 Inshallah, we'll start off with just a quick review of the class from last time and then we'll get into the topic for today. By the way, brother Malik has graciously cooked some delicious food and he has really, really would love if everybody would join and eat. So please feel free to get food, eat, inshallah, during the class, inshallah, or after as well if you'd like. Great. So last time we were talking about the importance of regularly reciting the Quran and having a relationship with the Quran. And the topic that Imam Al-Haddad, again, we're going through this book, The Book of Assistance, by the great scholar and knower of Allah, Imam Abdullah bin Alwi Al-Haddad. One of the things that he has mentioned to us up till this point is the importance of consistent acts of worship in order to improve your spirituality, in order to improve your iman and to improve your yakeen and your knowledge of Allah. You have to do acts consistently. You and I cannot just do things one off and very similar to kind of going to the gym in order to actually see results. You have to go consistently in order to be a healthy person. You have to eat good food consistently. You can't just have a healthy meal every now and then and every other day to see french fries and cookies and expect to actually be fit. Similarly with spirituality, you and I cannot only just have small periods of time where we might be more deeply spiritually engaged and then just fall off on the other days. We have to consistently be doing things and be doing extra things. And so we started covering this idea of a weird of having a regular practice that we do in addition to the five daily prayers. So the absolute most important thing for the Muslim to get down is the five daily prayers at the beginning in their time and then in the earliest part of the time is also the goal. So it comes in Hadith where one of the best actions that you can do is prayer at the beginning of its time or at the earlier part of its time. So we should aim to not only get consistent in our prayers but also start to then get to them by doing them earlier and earlier. If Doher has a window, let's say right now, it's coming in at 1 p.m. and in most of the Madhabs, Asar is coming in at about 4.05. We shouldn't pray Doher at 3.40 or 3.50. We should be praying Doher at 1 o'clock or 1.20, 1.30, 2 o'clock, let's say. We should be trying to pray in the earlier half. As an example of somebody who is trying to go to greater limits in order to increase their iman, in order to increase their spirituality. So what we specifically talked about last time is we talked about this idea of how to have a connection with the Quran and what the importance of having a connection with the Quran. And Imam Haddad, he laid out a couple of different areas that we should have a connection. So I'll just quickly review them. He said first is that everybody should have these five things down and regularly they should be doing these every day. You should have a portion of the Quran that you do what's called Tilawa, what you do just recitation. So you start with Fatiha and Surah Baqarah and you work your way through the entire Quran in some increments of time. Ideally, he recommended you get to the point where you're doing it once a month. But if you can even do so every few months, that's still good. Or even once a year, twice a year, it's still good. But you work through the entire Quran where you recite it end to end in Arabic. So that is one weird that everybody should have. One regular consistent spiritual practice that everybody should have. And with it results a certain type of spiritual light that will assist you in your affairs and your activities. So the way our deen works is that you have unseen assistance, something called madad, that you get as you start to do more and more actions. And you will get spiritual assistance by opening up different types of doors which will result in different types of spiritual lights which will then assist you and you will have angels assisting you in the unseen with your tasks and with your affairs and with every other thing that you have going on without you even realizing it because you are starting to do not only what Allah has commanded you to do but now you are starting to follow what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam used to do. And you are starting to get in alignment with His Sunnah. So there are various hadiths that prove the points that I just mentioned but for the sake of brevity we will try to keep going. Then you have in addition to regular recitation you have some portion of time which should be spent reading the Quran and studying the commentary and understanding the meaning of the Quran. So this should ideally be in your own language, right? So the Arabic recitation was called silawa, will be of course in Arabic and for those who Arabic is not their native tongue then the time when you spent trying to understand the Quran in addition to of course spending time learning Arabic which we might get to a little bit of that today we should have some time where we should spend learning what does the Quran mean what does it mean when Allah tells the Bani Israel to sacrifice a bakara to sacrifice a cow, what exactly does that mean and when they refuse to do so or when they ask question upon question upon question about the type of cow what do the commentators say about that, right? What does the tafsir say about that? You spent time learning about these things but on initial read it might not really mean much it might just be like this group of people they just ask a lot of questions but like what exactly is it that they are trying to do, right? Why are they so reluctant to obey the command of Allah? Whereas you see the sahaba as you see at the end of surah in the last verses the surah of bakara that they say samirna wa fatna, we hear and we obey that is what the people who are close to Allah they hear and they obey it might question to clarify later definitely don't ask these arrogant questions of why do I have to do this, why do I have to do that as just an example of as you dive into the commentary you and I will start to learn the third step in addition to having a relationship with the meanings of the Quran is to have a relationship with reflecting on those meanings so you might read the meaning that one of the great people of tafsir that one of them might have said, right? and the meaning might come from some of the earlier generations from the salah you might though contemplate a verse and you might get an additional meaning from that verse because of the reflection that you do the Quran is limitless in its meanings limitless in its meaning so reflecting on the Quran is important and we specifically identified last time that we should have a portion of time every week where we take a verse and we just sit with it for 5 minutes, 10 minutes and specifically the verses that we'll bring about the remembrance of the afterlife and the grandeur of Allah because you will start to then realize all this stuff is petty everything we get caught up in in the world is very very petty but sometimes we read the Quran and there's these like intense amazing verses that are talking about how Allah has angels that are circling his throne and how Allah will take all of the heavens and the earth will roll them up into his hands into his hand in no anthropomorphic way we're talking in a figurative way you might mention this is a verse and we just read across that verse and we just keep going not really thinking like how serious this might be what just exactly could this mean so that's where the reflection component comes in when somebody reflects something gets deeply embedded inside of them and when something gets deeply embedded inside of you you will see that when you interact with other people in society you interact with other things that meaning you had reflected upon will come back and will guide you to what's the right action in that situation and we'll get to that in the whole section that he has on reflection which is coming up in the next two or three lessons so it's tilawa, regular recitation it's reading in your language and ideally with commentary it is reflecting on it and then we should have a portion where we memorize some portion of Quran and so I think we mentioned last time that all of us should aspire to have at least the 30th Juz what's called Juz Amma the final Juz of the Quran memorized and it's something we can all work through that we want to get to a point as Muslims we're going beyond just knowing a few short surahs and we always recite the short surahs and if we know the longer surahs we should refresh our memory and recite the longer surahs in our prayer there's more reward for reciting more Quran that should be like something that we start to practice and one of the benefits of praying in the Masjid and there'll be a whole section on this as well that you start to of course the Imam generally speaking will not just be reciting or someone from the congregation will tell the Imam let me lead or let someone else lead you'll generally see that they're reciting from the longer surahs of the Quran in order to help build a deeper deeper relationship and then finally there's implementing which in all of this if you do all of it but you don't implement the Quran it doesn't it's not going to be a benefit we have to implement what the verses say so we want to be people who are careful not just to learn things so that we can discuss them and have intricate discussions oh did you hear that this the Bani Israel used to do this and this Fiqh ruling on this issue and this issue and then it's like we miss all of our prayers but we know all this like knowledge because knowledge has a risk to it as well which we'll talk about inshallah that it actually just makes you think you know a lot and it becomes a topic of conversation and also sometimes a little bit of boasting where you look at how much I know look at how much I know but like the implementation is not happening right and so we do want to be we want to avoid that and they say the Sahaba there was actually few hofad amongst the Sahaba and the reason was that they did not necessarily memorize the entire Quran because they would spend time with every single verse making sure they implemented the verse before they moved on to the next section or the next surah that was their type of relationship with the Quran as it's mentioned in the books so that was the first section we covered of the importance of having regular recitation the second portion then is the consistent surahs which the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam the Sahaba and the Salaf would encourage us to do regularly there were three that we should do on a daily basis and three that we should and then one that we should at least do on a weekly basis does anybody remember the three that we should be aiming to do every day and aspiring it doesn't mean we start with it but surahs and mulk and what time of day should we do surah mulk in the evening so in the hadith after Isha is when you aim to do surahs and mulk and does anybody remember the benefits of doing surahs and mulk after Isha and reciting it protection in the grave protection in the grave exactly surah mulk will intercede for you in the grave the punishments of the grave and we ask Allah that you protect us and our families our loved ones and all of the umma from any punishment in the grave but if the punishments in the grave begin surah mulk emerges and starts to fight for you and starts to protect you these things have a spiritual reality these are the friends you and I will have in the grave all of our other friends will be there with us that much is clear doesn't mean we become antisocial in this life and say hey I don't want to be your friend you're not going to be with me in the grave that's not what we're saying but in general our good deeds will be our companions in the grave so the surah mulk and then there were two others anybody remember that the most ideally the spiritual aspirant that we should try as we're getting closer and closer to start to recite these on a daily basis surah waqya and that does anybody remember the time we should recite surah waqya and the benefit of it between maghrib and isha so either after usur or after maghrib comes in the hadith that after maghrib and some say that the evening begins after usur and so after usur but after usur or after maghrib and the benefit of that is the one who recites it will be protected from poverty and the intention should be made to have an increase in both your spiritual risk your spiritual sustenance and your dunya sustenance and your you know it's a good risk good for job related issues and things like that career income that type of thing and does anybody remember the final one which should ideally be your fajr it's also known as the heart of the Quran surah yasin surah yasin surah yasin ideally so you generally would see that you generally would see surah yasin as one that a lot of Muslims have memorized and then surah mulk also it comes in hadith that the provisism wish we would all have this in our hearts and so we're in the month of the provisism we're in the blessed month of rabbi al awal one thing we should take away is one sunnah that we can implement consistently and what would we rather do in this month and make the provisism happy if he said he wished that we should have surah in our in the heart of every believer then we should leave this month having that surah in our heart because we are one of our goals is to try to bring happiness to Sayyidina Rasulullah sallallahu sallam that should be among the goals of the believers so surah yasin after fajr ideally surah waqya after asor after maghrib and there's like time to do it doesn't mean it has to be right after and surah mulk after isha and the recommendation was that you we work our way up to it we don't start all three in one day and then do it for two days and then get exhausted and never do it again for two years we take one we do it slowly implement, implement, implement and then we do the next and we implement but once it becomes consistent you're talking three to five minutes in the morning two to three minutes in the evening and three to four minutes in the like after isha at night time it becomes very very straightforward because someone just has it down right and that's you know a quick recitation recitation with tadaabot and the reflection that would of course take longer and that's what we want to aspire to and the core theme all the surahs they mention death often and so if we do reflect on them we will then regularly reflect on death often it's one of the main lessons we take away but the muslims actually remind themselves of death a lot because this is a very very short life the benefit of yasin it comes in various narrations that the one who recites surah yasin is putting up the hadith here whoever reads surah yasin at the beginning of the day it will assist with their needs being fulfilled and then there's another it comes in another narration yasin is read for its intention the hadith here as mentioned the narrations are weak but it is permissible to take weak hadith for virtuous things for fadaida atman okay so that's on just what we were talking about last time just a review on the relationship with the Quran and doing things regularly in terms of having that relationship anybody have any questions or clarifications on that before we move on to the importance of consistently seeking knowledge okay so let's get to the next section and so then in the next chapter imam ahadad he mentions and by the way the book for those who are joining now as we're going through is the book of assistance by imam abdullah bin al-wil haddad there were a few copies I think still left over in the masjid we had passed them out but it's you know you can order it on Amazon for like 10, 11 if you're interested in having a book and we're basically just taking it's already very very distilled down these chapters like two pages and he's really just broken everything down that you need to do from A to Z in your life in order to get to become or get to the highest levels of nearness to Allah at the thing that the things the believer needs to be doing and so we're just taking portions from the book so the next section that he mentions is acquiring knowledge and he says that everybody should have a weird or a regular litany of reading useful knowledge in some consistent basis and again here consistency is kind of up to you and your schedule and what you can do with it it's not these are not like with the exception of our far-of-the-ine which we like have to learn as soon as we become we hit puberty in general other knowledge we try to come up with a level of consistency that we can practice it with so don't worry if you can't do something every day it doesn't mean you leave it entirely once a week is better than never two times a week or once a month is still better than you know never doing it or only doing it let's say in Ramadan right so we just want to come up with a consistent practice so he mentions the definition of this of knowledge and this is a really really important definition and you'll see here all of the scholars that are the true what are called the ulama the ulama of the year after all of them have the same definitions for these things and it's all they're just from they're all from the same the same they have the same source sallallahu alayhi sallam and then you'll see scholars who have generally speaking or people who have generally strayed from the sunnah they will have various various meanings and amongst them you'll see lots of debate and constant arguments and constant argumentation about what does this mean what does this mean but you'll generally see that there is a beauty and it doesn't mean there wasn't a difference of opinion in our tradition but there was a beauty and like everybody kind of understood this is what's meant by knowledge so imama haddad he clarified what's meant by knowledge he says knowledge is that which increases your knowledge of the essence of Allah the essence of God his attributes and makes you aware of his commands and the first definition of knowledge anything that's not helping you do that it's not making you really deeply get closer and closer to understanding Allah and start to understand what does God want from you he wants something in general from every one of us and then he wants something specific from each one of us there's generalalities that he wants from all the Muslims and frankly all creation and then there's specificities which he wants from each of us that he created that he'll inspire us to understand and so it makes you aware of him and makes you aware of his attributes and his commands what does that mean his attributes an example here that you could be going through a very tough period in your life and you might think that oh God if I'm going through a bad time a tough time it must mean that God is upset with me because why else would I be going through a tough time if God has all control and I'm obeying him then that must mean that if he has all control and I'm obeying him that he must make things easy for me if I'm kind of in a good rank with him that would be like especially in the era that we live in many times that is the Christian view the kind of prosperity gospel type of view but somebody who's learned about how what's called the sunnah of Allah what's called the pattern of Allah will not have that understanding and so when they look at Allah's attributes they'll be like well there's many attributes we know 99 names just the 99 names there's many many many more names than that as well and there's many attributes of Allah so they might say oh I'm going through a tough time well perhaps Allah's name al-jabbar the compeler is manifesting in my life perhaps when I go through an easy time his name al-Latif the subtle kind one is manifesting in my life perhaps his name a Shakur the grateful one is manifesting in my life and so on and so there's so many different names not all names of ease they're not every name is not ar-Rahman ar-Rahim but he does begin with ar-Rahman ar-Rahim Alhamdulillah he begins with most merciful most compassionate so generally speaking at the end of the day it will be mercy upon mercy upon mercy inshallah but generally speaking a lot of that mercy is reserved for the next life when we really really really need it in this life Allah is very merciful with us and we are still tested and the test is a part of the mercy but the reason I mention this is because when someone begins to understand and seek knowledge more they begin to understand in every part of their life oh a different attribute of Allah is manifesting in my life today it's not always going to be the same if it was the same how would you get to know God because he doesn't only have one attribute he's not like like you and me might only have a few sides to us God has many many many many attributes and he wants us to develop knowledge of him in many many many ways and so that would be an example here of of how knowledge should be helping you right the next thing he says is that knowledge should lead you to renounce the things of this dunya you shouldn't desire deep down inside as you learn more of what's called true sacred knowledge you should stop desiring dunya all the time I want this I want this car I want this I want this giant house I want this it doesn't mean that it's haram to have those things that should stop being your end goal in life you should know what your end goal is that's the third piece true knowledge will help you yearn for the hereafter and only you will know that this is happening people will start to see manifestation of this behavior but you will know if you are actually hoping and waiting for the hereafter you will know that like that is the end goal of the believer you live in this world but you are as though you are a stranger as it comes it's not supposed to be the permanent of both if someone goes to the airport and they are waiting for the flight you don't see them start to like build a house and start to do all of these different things to establish their like full presence at the airport probably get kicked out if you did but right but you generally don't see that the muslim is you are just in transit doesn't mean we don't live in the world but your mind can be let's say here your heart is with Allah you gotta do what you gotta do we gotta go to work we gotta earn income we have to live we have to have cars we have to do all this stuff but at the end of the day it's like okay well this is not the whole goal of my life and the more somebody seeks true knowledge the more they are drawn away from this life and the more they are drawn towards the next life and the way to evaluate this is when you see other people doing things and getting dunya how much does your heart and again you know this person has this huge house and maybe I'm still living in a one bedroom does it do like oh I don't really care I mean just the house right is that the feeling or is it like oh my god what do they do how do they get this house what's going on oh my god and you actually start feeling envy towards them and you're like they're not even that much smarter than me and how do they get all this place what would happen they drive a really nice car and we're still driving our car from college and we're like I don't mind having nice things it'd be nice to have like a little bit of a nicer car but are you like tripping off it it does it really really get to you that's how you evaluate where you and I are at with regards to desiring you after and especially if like family members start to get things and whatnot like how much do you wonder why do they have this why do they have this why do they have this is somebody has that it's a deep deep deep sickness that you're constantly questioning why does somebody else have something and I do not right and it shows that we have a lot of work to do on our spirituality because ultimately we shouldn't make we shouldn't question what Allah has given somebody else his decision he's God not me he can give anybody whatever he wants and he'll ask them if he wants to and he doesn't have to right but that's where the yearning deep down inside doesn't mean we can't have it but the yearning deep down inside shouldn't be there yes and we're not truly a believer until we love our neighbors so we're supposed to love our neighbor we have to put it right and so there's if your daughter gets up a nice house you'll have to your daughter so we want to love everyone right and so we should we should love other people and what they have and not have this kind of envious type of approach but knowledge will start to clean all this stuff inside of us because it'll reorient and the crazy thing with somebody learns is just through the act of level of intellectual understanding knowledge is a spiritual this is a spiritual science we're talking about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam learned everything without formally studying everything because what you're seeing there the first revelation that came to him iqra and he's commanded to read and command to recite and then all of a sudden all of these knowledges just enter him sallallahu alayhi wa sallam so you see their knowledge is a spiritual phenomenon it's not only an intellectual phenomenon the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and we're not from the ranks of the olia that have there is this type of what's called elham inspired knowledge that can come like it came to say na khidr alayhi sallam insura qath but generally speaking knowledge has a spiritual effect to it and that's where we have to distinguish it you can't learn these knowledges in a secular university setting secular university setting we'll learn academic knowledge but we won't learn spiritual knowledge they won't be preparing us how to get what we even got that happened to me my teacher and I remember in university for near eastern studies and he was teaching religion I think I'm pretty sure he was an atheist and he just didn't believe and got it he had so much information that's actually what's that's called that's the distinguishing factor it's called information it's not called knowledge knowledge is when information becomes practically practically implemented in your life and it actually starts to change you that's knowledge otherwise it's just a bunch of facts like a PhD and as many PhDs as somebody wants and if they don't believe in Allah it's not going to benefit them what benefit will the PhD have and if they believe in Allah it doesn't if they don't have a PhD it also doesn't matter because they're going to inshallah they're implementing everything that they learn they'll have that and it's if they have they believe in Allah and they have all these outward degrees and they're using them in the right way subhanAllah then you'll see the thirst and the love for knowledge that comes with it and then the fourth thing that it does is it shows you your faults true knowledge shows you your faults you'll start to be like oh god this book is really just opening it's exposing me right you'll read the book and you'll walk away like if you read the books of Mama Ghazali you'll walk away scared a little bit just a little bit scared you're like this is real because he shakes you he calls you out in a way that's like wake up the hereafter is coming you could die tomorrow to feel the immediacy of things it's not like a it doesn't mean we should run away from those things it means that when we read them we just are aware that that's what these scholars are trying to do because when the Sahaba would sit with the Prophet s.a.w they would feel hope but they would also feel fear they would not just they would feel fear they would feel a reality the day of judgment they would act as though the day of judgment was coming when the hadith was mentioned about hypocrisy and about the health Omar would wonder he would ask Hodeifa ibn al-Yaman who was given the secrets of who the hypocrites were he would ask him am I from he would go to him and so the Prophet s.a.w had passed away at this point s.a.w he would go to him and say am I from the hypocrites tell me am I from the hypocrites Amir al-Mu'minin of course you're not from the hypocrites he's clarifying he's trying to figure out that they wouldn't even assume much of themselves even though he said in the Omar ibn al-Khattab of what is his rank but that was the presence and the awareness of like their own inner states and then what's going to come on the on the day of judgment and so finally that this knowledge on this point knowledge is going to change you and the knowledgeable start to have effects on changing there's an alchemy going on right Imam Ghazali has a book called the alchemy of happiness and you just as you read the book there's an alchemy that's going on inside of you just to all the things that Imam Hada is mentioning with the different odad the different regular things we should be doing it's also you can transform and have spiritual alchemy going inside Quran will have one effect the vikr will have another effect knowledge will have a very, very, very powerful effect especially in our time reflection will have another effect of course the prayers and the foundations and the fard will have their own effect the most important and then until three, four years someone does this every single day and boom they're completely transformed they will just be completely transformed they will not have completely different than the person that they used to be because the alchemy has taken place alchemy is known as like the the kind of art of transforming lead into gold so you're transforming right into spiritual gold so the reason why knowledge is so, so, so important in addition to what we just mentioned those are the benefits of knowledge now we get into why is learning knowledge important it should be sufficient that it was the first thing that was revealed to the prophet right and then it should also be the second thing that is what differentiated Adam aley salam when Allah says وَأَلَّمَ الْأَعْدَمْ الْأَسْمَاءَ كُلَّهَةَ we taught Adam the names of all things it's not just referring to this is a minbar this is a table no it's the inner meanings and the secrets of things were taught to Adam aley salam amongst what some of the commentators say right so again knowledge then is differentiated him from the angels the angels said سُبْحَانَكَ لَا إِلْمَ لَنَا إِلَّمَ عَلَمْتَنَا glory be to you we have no knowledge except that which you have taught us as they are perplexed over when they ask him how would you create a creation that is going to sow corruption on the earth and spread blood right and shed blood and he says I know what you know not again knowledge and then he teaches Adam the names of all things and then the angels say سُبْحَانَكَ لَا إِلْمَ لَنَا we don't know except that what you have taught us knowledge knowledge that's what's differentiating Adam aley salam is the human being from the animals right the animals in most ways are stronger there's animals that are stronger than the human being there's animals that can eat more than the human being there's animals that can run faster than the human being there's animals that can copulate faster than the human being or more than the human being every single other act that we can do there is another animal in Allah's animal kingdom that can do things that we cannot do except knowledge there's nobody who can learn like the human being can learn completely get spiritual awareness of Allah in the way that the human being can get awareness of Allah and this is what distinguishes the human being. So learning was one of the first commandments and then as Allah mentions in the Quran وما خلقتوا جنة والإنس إلا ليعبدون that we only created mankind and jinn to worship and as Ibn Abbas the famous commentator says it actually means ليعرفون in order to know but that's the goal of your creation is to know Allah and so you and I don't want to leave this world knowing chemistry and biology and mathematics and English and US history pre-civil war and post-civil war and modern era and linguistics and all in computer science and Java and JavaScript and HTML and all the different things that we can know and we don't know Allah. It's a waste of life. And we spend years on our secular education years and then we don't when someone is like wants to spend like an hour or two on the religion everyone's like whoa don't go are you sure about that right we barely invest time in learning on our about our religion the difference between us and the people of the past and the past generations their life was devoted to learning and devotion that's what they would do in their extra time they would earn a living they would have shops they would be business people they would do all these things there would be doctors amongst them and people who are helping amongst them amongst the men and the women they would be doing all these things but in their extra time they weren't watching Netflix they weren't scrolling social media they weren't doing all these things that we do they had time with each other to build brotherhood and sisterhood and then their goal was to know Allah extra time was doing if you ever sit with a scholar if we're blessed to ever sit with the scholars you'll see how they fill their time it's just book after book after book you walk into the office of a scholar and she's books books books books books and then they're doing this and then they're teaching and then they're preparing some presentation and then they have to counsel people and so and then but it's always in something else that doesn't mean our life becomes we're not scholars we have to live in the we have other things to do but we can have a portion of that maybe five minutes a day ten minutes a day twenty minutes a day that's that's the goal is to make it consistent but it's to know that what we want to aspire to so that we can start with the basics and the desire for knowledge can become so powerful in somebody that it actually exceeds the desire for everything else it can become stronger than sexual desire it can become there's five to seven types of desires you have amongst the strongest is the sexual desire in the human being that in the desire for food those are the two strongest appetites then you have the desire for wealth big desire right then you have the desire for fame rich and famous as people say then you have the desire for power the desire for power if you have power many times you don't even need all the other things because you just have power and many times the people in power will have gone to gone to extremes and all the other desires I just mentioned as they were on their journey to power and then like the government of New York they'll fall because they'll get exposed right that that that generally tends to happen but amongst all those desires one of the desire that's even stronger than that it's called a good desires a desire for knowledge because the thirst you just can't fill it you just always want to learn always want to learn always want to learn right and you have to have balance and I got other things that to do it but that that's a strong the desire for knowledge can become and so at the process I'm said that there is a time that's that's coming that there will be the people of insight will be few the orators those who talk right will be many and there will be few people who are kind of helping each other and he said at this time seeking knowledge will be superior to extra Ibadah right and very much paraphrase the hadith here but what does that mean that in the time of the Sahaba people generally speaking as we mentioned had a yearning for the year after that was very much established when you read the different hadith you'd see the majority of Sahaba they would spend their extra time in extra acts of devotion extra acts of nafil prayer extra acts of reciting the Quran extra acts of biker of reflection and so on and so forth but the Prophet ﷺ said that a time is coming when seeking you spending your extra time you do the fire that you do the basics that we're talking about and a few of the extra things and then you spend the majority of your extra time in learning because of how much ignorance there will be in that time and how few people will actually know and now you might not even be able to trust somebody who says that they know right and a statement of Ibn Abbas he said the studying knowledge is more beloved than remaining the entire night studying knowledge for a part of the night is more beloved and then to him then remaining in devotion right in the hadjad prayer Qiyam for the entire night and and there's many many many other statements it comes in a another narration in the Hiala Madin that attending a gathering of knowledge is better than praying a thousand rakahs or visiting a thousand sick people or attending a thousand funerals these are actions we do and their farthi faya actions the communal obligations to attend the funerals visit the sick and so on and so forth but he's showing the supremacy of seeking knowledge why it's so important and so when you go to traditional Muslim societies which still have the Sunnah in place today you'll see that like gatherings of biker and knowledge are like everywhere it's just generally speaking there they're happening all the time and then and then in the societies where there's a lot of heedlessness there's very few gatherings of the current knowledge and there's a lot of gatherings of everything else partying and this and that and and let's go let's let like the amount of amount of time people are spending just socializing and then socializing with haram associated with their drinking and smoking and so on and so forth and then just or just kind of wasting time and not actually doing things that are of benefit and so these are the time and let me just pause here before we get to this next section and then we'll end does anybody have questions on what we've covered thus far now he's gonna lay out the types of knowledge that everybody should know yes so good good good question the question was if somebody has a couple hours should they if they're better off seeking knowledge than to stand in let's say Qiyam Tahajjud or do extra acts of worship I believe it's a saying in Imam Malik Rahimullah that he said basically don't leave this don't leave devotion entirely for seeking knowledge and don't leave seeking knowledge entirely for devotion you should have a balance of the two because again each of them has a certain light associated with it so somebody had the Himmah for two or three hours to do multiple things it would be advised that they spend a portion of that time in prayer and then they spend a larger portion of that time learning if they have the Himmah to learn sometimes someone can only learn for 10 20 minutes and like I can't do anymore but they can do a lot of thicker or they can only do 10 minutes of thicker and they can also only do 10 minutes of knowledge and then they need to just relax they might not be able to do you know to me everybody has a different level of how much their nuts can handle the goal is you stretch and stretch and stretch the nuts until it gets to the point where it starts to enjoy these things it if you have not learned your part of the aim meaning you do not know the the detailed breakdown of of the prayer the rulings of Wudu the rulings of prayer what count what constitutes forgetfulness and prayer what constitutes a wajib act in prayer and so on and so forth and same thing with fasting zakat Hajj and and let's say somebody is starting a business of it becomes far to learn how to the rulings of business someone's getting married it becomes far to learn the rulings of marriage and the rulings of divorce so if you don't have those down then yeah and it's you have to learn those over the extra Ibadah it would be a misprioritization for you to go through do not feel about that and not know those far that if that makes sense right but if someone has the far that I'm down then you're talking about other actions that you can do other types of knowledge that you can gain and that's where the balance should come because much of the knowledge has to be implemented and it's implemented when you're doing the Ibadah that makes sense so like you might learn a hadith about the importance of giving charity we can't just learn the hadith you have to go and then give charity at some point right or go and so there's a hadith about feeding people we have to go and make food or buy food and then feed the people and implement the knowledge if that makes sense so there is that balance and that's why knowledge is not just theoretical right the difference is if somebody is an alum a scholar and they're significantly involved in writing and teaching this is what they do you'll generally see that for them them they're spending a larger portion in in learning yeah because that's like they have to do that and that's that's their route that makes sense does I answer the question and it's not there's no one formula for everybody it's going to be kind of under you'll know individually what works and what doesn't any other questions on this section so he mentions then we're going to mention the three the three most critical parts of knowledge that everybody has to learn so you're far the iron these are called individual obligations this is like by the time we are what's called balik we've hit puberty we have to know these things and many times we don't it's okay we have to just learn them at some point it is every believer has to have their akita down number one their creed what what does the Muslim believe and ideally somebody should go through a text but they just study the creed their creed and it doesn't this is not complicated but they should sit with a scholar and go through a text if they don't do that at least knowing the core essence of your creed is important right so like this what I mean here is that we believe in Allah we believe in the last day we believe in the angels we believe in the books we believe in the prophets right we believe in Allah's oneness we don't believe that Allah has hands and feet and so on and so forth we don't believe that right we believe that that Allah is all-encompassing and all-knowing we know that we will be held to account that we will be taken to account what it was a mean for the day of judgment we believe in that we believe in the life in the grave all those types of things and a lot of this we might have heard growing up it sometimes it is important though for at least a couple hours to sit with somebody and just learn the core aspects to just bring it all to this doesn't need to be like really really complicated a key that can be learned very very quickly but that would be one of the first what's called fire the knowledge is and there's a book in that's been translated in English it's the second second book of Imam of Azali's ahia it's on creed and he just lays out like here's everything you need to believe what you need to know and then you just read it and you're like okay did I get this down and it has a little bit of explanation there and then if you can study it with a teacher that's ideal but at the very at the very minimum we should have that down and this is by the way it's very difficult to derive all of this purely from that you can drive it from the Quran but we're not that level like we're not at that level we can drive you should you need to go to a book that a scholar has written that has consolidated everything that promises on everything Allah has said everything the prophet salam has said and then said this is that what's called the belief of Ahl al Sunnah and Jama'a which is the belief of the Sunni Muslims right let's say that that you know someone is Sunni that would be right that's that's important to know the next type of knowledge that's important to know is fit and this is what's called the jurist prudence laws for how to do things what you can do the knowledge of Halal and Haram and this is important but in our time people think this is all knowledge this is really really really a significant problem and mama Ghazali like this calls calls the scholars out left and right for thinking this is all knowledge knowledge is not limited to the knowledge halal and haram that's a portion of knowledge that's a portion of knowledge and many Muslims are pushed away especially in our time today especially amongst our younger brothers and sisters because they just think Islam is all halal and haram it's actually not that much about Islam that's halal and haram but if we learn growing up everything is halal and haram and nobody talks about love and about the the the tasting of nearness to the prophecy salam and the tasting of nearness to the Oliya and so on and so forth we think that everything is about halal and haram and rules and right and wrong that's not that's not the limit but that is a very crucial aspect it guides us and we have to know what's halal and what's haram so we don't go astray right we can't go on the other end of we all I don't want to learn any rules and just spiritual and such a spiritual person I want to learn any rules and then we just like go completely completely astray so what's required here is for somebody to know at minimum the detailed rules of wudu prayer fasting zakat and the pillars and then as I mentioned once you are in a state where let's say you're getting married you have to know the rules of marriage and the rules of divorce and when someone is starting a business and so on and so forth every decision somebody takes in life they have to know what is Allah have to say about this right what does Allah what do Allah and his message you have to say about this this can be done ideally it is done and this is the dominant opinion this is the dominant opinion of the Muslims is that it is wajib obligatory for the Muslim to follow a madhab in Islam in madhab in Islam there are four traditional madhab Hanafi school the most widespread school the Shafi school the Maliki school and the Hanbali school those are the four madhabs that the ummah agreed upon there were many many many other madhabs Sufyan authority had a madhab for an example and many of the other scholars had a madham had madahib but these are the four that the ummah united upon and you'll have people in today's day and age who don't understand the deans say oh but this wasn't around at the time of the Prophet's Salaam and so on there were so many things that were not around at the time of the Prophet's Salaam the word tafsir was not used at the time of the Prophet's Salaam tajweed was not a science the ba and ta and fa that you read in the Quran the dots as Sundiata was saying in the Khutba the other day were not around at the time of the Prophet's Salaam many of the Fatah, Dhamma and Kasra were not around at the time of the Prophet's Salaam the hijri calendar was not around at the time of the Prophet's Salaam the the Quran actually compiled in the order that it's compiled in as a formal book that we read was not around at the time of the Prophet's Salaam the go we could just give a whole talk just on this because that is not an argument it's not an argument the madahib are the understanding of what's called a someone who has reached the station of much tahid mutlak which means that they have mastered the air they have mastered all of the foundational and preliminary sciences and then they've mastered essentially all the other sciences you need to master they've mastered the hadith they've mastered the Quran they to the best of humans ability of course and then they say this is now my understanding of what the Prophet Allah and his messenger are saying about this ruling right and then that's and then the madahab is a school it's not one person so they'll say oh I'm you can't just follow one person you're not following a person you're following the school the school of Imam Abu Hanifa that's what a madahab is but if what the reason why it's important is because there are things that have difference of opinion and you have to make sure that you don't just pick and choose right I'm gonna take this today I'm gonna take this today I'm gonna take this today and we just you just kind of create your own version of the Dean if that makes sense so so it is usually a a school of thick and of course the majority of us whatever way we're praying it's valid according to some rule of thick right like we're valid we're valid according to some rule of thick but it's important to know what what what what we have to do and what are the requirements what are the wajibat of the prayer with in accordance to some of the rules of thick or and the Sunnah of the prayer and so on and so forth so that's the knowledge of fit and that can literally be learned in like a weekend in like a weekend course with like in any local place that's offered or there's there's classes online somebody just says okay I'm gonna study and they'll study a simple text that lays out everything we need to know and there'll be parts of it that you don't like have to you're not gonna use them every day in your life like for example would do if we can make with you in the Hanafi school you can make with you with many types of water ocean water being amongst those right but like you're not we don't really I mean we kind of live by the ocean but like we're not going there all the time but if you ever are there you'll know yeah it's valid for me to like make water make with you with ocean or in the river but like you don't have to have every single fact of that absolutely memorized but it's good for you to know and for have awareness that's what the book the books will get into that as an example right and by the thick many times it can be dry and as I mentioned last time some parts of spirituality can be boring they're not always the most fun but you have to go through the dry periods in order to experience the beautiful period you have to know the rules in order to to understand and experience the taste tasting ultimately that's one of the one of the things that ends up happening is someone starts to really feel the Sakina and the internal tranquility and the fruits of the faith but it'd have to be confined within the rules and then the third knowledge that's important to learn is the knowledge of spirituality the knowledge of what's formally called the so-of the so-of this traditionally would if would is translated as the knowledge of Sufism or the knowledge of and many people in our time don't like that word same group that doesn't like Madhav's but it is the knowledge of tazkiat al-nas purifying the soul the goal of the Muslim that's the most important verse that one of the most important verses that elucidates this point right that pure successful is the one who has purified themselves and destroyed is the one so it is a father for Muslim for the Muslims to learn the diseases of the heart spiritual disease of the heart and the good traits of the heart you have to know that I have a disease of the heart somebody could die with a major disease of the heart and not even know that they had the disease of envy inside them the whole time and probably some said in the hadith that envy burns good deeds like fire burns wood so you see somebody and you're just like envious and envious why do they have this was we were talking about earlier and the good deeds are just getting burned away and you're not even saying anything you're just thinking it that's what a disease of the heart can do that's why it's far it's one of the reasons why it's hard to learn so you learn about what are the diseases of the heart and envy anger jealousy love of the dunya and and there's many many many many other diseases a good book that clarifies these is a book by she comes up use of that purification of the of the heart pride as an example pride arrogance concede being full of yourself and and and so on and so forth and it's required to know what those diseases are whatever somebody wants to call it whether they it was traditionally for over 1200 years in our religion that science there's a science just like to fear has a science associated with it fit has a science associated with it tajweed has a science associated with it you do these things and this will happen that science has was called Sufism in our religion up until you know about the the late 1800s some people had problems with that term and so they threw it out but generally speaking that is the name of that science or you call it to ski at the most purification of the heart whatever it is you have to purify the heart that's the goal right and then those are the three that we have to know at minimum or three okay that's fine and so and then lastly in terms of implementing it the goal here is to just do a little bit every day and this is that I really am gonna emphasize a little bit we want to be consistent in our actions and so what I would recommend here is we pick two to three formats that work for us in different types of our life and we're gonna get to we're getting to the practicality component here and then we're gonna end inshallah example many of us are on the go or we you know we have phones so podcasts excellent format YouTube lectures or SoundCloud these types of excellent formats to learn there's so much knowledge out there in these formats right so we're driving okay I have a consistent routine that I'm gonna work through this podcast of 50 lectures I'm gonna listen to one every week maybe work my way up to one every few days and then maybe one every day while I'm in my commute or when I'm walking around or something like that and then another format that's very very easily digestible of course is books right which we have the example of the book of assistance here we start with one or two pages a day we don't overdo it we have to be careful not to do 50 pages hundred pages a day and a hundred pages in a day and then get overwhelmed just slowly slowly stuff can be heavy the goal is to reflect and implement it's not to just memorize it and then not implement it and then if we can go to any type of regular gathering or class or whatever it is that's also that's also good in our time sometimes especially with COVID that's limited but we can attend online you know Lighthouse has some of those many of the other massaging the community has gathered up gatherings but those would be like easy ways to do we just try to do something consistently consistently and I would I advise that we try to do a portion of the following every whatever rhythm we come up with in our life you come up with a rhythm I'm gonna do this every week I'm gonna do it on Sundays for 40 minutes on Sundays between you know if I if before before I go to Sunday brunch I'm gonna read 30 minutes of knowledge that's my routine let's just say you come up with a routine whatever works or on Mondays I'm gonna start my week with it or on Fridays as I finish up work I'm gonna end my week with it whatever you whatever works for you and we should have a portion a little bit which is devoted to tafsir a little bit of what you're reading hadith from books like real the salihin which there's there's some excellent translations of real the salihin the gardens of the righteous by Imam and no weed and then we pick one of the books and the books that are really really potent in our time that the Olimah recommend are the books of Imam al-haddad we start with the book of assistance being one and then there's like many many others which once someone is done with a book of assistance you can recommend a few others and Imam al-ghazali meant majority of which have been translated to English and we work our wages through those books that will be sufficient we're taking a portion of the Quran a portion of the Sunnah and then a portion of the books of the great scholars and the thick books that we study should of course be within a school right so both Imam Shafi and Imam al-ghazali for Imam al-haddad were both Shafi somebody's Hanafi they would study Hanafi for example we're just a little bit and you take it and you work through it and you just digest it and you'll see it'll start with I remember six seven years ago I just before work two pages of this book book of assistance I just got to get a chapter in but it was so easy I'm gonna get a chapter in his two pages and drinking the coffee and get reading a chapter then go on to work but I was like oh this is kind of fun like I actually like this this actually feels like I'm thinking about something other than what some corporation wants me to think about before I start my day now then I was oh and I want to learn more and so knowledge will kind of do that to you it'll just draw you and then instead of always thinking about someone else's you know don't you have problems and money problems you'll start to be thinking about how can I fix my life in this way in this way as you go throughout your day that's the impact and potency of knowledge and then lastly the heart if it doesn't learn the spiritual heart if it doesn't learn and spend time learning it gets sick really sick this is when major times types of depression anxiety worry other problems start to overtake the heart because the heart does not have enough portion of knowledge so inshallah we'll we'll end with that if anybody has few quick questions we'll take them and then we'll end Malik yeah I was just I was just giving an example like I was just the breakfast I was okay I'm gonna just read this book two pages while I'm doing yeah it was really good it was really good because the day was grounded in something like otherwise what was happening I think what happens in most of our lives is we start the day and then we start with like either we're studying or we're working and we start immediately we just dive into that or maybe if we wake up and we're scrolling our phone a little bit and like you know news social media whatever it is but starting the day with with learning was really helpful because it kind of reoriented the day but somebody can end the day like that or middle of the day it doesn't really matter what the time I was just giving an example of what what kind of help does that make sense any other questions yes yep it's a good question the question was how does one decide which madhab to follow you should decide so there's like the easiest madhab in our time is the Hanafi school as the easiest in terms of just like the types of rules ideally depending if somebody was born Muslim generally speaking someone's family will have come from an area where there's a certain madhab that was dominant you might have just learned Islam that way so for example in the subcontinent India Pakistan Turkey Syria the Hanafi school was dominant in the F in majority of African countries the Maliki school was dominant in many African countries but and then in like Egypt and some other places the Shafi school was dominant right and so you might just have learned Islam according to something you will already probably be following a madhab and you know if so you'll know like if you pray you know if you raise your hand and takbir every time or if you the Hanafis don't do that for example if they just raise their hands and takbir it's a haram and they don't raise their hands in other parts of the prayer you'll just kind of know if you pray with your hands like this that the Maliki generally will do that right with their hands at their side but I would just see okay is there a madhab I might have actually just learned Islam according to and then if not it's good to just make just kind of ask Allah for guidance on which which one would make the most sense for you and then just pick pick one and then just stick with it and it's like only in a few areas where you're generally speaking you just have to learn these details in our time we don't have to learn all the intricate details of every ruling in every situation it's just in the prayer and fasting and zakat and Hajj in a few other areas. Does that make sense? It's one other question. Anybody else have a question? I mean let me just see if there's any questions here. Yeah, yes. So you said even if you follow that if you find yourself in a situation where there is a ruling on something I think of for example the ocean water or something wrong those sorts can you then in a circumstance like that adapt that or even you would say no I'm not happy so I have to go find another source. Yeah, the question is if you find yourself in a situation where it becomes you know if you want to take the ruling from another school can you adapt that as long as somebody is not doing that all the time from my understanding that yes that's totally fine. Allah o Alam. But in our times you're living in just the fact that we actually care about the fact if there's a ruling out there is sufficient right that we know what's going on and what's especially like I'll give an example in Hanafi school you generally don't combine your prayers when you're traveling. You shorten the prayers you don't combine them. But many times especially in winter and especially if you have flights to if you're on a plane to make sure you pray just on time many times people will combine right and shorten and combine because it's very very difficult to always know exactly when the prayer time is in in avoidance of missing the prayer all together right but like now if that person wanted to more strictly follow the school they wouldn't do that all of the time right they would just do that when they need to let's say in a situation and then when they're like chilling for a week and a half somewhere and traveling okay now I'm going to pray my prayers shortened but on time the Shafi and the Maliki in Hamdoli school you can shorten and combine more often. Does that make sense so you can take that I've always learned our teachers to say like look this through this ruling is valid here this ruling is valid here this ruling is valid here don't like just pick and choose but if you need to know at least know that this is valid and that one of the imams and one of the schools said that it was okay if that makes sense because if we get too strict we also don't want to be like way too strict and then tell everybody else you're wrong your mother was wrong your mother was wrong and become partisan in it and then get a little bit too too intense on that right but the more we can follow one the better it is but if we have to for like it's called a roksha dispensation you have to take dispensation it's that's an excellent question so yeah brother Ismail suggested that if somebody were to read the biographies of Imam Malik Ibn Anas, Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Al Shafi, Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal that you read their biographies you learn about them and then you might be drawn okay we'll go ahead and we ask that you increase us and that you increase us on knowledge and that you give us the ability to know you and that you give us the ability to get closer and closer to you and that you give us the ability to implement the knowledge that is good for us and that you pardon us for anything that we may have said that you are not pleased with Allah we ask that you guide us and our families and our loved ones towards as close towards you and to get as close to you as possible and to follow the Sunnah of the Prophet's Islam we ask that you increase our love for the Prophet's Islam in every single time and especially in this month and that you allow us to get near and near to him and near and near to you ya Allah and we ask you for everything good that the Prophet's Islam asked for and we ask you for protection for everything evil that he asked protection from there's one of the things scholars mentioned there's one dua where Allah commanded the Prophet's Islam to ask for an increase in something and the only and does anybody know what that thing was it's the only time you actually commanded to ask for an increase in this thing right to increase in knowledge not generally not asking to increase in all these other things although it's nothing like haram with it but Allah's commanding that my Lord increase me in knowledge so there's also a deep deep wisdom there