 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim al-hamdulillahi rabu l-alameen wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wa barakah ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salam. Rabi shaykh sadri wa salli amir yuhaal al-uqtatim al-hussani wa fqawli wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wa barakah ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salam. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. Alhamdulillah. So we're going to continue on in this series where we're just discussing the traits of the righteous and the intention here, inshallah, is to discuss a new trait every week. So I'm just going to do a quick recap of what we spoke about last week. And then we are going to be chatting about the love of knowledge and the importance of knowledge that the righteous have. So just one second here. All right. So as we were mentioning last week, one of the most important things that we can do in the time that we're living in is prioritize the acquisition of virtues. We're living in a very, very difficult time. We're living in a time where there's a lot of vice out there, where there's a lot of corruption out there, where there's a lot of bad character out there. There's a lot of poor manners out there, a lot of lying, a lot of just sometimes you see what's going on in the world. And it becomes a little bit disheartening, especially when you see the way that society has started to interact, the way that people have begun to interact. And so the intention for this series is to cover some of the virtues that the people of Allah have and that the people of Allah have had. And to talk about just from a very practical point of view how we can go about acquiring some of these virtues. And we're just focusing on ones that are, inshallah, easy for us to slowly, slowly work on. We're not going to be talking about anything super grandiose here. All of this, inshallah, will be applicable to our daily life, inshallah. So for last time, what we mentioned is one of the most important frameworks for us to really understand the acquisition of virtue is, first and foremost, we have to learn that virtue. We have to learn that trait. And then second, we have to try hard to implement the virtue, to implement the trait. And so the amount of virtues that we acquire, that directly relates to how pure our heart is. So if we have more and more virtues, if we have the virtue of patience, if we have the virtue of controlling our anger, if we have the virtue of loving the Prophet ﷺ, if we have the virtue of reliance on Allah and so on and so forth, our heart starts to become more and more pure. And similarly, the more bad traits that we have, the more rotten, the more dirty our heart starts to become. And so it's very, very, very important for us to focus on virtues. And as we mentioned last time, the Prophet ﷺ, he gave us many indications of why becoming good people, of why acquiring virtues was so important. He said that good character melts away sins just like the sun melts away ice. And he mentioned that one of the most valuable deeds or the wadiest deed on the day of judgment will be good character. So in the time that we're living in, you know, we got to find shortcuts. We got to find ways to increase the amount of good deeds that we have. And sometimes it's difficult to do a lot of good. But if we have a few good traits and a few good virtuous traits, inshallah, that will be one of the shortcuts that we can acquire. So today we're going to be chatting about the love of knowledge, the love of knowledge, especially knowledge from the Quran and the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. This is a trait that one of the most exemplary traits of the people of righteousness and one of the traits that we should focus on in this time. And frankly, it's one of the traits that's been lost in the time that we are living in more broadly amongst the Muslims. So traditionally the Muslims really, really, really emphasize knowledge, like a lot and emphasize learning. And this doesn't mean that we have to spend our entire life learning. There are people who Allah wants to become scholars. And then there's, you know, the rest of us that we are doing other things with our life. But Allah still wants us to spend time learning the basics and then learning a little bit more and trying to implement. Right? And that is one of the traits that is so important in the time that we live in. And it's also been very, very much lost in the time that we live in. How do we know it's important? Well, first of all, it's what differentiated Adam ﷺ from when God created Adam, peace be upon him. He told the angels to bow down to him. And the angels initially kind of were wondering, like, why is, you know, this creature being created? They said, you know, you're going to create somebody who is going to shed blood and shed and sow corruption on the earth. And God said, I know what you do not know. So already God is showing that his knowledge is, of course, the most important knowledge here. Right? And that is one of the traits of Allah that he is all knowing. He knows everything. He knows everything that was going to happen. Everything that is going to happen. Everything that's happening at every level of existence, far beyond what our minds are even capable of understanding. And then he says that he taught Adam, alaihi salam, the names of things. He taught Adam, alaihi salam, the names. And what the commentators say on that verse is that he taught Adam, alaihi salam, the meanings of things as well. Right? So this knowledge is what gave Adam, alaihi salam a certain level of preeminence. And this is in a time where, or in a world, you could say, or in a situation where we were not there. But Allah tells us of that story of our father, Adam, alaihi salam. And the preeminence was given over knowledge. So that's the first, you could say, kind of proof for why knowledge is so critical. The second is that the first verse that was revealed to the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was ikra. And Allah tells the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam after we say, he says, recite, or read in the name of your Lord. And he says, read in the name of your Lord. And he goes on to say that the describe how Allah created us. He created us from nothing. He says the Lord who taught you what you did not know. He taught insan what we did not know. So here's the first revelation that comes to the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And it's about reading. It's about reciting. It's about reading. And then he goes on to say that the preeminent trait, again, given to man was that he taught us. Allah taught us. And so Allah through Jibril alayhi salam reveals this to our beloved Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Once again, showing the importance of knowledge. Just, you know, a couple of examples and then there's so many more examples in the sunnah of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam of why knowledge is so critical to our religion. Learning is so important. Learning dispels ignorance, right? So we know that there was a stage of time before the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam came and before his message was given. And it was called the period of jahlia. What is jahlia? Jahlia is ignorance. And what is ignorance? The ignorance is the lack of beneficial knowledge. That was the state. That was the state of people at the time before the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam came. It was that they had immense amounts of ignorance. And then, right, the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam comes and he teaches them. And he teaches them not just a few things. He teaches them the most important things, which is that there is a God, right? Fa'lam annahu la ilaha illallah. That know that there isn't, that you should know that there is no God except Allah. And that the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam taught them and took them from their ignorance into the state that the Sahaba eventually achieved, which was that they became the best generation ever. That's the state that the Sahaba eventually achieved. And so, what cured their ignorance, right? They might have had a lot of information at the time. We're going to define knowledge in a second. They might have had a lot of information at the time, but surely it wasn't benefiting them because their character was still quite, it was quite bad. It was very, very rotten character in terms of the types of actions that they would do. Small somebody would diss somebody and then they would, you know, knock them out and kill them. And then, you know, their tribe would go to war with the other tribe. Not dissimilar to the way that certain types of, let's say, you know, very, very violent gang behavior is today. It was similar to how that type of behavior was at the time of Jahiliyyah in terms of people's egos, how big they were and how quickly they would go and get offended. And so knowledge came. The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he came and he taught them. And he says in a hadith, and I'm paraphrasing here, but the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam indicates in a hadith that he was only sent as a teacher. That one of his, and he's emphasizing here that one of his main reasons that he was sent was to teach. And his teaching, the more we learn it, the more we implement it, the more that we will then inshallah benefit from it. So that's very, very, very critical. Now, why is knowledge though important today, right? We talked, we spoke about why it was important back then, why it was important to, in terms of the prioritization of this religion. So why is it important today? Most of the problems that we have in our communities, most of the problems that we have in our families, and most of the problems that we have in our societies are, they go back to a lack of knowledge. That's really what these issues go back to. It's a lack of knowledge and a lack of understanding. And the more knowledge that one has, the more understanding that one develops. And then the more one is able to fix the issues that are going on in their life and in their society. So what's an example? You have at the general level of society, right? We won't even talk about Islamically. You have people today that are just like spreading lies. We're in a pandemic, you know, you have even the president of the United States that spreading just completely false statements about the situation of this virus, about what it actually does to people and really no actual concern for what's happening or no actual concern for the facts. You have people today, right? We see these fires, may Allah extinguish these fires that have been happening in California. We see a wide variety of the effects of climate change throughout the world of global warming. And again, you have people who just, they don't want to see the facts. They ignore the facts and focus on, you know, some other, not even theory. The theory has to be at least grounded in something more just conjecture, right? So that's at the societal level. Those small things, I mean, those aren't small things. Those are a few examples. And there's more and more and more that you and I see in society where the lack of knowledge, the lack of proper understanding, how much it hurts us at the level of society, how much it hurts us at the level of governance, like what if people just more broadly had understood how negative and how detrimental this pandemic was going to be from a factual perspective, like just looking at the science and had responded accordingly and our government had responded accordingly. We would be in a very, very different situation than we are in today. Similarly, what if people had actually looked at the facts and acted a while back with regards to climate change or with regards to fossil fuel emissions and whatnot. We would be in a very, very different situation, but people choose to ignore information because they care about other things. There are people who care more about money. They care more about power. They don't want to know about the information because what is, there's a statement, ignorance is bliss. There are people just, I don't know, right? I don't want to know. The understanding of knowledge, it's supposed to sometimes be tough, but also it's supposed to illuminate the situation for us. So we see a lot of lies out there, a lot of stuff that's just completely made up and that's, you know, this world is full of that. So that's there at one level. And then you have at a different level though in our society, and this is more prevalent in our communities, you have people who just have very, very, very different understandings of knowledge and who have taken little bits of knowledge and that has affected them negatively with regards to their religion. And so you, for example, you'll see somebody who's like slowly gaining into the path of religion, but has learned very, very strict form of religion, and it's very, very constricting. The more outwardly harsh somebody is, it shows the lack of knowledge and the lack of their understanding of the benefit of knowledge, because knowledge is supposed to bring about good character. What we're talking about here are traits which bring about good character. And the righteous people, their love for knowledge is because it helps them improve their states, helps them improve the way that they live their life, and according to what God wants them to do, and then it eventually helps them get closeness to Allah, right? So that's like an example. I see this all the time, right, in our communities, where people will try to have a very, very, very limiting view. You can't do this. You can't do that. You can't do that. This is, this is a bit that that's an innovative this and that. And without, without understanding, there's multiple differences of opinion. You have different madahib that are out there. It's not as limited to the one little view that we might have learned growing up or from the limited understanding. So that's a view of people who like don't have a little bit of knowledge. It's like, it's actually, sometimes a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous if you don't understand the context in which you're getting it, but who don't spend time gaining broad amounts of knowledge. Then you have, then you have in communities today, where people just think the knowledge itself doesn't matter, right? So for example, our religion has clear outline, that's fiqh of a law, how we, how we make wudu, right? How, how we make ablutions before prayers, how we go about praying, how we go about fasting and whatnot. And, you know, believe it or not, we, we sometimes just throw out the law and we go with what we think makes the most sense. So, you know, we, I've definitely seen this, I'm sure we all have where you might interact with people and it's okay if they're like very much at the beginning of their journey and they need room and they need time to understand, right? Like the approach that should be taken to be one of gentleness, one of slowly, slowly helping people come along and say, no, no, the law is very, very important. You have to understand the law and whatnot. But there are, there are people in our communities and this is a widespread problem who ignore the law and say, no, that doesn't matter. That's irrelevant today. I disagree with that opinion. This doesn't make sense to me. I don't really see what the problem with interest is. So I'm not going to say it's, it's haram. I don't really see why we have to be so strict about this specific thing with regards to, you know, my prayer. I don't really see why, like if I don't have wudu, why I can't just pray, you know, it's fine. It shouldn't be an issue. Like just kind of coming up with rules. Oh, you know, if I'm busy, I'll just combine all my prayers. Right? Like there's one thing if you are admitting that this is sin and doing it and saying astaghfirullah and then doing something wrong. But it becomes another thing when you think you're above the knowledge and you say, I don't care. The knowledge is irrelevant. And that's a trick of shaitan that he wants you and I to practice the religion without knowledge. And his ideal goal is that we don't practice the religion at all. Right? But it is very, very dangerous when you start, when we start to practice the religion without clear understanding of how to practice the religion. And it's even worse when we irrigate ourselves at a level, we would come arrogant and say that that was for that back then. Now it's different. Things are different. Let's be quote unquote, get with the time. Let's kind of modernize things and whatnot. There is a classical traditional understanding of how we're supposed to do things. And then there's things that we adapt to, right? But the law of how you pray, basics, et cetera, it doesn't, it doesn't change. So those are some examples of what different levels of knowledge will do. Right? And why gaining knowledge in the time that we live in is so important. And then you will have people who, because they don't understand the need to be gentle and the need to be calm and, you know, calm and overall, what's the word I'm looking for? Tolerant, as we spoke about this last time, tolerance with people who are new with the religion. Again, because of a lack of knowledge, they might become very judgmental and become very judgmental with, oh, I know this now. And thus, nobody else, this person doesn't know it. Thus, I'm better than them. And thus, I'm going to make them feel bad about the religion. Or I'm going to spend a bunch of time talking bad about them and how they don't practice this and they don't practice that. Just examples of how a lack of comprehensive knowledge has damaged our communities. And really, and I know many of our scholars will say this, that, and I've heard many of our scholars say this, that the majority of the problems that come in our communities today and in the Muslim world today are because of ignorance and because of a lack of knowledge. Because knowledge influences how we prioritize our time and how we prioritize our time influences what we do in life, how we take care of people, and how we are going to go about becoming good stewards of society. So, those are just some of the problems that come. And I'm sure we can all think of others that will come because of a lack of knowledge. By the way, if anybody has questions, feel free to post them in the chat and, Insha'Allah, we'll try to get to them at the end of the class. We're going to try to keep these fairly short, about a half hour, a little over a half hour. So, also the majority of the people though, and it goes back to the importance of not just in learning a little bit, but learning the right type of knowledge. The majority of people who went astray in this religion, who went astray because of learning the wrong type of knowledge, right, or having the wrong teachers. So, you have people like extremist Muslims, right, these groups and whatnot, that will go out and do terrible things to people in the name of religion. And they'll actually use verses. They'll try to use verses. Again, they've misunderstood the verse or they're using an abrogated verse or something of the sort, but they'll try to use a misunderstood verse of the Quran to justify their actions. And again, it's because they didn't have the right type of knowledge. They didn't have the right people teaching them the knowledge and they did not understand the way that knowledge was applied. So, this goes back to why this trait is so critical, especially in the time that we are living in. And the Prophet Muhammad mentioned in Hadith, and again, we're paraphrasing here that a time is coming where the people of insight will be few, the people who talk, the orators and who talk a lot, there are going to be many, and there will be few people who will be people of help and people of goodness, and there will be a lot of people who seek help. A few people who actually offer help, a lot of people who seek help. And he mentioned at this time, seeking knowledge, learning knowledge, prioritizing knowledge will be superior to Ibadah, superior to worship. And I mean, we look around us, this is the time that we're living in, that if one person can prioritize doing extra worship versus like, of course, the farthest important, extra worship versus seeking knowledge, knowledge becomes a priority in this time because there's so many people who need to benefit from the knowledge. So, what does this knowledge do for one? So, we have many statements of the righteous who talk about how knowledge is a light, how knowledge gives one clarity, how in a time of darkness, in a world of darkness, it provides one clarity, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, this is what I'm not supposed to be doing, and this is what I'm supposed to try to be doing if I want to excel. So, it really just clarifies the road ahead that this religion, this need is a path. We are on a path. All of us, inshallah, are on some type of path. And we can go left, we can go right, we can go backwards, we can fall off the path. But we are on the path. And the path is the journey towards God. But knowledge is the main source that we have to assist us on the path. It gives us the light, right? It's nighttime right now. And there's a light on in this room. And if that light wasn't on, the room would be completely dark. And if it's dark, you can't see, right? And if you can't see, you don't know where to go. You're going to bump into things, I'd bump into this table, I'd bump into this couch, I'd bump into this, I'd bump into that. We would be, similarly, if you don't have knowledge, and you don't, because knowledge is a light. If you don't have knowledge and understanding of how to apply knowledge, when we're going on the path, we're going to take this bump and that bump and go fall off this way and fall off that way, and then wonder what's going on. And sometimes we might think we're going in the right direction, but we're not, because we haven't spent the time preparing, right? That just before you go out, you know you got to go somewhere, you type in the thing on your GPS, back in the day you'd pull out a map and you'd map out the directions. Similarly, then the knowledge of where to go, the GPS tell you go this way, go that way, go this way, go that way. That's what a teacher is, that's what a scholar is, that's what a chef is, that's what they'll tell us, go this way, no, no, no, don't do that. Go that way, go right, oh, you went this way, turn around, you're moving away from the direction, but the knowledge is what helps us then do that, and then eventually they teach, they teach, and then you can do that yourself, because you just know, okay, like I know how to get from my house to the must-shit, let's say, because I've gone enough times. The first time I'm going, I might need the GPS to help me, and maybe the second or third time, but eventually you'll figure it out. Similarly, on the path, the first time you're starting something, it's hard, right? And then eventually, you're going to figure it out, and you're going to get used to it, and then you learn more, and then you apply that, as we spoke about last time, it's very basic. You learn, you implement, you iterate, and, inshallah, we go from there. So knowledge gives us that clarity, it gives us the light. What is the source of knowledge? And then we're going to talk about the rewards that God gives us for seeking knowledge, and then we'll talk about how we actually go about implementing this trait, inshallah. Source of knowledge is very, very important. The knowledge we're talking about is not the knowledge that we're going to gain from internet articles, from Wikipedia, from... Excuse me. It's not that type of knowledge. It's not even the knowledge so that we're going to gain from textbooks in school. That's generally... Secular knowledge has its place. But we're talking right now about sacred knowledge. What is sacred knowledge? Sacred knowledge is knowledge that when you put it into practice, it brings a light into the heart, and it improves your state and draws you closer to Allah. That's what sacred knowledge is, just like a general summary. Right? So if it's drawing you far the way from Allah, it might not be sacred knowledge, or if it's making you harsh or making you angry, etc., making you debate all the time. Like a lot of people will learn religion and they just want to debate all the time. That's... They didn't learn the correct thing or they didn't learn how to apply it. Right? It should be making you more humble, making you have what's called khushu, a state of reverential awe of Allah. That's what sacred knowledge is. Now, there are types of sacred knowledge and we'll talk about that. But the source is, first and foremost, the Book of Allah, the Qur'an. Second, the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Now, the way that we get that knowledge generally will be through a chain of transmission that has gone on from the time of the Prophet ﷺ all the way till now. That there are, Masha'Allah, many people alive on the planet today, many of the great scholars who have chains. They can give you their isnad, their chain to whatever they learned back to a certain teacher, to a certain teacher, to a certain teacher who can then give their chain and then share and then get their chain and then all the way back to the Sahaba and all the way back to the Prophet ﷺ. Alhamdulillah. 1400 years, you're talking about like 30 or 40 generations. Very, very doable. Alhamdulillah for our religion versus other religions, they've, you know, that chain has been lost. That's why their scriptures have been changed and whatnot. But while ours has not been, the chain has not been lost. But that chain is very, very important. These are the sources of knowledge, the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Those are the most important ones to learn. And then we go about doing it though, through the lens that our scholars have understood it. So like reading about, you know, you read a book that talks about the virtues. You read a book that talks about certain verses of the Qur'an. You read a book of fiqh, let's say, that takes its proof from the Qur'an and from the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ and then tells you, this is how you pray, this is how you fast, that you make wudu, etc, etc. You don't have to go and then in fact you can't go. It's for us people who are not at a state of what's called much tahid. We can't just go to the source book of the Qur'an and the hadith and say, oh, this is how you should make wudu. This is how you should do this. No, no, no. We just go to the books of fiqh. Okay, your Hanafi, you go to the books of Hanafi fiqh, your Shafi, you go to the books of Shafi fiqh, etc, etc. in order to learn that type of knowledge. But then there's other types you want to learn like how to be a good human being. Oh, you could, the Qur'an is the best book to teach you how to be a good human being. Read the Qur'an, apply the Qur'an. You want to get a commentary, get a good commentary about the Qur'an and then it'll tell you all the verses of character, all the verses of okay, be good to people, speak good to people. Hold your tongue. When somebody says something to you, hold back your tongue. When ignorant people speak to you, say peace, right? These are various types of verses that are mentioned in Allah's book. But that is the source. So we have to prioritize in the time that we live in, learning the Qur'an, reading the Qur'an, learning the Qur'an, ideally spending time reading it in our own language. If we speak English, we should learn the Qur'an in English if we can. Of course, the Arabic is it's, that is the highest level if we can go about learning the Arabic even better. We should learn how to read the Arabic so we can recite the Qur'an. But for understanding, we should go about reading in our language, reading a commentary. A book I would highly recommend it's called the Study Qur'an has great commentary about the book of Allah. There's other tough seers out there. So, you know, or if one speaks Urdu or a different language, right? We go about learning the book of Allah and studying the book of Allah. Or one can listen to classes about the Qur'an or podcasts about the Qur'an or YouTube series about the Qur'an. But the Qur'an is so, so important. Right? Many of us, maybe we're spending tons of time watching shows these days or TV these days or whatever it is because especially the pandemic has kept people indoors. We should spend at least 5% or 10% of that time. Now set a goal with the book of Allah. Now we can spend that time with all of these other stories that are out there. Spend some time with the stories of the Qur'an. Spend some time with the Qur'an. That is the first source of knowledge. And then the knowledge of the hadith of the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, rather. Now this is, again, most of the lectures one listens to, the talks one listens to, they're going to be derived generally from these sources. But you know, you can get a book like Riyadh-e-Salliheen, The Gardens of the Righteous by Imam-e-Novi read hadith from that book every day. That's a type of way to get closer understanding of the hadith. What's not meant here, especially for those of us who are not pursuing the path of like scholarship, is we don't need to go and get Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari and all of the like primary source hadith books and then try to understand them. Those are books for the Ulama. Those are books for the scholars. And then there are books that other scholars have written that take the hadith that makes sense for us to apply and that we can focus on in our life. Fadail-e-Lamal, these types of books, Fadail-e-Sadaqat, these types of books, you know, that tell you about the good deeds that one can do, the good ways that one can increase their charity and their virtues and whatnot. So that's the first source. The second source then is after understanding that, making sure that we find some teachers that we really click with that makes sense. We, okay, okay, this scholar, this teacher, we click with what they're saying and as long as it's rooted in the traditional understanding of Islam, that there are people who are rooted in the Quran, rooted in the sunnah, rooted in traditional understanding, they have a spiritual practice, so on and so forth and try to benefit from them by watching their talks, by learning from them, by listening to their podcasts, whatever stuff people are doing these days, people are doing things on like SoundCloud and all these other things. And then eventually, inshaAllah, may Allah open up our societies again, going to classes, going to Khutbahs of course and so on and so forth. That's a really good way to gain knowledge because somebody has kind of done the work for us and then we can just go and sometimes people will spend, like you read a book, like this is a book, if we read this book, it might have spent the scholar who put it together hundreds of hours of research and they're giving it, distilling it to us and something we could maybe read in like two, three, four days or if we were really studying it in a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Right? So that's amazing that we have access to that or a talk or a Khutbah or something that somebody gives. It might take them hours, hours, hours of work to prepare for that but you and I can sit there and watch it and benefit from all of that work and then get the knowledge and usually people in their talks and series and whatnot that people do, they're sharing the gems of what they've understood. Right? And so it's a really, really good way for us to go and for us to just extract those gems and put them away in our pockets and bring them about for when they're going to be useful, inshallah. So those are really the two main things that I wanted to mention with regards to the source and how we go about acquiring it. We don't make up things on our own, number one. Number two, what we shouldn't do with regards to knowledge is go and read like some new theory that some western academic came up with, rooted in like critical theory or rooted in some problematic framework that's, you know, that it itself is rooted in some theory that came about in the last like 100 to 200 years and that questions parts of our religion or tells us this part is wrong or we should reinterpret this, et cetera. That's just a waste of time. Like if somebody wants to do that, it's for sure a path that can lead one astray but it's also not a good use of our time because it's just going to confuse you. Right? If you want to spend time, focus the time on the sources that are there, the traditional books that are there. I would highly also recommend the couple of series. First is the books of Imam Abdullah ibn Alawi al-Haddad. And those are amazing books, entry-level books to give us a good sense of the critical aspects of this religion. There's a book called The Book of Assistance. All of these have been translated. A book called The Councils of Religion, a book known as Good Manors on the Path and other books that teach us the way. They teach us, again, all of the research and understanding that these people spent and the time that they spent they distilled it into like small books and then we can read those books and benefit, right? And the other books I would recommend, the books of Imam al-Ghazali, amazing books that a large part of Imam al-Ghazali's famous Ahya al-Lumideen, The Revival of the Religious Sciences, which talks about how to become, get rid of basically all your bad character traits and get all the good ones, right? One of the most important aspects of religion. They've been, most of them have been translated into English. So those are some of the books and Imam al-Ghazali's The Beginning of Guidance and Bida'at al-Hidayah, an amazing book, also been translated into English. So those are just a couple examples and then there's more that are out there. But classical books that have been translated into English will go a long way in helping us understand this religion and then some of them might have a commentary or the translator might have helped us translated it in a way that will help us. So those are examples of ways to learn. But don't, I would advise against learning from people who are questioning what our religion has practiced as established fact for the last 1200 years. You've seen in the last like 100, 200 years a new age of quote-unquote scholars who have appeared who like question everything and say, no, this is wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong, this is wrong and who just say that, you know, their limited understanding of what they've done in the last 100 years is correct. It's a waste of time. I would generally advise ignoring that and instead spending time on the people who methodically took, had an understanding of a method that was coming as we mentioned with the chain from the Prophet's Islam and then they practiced it, they lived it, they then preached it and they spread benefit for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. And in a time when the Muslims were in, Alhamdulillah, much better state than we are in right now as again, a proof probably of the level of knowledge that once was out there versus now. What are some of the rewards for seeking knowledge? So there's so many amazing Hadith, Bismillah, excuse me, that talk about the rewards of gaining knowledge, so many of them. Just to touch upon the few that it is mentioned in the books that the creation in the heavens and the earth, the angels, the fish in the ocean, that they make dua and they seek forgiveness for the person who is set out on the path of seeking knowledge. And it is also mentioned that attending and gathering, one gathering of knowledge is better than praying a thousand rakah, visiting a thousand sick people, or attending a thousand funerals. This is mentioned in the Book of Knowledge in the Ahya Al-Lumuddin. And it is mentioned in the Hadith in the collection of Ibn Majah that rising early in the morning and studying any portion of knowledge is better than praying 100 rakah. So somebody gets up, after Fajr they read, learn, spend some time learning, inshaAllah, for just a small portion, it's better than praying 100 nafil rakah. Imagine praying two rakah, two rakah, two rakah, till you do a 50 time, that's a lot of rakah. But studying knowledge, it just shows the Prophet's Islam is encouraging us to, excuse me, to prioritize this. So the prioritization, the rewards are immense. And the righteous people, they would spend so much time learning. It's amazing. And again, in the daily life that we live today, it's going to be difficult. We just got to learn like 10 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day. Maybe we set it out an hour a week. Maybe we set out even an hour a month and whatever it is that we can do, but we should actively be on a path towards increasing our knowledge and increasing our implementation. Because that is one of the the deeds that will significantly assist us. As we get closer and closer to our death. There's a story of Imam al-Khazali that he had gone and he had spent years and years and years studying with his shoe. And he had spent so much time writing down all of the knowledge. It's one of the famous stories of Imam al-Khazali. He spent time all this time writing down the knowledge and he wrote it down in all these essentially like journals. And then he's in a caravan and people back then used to travel via caravans and he's on this caravan and highway robbers they come to the caravan and you know at the time they would just like literally jack all of your stuff they take everything and leave you with nothing and you're like on the desert on your caravan with camels and whatnot or horses and they're just there they take whatever they can especially anything valuable. This was very common in one of the dangers of traveling in the early times. Alhamdulillah we don't really face that danger anymore. So what happened was that they came to the caravan and then he had his books with him all of his books and you know they were there with him some sort of bag or something and they stole all this stuff from people right this you know their money and jewelry and whatever they could get and eventually they come to Imam al-Khazali and he says you know they say what's that? And he says this is this is just don't take this please like this these are all my notes it's all the knowledge I have this is all the and the robber like looks at him there's like all the knowledge that you have is in those books he's like yeah all of the knowledge that I have he's like what good is knowledge if you literally just leave it in the books if you just leave it in the notes and the robber like you know left he was like wow like what a you know he kind of reprimanded him and he left Imam al-Khazali later reflects that Allah had sent that he felt that Allah had sent him that person to warn him and to kind of admonish him so that from that day he memorized everything he learned he didn't just take notes on it he memorized it because when you commit it to memory it becomes useful for you and I later in life but the kind of point of that story is like look at the extent to which these people honored it and if we can just get a small portion of that and just have love for at least we don't love knowledge ourselves at least we should love the people who love knowledge right that there are many many things in our tradition which tell us many many sayings which tell us to love the scholars love the people of knowledge instead of like having love for these you know celebrities and CEOs and people who have all this wealth and politicians when most of the time a good percentage of the people I just mentioned like in large amounts are corrupt you very rarely find that though amongst people who have a true love of knowledge and that is what elevates them in this life and inshallah in the next life so inshallah we will wrap this up so the types of knowledge that are very very important first we learn then we implement so we might not implement it right away even if someone is the likes of Imam Ghazali had spent so much time writing it down and then he spent many more years after that memorizing it it's all good if we don't immediately memorize or immediately implement we have to just make the intention inshallah three types which are absolutely essential they're part of the ayin knowledges that we have to learn first the part of the ayin means individual obligation so the first is the knowledge and belief of aqidah which is what we believe that Allah what we believe about the angels the books the messengers their belief in the afterlife belief in heaven belief in hell most Muslims will have a general understanding of it it's good though to spend some time studying a proper text of aqidah or you know watching a class or something like that about aqidah and belief and not to get caught up in like the intricacies of it because that's again not a good use of our time just the general things okay so that when we face questions in this life okay no hold on that's impossible for Allah like no Allah that Allah is all knowing He knows what's best for me so that means if He knows what's best for me when I'm going through something difficult I can relax because God knows what's best for me He has all the knowledge and I don't have all the knowledge and therefore God knows what He's doing and I can relax because He's going to treat me in the best way there's just one small example knowing that fact in aqidah that Allah knows everything will help me deal with the personal problem that I have in my life when I feel anxious about what should I do next in life and whatnot which I'm sure many of us feel anxious about these days so that's aqidah the second is fiqh fiqh meaning law fiqh is more than the definition of fiqh is a very very broad definition but in this case I very specifically mean jurisprudence and the rules of how we should do our worship how we should worship Allah so the fiqh of udu prayer fasting hadj and zakat we should know that we should be able to say it if somebody asks us we should know it off the top of our you know off the top of our hands and we should just be able to we should just be able to very much focus time on memorizing that and then to articulate it if need be right so the small things and the big things right like okay for udu let's say one doesn't have enough water one should know the farth of udu at least in the hanafi madhab is like from ear lobe to ear lobe from here to here just the hands up to the elbows including the elbows and the feet up to the ankles right one does not act as sunnah to rinse the nose and or rinse the nose and rinse the mouth and get the and then sorry one more thing well the one fourth of the head for masaa those are the four absolute integrals but if we don't have enough water and inshallah we wouldn't face situation but if we if we if we were in this situation we would know okay let me just focus on doing the absolute integrals and then of course every other time I should do the full sunnah of three three times rinsing three times rinsing here washing three times washing three times here etc etc same thing with the prayer we should know what is required in the prayer what is a valid prayer what when can I pray sitting down when can I not pray sitting down right like you can't pray your farth prayers example here can't pray your farth prayer sitting down it's an integral of the prayer to stand up and then to to bow but but if one is injured that could be changed but if one is like able to walk around one has to do their absolute best to stand for a portion of the prayer and then only sit when it's getting difficult for them right again this is assuming somebody has an injury or something these are just small examples so but for sunnah enough no prayers it's different you can pray them sitting down um even if you have the ability to stand at least uh from what I've understood in the hundafi school so thick governs all this stuff it there's a lot of detail this is not a fifth class I would recommend finding a proper book a thick and a proper scholar a thick in a specific school and learning it and then other thing with thick is be open when people do things differently than you and me because there are many opinions out there in thick and there's many there are many schools out there in thick so don't think that one school is better than the other school or one way is better than the other way we should be relaxed and not be people who are super strict with regards to thinking that there's only one way to do things in thick we should have a broad understanding that hum the lot there are many understandings in this religion and then the last one is what's known as purification or you it's formally known as the sow of or purification which is the the science of purifying the heart and attaining good character traits getting rid of bad character traits and the science of knowing of coming to a realization of God an experiential realization of God and there are many books again out there that teach one to do this so those are the things it's essential for us to know these basic ones one has to know the bad diseases the basic understanding of bad diseases of the heart and good diseases of the heart so you don't pass away doing major sins of the heart without even knowing it one has to know basics of thick and the basics of the law of anything you enter into if you get married you have to then learn the thick of marriage and the thick of divorce if you get into a business we should learn the thick of the business and how to interact so on and so if you're like taking out loans from people there is a thick of how to take out a loan one has to write out the amount one has to issue some type of contract right that there's a certain thick of all of these types of things even if that loan is from you know a family member or something like that right so those these are examples of thick that one learns depending on whatever actions of life that we're engaging in if nobody in your family has died you don't have to learn the thick of inheritance that's not something we have to learn when when someone passes away we go and we ask a scholar the thick of inheritance we get it down it's not something you have to spend its extensive time learning but the individual ibadat are the essentials and then as we mentioned akida it's not super complicated it's fairly straightforward and it's important for us to invest time in learning so those are the sections and the the types of knowledge that are so critical again knowledge is so important in this religion the virtue that we discussed today is the love of knowledge and the importance of knowledge that the the righteous would give to knowledge they had immense immense immense love for it and inshallah next time we'll try to include a few more stories and examples as i know that's helpful but just a few there are many mentions of of the righteous people that they would spend hours and hours and hours in the night time reading and then hours and hours in the night time praying and then a small amount of time doing their sleep getting getting some rest right but their love for knowledge was so immense that it would take them away even from their sleep and of course that's not what i'm saying we should do but we should at least then be able to dedicate a few hours to it right some of the scholars they would tell their students don't come to the class until you have read your lesson 20 times before you come to the class and then you can come because you actually benefit because you'll have understood what i'm going to be discussing and then you'll be able to kind of build on top of it so this was probably mentioned with regards to like a complex matter a thick when a scholar was teaching this class but that's just a small example of the amount of time the great scholars of this religion would spend learning and there are people out there today who this is their love they love learning they love knowledge they love understanding it and then they love spreading it and so we should make the intention to take a small portion of this to at least have our further aim down and to have a portion first every month and then if we can do more every week and then if we can do even more at least every day or sorry if at least every week and if we can do more than some part every day where we spend time learning we spend time prioritizing knowledge and we spend time getting this love for knowledge the knowledge is a light inshallah it will guide us just like it guided all of the great people who came before us and we ask that Allah make us people of knowledge that He make us people who love knowledge that He make us people who prioritize knowledge of the book and the sunnah as the most important type of knowledge make us people who give us may Allah give us a special type of purity with the knowledge inshallah that we gain wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam wa barakah alasirna Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin inshallah if anybody has questions please feel free to post them in the chat and we will answer them we're just going to check here I don't see any right now okay so we'll just wait for another minute or two and if there's no questions then we will go ahead and end alhamdulillah so inshallah we'll resume next week these classes will be every single week 8 p.m. pacific time and they will continue with a new we'll continue on inshallah with a new with a new trait next week jizakmalakher may Allah bless all of you may Allah accept these efforts may Allah accept your desire to pursue knowledge and may He give you a deep deep deep desire to get closer to Him via the path of knowledge and any other paths that are the best for for all of us and may He give us rain to to put out these fires and may He relieve this pandemic and relieve all the difficulties that we are going through and that our community is going through wa salallahu wa salam wa barakat sayyidina Muhammad al-Malali wa sahbihi wa salam alhamdulillahi rabbil al-alameen jizakmalakher as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah