 As always, it is wonderful to be back with people that you love and familiar faces that we ask Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala to keep us together in this Dunya. And most importantly, to be together in the Barzakh, in the intermediary realm, and on Yom Al-Qiyamah. And insha'Allah Ta'ala, and in Paradise, at the highest levels, at that point where Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala و نزعنا ما في قلوبه من غل, and that where Allah Ta'ala removes any type of ghil, which is actually in his introduction I just noticed here, where he removes all types of ranker, and anything that anyone would ever have in his heart for, that any other person, اخوانا رصورا متقابلين, they are brothers on couches facing one another. And just think about the purity of what is experienced from the blessings of brotherhood, and the blessings of sisterhood, and the hereafter, and that everything that is, that one experiences, Alhamdulillah, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala has given us this opportunity. And really in a time where there's so many people that are so lonely, and there's so many people that have reached the point of despair, don't have anyone to take care of them, and if anyone's ever seen old folks home, or visited one, and to see how so many people end up towards the end of their lives, to have people, and to see that is a real eye-opener, and we have to really be thankful to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala for everything that is that we have in all of our blessings, and one of those greatest blessings of all is the blessing of companionship. And Subhanallah, I think we've all learned that in this past year or so, what happens when you're not able to be around people as you normally would, when you're not able to maintain relationships and visit one another as you normally would. Should I just leave this aside, it's a great key back. And we've all learned how much we actually need those interactions, and sometimes they might think like they're very normal or even mundane, what happens kind of on a day-to-day basis, just receiving a text from a friend, calling some whatever it might be, but then all of a sudden you're deprived of that, and then you start to see the repercussions after. And so this is really one of the most important things of all, and one of the great blessings of all is that we have a concept of brotherhood. And as we will be reading today, and again we're going to take what we can from this blessed book of Dehrar, as we'll be reading, the standard is extremely, extremely high. And someone might argue that there's no reason even mentioning that high of a standard if there's no way that you can possibly attain it. And I would put forth that actually it's helpful to know what's out there, to know what people achieved in a very real sense previously, so that we can know where we're at in relation to it and do what it is that we can. So just because we'll be mentioning the lofty standards that Imam al-Husadi is putting forth for what it really means to have brotherhood with someone or sisterhood with someone and to love each other for a lot of other Qaddaa's sake, that's an extremely high standard. But it doesn't mean that we just neglect it completely because we can't attain that high standard. We do what it is that we can, and we inch in that direction and try to do what is facilitated for us. And that really if I kind of take it back, this was also by suggestion that we do this particular book. And as our dear beloved Sidi Mahdi said, I do love the Ahl al-Madin. It is a passion that I have to read this blessed work, and it is a work that does bring your heart to life. And one of the secrets, as he pointed to, was Imam al-Husadi was a person who internalized these meanings. And there's this beautiful, and this is the good thing about California, you can talk about things that you can't talk about in other places because the hearts receive it. There's this beautiful section in Ibris where the student of C.W. Aziz al-Dabagh, the Ahl al-Madin of Barak, he was critical of something Imam al-Husadi said, and I believe it was in the context of what he said about the best of all possible worlds. He said, And he was very critical of Imam al-Husadi, and reached to the point where he was almost attacking his person as opposed to his position. And there's a difference. And when C.A. Aziz, being a person of inner sight, perceived this, he stopped him. And he says, Imam al-Husadi is a great puttup. He's one of the greatest of the Awliya. And from the Barzakh, he visits me regularly and asks me questions, indicating that this is someone who's very special. And there are even those like mentioned, as Habib Ahmadzain, Habshi mentioned in his commentary of the Shahr al-Aniyad, Imam al-Hadad's work. He says that even though he wasn't from Ahl al-Bait, and this is in rare exception, the very few that have assumed the Maqam of al-Qutb al-Qubra from other than Ahl al-Bait, they do it ultimately na'ib al-Ahl al-Bait, that on behalf of the family of the Prophet, but their few Imam al-Husadi was one of them, he held the position for three days. So Imam al-Husadi is one of these people who internalize this knowledge. And one of the most important books of all that we can read and reread and reread time and time again, several times throughout our life, and that we should encourage teenagers and people, as they mature and get into their early 20s as well, to read is the book al-Munqad min al-Dalad. And the most accessible translation we have until there's another option is R. J. McCarthy's translation, which is titled, Al Ghazadi's Path to Sufism. This is a really beneficial book where Imam al-Husadi talks about his experience, and it's an autobiography where he explains what it is that he went through, what it is that transpired in his life, and how he went through his two famous crises, was brought out of them by Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, the first being that a more existential crisis, and then it was a light that Allah placed in his heart that brought him out of that, and the second was a spiritual crisis, that again Allah forced him to be in a state of what is called ildirar, and he actually quotes the verse, and then Allah brings him out of this state, as a bounty from him, subhanahu wa ta'ala. But he then goes on to say that what he realized is all of the ways to come to know, any way that you can come to know, whether it be through philosophy, or whether it be through theology, or that whatever it may be he found, the best way to truly come to know was to tread a path of drawing near to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, by putting the knowledge of the sacred law into practice, and then the veil that is lifted as a result, in other words the science of ildirar, is that this is the best way to truly come to know reality as it is, and so when he writes this book, he is writing this book from a heart that is alive, and here we are 950 roughly years later benefiting from his scholarship, and this is a great blessing, and even have these windows into the souls of these individuals, because if you think about it, every single way that we would write, that we think about a meaning, and then we put pen to paper, and now that fingertips to keys, and then the words come out. But what was our state when we were writing? If we're facing the qiblah, it's going to be different than if we're not facing the qiblah. If we're in a state of wudu, it's going to be in a better state, if we're not in a state of wudu. If we are a person of zikr, it's that our fikr is going to be monowa. If we remember Allah more, when we write, the words are going to be illuminated. If we are people who put our knowledge into practice, the words that emanate are going to be different, and so forth and so on. In other words, it's that how our heart is in a state of our very heart will determine how the words that emanate from our heart are received. And so, reading a text like this from such a great author and such a pious person has tremendous benefit, and what a better place to do it amongst the people that you love and that you hope. There is some degree of these realities present in a very real way that we can then seek the fruits of them, masha'Allah, as long as we are alive here in this world and then most importantly in the next. So, having said that, we only really have two sessions, and so we're not going to be able to cover the entire book, but I still think that we can cover the main themes of the book. And I wanted to start right off the bat with this introduction and then briefly walk us through the various chapters of this work so we can understand the scope of what Imam al-Zadi is trying to treat in his discussion on brotherhood. So, there is a translation of part of the book. Many of you might have seen it. It's that translated by Muhtar Haaland, and published by the Islamic Foundation. But really, he only translates one of the chapters of the whole book. And he focuses on the actual duties, and it's called the duties of brotherhood and Islam. So, he doesn't translate most of the other chapters. He focuses on that one, which is beneficial. And we were going to be covering this in the second session today, but it is worth really looking at the title itself of this book because we think of this book of the Ahyat only in the sense of, we think of it only in the sense of brotherhood, but actually the intention behind Imam al-Zadi was that it be more vast than that. And this is the fifth book of the second quarter of the Ahyat. So, you all are probably all familiar with what that means by now. The Ahyat is divided into four quarters. And the second quarter is the quarter on adat. And it's a very difficult word to translate, and customs doesn't really convey the meaning as you would want it to. But the meaning of adat comes from adirudu, something you return to. So these are things that are part and parcel of life. Things that we are doing in relation to other people. So you could say it relates to our interpersonal relationships or our dealings, our interactions with people. And so this is the fifth book in this quarter. And the title that Imam al-Zadi gave it was kitabu adab suhbati. So this is the book on the adab, the plural of adab. And again, this is a very important word. And it's better probably just to leave it as it is, but it can be translated as manners, proprieties, etiquettes, however you choose. So on the etiquettes are the proprieties of suhbah, which is companionship. Wal-ukhua and brotherhood. And why would someone use a word suhbah and then ukhua when they seem to be seminars? There might be people that you have very strong ukhua with brotherhood, but you rarely see them. You could have a brother on the other side of the world that you might only see twice a year, or once a year, or once every five years. But your ukhua, your brotherhood with that brother is benefiting you on a daily basis in a very real way, much more than the people that you have the suhbah with, companionship of, and that you are actually interacting with on a daily basis. From the blessing of the bond. And look at the beauty here of how the vision of Islam is and what we're taught about the realities of disdain. All of the merit that we will soon hear about establishing a brotherhood with another person and loving people for a lot of other kutada's sake, distance does not harm that, nor does death. Distance nor death cannot separate you from the benefits of that relationship, no matter where they are on the face of this earth. And you'll benefit in the moment, in every moment, that the reality of that is there. And there are people that have even, by way of karama, have had such a close bond where you hear a jahib of wonders, but the purpose of this story is to mention what is possible. Where there are stories where people have such a close connection where even in a physical sense, someone does something in one part of the world and someone else might feel the effects of that in another part of the world. And it might be something as mundane as even eating where someone eats with the intention of that benefiting his brother and someone on the other side of the earth benefits from that, even though he didn't physically intake what that person did. In other words, is that if the relationship becomes so strong that someone really wants to share all of the blessings that they receive with that other person in that moment by virtue of that connection, as this person receives, that person receives. And as that person receives, it's a two-way thing. That person receives. And so you're being raised and ranked and ascending spiritually without doing anything outwardly in every single moment. What a blessing. And this is why they have always said as the a'mal al-Qulub are so much heavier in the scales than the a'mal al-Jawadah. The acts of the heart are so much heavier in the scales than the acts that we do with our limbs. And we're not juxtaposing the two to each other. They're both needed. They're not mutually exclusive. We need both. And we are on both fronts simultaneously. And the outward impacts the inward and the inward impacts the outward and so forth. However, this is one example of how someone could be benefiting immensely in every single moment and be raised up in degrees merely by having a strong connection with another person. And this translates in the hereafter by virtue of that love which is the bond of that connection. Then if Allah when Allah ta'ala says wajabat mahabdi la ilahe illallah that now as a virtue of loving your brother for Allah's sake in the world Allah will declare Yom Kiamah his love for you. And even though nothing is an obligation upon Allah Allah uses this terminology to emphasize the blessing of having that relationship here. That Allah will surely show his love and give his love to those who love each other for Allah ta'ala ta'ala ta'ala say. So when you look at it from this perspective what a blessing to have a Dean like this. What a blessing. And that was surely something that impacted this Fakir from a very early on having converted in the Bay Area and been shown so much love in the Bay Area by so many different beautiful people. And if you would have asked me that as a young man at the age of 19 becoming Muslim if I would have had very close friends that were like at that time 30 years old so like 10 years older than me or in their 40s or even in their 50s I would have been like I don't think I'll ever have like close friends that are that old. Normally you're kind of roughly in the range of your age group and they might be people that you like a few years older but not only like and respect to have a close connection with and in spanning different cultures from different ethnicities to different ethnic backgrounds what a blessing. What a blessing from Allah Ta'ala and those days are sweet and some of the people Mashallah are still here I still remember going to city Yusuf's house Mashallah Tabarak Allah when he was living in East Oakland with our dear brother Mustafa Davis meeting our Filipino brother Ramel Rogini very early on and his conversion with Sheikh Khotri were you there when Ramel converted? Yes I was there and that Mustafa was trying to give Dawah to Ramel and he wasn't really trying to hear it but then he just took him to see Sheikh Khotri and his house I think was off Catherine Street was it? and then Sheikh Khotri started talking and that Ramel interrupted him and he confused the word shahada with jihad and so he says I'm ready to take my jihad and he makes like giving me your shahada with Sheikh Khotri and that subhanallah that what a blessing what a blessing and these meanings the more that they become firm in the heart this is what gives us solace when we lose our brothers this is what gives us solace that we know that inshallah this is real and this is not just about this dunya inshallah when we lose people that were our age that we knew very well and they returned to Allah Tabarra Qatala this is what gives us solace because if this is real it doesn't end with death and this is why we all need iman this is why we all need iman there's no way that you can really withstand the vicissitudes of life and to experience difficulty in this world without iman we should pity people who have not been blessed with iman and pity them not in a way where we think we're better than they are in a way where we are completely impoverished before our lord subhanahu wa ta'ala and thankful for the blessing that we've been given and hold firmly on to it and want the same for other people in hopes that they also get to experience what people of iman get to experience in this world but this is why it's so important that we preserve it that we preserve it and that we talk about it and we put ourselves in environments regularly so that it can increase because we know that iman increases and decreases based upon what it is that we do so his book is the various etiquettes of companionship and brotherhood but he doesn't stop there Mu'ashara is to spend time with someone to interact with someone and so in interacting with all different types of people and this is one of the chapters of course that he didn't translate but there is a beautiful section at the end where he talks about the hukuk of a Muslim the rights of a Muslim the rights of the neighbor the rights of others and this is very important actually that might have been a better place for us to begin let's all start from the level of giving each other their rights but really in our context there's so many of us that are not giving other Muslims their rights it's hard for us to even talk about brotherhood because brotherhood is after that maybe if we have time I'll just read through a few of them and most of you probably already know but when you see them listed it's very impactful because you realize that maybe that's where we should begin let's give everybody their rights first because the rights are not voluntary this is not where we're like oh I'm going to think about whether I should give this brother his right or not or this sister her right or not you have to give everybody their rights not too long ago and the weekly gathering that we had of our citation of the modem where we were looking at the rights of Muslims and we didn't finish and it would have probably required like another eight or nine sessions because it's actually quite extensive and that these rights are important because it's the glue that keeps people together that keeps a community together that keeps a message together and so forth and so on it keeps even a family together and so they can't be that understated anyhow this is essentially what this book is all about and that he always begins each book of the Ahia with Dibaja this beautiful flowery that rhyme prose and he says here he says so we'll just translate this very generally he says I'll praise you to the one who has that immersed the choice servant of his with the subtle manifestations of singling him out that's solely from his bounty and that he that created familiarity and love between their hearts and so they became through his blessing Ikhwanin brothers he removed all ranker and ranker is just a terrible thing in the heart that prevents you from having a good connection with a person from their hearts and that so that they remained while they were here in this world friends and loved ones and then in the hereafter they will be companions and that intimate friends and may the peace and blessings be upon that our master Muhammad the chosen one and upon his family and companions and that followed in his example and they followed what he did what he said and were just as he was just and that showed excellence as he showed excellence and one of the great blessings we should never be wary of these introductions and sometimes people when they give introduction to people let's just get to the point why do you think all the scholars did this they're not just doing it for the sake of doing it they're not just doing it because oh that sounds good let's just begin with some flowery rhyme prose that's not why they're doing it they're doing it for a very very very deep meaning everything that is that we're going to talk about what they're saying is this has come to us through transmission there's a source this is ultimately that rooted in revelation by Allah given to the prophet in terms of the Quran vis-a-vis the archangel Gabriel and then that through the various other prophetic narrations and those generations that the prophet the generation that the prophet reared himself that generation that were his companions including those that were directly from his family sallallah I sent him those that follow them and that learn from them and learn from them until this day and age what a blessing there's so many meanings in this so that this doesn't just remain an academic exercise where this is not about mental acrobatics where we can analyze the text and show exactly that's interesting to do and sometimes you can point to the fact that that's important in many ways but that's not the whole point is to just in a very academic fashion look at these words and talk about how great they are what really matters is that we put them into practice and by always starting with that proper introduction one of the many meanings there is that everything that it is that we are talking about is not just theory there are individuals that in although they were human beings had put these meanings into practice in the very highest way that are then exemplars for the generations that come after them that can inspire you and I who are trying to learn maybe won't call it your theory but the knowledge portion of this and how it is that you and I can put it into practice we know this has been done by generations of people that came before us we know that throughout the centuries people after those early generations also learn these principles and we can put them into practice and by beginning in this way we're connecting ourselves to that tradition and positioning ourselves to not just have these words enter into one ear and exit the next but in a very real way that we then can put them into practice so he says here he's transferring now from his introductory words to what it is that this book is all about Wow loving each other for Allah's sake mutual love and that brotherhood for his sake brotherhood and his religion from the greatest ways that we draw near to Allah what else what is used in the practice of adat it's a very precise Ibar and the most subtle of things that are benefited from things that are considered to be acts of worship that relate to our adat the customary things that we do is a part of our human life there are conditions though that serve as prerequisites when they are fulfilled those that are with each other outwardly they have companionship will then be considered to be among the ranks of those who love each other for Allah's sake just as they have rights when those rights are fulfilled the brotherhood is pure it's pure from all of the different blemishes that might arise or the various whisperings and promptings of the shaitan what a beautiful frame so sometimes we think of rights in a very different sense that he's pointing to one of the wisdom one of the wisdoms of Haqq of rights is that when they're preserved you're going to be able to preserve the brotherhood in particular he says so all of us have had friends in our lives and we know that sometimes certain things happen we have challenges where we don't feel the same way about those people as we did before and it might have been because of a shortcoming on one of the two sides or someone didn't feel that their brother helped them in this particular instance or does something of some sort and what a beautiful frame that when we look at the whole idea of Haqq it's not just about okay there's something I have to do no this is a blessing from Allah to preserve what it is that we're supposed to receive from that particular thing in this case brotherhood so when people fulfill the rights there'll be saha there'll be purity in the relationship and that purity is a prerequisite or you could say is a channel that leads to love if there's kudorat which is which is the opposite of purity where that your heart is just not feeling the same about your brother you're bothered by something that he did something that he said or something he didn't do or didn't say that prevents that prevents love from being there in the heart because you're caught up on that particular thing and on one hand is that your brother needs to do a little better on your hand too there's things that you need to do to clear that channel and finish flowing back and forth so by upholding their rights someone draws closer to Allah when we're half of the half other to now do it and by preserving it is that the highest of degrees are attained so he's going to now clarify the aims of this book which fall into three chapter headings and the the first chapter is on the fadila the merit of what is called ulfa or iltha and this is a word that means familiarity it could also be translated as the love that's in your heart for another person that even it could also be translated as intimacy and and then so he's going to talk about the merit of it its conditions, its degrees and its benefits and then in chapter 2 he talks about the rights of companionship and the adab the necessary things that must be present when you are taking the companionship of someone and then it's in the third chapter that he'll get into the various rights we'll talk about the right of a Muslim the right of family members the rights of your neighbors the rights of that all these different types of people that we are interacting with and so before that we look at this first part which is on the fadila, the merit let's just walk through here very quickly some of these other chapters because he includes in the introduction the general topics that he'll cover but he has some very interesting topics here and he has one that says he has a whole breakdown and it's going to be hard for us to get to this because it's a very precise and detailed discussion but Imam al-Azadi is a master of wanting us to understand the frame and get it right from the beginning and then he'll talk about the details and this is a beautiful example of how he unites transmitted knowledge with rational knowledge and the way that he explains things doesn't allow anyone to misunderstand any of the details outside of context because he almost always throughout the entire iqiyah provides the context so book one in a sense provides the whole context of the entire iqiyah al-umad-din but then in the second half of the iqiyah he provides the context for the remaining part of his book and then in each book he provides the context for the specific subject and then sometimes in some of his tangents he'll provide the context for the particular discussion which is in that particular chapter he wants us to understand in the broadest sense how to situate this particular topic in terms of our understanding of the deem and this is very beautiful and extremely helpful and the more you read Imam al-Azadi's books the more by reading it it trains you to be able to do this so you might be speaking to a person and that person could be a Muslim and there's something that you want to talk to them about and if you don't know how to speak about that topic in context then you are likely to miss the mark and you'll speak to them but you won't reach them and here is that the outward dimension is not enough the inward dimension is also very important and really the inner dimension is more important sometimes if your heart is enlightened even if you make a mistake in terms of that your words can pierce people's hearts and I've seen people that outwardly you would probably say oh that's kind of bad datwa but it worked really well like bad in terms of the way that you think that you actually should have dealt with that particular situation but it worked very well I've seen people that are very blessed like when my father was in Tareem give him very direct hour and actually it was in the context of brotherhood there was this instance where and this was one of the great scholars of Tareem and he was talking to my father saying a number of things and I was translating of course and then he was saying how brotherhood is a good thing we want to have more people we want to have more brothers but then he got very jelali but if you leave without becoming muslim mashayukhu no brother I was like whoa how do I translate that so anyhow that if someone else would say that to someone like you could lose them forever but this person was such a special person a man of Allah it actually had the opposite effect even though he didn't become muslim right then and there that he left the gathering in awe and was doing nothing but praising that particular individual because of that person's presence so sometimes people have the ability to do that nevertheless what we like ultimately is to balance between the two where we take into consideration the context but then we that know them how to speak about and articulate the particular point that we're trying to make Imam al-Rizadi is a master at this and so he has this whole discussion about what does it mean like in its reality and what is the true nature of that having brotherhood for the sake of Allah and we're not going to say brotherhood and sisterhood it's understood when we say brotherhood this includes the sisterhood of the sisters with the other sisters and that's a given so and then he wants to give us clear signs on how to distinguish that from that a more worldly type of brotherhood and so he goes into these that breakdowns of that loving someone for their essence and then loving someone for other than their essence but for a worldly reason and then loving someone that's not for their essence for another person for another reason and then the benefits of that relationship doesn't come back to any worldly benefit rather it's for the afterlife as I mentioned it gets very technical and then that finally that loving someone for the sake of Allah and what does that actually mean and so forth and so on so he goes into a lot of detail there of all of the reasons that we love and gets to the heart of the matter what does it truly mean to love for the sake of Allah even if we don't study this by looking at what we need to look at we'll still get the gist of this chapter but if we did want to read further and we have access to Arabic it is worth reading because he then follows that chapter up with another chapter and that this is the exposition on that we have love for the sake of Allah and that you have hate for the sake of Allah and we have to again frame this properly because this is a topic in our time that when you start speaking about people get very sensitive like what do you mean and people will jump on you very quickly about this concept but it's very simple there's things that we love and there's things that we hate in terms of your own body Allah made you naturally inclined to like certain things and to dislike certain things to protect your physical body does any of us like pain nobody likes pain unless there's something that wrong with them no one likes to have pain so we've all burnt our finger before on the stove and we know that hurts so we hate because when you speak about it in English it's just even difficult because we don't speak of it necessarily in the same sense but we hate to be burned okay so our hatred of being burned protects us from being burned you're careful around the stove you're careful around fire when you hate something or you dislike something it's a means for you to be protected from that thing and even in terms of fire the same distinction is there we don't hate fire for the sake of hating fire we hate the fact that that fire will hurt us if it touches our hand but at the same time fire is a sign of Allah and that it's a part of the wonder of His creation so from the standpoint of fire being fire we see it as something a lot to add to created and try to learn the wisdom of it but from the standpoint that it burns us it's something that we don't like the same thing goes with people is that people that are going to harm us in this world and in the next i.e. if we let what is in them see into us so some type of disbelief or some type of bad trait of some sort by you hating that person will clarify what that means it's a protection for you from having that thing that will harm you that reach you so just as we don't want to be harmed by in any physical sense and it's even a greater type of harm don't want to be harmed in a spiritual or religious sense and so that hating now is not hating the person's essence we hate the trait that they have within them that would then harm us so in so far as there's disbelief in that person we have to hate disbelief to protect ourselves from it we have to hate that character we have to hate wrong in order to protect ourselves from it but we don't hate the person itself who has that disbelief or that wrong unless we die in that state and that's how they were sealed until that Yom Kriyama but then how do we really know how people ended we judge outwardly according to the Shia so in general in most case scenarios when it comes to other people what we mean by hating for the sake of Allah is to protect ourselves from anything that would derail us in relation to this religion and that's totally understood and in anything else why wouldn't that be the same case when it comes to the religion and it comes to the Ar-Deen so that's a topic in himself but he goes into great detail about this and then he has this very beneficial section and he says the various descending degrees of various people that we have to have bullied for for the sake of Allah that we have to dislike for the sake of Allah and how did you interact with them and this is really really important because he goes into all of these details where first of all he talks about people disbelief not everybody is the same and he'll talk about in a very traditional sense the Muharram someone who's at war with the Muslims is not like the them-mean and then that the them-mean that might be a family member is not like the them-mean who's not a family member and then in our context living as a Muslim minority in the non-Muslim majority country has it so there's a lot of nuance here of various degrees of even disbelief and then someone who is than someone who is that outwardly atheist and then atheist in our context now there's multiple ways John Gray has a book on I think it's called The Seven Types of Atheism there's so much detail here but this is very important knowledge that you and I have to have when we are interacting with people especially in a place like we are we're not in the Muslim world and there are different ways in this particular regard that we might deal with certain things that would be dealt differently in a Muslim country and there's a lot of examples of that but then also in relation to that other aspects he goes into details where he talks about the Muptarak the person who has a heretical belief but is he calling to that or is he not calling to that would he impact someone would he not impact someone and so forth and so on that we deal with all of these different people that not practicing the way that they should in a state of disobedience are they that outwardly doing it are they impacting other people and calling to it are they not all of these people are different and we deal with them differently and we have to know the time and place for everything and in general what I understand if you want to summarize our time this is a time that is very difficult and this is a time where we have to focus on mercy and to be a source of upliftment for people this is really a time where we have to have overwhelming mercy for people and really try to embrace people and to inspire people and to uplift people this is a very very difficult time and this is why it's so important not to read these texts out of context to read these texts from masters who have put them into practice and show you how specifically to put them into practice in your given time and in your given circumstance and ultimately this is one of the meanings of fiqh in the deen in the broadest sense of having an understanding of the deen and you understand there are different ways that we ultimately deal with every person but in a day where you have things like industrial medicine where it's just one medicine for all and it's not necessarily tailored to the individual and we have this lost wisdom of things like temperaments where we recognize okay that maybe every human being doesn't need eight glasses for our day maybe this one only needs four maybe this one needs five and that even these that people that are into natural that medicine incures and all of a sudden there's a type of food that comes out and then everybody's on board to everybody's drinking pomegranate juice or doing this where we lose the nuance and we forget that no actually we have to have individual device for every individual person and sometimes it's somewhat similar and sometimes there's certain things that work for groups of people but this is where wisdom is lies is how to interact with each individual person and what do we need to know to give them the correct advice or to speak to them in the right way at the right time and I remember and this was such a lesson I remember being present where there was someone who came to my teacher and he asked him or he said to him that I haven't prayed in years I hadn't prayed in years and this person clearly was broken and wasn't happy at the fact that he hadn't prayed and my teacher responded by saying the most important thing of all is to maintain humility in your heart that was his response and was he saying that it was okay for him not to pray no of course not but he felt that he knew in that particular instance this person was so broken if he would have come down hard on him and be like what's wrong with you why haven't you prayed that don't you realize that every prayer that you missed that your name is posted on how far that this person named Mr. Prane has to enter that would have probably destroyed that person and that led him to completely give up into completely lose hope so he indicated that based upon his particular state what he needed to do in order to start praying again and because this person is also looking for a sense of belonging and this is something it's very important for anyone that's running a masjid or is that related and is involved with the community the vast majority of people are looking for a sense of belonging we all are we all are and this person that needed that reinforcement that okay I still have even though I've done these major sins which he knew that they were wrong but the sense of belonging is still there and as a result that this individual started praying again shortly after that but this is wisdom this is wisdom and this is how it is that you and I need to be with various types of people so this gives us an understanding of the different types of people and it's reminiscent of that what Ibn Mawak says in his book where he talks about the seven stations of the religion so then he's going to talk about the various traits that we should look in for the people that we want to take the companionship of and then he gets into the rights sorry he gets into the conditions of brotherhood and then he'll get into the various rights so that's roughly what he's doing in this book we will try to cover as much as we can but we're going to for the remaining part of this session look at some of the blessed narrations that indicate the merit of Ulfa in their conditions so the way that he prefaces this is that he talks about the importance of Ulfa and this is directly mentioned in a hadith which we will get to but he says here is that Ulfa which is something that the Sharia and our prophet encouraged to have familiarity between ourselves to love each other for a lot of other Qutada's sake to have that a sense of intimacy in relationships and this doesn't mean between man and woman this means between the same gender he says that Ulfa is the Thamara of good character when you have good character people naturally will have a good relationship what what when people that are alienated from each other it is the fruit of having bad character so good character leads to mutual love that mutual familiarity and mutual understanding where people are getting along whereas bad character leads people to be at odds with one another what to haasud where they envy one another what to dabar where they are now alienated from each other and so that when the fruit is praise worthy is that that which the fruit leads to is also praise worthy so he frames this whole discussion in terms of good character which is beautiful he doesn't just get right into the narrations he says that if we are going to really have good relationships and establish a brotherhood for a lot of other's sake and have people that we experience the realities of the very first thing we have to discuss is good character because if you don't have good character that relationship is going to be short lived and into the degree of the good character is to the degree that relationship will remain and be permanent in this world then in the next in other words it is good character ultimately that will that enable us to have that true brothers and sisters for the sake of a lot of other's so then let's just pause here what is good character and how does it relate to this good character essentially is if we define it having the ability to not be affected by thoughts that come from shaitan or anafs in other words we don't respond to the thoughts that come from either shaitan or anafs that's the essence of what good character is in other words when good character is not expecting people to deal with us the way that we want them to that deal with us it is when people deal with us in a way that we don't care for or we don't like we don't respond in a way that we shouldn't to go a little bit deeper it all gets back to what we let ourselves do at the inside of our hearts and let's say there's just something annoying that one of our friends does he just has a bad habit he's just annoying there's something that there's something that he does to annoy us do we let ourselves be annoyed by that thing or do we have magnanimity of soul where even though that's annoying us we don't even let ourselves think about it let alone backbite that person to someone else in relation to that thing let alone joke with that person about that particular thing we just over look it and even though it's annoying us we don't let our nafs which dislikes that lash out for that thing or we don't let shaitan use that as he tends to do and this is the way it gets really complicated where just a simple annoyance and all of a sudden something else happens and then shaitan will turn that annoyance into something that is actually even not and then make you in your heart like see that's why you shouldn't spend time with that person don't go to that gathering if that person's going to be there and then if you're not aware you end up falling victim to that thought and do something that prevents the brotherhood so if we can't learn what good character is which requires us to know what is transpiring at the level of the heart and the various thoughts that arise within the heart and so forth in a very detailed way we're never going to really have good relationships with people and then kind of in the context of what we just mentioned we also have to have realistic expectations so we were talking about the maqamah to the deen, the seven stations of the deen and the various degrees in the context of that having dislike for a lot of times sake but even brotherhood itself and this is just for me this is not from Imam al-Zadi let's just say that there's seven or ten different degrees of brotherhood let's just say ten and we have to recognize where we're at with any given person and the general breakdown would be if you just kind of read about this in like a book on psychology or something they usually classify friends into extremely like close friends friends and acquaintances and they've done studies on how many close friends the vast majority of people tend to have how many friends they have and how many acquaintances that they have and there's studies that can point to this but there's no doubt your close friends usually are only going to be a few people but what a blessing to even have one close friend in our time and that close friend when we look at what a ten would be when we talk about the hukukimah al-Zadi mentions there might be a few people in the world that have that but it's rare at that level at the highest level the point of what I'm trying to get at here is let's say your reality with someone is that you're at a level 4 you can't delude yourself to think that you're at level 7 because as you move up in the levels there's more that's required and this is one of the meanings differently applied of course the caliph is to try to do something that you can't really do and when you have people to your home you serve them what you have buying groceries and stuff to prepare for a guest that doesn't negate that but going outside of your means does just do what you can same thing with relationships we gotta keep it real we can't try to act we're at level 7 if we're really at 4 and if we do you'll put strain on the relationship and that 4 might be bumped down to a 1 or a 2 and I've experienced this in my life you all probably experienced this as well and then when you start to learn like oh I should have had more wisdom in that situation and just back off a little bit and be thankful that I'm at a 4 with that particular brother and everything's fine and then you remain and you keep that level with that particular brother and over time it might move up to a 5 but the whole point here is we don't have to be best friends with everybody you have to give everybody on the other hand their rights so that's the baseline you give everybody their rights and then you move up in degrees after that and you keep it real and you don't try to act like your place that you're not and this is very important especially if we are trying to develop a way of approaching this dean that spans certain geographical locations and let's just speak in the context of the United States of America is that ultimately we are one umma and whereas academics criticize this whole concept of umma and talk about how there was no historical reality to it that's nonsense we are an umma and there's a reality to it to various degrees but the whole point is we're supposed to live up to that so the concept of the umma is not one that's passive rather it's active i.e. this is something we have to live up to and actually that experience what it means to be a part of the umma and this is one of the meanings of our prophet being a nabiyat ummi yes the unlettered prophet but the nabiyat of his umma this is a valid meaning of a nabiyat ummi that's mansoob to his umma in reality is mansoob to him sallallahu alaihi wa sallam but because of his care for his umma and so all of those that moments where the prophet says he has huzin huzin grief in his heart and subhanAllah when the veil is lifted when the veil is lifted and someone sees what people are doing in the consequences for what it is that they've done and then to still have to keep it all together and with mercy and gentleness take them to the path and help them get out of what they're in that's one of the most difficult things of all and it's only in talking to people like that that you realize the toll that that takes on them and there's people like that to this day that Allah has lifted the veil that there are people who will see it they know the consequences of certain things that people do and it's not something because they've seen it through the lifting of the veil it is hard for them it's hard for them to even function normally as a human being and it's here that you just start to understand the tip of the iceberg la alaka baqiunafsaka that perhaps that you are about to kill yourself out of grief and just imagine everything that we do is shown to the usul sallalaihi sallam imagine some of the things that you and I know that we've done being shown to the best of creation la ilah and the pain that he feels as a result the only thing to prevent us from doing wrong it should suffice Ya Rabb, I just don't want to bring hardship to the usul I don't want to bring pain to his heart that would suffice if that's the only, I'm just not going to do it for that reason that's motivates us to get ourselves together and then on the opposite as well imagine bringing happiness to the heart of the usul sallalaihi sallam together to study these meanings these meanings of his deen that in a time where people are doing whatever that this is that a small time that we spend together where we're doing things that will bring happiness to his heart sallallahu alihi wa alihi wa sahbihi sallam so this is the crux of the matter is it ultimately gets back to that having good character I'm going to quote one hadith because Asadbah is giving me the time out signal is that our prophet said sallallahu alihi wa sallam there's different narrations this is in the narration of Muhammad, Ahmed is that al-mu'minu that alifun ma'loof laa khaira thima laa yaalaf wa laa yuulaf and so the believer befriends and allows himself to be befriended there is no good in someone who does not befriend or allow himself to be befriended and so our prophet is giving us a golden principle here on how it is that we can carry ourselves and we should in general carry ourselves in a way where we're bringing people together where we're bringing hearts together where we are sources and means for people to love one another that means for people to that live right we are means for people to be uplifted it's how we carry ourselves and of course people are different in this regard and temperament does play a big role and we cannot underestimate the importance of temperaments and for some temperaments this is harder than others this hadith from melancholics is a challenge it's a challenge for people that tend to be more in modern psychology terms introverts and that this type of this is harder for people like this that don't do as well at the public gathering or mixing with other people or that don't tend to but you still have to that have a portion of this even if you're like that you can't say it's just my temperament no our prophet said have your mercy your portion of it so at least you are doing the bare minimum in regards to but what a beautiful hadith it is setting up the basis for all of the good that comes and why did our prophet speak so emphatically when he's talking about this matter and there's multiple narrations because of all of the good that comes from society when people have good relationships and all of the harms that come from society when people are at odds with one another this is one of the most important things of all and you could say without exaggeration the secret of the hijrah was the os and the khazraj coming together and then the secret of the Medinan phase was the union of the muhajirin and the ansaab and then the rest is history that you have a spread of this deen within a hundred years that was faster than the spread of anything else previously and anything else after from the bounty of Allah so relationships are key let's stop there being like ta'ala we'll pick up where we left off and that get through as much as this as we can and to put it into practice and may Allah ta'ala bless us to live these meanings and to be that means for people to come together and to love each other for his sake Allah is the Messenger of Muhammad and upon his family and companions and praise be to Allah the Lord of the worlds Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem praise be to Allah, peace be upon him and upon his family and companions and who? and who? ok so let's see what we're going to do next year there was a few other narrations that I did want to I did want to cover but I think I'll just spice ourselves with one more and this is with the intention of there's a very practical benefit to this particular hadith and it's one of the ways and it's a very easy way of doing things with no other ulterior motive other than to that do that particular thing as a way of strengthening brotherhood so we'll read the narration first this is in Sahi Musa that our Prophet said that there was a man who visited his brother for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so that Allah knew this and sent an angel to go observe this particular individual and so he came and human form and asked this person where are you going and he says I'll read that I'm going I want to visit my brother so and so he mentioned his name and then the angel said to him do you have some type of need do you have some type of need that he's going to fulfill and he said no he said is there any qarabah are you related somehow and he said no he said is that did he do something good for you and you're kind of going to like repay him or something and he said no he said so the angel asked this individual why are you going to visit him then and he said I love him for the sake of Allah and then look what the angel says Allah sent me to you and Allah sent me to you to inform you that he subhanahu wa ta'ala loves you because of your love for your brother and that love that you have for him has necessitated your entry into paradise what a blessing like seriously like you read these ahadith and it just really feels your heart would joy that you're a Muslim and that we have this blessed deen and this is one of the great manifestations of our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam the door to the key to the door of Allah ta'ala's mercy look at all of these doors of mercy that open up so how can we bring this hadith into our life it really is one of the most important things that we can do is to visit brothers for Allah ta'ala I know you live in the bay area I know sometimes your brother or friend is an hour and a half drive and you don't want to get on the 680 or 880 or whatever direction you're going now there's traffic at all different times of day both directions but try to have this be something you do from time to time for no other reason there's nothing that you want from them there's nothing that you need to do there's nothing that you need them to do simply you're visiting for Allah ta'ala's sake and it doesn't mean that you have to spend 2 or 3 hours with them it could be a short visit but we need to reestablish this culture and we can't let our busy lives and our work lives or even our family lives prevent us from doing this and we need to have this from time to time even if it's only once a month you say okay I'm just going to visit someone once a month and think about the people that you love and just go visit them and the beautiful thing is in Muslim cultures in traditional Muslim cultures there were certain times where this was customary so for instance where the time that I spent in Hadlamot in Tareem the after Asr period was a time that people tended to be at home and especially kind of like an hour after the Salat was prayed and this would be a time where you could just knock on someone's door and their door actually might even be left open it was a time where they have kind of put that in as part of their cultural practice that they were ready to receive guests at this time and it's not a meal time but you might come and have tea and tea is kind of already being prepared anyway and this is something that is beautiful I know we don't operate like that because of our northern latitudes that the times fluctuate in relation to prayer so it makes it a little bit difficult to have a specific time year round that you do that but you can at least from time to time once a month try to do this and if you can't do it in person then call someone and for no other reason just to call them to talk to them ask them how they're doing to talk about something that benefits or text them or send them a picture that if you think that picture would bring happiness to the heart or something like this and with no other intention no other ulterior motives other than that you're doing this for the sake of a lot of political data and hopefully we'll receive portions of this great reward by doing these little things and this is something that creates mawanda and creates love between the hearts so I think at this point we're going to shift gears slightly and we're going to look at some of the traits Imam al-Zali says should be there in the people that we bring especially close to us and again this is not meant to be exclusive for the sake of being exclusive we're here to help everyone and uplift everyone but as people get closer to you there are certain traits that you want to look for why? because the people that are really close to you they are a testimony to your deen al-maru ad-dini khalilihi so that a man is on the religion of his close companion meaning that it is highly likely you wouldn't have been that close unless you're very similar in relation to your religion and so Imam al-Zali gives us a number of traits that we should look for and he mentions khams khisal is that first of all that the person in your corner and we'll go through these after we list them they have intelligence they are they have good character and then and what this means is they're not someone who is outwardly falling short and falling into acts of disobedience they're not someone that has misunderstandings of the religion in beliefs that you shouldn't really have or opinions about things that are odd or strange nor should they be someone who there's covetous towards the world that's all they want is dunya and again it doesn't mean that we created dichotomy between our deen and our dunya but we all know that there are certain people that all they're about is making money we know that there are certain people that's all they think about that's all they want, that's all they're concerned about they're willing to that take shortcuts into cross what should be red lines in order to do that this is what we have to be careful of so the first is akal, it's intelligence and what this really means is not that they got a good score on the SATs that's not what Imam al-Hadidari is referring here to what he means is in the true sense of the word is that people that have intelligence in really a type of religious intelligence where they understand their religion and they tend to be wise people who know how to put it into practice and it could at times refer to certain people that even in a very general sense lack intelligence but really what he means by this is that someone who understands things as they are they have an awareness and people that don't tend to have this when they get close to you and especially if there's trust might unconsciously lead you astray without you even knowing as a result of this so this is something that we want to look for in someone is that someone who has a good understanding someone who has a good approach to life you could even extend it to that type of understanding that has wisdom that they have experience and this will set the foundation for the remaining traits and then the second one is someone that has good character because again and what we mean by this is at a basic level of good character we don't mean by this is that someone has to be that flawless we all know that people do make mistakes and they have various degrees of their ability to maintain good character in various situations but they have a general sense about themselves that they are good people and taking it back to what we mentioned in the previous session if we are saying that good character is the foundation of preserving a relationship in all of those meanings not allowing ourselves to fall victim to the thoughts that come from the ego or the thoughts that come from shea time if someone doesn't have good character and one of the worst manifestations of that is Bukul is miserliness miserliness is a bad character trait and when we detail it in that put it under the microscope what we find is it relates to that thought in the moment in the worry that accompanies it that if I give this out I'm not going to benefit from it and it's not I'm going to lose it and so that thought comes to the heart and you hold on to it so there's a time where you could actually really benefit your brother financially but then you hold on to it because of that miserliness that's in your soul even though that you could so miserliness that giving is not ethought ethour is a higher stage where the highest stage of ethour preferring others over yourself is that even if you're in absolute need of virtue to prefer others over yourself even if you die not everybody can do that that's the degree of the slahaba but in our context like it's a great station to read a stage of ethour where you're preferring others over yourself so you don't remain in a state of luxury so if someone intentionally downsized so that they could that support a cause or so that their monthly expenses wouldn't be as much and they would have more money to give out that's a great blessing and that's something that when we were talking in the khutaba about when was that, that was another thing that this whole idea that studying sacred knowledge was a thing of the 90s oh yeah that's so 90s bro we're going to study sacred knowledge miskeem is almost like the same sense of dunya when people like downsize are you okay do azat almost is everything okay you're supposed to get a better house in a nicer neighborhood and that yes at the age of 60 take on a new mortgage that you had already paid off the old one just so that you can move into the new area these are decisions that we all need to make and as we get older we should have more zuhud doesn't mean you have to give everything up but small little things that you do and freeing yourself up because you're not having zuhud for the sake of having zuhud you're detaching to free yourself up to focus more on what's going to remain in the hereafter and that's an important point so really that you're having zuhud in something that will be of less benefit for that which will be of more benefit so good character but that's an example is like stinginess or jubin which is cowardice there are certain times where it requires that you defend the honor of your friend but you're worried to say anything and so because of that worry and then the thoughts that oh if I say something what's going to happen to me and that circle of friends or whatever else that you don't do the right thing that's a manifestation of bad character and how can you really have a friend that's not going to defend you when you need to be defended right another class example is radab, anger if we can't control our anger that a backlash of anger is a manifestation of bad character uncontrollable anger causes innumerable problems in all different types of relationships so learning to control our anger and it would be very hard to maintain the relationship with someone in the long term if they are constantly having fits of uncontrollable anger it's a problem and unfortunately that we live in a society that is creating more and more uncontrollable anger now it doesn't mean that we avoid these people entirely but what he's talking about here is that the people that you want really close to you if they are a very fiery person that are constantly getting angry that's hard that's hard and then there's other examples of convention there so intelligence but really kind of like a religious intelligence combined with good character and then avoiding that acts of depravity and the technical definition of what is called a facet and the traditional way of understanding that is that this is someone who that openly commits an abominable act i.e. a major sin or that repeatedly does a lesser sin and this is generally speaking the definition that they give but we could simply put it in the context of people that are doing things that they shouldn't be doing if people are close to us and we know that they are openly doing things that are harmful to their religion it's very hard to maintain a relationship and not fall into the same problem we end up oftentimes the doors open up for us to do what is that they're doing so this is something that we want to think very carefully about and then the fourth thing that he mentions here is not having a misunderstanding in the dean and this is very important because if we know if people have beliefs that are problematic in relation to what it is that we believe or that they have strange opinions on certain matters for whatever reason people tend to get affected by this and you'd be surprised how Suhba in companionship affects the way that people think and especially people that have clean slates they pick up very quickly on the way that other people talk about certain ideas and tend to parrot them that back right away and that people that are a little bit more grounded in knowledge that might not happen as quickly but you'd be surprised sometimes and you really have to keep your guard up even if you're aware of certain things seep in from the people that you're around and we want to make sure that we are believing proper just as we are practicing proper so we don't want people really close to us that have beliefs that are problematic and then the final that point here is that someone that is not haris aded dunya and that all of us to a certain degree of course love this world this is one of the things that we have to work on day in and day out but when we are in that environment where it just really is all about the dunya nothing can be more harmful to our deen than that and this is the thing that our prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam that he worried about for his ummah is that he worried is that the dunya would be opened up for his ummah and that we would compete for it the way that people competed for it and those that came before us and then it would destroy us the way that it would destroy them and we do tend to forget as well that detaching from this world is one of the greatest overarching sonnas of our prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam as unpopular as it may be and ultimately the key to detachment of the dunya and the first stepping stone towards that is to make sure first and foremost that everything that we're doing is permissible so by doing everything that is making that the first stepping stone it's a type of zuhud because you're leaving out and you're having zuhud in the things that are impermissible it's a type of zuhud you're leaving certain things out that okay I'm not doing those things I'm going to make sure that first step is that I'm within the realm of what is permissible and you'd be surprised some of the restaurants that we go to are questionable some of the places we take our children are questionable definitely a lot of what we watch on the television or on our devices is really questionable if not outright hot on so let's start with zuhud in the things that are impermissible and just because everybody's doing it doesn't make it right and just because there's not a lot of good creative permissible options likewise doesn't make it right it makes it challenging but it doesn't make it right so we can't provide alternatives that are permissible whether it be proper books that teenagers should be reading anyone that knows a teenager that you're trying to get them off a device you're trying to encourage them to read but then what on earth do you have them read because reading arguably and reading bad books and most of what's out there that teenagers tend to read in our time I don't know if you've all looked at some of the pages your own kids are reading it's scary it has a more powerful impact arguably than even watching videos which has a terrible impact upon you it affects you in a much deeper way and so that our children are reading books that are like it's like consuming junk food but they're reading junk literature the way that junk food what that does to the physical body this is doing to their spirit and doing to their heart so it is very difficult to find good books for them to read however it doesn't mean that we just open up the floodgates for them we still have to try and it is frustrating because you can't micromanage the lives of your teenagers and you're busy you have your own life and realistically we know how much time we're spending on a daily basis with our kids anyway it's not much so how do you cover and how do you oversee everything that is that they're exposed to how do you walk them through the ideas they're being inundated with from the time that they're in school from a young age and even if we're homeschooling even if we're in Islamic schools these things still reach our children and that we have to spend time with them and discuss their ideas and to give them clarity on certain matters to the extent possible there is no way around this anyhow we have to look for alternatives so this is the first step is let's just have Zuhud and try to have Zuhud in what we know we shouldn't be doing and then we can move up after that in the various degrees of this so the people that we bring close these are the five traits that we really want them to have now we're going to look at what Muhtar Haaland covers in his translation of this section and he will mention here what he calls the the eight duties if you will of brotherhood and again that I feel that it's best that we present this material as Imam al-Azadi presents it and then we see where we fit and we recognize where we are and where we need to be and we develop a plan on how to get there and again the principle states is that just because you can't attain all of something it doesn't mean that you completely leave it either and this is the nature of the nafs it either wants to fully have something or it doesn't want to have any part of that thing it's very hard for the nafs to be balanced and that's why it's so hard for the nafs to have a schedule that's why it's so hard for the nafs too that worship when it's time to worship and to sleep when it's time to sleep and to work hard when it's time to study and to spend time with people when it's time to spend with people that ultimately we're multitasking in our lives in terms of the things that we do on a daily basis the nafs wants to do what it wants to do when it wants to do it and how it wants to do it to the amount that it wants to do it and it's very important that we put everything in its proper place and ultimately just because that we enjoy doing something doesn't mean that that is the only thing that we have to do we have to look at the responsibilities that are upon our shoulders and thus the wisdom of the famous statement of Imam Mahdiq when he was asked about focusing on el and study and he said that there's no doubt that seeking sacred knowledge is a beautiful thing but look at the responsibilities that Allah ta'ala has placed upon your shoulders so in other words that knowledge is a part of our life to various degrees to be lifelong full-time learners but then other people have other responsibilities so just because they're not a full-time learner doesn't mean that you don't spend time learning we should at least spend a little bit of time daily learning every one of us should have a book that we are reading at all times one book at least have one book at all times you don't have to necessarily finish it in one week but have something you're reading in addition to the news articles that you're reading on your phone or time magazine or your Facebook feed or all that type of stuff okay you're already doing that and you know you're going to likely do that in addition to that have an actual book right and preferably not a kindle an actual book that you can smell and have these beautiful experiences with later and read your notes and I have this book here I don't even know who gave this to me but someone quoted this beautiful thing here every morning there is a shout oh son of Adam this is a new day it is a witness of your actions oh son of Adam you're just days every time a day goes a portion of you goes by Allah I met a people who are more vigilant over how they spent their time than you over you are your dinars and dirhams has an adversity so you have like these notes in your books that like from like previous times where like there's books from what a chain that still have sand in them or that you got like a little bit of like perfume on them they still like kind of smell the same way and then you have like your notebooks that you kept that brings back the nostalgia of kind of the setting to that particular benefit that you've received and so that actually have a physical book and that have a way where you can write in it in different ways because the more you read the more your mind is sparked to think about other ideas and you might have something that you write in the back of the book and then something that you want to research and that book will lead you to another book but just have one book and there is a long list of beneficial types of books that you can read and one additional suggestion is if you want to have one book that you're reading at a time to end, I would recommend having a book on Tisawuf Sufism, Purification of the Heart that you put by your night stand that you read every single day even if it's one paragraph and I would start with a book like the beginning of Guidance of Imam al-Zadi and then I would move after that to a book like the book of Assistance of Imam al-Haddad and then I would move after that to another book of Imam al-Zadi and also Sheikh Muhtar Ha'wan translated the path of the worshipers and so forth and so on I would read Purification of the Heart the Translation of Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and there's about four or five other books that relate to the science of the heart that you should put this book by your night stand and read every single day even if it's one paragraph or a single page because of the importance of the science and then when you finish one book you move to the other and you'd be surprised at how much knowledge you could learn on a regular basis with very small little things that said Mjad he speaks to me so much about Atomic Habits I actually heard the podcast of the author who wrote the book and I was like that reminds me of said Mjad even though it was the men's ideas but anyhow Atomic Habits is a really cool idea and the whole idea is is that human beings are people of habit we all have habits and ultimately you are what your habits are and one of the things that he says there the greatest way to help yourself change habits is to create an environment that is conducive to certain habits so he says that if you want to read more place books in different places around your house make them easy to access and the remote control put it somewhere far away like put it in the closet or something where you have to go out of your way to actually get the remote control put your iPad or whatever somewhere that's locked away in the closet make it difficult to access and then the essence of the idea of Atomic Habits is read for 2 minutes sit down for 2 minutes and then stop and he mentions that he knew someone the author of the book that wanted to get him so he wanted to lose weight and get in shape so he said he drove to the gym every single day for 3 weeks and did 5 minutes of exercise in the gym and then went home even though he eventually wanted to stay he wanted to develop the habit of going to the gym and then you increase it after that and you will see this works this works it's very real because you get attached very easily you read 2 minutes and then like you get into it you're like I want to keep reading but put the book down you'll then want to come back just 2 more minutes and then you eventually can expand it after that that we need to bring this into our lives so let's look at what he says here Bidnidah Ita'ala Nam about the Hakuku Suhbah and the very first one that he mentions is in relation to our wealth of course because as Sadaqatub Burhan your wealth is a proof of the reality of our faith whether we really believe or not and he says here in relation to the degrees of material support so this is in relation to our brothers if we're really going to say that this is our brother for the sake of a Latata there are degrees so he says here the lowest degree is where you place your brother on the same footing as someone that is working for you attending to his need from your surplus some need be false and when you have more than you require to satisfy your own so you give spontaneously not obliging him to ask to oblige him to ask is the ultimate shortcoming in brotherly duty so this is the lowest degree this is the lowest degree at the second degree you place your brother on the same footing as yourself you are content to have him as partner in your property and to treat him like yourself to the point of letting him share it equally at Hassan said that there once was a man who would split his waistband between himself and his brother at the third degree no and the waistband here is how he translated at the third degree the highest of all you prefer your brother to yourself and set his need before it is your own this is the degree of the Siddique in the final stage for those united and spiritual love so in other words the first thing is in relation to our wealth and Alhamdulillah in general Muslims are incredibly generous community and anyone that has experienced people outside of the Muslim community can testify to this Muslims are very generous by their nature and they tend to give out a lot of wealth and support a lot of projects and this is a very beautiful thing and this is a very blessed thing and as people develop a closer in closer relationship though there is more of a responsibility when it comes to this and there are people that have these true traits of sugar one of the things that touch my heart there is people that are still like this in this world that I saw a video that sheikh and the son of sheikh Abdullah bin Bayer he went to visit Osama not knowing she comes and mentioned this in his obituary knowing that Osama had passed away he left it's about a 3-3 and a half hour drive to Fez and went to go visit Osama Osama had passed in the meantime so he was there for the burial and after he was buried is that the video is available online he said his name he says that I am sheikh and the son of Abdullah bin Bayer and he says that that I am making you all witnesses that his debts are my debts he said his children are like my children and I will look after them like my own as long as I am alive this is this is this is true manhood this is the type of people that would do this there was a relationship between them and that he felt part of that relationship means for me my brother is dead his debts are my debts I am taking care of them and it's not lip service he'll do that he'll remain faithful to that and on top of that his children are like my children until the day that I die Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar this is how true people are and this is how we need to be if one of us would go those of us that have children what would you want people to do for you if you were gone what if no one took care of your children and just let this world that prey on them and everything we know that is that they are exposed to all the difficulties they are going to go through having lost their father to help them process and get through the difficulties of being a young man or woman in our time and to grow up into maturity and what you need to learn to develop a relationship and to have children and to have a livelihood and to live how you are supposed to live and to do that without a parent we all know how difficult that is this is subhanAllah and we might be a person that can't do that for a hundred people but there might be two or three people that we might do that for but if everybody would do that then we would have enough support from within and we wouldn't need people from the outside to help but this is why this is so important this is subhanAllah there are people that are still like this so there is a financial responsibility that we have towards our friends and even though he says his first degree here is that we don't oblige him to ask this is what he says is the ultimate shortcoming in the brotherly duty we should be aware of our brother's situation from before that they fall into that situation another problem is sometimes honorable people are good at hiding it honorable people sometimes are good at hiding it so what he means though is this should be on our radar we should be people that are in tune with the way people are and it's really I've told the story in multiple cases but it's such a beautiful story that Habib Ali narrates that he knows first hand that his sheikh Habib Abdul Qadir Ahmad al-Sikaf received that from a businessman in Saudi Arabia one million riyals which is roughly close to $300,000 and he says after Asr he got in the car and they went around from house to house in Jidda which is a huge sprawling city and he would instruct his driver take this amount to this family take this amount to this family take this amount to this family and on and on and on until well after Salat al-Isha he takes the bag and he lifts it upside down and he goes like this bear witness that bear witness that what he distributed all of that wealth in a way that was pleasing to him and didn't keep a single riyal for his own self because he saw it to begin with as Allah giving him that wealth to take care of other people and like the story of our prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that were you only to have left some from before us right another one of my teachers his grandfather similar stories this is the way the people of Allah are and they didn't even have enough money to have a full dinner at night and he distributed all of the wealth this is the way they are and obviously that's a very high standard to be that selfless and to be that concern for other people but the reason I mentioned that story is he was aware of who the poor people were he wasn't disconnected from his society he was aware and this is the problem of the suburban one of the many problems of us just living these comfortable lives in the suburbs and not being aware of other people's realities but there's people even in the suburbs that are struggling but we have to even more so in our particular context go out of our way to get out of our ivory towers to be in touch with the people and to be aware of the needs of the people and if we can do it first hand that's even better but if not we should have people that are letting us know who are doing the work for us so at least we're aware second hand how people are doing and this is the way that the people before us were they would actively check up on people we know say would walk through the streets at night and we know his concern was not only for people is that a donkey would trip because he didn't pave a road in the way that they paved roads back then that he would be asked about that why didn't you pave this road they were about donkeys tripping up in places well outside of Medina right let alone the people so these are beautiful meanings that have to become a part of our deen and there's no way for us to be effective of Muslims in these societies without these types of things we can talk all we want about Islam but what's really going to touch people's hearts and change them is when they see Muslims living these meanings where they find a qualitative difference by living next to a Muslim by interacting with a Muslim that a deen that is being put into practice even if it's not perfect the standards are so low even the lowest degree or even it's somewhat approaching the lowest degree of implementation is so much better than the alternative this is attractive and for those of us that know this for instance the family structure in Islam it is so beautiful it is so beautiful even families that for Muslim standards are not the closest knit families it's so much better than your typical family nowadays it really impacts you that impacted me greatly that impacted me greatly and everywhere I went but especially the time that I spent in Damascus in seeing the incredibly beautiful way that Syrian mothers were with their families and I was blessed to be around this very beautiful family and it was just a really beautiful really amazing to see this and I was just like if people only saw like how beautiful this really is anyhow there is a financial responsibility that we have and we need to do our best and my personal advice is I'm not I don't really like fundraisers personally but if someone tells you about some type of cause at very least well first of all the etiquette is to be thankful that Allah made you aware of a good cause or someone in need to be thankful that Allah made you aware of a cause or someone in need because the Sadaheen used to see people knocking on the door to beg as people being sent by Allah for a means for them to draw near to him through charity this is the etiquette that we should have and then the second etiquette is to support that cause in the way that you can even if it's with a single dollar give what you have make your intention at least well sorry three stages be happy that Allah made you aware of it two make the intention to support every good cause on the face of this earth and three do what you can for all of the different causes that you come across even if it means only supporting it with a dollar and there might be some that are closer to your heart that you want to support a little bit more and that's perfectly fine and there's a wisdom in why Allah moved certain hearts to support certain causes there's a wisdom in that and alhamdulillah from the bounty of Allah there's enough to go around but this is important so that we change the frame as opposed to that oh here we go again masha Allah the next that fundraiser that I have to go and sit through and they're going to trap me until they get my money and then serve me dinner at the end right but we should be happy in general to support what we can so there's a financial responsibility the second duty relates to helping our brother and that he translates it here as to render personal aid and the satisfaction of needs attending to them without waiting to be asked and giving them priority over private needs it's a little bit ambiguous there but filianity bin nafs fit qadad hajat taking care of their needs now what qiyam biha that taking this up before they even ask and giving the needs of your brother preference over your own needs and so we all need people to help us with things in this world and especially in our time things are difficult sometimes you have to ask people to do certain things for you but you have to be careful about who you ask to do what for you and there's some people that of course might take advantage of that but outside of those situations where people are taking advantage which they really shouldn't and that approach or actually end up on the verge of some form of abuse put that aside and we don't mean put that aside it happens and it's wrong but there are times where we're going to be in need of people there are times when you need help sometimes you need someone to help pick up your parents from the airport because you can't do it and what are you going to do get your parents to come home in a taxi right there's times where you need help to do certain things and this is where we need friends who are willing to help and are happy to help and are actually feel honored that you asked them to help and ideally that we eventually have relationships where we don't even need them to ask and so it's a very low level of brotherhood if we're asked to help in a particular situation and then we grudgingly say okay or outwardly we're like oh yeah sure and we're like oh right I'm going to be in the car for three hours right so brotherhood requires that we step up when it comes to this if it truly is brotherhood now there are certain things that are considered to be fard kafia that are communal obligations that if you don't fulfill them the entire community is sinning that's not what we're talking about here that relates to the rights we're talking about now beyond that beyond that where it's not a matter of doing something that is not permissible so there are degrees and then he says here the lowest degree consists in attending to the need when asked and when in plenty though with joy and cheerfulness showing pleasure and gratitude that is the lowest degree so we're going to repeat that now so and and and so attending to the need helping them take care of their need and when in plenty and when you're able to though with joy and cheerfulness so you might not be able to if you can't do something you're obviously not going to be taking account for that but joy and cheerfulness and you have that you show that you're actually happy about this and that you see is not you upon them they have a upon you so that this is really one of the big ones that all of us fall into all of the time and we tend to forget that reminding someone of some good that we've done for them is haram we forget that and this is a big one and all different types of relationships husbands and wives and wives and husbands and that parents and children and children and parents and brothers with brothers and sisters like this is a big one something all of a sudden goes on it's like doesn't this person realize what I just did for them right and then we remind them of it this is a problem and it nullifies the reward of everything that we've done and it's hard because sometimes you want to say something and you gotta bite your tongue and just bear it and sometimes people were totally ungrateful you went out of your way and if you did it for a lot it's preserved for you don't worry but sometimes we just about to lash out because we're like no this person is doing that after that we gotta be very careful there so this is the lowest degree and then the degree after that is where we reach a point where we preempt the needs of the various people that we were interacting with and we don't even make them be a need of asking us and there's a lot of details that he mentions here that unfortunately we're going to have to skip over so then we have the third right which now this one relates to the tongue and Imam al-Zali says here is that is where we refrain from mentioning their faults in their presence and behind their backs rather it's that we act like we are ignorant of them and we remain silent and don't necessarily that return in speech and respond to various things that are said so again all of these things need to be put in context and there are certainly certain things that your brother would do that might not be right that it's not just a matter of being a fault but it relates to harming another person that brotherhood or sisterhood doesn't mean that we just let people do those things no that people should be that spoken to in a very gently in a very gentle way or implicitly before being explicit about the matter and then there's stages that we go through before we reach the point of I might have to distance myself from this person a little bit because this person continues to do such and such a thing but in general we know that we don't have faults and the context of what Imam al-Azad is saying are the faults that don't relate to the harming of other people so that if we know one of the people that is close to us isn't the most generous of people okay we're patient with that even though it's good to find friends that are generous but we're patient with that and we don't talk about that trait that they have if we know that we're impatient if we know they have some other type of issue that they're going through some type of struggle that they have again as long as it's not affecting someone else you veil them and you don't talk about those things in their presence or outside of their presence and you simultaneously do the best that you can to help them through that particular thing they might talk to you about it or they might not so this is part of brotherhood is that restraining our tongue in the proper way just as that sometimes this requires us to speak about certain things part of brotherhood is speaking about other things and we have to learn the nuance and unfortunately that in our day and age I see a world of extremes the very little that I'm on social media I see a world of extremes I see a world where there's very few people that are balanced and the people that try to be balanced are attacked often times by both sides and it's like I just can't say anything then because no matter what you say there's going to be someone that pokes a hole in what it is that you're saying and sometimes it's completely without right and other times there might be a legitimate concern or pain in relation to that but nonetheless it is important that we have balance in all these different affairs so there are times that we need to speak and there are times that we need to remain silent and then the next one here is and this is the fourth duty is to use the tongue for speaking out so this is now a separate duty even though it also relates to the tongue and he says here because brotherhood calls for silence about unpleasant things so it requires the utterance of favorable things indeed this is more particularly a feature of brotherhood because anyone satisfied with silence alone might as well seek the fellowship of the people of the graves you wish for brotherhood so as to benefit by them not just to escape by being hurt by them and the point of silence is to avoid hurt so the point of silence is to avoid hurt so what he says here is is that now there are certain things that is that we have to say and our prophet clearly told us if one of you loves his brother let him know that you love him and there is a number of different things that we can do and so he mentions them here is that if you know that something has happened to someone they got a new job or they got married or they had a child or something of this nature part of brotherhood is to congratulate them and share in their joy and that also if that something bad happened to them is that you should be there for them and say that you are sorry for their loss if you know someone is sick that you send them a text saying that that person is in our prayers and if it relates to that brother you are reaching out to him or her if it is a sister and saying that you will be in our prayers and so forth and so on so there are certain things that we have to do in relation to our tongue and there is a long list of those things so we will just keep it general at this point for time sake because we are down to about 5 minutes unfortunately so using our tongue we recommend that everybody get this and anything that we are missing here that you can read in detail and then the fifth is is forgiveness of mistakes and failings and even though there are details in relation to this conversation this is a very important trick we have to be people that forgive and we all have shortcomings and just as we want people to overlook our shortcomings we have to overlook other people's shortcomings and sometimes it might take a little bit of time give yourself the time that you need to heal don't try to if you have a gaping wound that do what you normally do let the wound heal and then get back to what you are doing give it a little bit of time in relation to forsaking your brother a prophet even gave us 3 days to let the emotions settle that's it less than 3 days you don't have to speak to your brother you are mad at them for whatever reason you don't have to speak to them let it settle and then that's it make sure it doesn't go past 3 days don't forsake them beyond that and even beyond that if you just at least send salams you are not falling into the sin of forsaking your brother look at how practical and beautiful this should be it gives you time to process these things as human beings so don't force yourself to do something you are not ready to do allow yourself the time that you need to heal and if they are pushing you for some reason to heal, no don't let them do that that time needs to transpire before we do that but we have to be open to forgiveness and people will fall short we are human beings we make mistakes issues that we are ourselves dealing with that we might be especially stressed out in a particular time but likewise the other person so if we are going to have bonds of brotherhood we have to be open to doing this and then the sixth right is relates to that praying for our brothers ad-du'ah is that the sixth duty is to pray for your brother during his life and after his death that he may have all might wish that he may have all he might wish for himself his family and his dependents and this doesn't mean that you just do it one time this is a part of your daily practice there are people that make du'ah for their loved ones buying them in detail every single day and if you develop a list that's perfectly fine too and then anyone you don't mention specifically you can mention generally but this is a beautiful thing every single day we should be doing this praying there look at the beauty here imagine you have all these different people in different parts of the world that are brothers or sisters for a lot of sake praying for each other and you have angels that say and you have the same and that du'ah is mustajab because it's not for you it's for him so you know that they're answered look at the beauty of this whole thing and for this reason one of them said were it not to be for brothers that I had for a lot of sake I wouldn't have wanted to remain here in this world because it's such an opportunity to let draw near to Allah to barakah ta'ala and reach the highest degrees of closeness to him and then the seventh duty is loyalty and sincerity Allahu Akbar and what it means here in terms of wafaa is that you remain firm upon continual love that you have for this individual until death and then after death in relation to his children and his friends and look at Imam al-Maghzadi says love is only desired for this hereafter in other words you only truly truly benefit for it and the hereafter and Allahu Akbar this is how we should be there's very few people have forgotten this we don't live in a society that teaches us this virtue we live in a society that teaches us to be narcissistic and selfish these are the virtues that we need where we are people of wafaa even if the relationship went a little bit sour you should never ever ever forget what people have done for you even if the relationship went a little bit sour never ever ever forget what people have done for you what kind of person are you if you do Allah put that person in your life for that reason even if it went a little bit sour okay but still remain loyal to the degree that you should so loyalty and sincerity and that he goes into beautiful details here about what this means but loyalty to the brother includes consideration of that all of the people that are connected to him and all of the people that are related to him his friends and his relatives and so forth and so that when you love someone naturally you're also concerned for people that are associated with them and then the last trait in closing here is relief from discomfort and inconvenience so you should not discomfort your brother with things that are awkward for him and there's a lot of details here but I'm just going to summarize for time's sake this gets back to where we were talking about the one to ten and you have to have a realistic knowledge of where you're at with any particular person don't force them to be at a level that they're not ready for and don't fault them for not being at a higher level be content with where they're at and think Allah that at least it's at a level three and then think Allah for the other brother that you have that's at a level seven but if you focus someone who's at three to be at seven you're going to lose the relationship and that's what's called tekelif you're forcing something that's not really there do what you need to do to build that relationship and then maybe it will grow from a four to a five and so forth and then with the people that are seven that make sure you fulfill the condition so that it doesn't drop to like a five or four but keep it real when it comes to this and know where you're at and know your limits and be honest with your brother like I would love to but I'm just not there and it's better just to be honest is that then to say that you're going to do something and not do that particular thing just be honest and be transparent and if people aren't willing to accept you with your honesty as you are then they're not really able to be your brother or sister for an extended period of time people have to accept you as you are and if they expect you to be something else you can never ever really have a good and solid relationship with them I hope there's been some benefit here I feel that we did a very inadequate job of presenting of what needed to be presented in a short period of time but again back to the same principle we mentioned it's better to do a little bit than to completely to not to do anything at all so we hope that's been a benefit and this is a conversation that we need to return to time and time again and inshallah ta'ala we have heard that's a benefit may Allah ta'ala make it a reality within us and what it is that we didn't cover in this book that from the blessing of doing what we can may Allah ta'ala bless us also to put that into practice we come to life in our own selves and our families and amongst our loved ones and in the communities and amongst the ummah of our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and to manakh us and to be a means for us to attain the greatest good in this world and the next in two to be a means and source of spreading the light of guidance of this blessed religion to all of those that we are living within this country may Allah ta'ala give us tofeeq and all of our different prayers and to forgive us of all of our sins and to keep us together and bless us and to have a relationship solely for a sake to barak wa ta'ala and to preserve these moments that we spend together and bless us to have an everlasting reward for them that increases eternally Ya'al Humma Rahmeen may Allah ta'ala keep us all together in this dunya and in the bazakh and in the akhirah may not a single person ever be left behind Ya'al Humma Rahmeen may Allah ta'ala be still a mercy upon us a comprehensive mercy whereby which all of our sins are forgiven Ya'al Humma Rahmeen all of our needs are taken care of and we attain everything that we want and next may Allah ta'ala bless this beautiful community and bless all of us insha'Allah ta'ala and all of our children and all of our loved ones Ya'al Humma Rahmeen may we be people who that turned to him in all of our different states Subhanahu wa ta'ala we ask Allah to bless us with a deep and profound love of him and of his blessed prophet Muhammad Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and all of his inheritors until Ya'al Humma Rahmeen bless us to love them and to follow their footsteps and to be with them in the dunya in the bazakh and in the akhirah wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam