 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillah, Roba l-Alamin. Wassallallahu sallam wa barakala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahdi wa sallam. All right, so we are continuing in this conversation that we've been having about desires, deceptive desires. And today's topic is we're gonna focus on the desire for lust. So we've been touching upon this a little bit and so we're gonna dive a lot deeper today, inshallah. So let's dive straight into it. What we discussed last time was the kind of mother desire. And so there's one mother desire that human being has. And a couple of things to keep in mind that the human being that's able to successfully control their desires in this life is the one who will be rewarded inshallah the most in the next life. There's a direct correlation between how many of our appetites we follow, how much of our nuffs we follow, and whether or not we are going to be successful in the next life. And so we really wanna try to be people who are controlling our desires regularly. So we spoke last time about food and how food is this kind of mother desire. And now we're gonna talk about how other desires stem from food. So we'll dive into lust today and sexual desire. So sexual desire is not necessarily a bad thing even though many times it's made out to be. In moderation and channeled in the right direction, it's a good thing. And so what we've been trying to do is talk about all of these desires at a high level and talk about when they are negative and when they are positive and how do we channel the desires in the overall right direction. So the way to think about this, you and I have a certain type of desire because Allah has created it within us. Sexual desire has a couple of reasons according to Mamal Azali that God created this desire in us. First is the obvious one of allowing the human race to continue, right? If the human being did not have this desire then the desire for relations then obviously that would not result in the human race continuing because you would not have offspring and whatnot. And the second reason is actually what Imam Azali says and where many of the other scholars say is to allow you and I to know the delight of the afterlife. That one that there are indications that the desire that one feels in that experience is a very, very, very, very, very small portion of the experience one is going to have in the afterlife and the type of euphoria one is going to experience in the afterlife. Now this is of course when you're talking about channeling it in a permissible way when you're talking about channeling this desire in a halal way. Now let's talk a little bit about the condition of the society that we live in, right? So we live in a society right now that is filled with overall promiscuity following desires not really like being in touch with ourselves in a deep way such that we try to control these desires or channel them in the right direction. So the job of the Muslim is to say, okay, how am I going to ward off the different aspects of the society that are negative and how am I going to channel the desires that I have in the right direction such that I can achieve success in this life and the next life? We also see in the society of small examples, you have apps like Tinder and other dating apps where people are literally just like scrolling through these apps in order to find ways to release their sexual desire and find ways to release their lust. You have phones and devices that every single, anywhere from a teenager all the way to an adult has access to, that literally you have the entire internet at your fingertips. And so anybody who wants to engage in some type of impermissible lustful desire, they wanna watch something that they shouldn't be watching if they wanna listen to something that they shouldn't be listening if they wanna chat with somebody or start talking with somebody that's going to lead to an eventually a desire a sexual relationship, they are able to do that very easily. Even in a pandemic, you're able to engage your lusts and the traits of Xena, you're able to engage them in forbidden ways even though you and I might be just literally sitting in our homes, right? And so we live in a society that is full of promiscuity, it's full of pornography, it's full of hyper sexualization and it's full of trying to make us follow this desire from a young age. So now regularly we see, for example, in Western society, you see promiscuity at a young age and you also regularly see people having sex before marriage, right? That's very, very common. In fact, as we believe the statistics show now that more people now engage in relations before marriage than people engage outside more people engage in relationships outside of marriage than they do in marriage, right? And so this is a very, very big shift even in Western society. So these are the impulses that we're facing, these are the lusts that we're facing, these are the desires that we're facing. But we have to know that God created us as human beings in order to test us. That's one of the main why Allah created us and he created us in order to test us and he created us in order for us to be able for him to see, okay, who is going to respond to this desire and who is going to reframe themselves from this desire. Those are the main reasons why we are created. Just checking something here. So that's up to us now. The more tests that somebody has, the more reward they're going to have when they resist that test, right? And so Allah knows our condition and it's not expected that our condition is going to be the same condition as people of past societies. That's not an expectation that exists, right? Now, what does Allah say in the Quran with regards to desire and sexual desire and controlling it? First is that he commands the believing men and the believing women. He tells us to lower our gaze and he tells us to lower our gaze because he indicates that lowering the gaze is a way to prevent the desire from developing further. That that's what happens when somebody lowers their gaze. That the desire doesn't develop further. The desire starts to be tamed, right? Because the eye is the entry point and as soon as somebody sees something, they see somebody attractive, now the thoughts start to stir in the heart, right? And when the thoughts start to stir in the heart, what starts to happen is they start to get ideas. And when somebody starts to get ideas, then they start to say, okay, maybe I could reach out to this person, maybe I'll start texting this person, right? And the kind of overall sexual desires are incited within somebody and all begins with the eye, which is why God commands us to lower our gaze, that that is one of the first cures you have to this desire. And by the way, as folks have questions, please just put them in the comments section and we'll go ahead and get to them. And if you're having any issues with the audio, just please also put that in the comments section, let me know. I can't 100% tell if the audio is working properly or not. So that is the, where was I, sorry about this. That is the situation of how God tells us to, okay, this is how you start to reduce this desire by preventing it at the onset to lower your gaze, right? But then he also gives us many indications that human being is created weak, right? He says, that we created mankind weak, we created the human being weak. So when you're created weak, what does that mean? Well, when you're created weak, it means that you and I are gonna slip up, we're gonna fall into things and they're not always gonna be able to lower our gaze. We're not always gonna be able to control ourselves, but God gives us routes, right? To say, okay, look, I know this desire is inside of you and you can release this desire in a permissible way, right? Thus he tells us, okay, you can get married, right? You are allowed to get married and we are not a tradition that is your force to be celibate, right? You have other traditions that in order to reach certain stations of spirituality, you can't get married. Our tradition, I'm the one that doesn't have that. The Prophecy Psalm did marry and he encouraged us to marry. It's as soon as the Prophecy Psalm, but to release that desire in the halal way is what we're taught to do, to not let our lusts get to the best of us like has happened in most of the societies that we live in. So those are some of the aya's of the Quran and then, you know, Allah describes zina, fornication and adultery in very, very intense terms in the Quran, just saying how reprehensible these things are to him, right? So these are things that obviously we do our best to stay away from. Now we'll talk a little bit about, we will talk a little bit about the Hadith now. So the Prophecy Psalm, he indicates, he says that whoever can guarantee me what is between his two lips and what is between his legs, right? So his, the food that he eats and the sexual relationships that he engages in, guarantee them, do them in a permissible way. He can guarantee for that person, Jannah. And this is, I'm paraphrasing the Hadith here, but this is generally what the Hadith indicates. Another Hadith of the Prophecy Psalm says that a lustful gaze is a poisoned arrow from shaitan. Whoever abstains from that gaze in fear of Allah shall receive an increase in faith and the sweetness of which they feel in their heart. So when you and I like are about to look at somebody, we're about to check somebody out, we're about to go on a Haram website, we're about to do something we shouldn't be doing. And this is especially happening for sure amongst certain age groups, especially like, you know, if you are a teenager or if you have teenagers, this starts to become more and more of a thing, right? Pornography is a very, very big problem in our community, unfortunately, not discussed enough. And the types of images that people are looking at both hard pornography and soft pornography, where is this? The Prophecy Psalm says poisoned arrows from shaitan. Now imagine if shaitan shoots a poisoned arrow at you, you're screwed, you're in trouble, right? Your whole body and your whole system is going to be impacted. So whoever abstains from that at the gaze, at the onset, right? Whoever abstains from it, they will receive an increase in faith and they will feel the sweetness of the faith in their heart because you're like, okay, I'm doing it for the sake of God. Remember that it's harder when it comes to worship, it's harder to stay away from disobedient things than it is to do obedient things. It's actually very, once you can get to a point where it's like, okay, you got the prayers in a rhythm, you're doing your dhikr, you're doing all the stuff, but when sins get presented in front of you, when your lusts get challenged, when Haram things come up in front of us, that becomes difficult to tame, right? And we see that some of the biggest profits in the history of Islam are challenged with this. So the story in the Quran of Sayyidina Yusuf, alaihi salam, that he was challenged with being seduced, right? And it's mentioned that he even indicates the ayat in the Quran that he would have given in had there not been assigned from his Lord, right? That this is a desire that's naturally there that any human being can fall into. But of course, Allah protected his profit, may Allah grant him mercy and peace from falling into that. So this is no small thing. This is very, very much an easy thing for people to fall into. What the Prophet of Islam says, cut it off at the beginning and you'll feel the sweetness of faith. Why is sweetness of faith important? Because when somebody tastes the sweetness, when you taste the dessert, when you taste the sweetness, when you taste sweetness, when you taste the dessert, you taste something, right? You want more, you have a really delicious cake and you're like, dude, I want a cake again, right? You have really good cookies or brownies. You're like, I want more of those or where did I get those from? It's the same thing with the sweetness of faith when somebody tastes the sweetness of faith, you have people like, it's like faith is just this kind of burden, this like boring intense thing that we feel sluggish doing. And then you might have people who, they actually enjoy it. And you and I might see like maybe our parents or others like they're literally enjoying their prayer and they want to pray more. And you're like, man, I can't even do the basics and you want to pray more? And for them, it's not a burden because they've tasted the sweetness of faith. The sweetness of faith is tasted when you and I stay away from haram and when we stay away from things we shouldn't be doing. And when we do engage in them, we just ask forgiveness and we try to change. It's not about expecting everybody to be perfect. Remember, we said Allah created mankind weak. He knows we're going to mess up. He created us to mess up, but it's about messing up and turning back to him. And then the Prophet Salaam said that every limb fornicates in some way. And he said the eyes fornicate and they do so by looking and the hands do so by touching. And this is very, very like, this is very much a comprehensive idea. He said the feet do so by walking to the haram place, right? The mouth does so by kissing and the heart does so by forming the thoughts, right? And the wishes and then so on and so forth until the other actions somebody engages in. What's important about this that if you apply this to our times, right? You could even be texting and your hands are in a state of fornicating because you're like trying to flirt with somebody. You're trying to like, you know, spark up a conversation with somebody and you are doing so with a lustful intention behind it. And so there are a lot more ways. Now, remember, every single limb gives account. I mean, SubhanAllah, every limb will give account and Allah will ask that limb and the limb will speak out either for us or against us. So say she or he was, the eyes will say that they read Quran and that they watched, that they looked at the Quran or that they watched pornography, right? Like which end of the spectrum does somebody wanna be on? And then of course, there's mediums in between the hand will say that they used me to do good and to give charity or no, they used me to like, you know send flirtatious text message and to swipe right and swipe left on Tinder. I mean, these will be statements and we'll have to stand before a God and answer about these statements. And some of them, I'm sure many of these things will feel embarrassed, right? Now imagine all of humanity watching us as Allah asks these questions and we ask Allah veil us and protect us on the day of judgment, ask these questions about why did you do this? Why did you do that, right? And our hands are will speak, our limbs will speak. That day the mouth is where you and I won't get to give explanation. Rhetoric will not help. It's going to be the other limbs that are speaking in their stead on that day. So we have to keep that in mind and that is the indication that we try not to get engaged in any form Zina any form of fornication by preventing it from even by even looking at something Haram let alone reaching out to somebody who we know we have a lustful desire attached to them let alone walking to a place that we know we're going to do something we're going to mess up and so on and so forth. This is very, very important. Now, what are the challenges though in our times that people struggle with, right? And again, by the way, the goal for these talks and I appreciate some of the comments here that, you know, it's often taboo. So the goal for these conversations is to be really real like we're just trying to be real and these are real issues. And my understanding is and I could be wrong but that our elders, our teachers and of course the prophecies and they didn't shy away from addressing the real things that were happening in their society and there were some really serious things, right? So let's talk about the real stuff. Let's start with the major thing that I believe that people in our society struggle with when it comes to lustful desires. We'll talk about, we'll start with this which is pornography. Why is pornography so dangerous, right? Pornography is dangerous because first and foremost it is the most intense form of Zina of Haram that I can commit the most intense form of fornication and it is a spiritual, it is a spiritual spear to the heart. It will destroy your heart. Literally it will completely destroy the spiritual heart when somebody engages in that. And look, that doesn't mean that if we're caught up in it we forget, we give up. No, no, no, we turn back to Allah. Allah can wipe our hearts clean in a minute. Ramadan is coming. We're already in a special month of Rajab. We're about to enter Ramadan in about a month and a half. So there's a lot of time until it for us to change. The goal is not for us to despair but it is for us to realize that, hey, we might be struggling with it. And if you're, if you have like siblings or you're a parent and you have kids, just know. And I know this through like having worked with a fair amount of youth that people are struggling with pornography, like a lot. And they're doing so on their phones. They're doing so in the middle of the night on their laptops. They're not like, you would likely have no clue that somebody in your house is engaged in that but they are. And that leads and it has significant damages in their worldly life just in terms of how it's gonna impact future marriage, future relations. There's a lot of damages gonna have let alone the spiritual damages and the spiritual damages sins and that people have grew and the impact it's gonna have in the next life. So what do we do about this, right? So if somebody is struggling with this or you know somebody who's struggling with this it's important to realize a couple of things. First is just realize the damage that it does. Number two is to actually, and I've seen people who like work in this field mentioned this to those who are like addicted to this stuff. Imagine that if somebody else was watching like a mother or sister of yours engaged in this activity. Imagine if somebody, they were watching that person. What would you do? You couldn't stand it. For sure you couldn't stand it, right? You would just lose your, you would completely erupt if you thought that someone was watching your mother or sister doing that type of act. Now you gotta keep in mind if you're struggling with this that is someone's mother or someone's sister or someone's daughter. So how could you allow for that type of objectification to happen to somebody? No, the human being is dignified. Somebody might be in a state where they're caught up in engaging in that act or doing so for the sake of money and whatnot. That doesn't mean that we get caught up by promoting that industry, by encouraging that industry. No, we have to be people that are calling to good and that are staying away from that. So that's the first thing to remember. The second thing is if someone is struggling with it it's okay, you reduce it slowly. You might not be able to get rid of the addiction immediately, you slowly work on it. I'm going to go from this many times a day to this many times a week to this many times a month and then I'm gonna work towards quitting this type of behavior and this type of action. The third thing that someone does is to pray to Allah to sincerely, this should really be the first thing but I'm just kind of going, no specific order here, pray to Allah to really help you with this situation. And if you're a sibling or a parent pray for Allah's protection for your children or for your siblings or whoever it is with this because this is very much present across society right now. Very much present. So pray for special protection for this type of stuff. It's not the same as it was back in the day. It's really not, it's too accessible, right? And this is, we're talking about there are two types here. You have like people actually going and logging in on like what are actually pornographic websites and then you have what's called basically soft pornography which is people seeing like people posting pictures of basically themselves make it even basic on platforms like Instagram, even on TikTok and other platforms stuff is happening. And so how do you respond to it? Well, you and I have to control ourselves and we have to help ourselves and we have to help other people who we know that are struggling with this. The fifth, the next thing that we do is we increase the amount of protective thicker that we're doing. So remember this, the more thicker somebody does the more light someone will have, the more light someone has, the farther away shaitan will, the less effect rather than shaitan will be able to have on them. And we see this in the hadith in the prophecy somewhere he says, he tells Satan the Omar that if you were to take, if you were to travel one path, shaitan fears you so he would travel another path because the light and the Augustness of Satan the Omar it was so amazing that shaitan couldn't stand it, right? Satan couldn't stand it. So that's possible. The more protective thicker somebody does the more they will assist in this. I know people who told me that they couldn't control lowering their gaze they couldn't control this desire. And then they started adding more thicker to their schedule. They started doing a couple of basic protection duas. They started adding in the sunnah morning duas and the sunnah evening duas. They started adding in a couple of these basic things, right? A recommendation that I've made before and I would say again is to read regularly, try to at least listen to on YouTube, if not read what's called the weird al-latif of Imam al-Haddad which is a compilation of the duas the prophecy someone would do in the morning in the evening and try to at least read that in the morning time. Weird W-I-R-D al-latif, L-A-I-T-I-F, sorry, L-A-T-I-F. So that is the way to protect ourselves. You gotta do more thicker. We know we're gonna struggle. So like if we're going into battle and remember when you were on the internet in some way or shape or form you were entering into a territory where people are gonna be coming at you in a negative way whether that's haters, which happens a lot or whether that's Haram coming at you. So you have to be protected. When you're out in the world, you have to be protected. It's like entering a spiritual battle. Spiritual battle should not be entered without spiritual preparation. Spiritual preparation is done so by asking Allah for protection. And it's best done through the sunnah du'as that the prophecy someone allocated and told us to do with professional protection. And if one isn't able to do that just make general du'a that Allah protects you from the type of lust that you and I might have or we might channel that. So that is a very high level overview, right? So first is realize it'll destroy your heart. We're talking here about someone who might have an addiction or regularly engage in pornography. Second is imagine if someone is doing this to like someone who's watching someone in your family a mom, sister, or daughter and realize that that person who someone is watching is a mom, sister, or daughter to somebody. So like that's how could you do that, right? Third thing is to reduce it slowly. Fourth is to realize that pray to Allah regularly to help you and pray for your family and your kids and others to be protected. And lastly is to increase the amount of protective thicker that you're doing. If you would do these four or five things Allah will help, inshallah. Allah helps the person who starts to work on themselves, inshallah. That's the first major bucket. The second major bucket of things that I believe that I've seen that people struggle with in our society is just an overall like, you know not an ability to lower their gaze and then that gets into like illicit relationships, right? So this comes from a desire of like maybe someone always wants to flirt if it's someone always wants to get attention maybe somebody always doesn't present themselves in a very specific way. So the opposite gender can be attracted to them. It happens all the time and you know the filters that we have on social media make that a lot like more inauthentic by just we can make ourselves look like ways we don't even truly look, right? And that comes then and someone sees that image and they might not lower their gaze, right? And so what do we have to do? First and foremost, we have to be people who follow that try to follow that commandment. Okay, I'm going to follow Allah's commandment and the Quran says to lower my gaze. I'm going to try, I might not succeed but if one out of every five times I can succeed if today I'm lowering my gaze zero times now every time I see something I shouldn't be looking at if one out of every five times I can succeed in lowering it, I'm improving. Remember, Shaitan will try to get you to go from zero to 100 real quick. It'll be like if you're either like a super, super saint in the religion or you're like a terrible, terrible, you know sinner who has no hope. Like he's going to try to point paint those extremes. Remember, this ummah is a middle nation as the Prophet Muhammad said. So you and I don't have to be on either extreme. We just have to try our best. Allah rewards it when you try. Remember that always Allah will reward you when you try. It's not about being perfect, not about getting it right. So with regards to this, we try to lower the gaze. We remember number one, the sweetness and the worship that will come and this overall calmness will feel. Number two, we realize that when we see haram and when we text somebody haram things when we text haram images and when we start to do this type of stuff, what happens? Anxiety builds up in the heart. Anxiety and depression come from a spiritual perspective from the limited understanding that I have is from the sins that we are committing. And it's very, very real. The more sins one commits, the darker the heart gets as the Prophet Muhammad told us. And the more dark the heart gets the more trepidation and worry and anxiety and problems the heart has. So we might have anxiety that we're feeling now because of certain things that we were doing six months ago or a couple months ago or even last week. You might not feel the effect of the sin immediately. There is an effect that that happens, right? So keep that in mind. It will help you when you lower your gaze it will help you with your anxiety. And third way to help reduce lowering the gaze or sorry to increase lowering the gaze is to again increase the number of thicker that someone is doing, the amount of thicker someone is doing. The same prescription for the one struggling with less and pornography is very similar here, right? Now the other thing to keep in mind is let's talk about specific places that you and I get into when someone might start to the desires aroused. Many times it'll be a specific app like Tinder or Instagram or something else where they're or you know, TikTok something else that someone is on and they see something you know that they shouldn't be seeing and then the desires get aroused and they start to follow down a bad path. So or it's a specific person that they're texting or DMing or messaging and there's a certain type of lustful slash love interest that's forming that we might think is gonna lead to marriage but it might not, we don't know, right? So we might be doing something we shouldn't be doing it's damaging us spiritually in the process. So if it's a specific app or a specific website that we're not able to control ourselves we should take a break from it. Doesn't mean permanently delete just take a break from it though until you're able to control yourself. I know people who deleted these apps and it's had tremendous spiritual benefit for them because they were able to take a break, reset, clean themselves or a lot of course cleanse them and then you know, keep still had stuff to work on but just okay now they were able to go back into it because the intense power of the lust that was being ignited wasn't as present. So if it's a specific app, delete it. If it's a specific website, block it. There's blockers you can get like on Mac book they have a blocker called self control which is an app. Sometimes when I'm working I'll like put, you know a couple of websites, news sites and others on that app and then even for the whole day I can't access those sites even if I wanna go read the news or whatever other sites somebody wants to book. So if it's a pornographic site someone's struggling to stop looking at, block it. Just control those things put those control mechanisms in place. Parents, you don't have to do this forcefully for your kids if you are a parent you should talk to them about it and because the helicoptering type of issue the helicoptering type of issue might become more challenging for somebody. So you wanna make sure you do it in a very, very gentle way with somebody. So what do we say specific app delete it specific website, block it. If it's a specific person that is inciting those desires distance yourself from them. If it's a specific place that one goes to stop going or bring someone with you. So if you know that like when I have my device alone in the room at this time that is time I'm gonna mess up, put your device away. If you know if I go to this person's house I'm gonna start to flirt with them or whatever it is don't go to their house. It's difficult, these are like simple things but they're difficult to do. So we just have to take what we can do and do our best with it. And if it's a specific time that we engage in this activity we fill that time with something else. So we do our best and again Allah will guide us. The other two things to help with this. First is too fast regularly. And you don't have to do that as a full day fast if it's not Ramadan. If it's you're just trying to control the desire you just reduce the food intake. So maybe you skip one meal, right? The less full someone is the less they will act on their desires. That's a proven methodology according to our religion. So you lessen the food intake and the animal instincts inside of you become weakened and then you don't act in that type of way. So food and lessful desire are directly linked. The second thing to do to make sure to do this in more broad way. So the first is to control the food intake. The second thing is to increase the bigger intake as we mentioned. The third is to say out with the bilim and shaitan energy regularly. As soon as we are about to do something to say out with the bilim and shaitan energy it'll stop it to a degree. It will in sha Allah because shaitan is coming at you and it'll immediately heal leaf. The next thing is to never be alone with the opposite gender in either some type of private communication in the same room to the best of our ability because that's when the desire starts to start, right? So when you and I are like texting somebody and we're not married to them and we're slowly starting that conversation DMing them and doing all this stuff we know where it's gonna lead to. We want it to lead somewhere and that place we want it to lead to is a desire of ours that's impermissible. So we have to just cut it off at the root, right? And keep this in mind. The best thing to do, the best thing to do in Mama Ghazali mentions is to break this at the outset, that to cut it off at the outset. He said to cut the desire off at the outset meaning to like immediately lower the gaze or immediately close the app or to immediately delete it or something like that. He's like, it's like pulling a bowl before it gets to the gate. Imagine you have a bowl, like an animal, a bowl and it's about to get to the gate. It's like, you know, there's a gate and it's gonna run in the field after that. If you cut it off at the outset it's like controlling the bowl before it gets to the gate. But if you try to treat it after it has, after the outside, after the desire has been stirred it's like the bowl is running loose in the field and you're literally chasing it and trying to catch it from its tail. That's not gonna be easy to do. It's possible it's not gonna be easy though, right? So this is why cutting the desire at the outset is important. These are addictions and addictions. They take us completely. They completely consume us, right? So that's a kind of general prescription that scholars outline. So what is, we'll review it one more time. It's to control the desire at the outset. It's to never be alone with the opposite gender. It's to reduce our food intake and fast regularly. It's to increase our thicker intake and it's to say, I would be lend a shit on energy. And it's to cut that thing off. So it's an app, we cut it off. If it's a website, we stop going on it. If it's a, or we block it. If it's a person, we limit our communication with them and so on and so forth. This is the way that we can hopefully start to do this and most importantly, inshallah, Allah will help us. And lastly, what is the way to channel this in the right direction? So I did say that we'll talk about the way to channel this in the right direction. Having sexual desire is not haram in and of itself but channeling it in the wrong direction in the lustful direction is what's not allowed. So we can channel it in the right direction. What do we do? The first thing is to actively channel the desire in the right direction is to get married. Now, what does that mean? Obviously someone has to be in a position where they're capable and they're able to get married. At the same time, though, we do need to have real conversations in our community about having extremely high expectations that parents might impose on kids. Say you have to be this age, the girl or the guy has to be like this, look like this, walk like this, be of this position, be of this race in order for you to get married to them. We set expectations so high and I can guarantee you for the parents who if you're doing that, your kids are in some way or another starting to get into some form of illicit relationships. It's almost impossible to control a desire in this country. And if you and I as people, if we have kids, if we are the ones who limit them from getting married when they feel like they're ready to get married, the haram and the sexual desires that they get into, the lustful desires that they get into, that's on us. That's on the person who limited them. Keep that in mind. So be much more open-minded. This is not the same as things used to be way back in the day. Like this stuff is way too easy to get into. You don't want someone's spiritual heart to be ruined. Someone's mental health to be ruined. Someone's addictive addictions to go up all because we were not able to have a very frank conversation about getting married at an appropriate age. If someone is out of college and they're able to like earn some money, they're like in their early 20s, I believe personally, they should get married even younger than that. I think if they're able to manage it, they should do it because otherwise the desires just keep increasing. People are hooking up with people, people are on Tinder. And again, 95% of parents and whatnot don't even have a sense of the stuff that's going on on the internet because they might not be engaged in it themselves or the different apps someone's in. So that's the first thing, is to get married and to have a halal way that someone is able to release these desires. The second is if you're not able to do that, the energy that one is trying to activate or release with these desires, one does so in other means. So one takes up the sport, one's exercise, one does some other intense activity to release that energy. That is not a long-term cure like the way marriage is, but it is a way for us practically speaking to say, okay, every time I'm about to do this, I'm gonna go run instead. I'm gonna go do this and say it's gonna release a certain type of dopamine inside of you that is going to still trigger similar things that would have been triggered with that other addiction that one has. So those are really the two like ways that I believe and a lot of those best there's probably more if you have others please comment and suggest that one can channel this desire and this lustful desire in the right direction. So that's really the main thing you wanna keep this brief. So if anybody has any questions, I'll wrap up. And if anyone has questions, please post them in the chat or the Q and A section wherever it is. And I'll go ahead and try to answer a couple of these questions or comments or things you've seen or concerns and whatnot, please do so. And we'll go ahead and try to answer it. I see someone said, yes, this topic needs to be addressed. And I totally agree. So just as a kind of recap, while we wait for any questions to come in again, the goal here is like be open, create an open forum, ask whatever questions it is that are on someone's mind and we'll do our best to address them. And inshallah, if not, we'll do our best to check with a qualified person and hopefully get back to you in a future week or in a future discussion. But just as kind of a quick review, we spoke about sexual desire and we know that it is something that Allah created in us. It's something that is a good thing if channeled in the right direction. It's to allow us to marry, it's allow us to have kids, it's allow us to understand that it's a small portion of the delight of the afterlife as according to Mama Wazali. At the same time though, the societies that we're living in are full of lust, full of desire, full of promiscuity, full of sex at younger and younger ages. And so we have to do our best to control this desire. And the way to do that is to lower our gaze, to cut it off at its root, to try to fast often, to try to increase our bigger intake and to turn to Allah sincerely and ask Him for help. And if we are caught up in a major, major difficulty like we're addicted to pornography or something else, we do what I just mentioned before and we slowly reduce our intake if we can't cut it off directly. Cutting off directly is obviously preferred and we reduce our intake of that. And then we cut off the apps or the websites or the different channels it is that we are consuming this stuff from or the people it is that we're engaging in this stuff with. And inshallah slowly and slowly, Allah will facilitate, Allah will help. We ask that Allah bless all of you. He make this easy for you. Anybody who's sick, may Allah cure you. And inshallah, I'll see if there's any questions. I don't see any pop up. If anybody has anything, please post it in the chat. Inshallah, otherwise we'll go ahead and end. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillahi rabbil al-alameen. Allahumma salli wa sallim al-barakala Sayyidina Muhammad al-Ali wa sallim. Ya Allah, ya Rahman, ya Rahim. Ya Allah, please allow us to channel our desires in the right direction. Please allow us to channel our desire, ya Allah, and have knowledge of you and love of you and to desire your heaven, ya Allah, to desire your agenda and to desire you, ya Allah, and desire closeness and nearness to you and nearness to your prophet, sallam ya Allah. Please forgive us and pardon us for any impermissible things that we've done, for any haram thing we've looked at or anything else it is that was just pleasing to you. And please cover us in your mercy and your love. And please forgive all of those that are struggling with their life. All those who are here and present and watching or have any intention to work on themselves. Please forgive them and pardon them. And please assist us in all of our different situations and all of our different affairs. Please allow us to control our desires. Please allow us to lower our gaze. Please allow us to be people who are people of chastity and people who are pure inside and outside. And please allow us to have love of you and your prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, wa sallam al-barakala Sayyidina Muhammad al-Ali wa sallim. Alhamdulillah. Thank you so much, JazakAllah. I don't see any question. And yeah, someone said, I deleted my social media and it has lowered, yeah, it lowered my lust desires. Totally feel you, man, like, or yeah, totally feel that. I know a lot of people that's happened with just because the amount of things that are out there that we're seeing when we're just scrolling, we can't, you don't even have time to lower your gaze because the next scroll is something else, right? So totally, totally feel you. Thank you for sharing that. I don't see any of the questions. I'll give it another like 20 seconds or so, otherwise we'll go ahead and end. Thank you all so much for taking the time.