudu is invalid the wudu does not count fake nails these long fake nails that people are wearing it invalidates the wudu because you're not supposed to have any problems with something said you have to cover any part of the unless you if you're like a person who paints for a living in your lips of pain you would excuse for that but other than that you have to try to wipe them off first but to just fully for the sake of beauty have that on and to pray and to just ignore the fact that it is um uh required to take it off and required to um that um that make sure the wudu is done properly with the types of things many people and i know it seems like something small and they've heard all sorts of arguments will know you're allowed to wipe over the hoso it's similar uh reasoning and so you must be allowed to wipe over the nail when it has and you're just like where did you get the where's the hadith that says that you can't just make that up right not we're not this is what's called pias analogical reasoning someone who is not a scholar is not allowed to just come up with an analogy and reason in their way into fit that's not how it works you have to see is this accepted in any of the schools if it is okay we take that right um you could take that position and so another example people think and we think we many times we think in travelers prayer that um the for example the hanifis the hanifis their travel is two weeks usually so if you go to a place and you're going to stay for 14 days or less less right less than 14 days you're considered traveler meaning you can shorten your prayer the shafis will say it's three days and i believe the malekis will also say three days i'm not 100 percent sure three days the shafis and the malekis they combine they they do what's called kassar what jump short combine you can combine or an aster you do two and two while traveling you can combine um that isha and so on you don't combine during any of the schools often we will two of them at the hubs and we'll merge them we'll take more merge both opinions hanifis do not allow combination of prayers except and so we'll say well i can combine and shorten for 14 days well if you have a proof for it that's one thing but usually it's pretty difficult to find a proof for somebody either you follow one or you follow you have to have a and they have their traditions and you don't even need to go um when you follow a school you don't need to go digging into the proofs behind the school you will confuse yourself because there's so many hadith and verses and that analogical reasoning and so much that has been done that unless you are a scholar who's devoted themselves to this to go and try to figure out well what's your proof what's your proof what's your proof this is going to confuse you let the scholars who've sorted this out and spent over 1400 years these schools have been sorted out let's handle it and we focus on worshiping Allah properly and trying to get close to him and so this is an example we have to learn these things right wiping over i mean things out there that are usually according to you know these the court and courts will have the opinions that you can wipe over your so you go and buy socks from target what's called hoof hoof is that a leather sock which fits on various riyah and that imam ali transmitted and very many of the books that fit sound um where if you do make wudu and you put on a leather over it what you do is you you don't have to wipe under it literally wipe over it use three fingers you wet your your hands over the sock up to the ankle and so if you break your wudu let's say you put it on it you made wudu you put that sock on a fudger and then on the horse or you just have to wipe over it if you break the wudu right and that's valid for a day if you're a resident three days if you are traveling in most of the schools now that doesn't work for just like a random sock from the store it has to be a leather sock or specific wudu socks which are um that they make sure they follow the shari requirements of those leather socks that they have they can't it's something like if you walk for a mile in them they won't rip like they really have to be deep um in terms of so just to make it up and say no we can do it over any sock because it makes it easy that would be risky because four mothers don't accept that right except eating McDonald's meat and thinking it's halal if you eat it knowing it's halam at least you know it's halam but in a country that's christian and then leave from the christians and the quran says that you can eat the book the meat of the people and we just like extrapolate and we just we're like well if makes suits my desire so i'm going to follow it these are the things that they add over time little things little things little things and the next thing you know we're in we're we're doing according to four of the schools of islam or that exists all four of them say we're doing something halam and we're just like confused as to why we're not guessing spiritually because we never learn and we're just stagnant and we're stuck and so it's very very very um uh very important to learn and so we'll we'll wrap up with this um and i see a few questions and then we'll get to the the questions um so really on a lighter note because thick can be a little bit heavy um the goal then after we learn these things the part of these obligatory knowledge and then spend most of our time how to purify ourselves this is the knowledge of what do you do when you're in tribulation how do you get through it how do you manage difficulties how do you be patient how do you trust in Allah what do you do when you see when you're someone you're scrolling on someone's social media and they have the life that you wish you had and you start to feel some weird stirring feeling inside uh i don't know why are they married and i'm not why do they have this house and this car what is that what do you do how do you tackle that what is it it's a major religion that says that envy burns good deeds fast like fire burns wood just that feeling and not regretting it just feeling letting it sit burns good deeds the way being jealous and envious of the people have so this is the not then this takes time you can't just learn that quickly you might we might have heard the hadith before by how many of us still feel envy have to actually now spend time cleaning the heart cleaning the heart right and so there's what's called the destroying vices and the saving virtues and he's going to cover most of them in this book at a high level the destroyers right the the vices of desire of appetite of anger of envy of hating people of arguing all the time that of cursing a lot of backbiting of slandering of people of being in love with the dunya of neglecting the rules of Allah there's a variety of different vices which will destroy you we must learn what these are and we must purify our heart and then there's the saving virtues the virtues of repenting to Allah and having trust in Allah and that the suburb and that relying on and being detached from the dunya and not upset with the dunya and having a deep sense of love with Allah and prioritizing the next life and there's a variety of different other trade these are the adornments of the what you do is you remove the bad from the heart you start adorning it with beauty that's good and then that heart at the end becomes radiant and it becomes full of light and new and then it starts the new becomes so powerful that it starts to spread to others and the newer starts to impact yourself at deep level around you of course that Allah is the guide and Allah is the light and by Allah is the light Allah doesn't put on and that um that including people who have this light and so there's a that that is the goal then you you start to traverse the path of how do I increase my light my newer and get more and more and then you meet people that their light is so strong you see it on their faces you see their light just emanating from them and like some of them their beard even has light on and it's just light everywhere and they could like light up a room that's how strong the light is and the Prophet saw sometime he walked into a room and that they had dropped a pin and his face they were able to find the pin that they had dropped because his his face was radiant is radiant not everybody can see that light but those who Allah had they were able to see this um let's see this newer and see this light and so this is the importance of pure from the heart and you'll know this is always accompanied with tranquility and with sakinah and with contentment that's what this the spiritual um uh that purification is accompanied with you'll know how you're progressing spiritually based on how tranquil you are a common patient and easily easily internally things might be going through it but you're trying in a state of internal composure and then at some point Allah establishes somebody and that's okay and so that really is going to then be the focus of the um evidence of the next uh kind of uh really the rest of the book is going to be how do we these beautiful traits um and Shaytan he in my own sense kind of at the end here Don will try to come to you to mess up the knowledge as you do learn how he mess it up first he's going to try to tell you that to show off about it receiving a lot of praise from people and such as show off about it and lose the reward the hell you it's worthless to pursue knowledge anymore it's not important because he says oh you learned enough you'd now go do other stuff or you can do your whole time you learn the dean go and do something but he's going to come at every point at this first light but the light first knowledge is so powerful it will just eclipse why promises unsaid that Omar you take one path then Shaytan takes the light Shaytan can't handle it he's just like yeah i'm not i'm not gonna no way i'm i'm messing with say no i keep him he just it's not going to work right because he's so firmly established that's what we want this knowledge is one that when we take it seriously come established and a lot a lot of stuff that firmness and is the comma really is what we that what we want to ensure at the at the end of the day so with that we'll go and conclude and if there are any questions and then we'll wrap up with a so any questions yes yeah good question question is how do you know which mud have to follow if you don't really you didn't have a good question so in general the if you are from like if your family is from a certain part of the muslim world there is a there the madahib have existed in these parts of the muslim world so for example in um south asia and the subcontinent primarily hanafi almost i mean i mean dominant in a large part of the muslim world turkey and a lot of hanafis um then you have in uh in north africa um and north africa generally morocco and um the seheras is primarily maliki for example and um uh in yemen and in parts of egypt you have a lot of shafis and the hanafis are in different places as well now what the reason is not that you have to necessarily do that but if you know something naturally that you've been taught you don't need to go unlearned or like try to add something um different to it if you know hey i'm from my parents are from this country that means 95 percent of the time they're usually following maliki school probably just stick with that it'll be easy for you but if you let's say someone to islam or maybe their family didn't really practice so don't really know then it's kind of you you could just either explore or a few different ones or you could um look at the way you've been practicing in which one it kind of ties the most closely to you and then just kind of go deep uh into into that um that would usually be the and some some take a madhhab because they are more important they want to there's something very specific in that madhhab that they like for example many people who want dogs um in most of the madhhab you usually don't have everybody wants dogs everyone wants to be maliki right because in the hanafi school um and i believe in hanafi school as well that you usually you should not get a dog because it's not just um that it would be pure um you have to make your wudu all the time but in the maliki school guard dominated and i there's probably rulings for other types of dogs as well um so that that sometimes might even be reasons someone's like i want to be maliki right there's a variety of kind of reasons why usually pick one that's easy that works for it's kind of expensive it's it's it's it's easy and it's expensive and you can do a little bit of research um to figure out which ones are kind of easy um yeah if you if you have it if you have a teacher if you have a shade if there's a certain skull you really kind of are inclined towards then you can you know you say okay which method you follow and you can follow um there there yeah yes really good question is um that it's not necessarily about which one you follow but the fact that you stick to it and so what's the importance of kind of sticking very much to specific school yeah so general uh that's exactly how it is it's you should pick a method and then you should stick to it like okay to the rulings for the school um what you don't want to do is become so rigid in it that when you need to take a difference of opinion you're just like unwilling to and you're just like no it's you're just so staunch about it because sometimes difference of opinion is needed in order to make things easy right and that's up to that individual person and like how much rigor they want to apply to themselves right um for many nine percent of things it's very very very important to stick to it there might be other i mean i'll give you an example there might be a circumstance where um someone's at hutch and you're um you know you might with your wife or your sister or your daughter and um her cycle comes and now some of the methods are very strict in terms of what's allowed um when you have yet to complete all of your rights for hush and what's allowed in terms of throw off and in terms of much with haram and so on and so forth others have dispensations that you can do something and then pay a significant amount of um expiation for that right and so you might just say okay i might need to take a difference of opinion in that right so there may be certain circumstances but the most part what you want to avoid i think this might be what your question is getting at is you just pick and choose everything that's easy right and you're just like oh this one i want to have a dog here and i want to do this i want to do that i want to do that so you just start to now and you're just combining and you're essentially creating your own because you just try to decide it to come by um there's other examples for for example the uh the facet shawwal in ramadan the the hadith says that whoever fasts ten um uh so six days in shawal six days in shawal it says though you faster the whole year because you get three in ramadan 30 times 10 300 six times and see 300 roughly days in the lunar year it's the reward of fasting a whole year now most of the school said that has to be in shawal in shawal the maliki is imam maliki said no it says min shawal he says it means from shawal so it could be from shawal to the next ramadan now that's not a far the it's not a far far that's like kind of like up to you into no so sometimes you want to take the maliki opinion on that i mean you have a sound opinion there right i mean it's imam malik ibn annas who has that opinion but um that would be like an example of a time where someone might take that ruling but it's not like uh that that's really really something like super super core it's just something that action but it isn't been to try our best to stick to it um and to learn at least study what's called the basic text in one school and we'll talk about we'll talk about it with with hanif is one of my imam aghazali he's shafi generally will follow the shafi school and then he'll have some um some opinions that are um have contributed to the shafi school um and uh but but most of what he's covering here is not really really thick thick related so does that does that make sense yeah okay question um do you recommend a book that may strengthen my touhid yeah if you really want to if you're uh it's a little bit of an advanced text but if you really want to dive deep into touhid um read it's called by imam aghazali a touhid with touhikul um kitab a touhid with touhikul question what do the schools think about whether or not a face availing is required for hijab yeah some of the schools have said that it is but most of the schools um that they're strong opinions that it is not that the hijab is not the niqab and it's called the custom and culture that you are in um and so the the different they're going to be different um and that okay any other questions questions oh yes yeah um the three types of knowledge that are wajib to learn it's obligatory and we will be asked about this fire the knowledge is akida the knowledge of belief what do you believe but a lot what do you believe about the messengers the aim fifth what's the rules of that worship and spirituality or spiritual excellence how to get rid of bad traits and how to cocaine the good traits these are required if you have not learned and i'm saying to here online anyway learn these things we should not be spending time doing other religious things what do i mean by that if we're doing a lot of other religious activities or we're watching all sorts of talks let's say that go deep into spirituality but we don't know our faith we got to go learn first it's way more interesting yeah sometimes to learn about spiritual experiences and dreams and all these amazing things that are mentioned in the books but that's just a different shape they thought we have to go learn the basics of faith if we know a lot of faith but we don't know how to purify our heart we don't know how to purify our heart we need to go and learn that at least at a basic level it's a balance here if we're starting to have questions about what we believe about Allah and we don't really know how to process that we have to go and learn proper akida at least what's called the basic text and each of these must be studied it's very very important yeah ihsan means spiritual excellence virtue virtue spiritual excellence is a way of translating it um and there's there's there's kind of other um so so you use those two words um you know it's either called ihsan it's called teski it's a nus or it's called the saw-wolf those are the usual words purification of the nus the saw-wolf which is uh that the term used Sufism them Islamic Sufism the term used to describe the people of the bench with the people of the Sufa of the Prophet's office of Islam and they were people trying to constantly purify themselves that's one of the etymologies of the word and or the knowledge of ihsan the point is purify the heart that's the point what term you're comfortable using it's kind of up to you some people have a little sensitivity to certain terms um but really the the goal is um yeah to learn it yeah yeah good question okay yeah really good so for the stuff that's obligatory how do you start okay so there's a rank order of what's preferred and then what's possible and you sign a spectrum what's preferred is you ideally sit with somebody who has a sound who would be considered an alim in that specific science um a scholar in that science and you learn from them so if you can kind of find there's you know um whether it's done virtually or in person person that are being done regularly in the Bay Area through various institutes that we could probably find honestly if we can't do that we call a structured curriculum of a text with while going through the text in person that would be the next best thing if we still do that that then we follow something that's on youtube that would be like structured as well meaning it should be like okay there's 10 classes and class one covers this chapter and so on it shouldn't just be all over the place we need to make sure we get through all the points otherwise we might miss something and if we still can't do that then we um then we would just learn whatever we can kind of piecemeal until we're able to get access to these other resources there's a there's a site called um seekers guidance or they have free courses and their whole goal is to make all this this core knowledge is free um the traditional islamic sciences Sunni primarily i mean Sunni entirely um and they are uh they have basic thick intermediate advanced basic here and you keep going right but that would not be considered far behind commentary on the ground so you could go to that site actually there's tons of things that i've benefited from on that site you can download lectures they're recorded and then have live kind of classes where you can um kind of engage with the teacher over a period of time and ask you an end that would be a very sound solid source where you know that it's solid what they're teaching is solid and um stated in a more structured way and they tell you we're going through this test that's seekersguidance.org um anybody who is uh able to use that okay so someone asked what is uh the website it's seekersguidance.org um okay somebody asked are three divorces in one sitting equal to one divorce according to most of the school's effect divorces in one sitting are equal to all three divorces some of the newer opinions have diverged from that but the safest opinions are that three are are three so you don't utter three and one um would you ever be interested in the list of okay the most recommended uh what is the most if for akida um read uh as a book on creed you can just book on akida it's the second book and you can read that as a translation a song just a solid translation for fit there's one one if you're um an aphi that is called a centuphalic that's a good one it's translated in English exact excellent book and for spirituality the one i would start with is not the one we're covering right now but when we just finish covering which is called the book of assistance um by mama hadad or um or purification of heart actually comes a user okay i have questions i've read hadita the prophecy song fasted during his birthday is this true yes this is true it's sound he said fast okay there's a couple questions that are unrelated um so i'm not going to cover all these questions right now is there anything to back up group zikr the sahaba do group zikrs hadita talk about the importance of doing zikr or learning in groups that the angels are out there searching for these types of gatherings um in the Quran when say musa alaihi salam is that respond he asked Allah to give him haroon alaihi salam as a companion and he says so we can glorify you together that's the strongest proof for doing zikr in groups is it's in the Quran and it's the prophet of Allah say musa alaihi salam i'm saying make so we can sing your praises glorify your praises together and so it's very very that together you don't have to be don't want to but to watch the world cup and you don't meet up to do zikr and you and you think it's wrong to meet up to do zikr you there's some problems there um there's a big serious problems uh i should have prayed with my okay so with that we'll um we'll go ahead and end with a um with a so we'll cover we'll start next week we'll finish off this kind of section on knowledge and then it's going to be about the hurdle of repentance so once someone has learned now obviously this hurdle we just see how we have to implement it so we should take this away and we should say okay now how am i going to go and spend time and learning these knowledge these not these knowledges and solidify them and coming up with a structured curriculum and a path for ourselves that's very very very important um okay there's a couple other questions but as i apologize we're gonna have to end inshallah the can you pray the hajj congregation um you can but uh the hajj is usually prayed alone because it's deepening your connection Allah and this time zone we are in it starts at seven fifteen seven thirty pacific time on wednesday pacific time california alhamdulillah okay Allah we ask you that Allah to give us complete complete complete to walk all in you and complete guidance you allow us to learn beneficial knowledge and knowledge that will give us assistance in this life and in the next life we ask that you give us sincerity and to direct our hearts towards you and to remove any problems or issues or worries or anxieties that we have we ask that you allow our hearts to be pure towards all of the muslims to not allow any problems between us and any muslims and any debates and arguments that allow us to be in a state of purity towards each other especially when discussing these important matters of knowledge we ask that you connect us to the great you who are connected and connected and connected back to the prophets that you give us complete in these stations that you give us complete you allow us to be learned it in our qida and in our fiqh and in our tazkiah yadab al-alameen and make us firmly established in all of these sciences and make us firmly established in the knowledge of spirituality and give us and our families and our loved ones ma'rifah of you yadab al-alameen and these are all things we cannot do on our own no matter what we do no matter how much we try we cannot attain nearness to you unless you give it to us yallah that is the best gift that you can give anybody we ask that you bestow us and our loved ones and our family community of the prophets with the gift of nearness to you and desire to be with you and the desire to want and get close to you yadab al-alameen we ask you for everything good the beloved sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi wa sallam ask for and we ask for protection from everything we build the detection from and we ask yadab al-alameen that you allow us to do things of benefit yadab al-alameen inwardly and outwardly from the moment that we wake up until the moment that we go to sleep until we take our last breath and let our last breath be upon la ilaha illallah Muhammad Rasulullah wa sallallahu alaihi wa sallam wa baraka la sayyidina Muhammadin wa la alayhi wa sallam alhamdulillahi wa sallam alhamdulillahi wa sallam alaykum wa sallam i'm sorry for those i did not get to your questions online i apologize um we're gonna focus when we do the classes just on the questions related to the text um and if there's kind of peripheral questions we'll save those inshallah for another time