 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillah. Rabbil Alameen. Wassallallahu ala salam wa barakala sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim. Rabbi s-Sahih sadri wa salli amri wa halal oqtata ma al-Lisani. Ifqa al-Qawli. Wassallallahu ala salam wa barakala sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. Alhamdulillah. I hope everybody is doing well. So Alhamdulillah. We have reached our last class for this season and inshallah hopefully we'll do another one starting in January, probably a different type of topic. So we wanted to just end with this topic. We've been talking about different traits, different traits that the righteous have and we wanted to end with a very, very important trait and this is known as being in a constant state of remembrance, a constant state of dhikr of Allah, that one of the highest stations of our Deen is to, is a station where we always are trying to remember Allah, where we are always realizing that Allah is with us, that Allah is watching us, that Allah is aware of all of our actions and it's not just a something we intellectually understand, it is an active, mindful understanding, right? We have these ideas of mindfulness and that have become popular recently. Mindfulness is very much a core part of our religion and so that's something very, very important and so we want to talk a little bit today about why being in a constant state of dhikr of Allah is so important. Let's start with just understanding what is dhikr? What does the word dhikr mean? How do we understand what dhikr is? So dhikr generally means, right? And some people say dhikr, but dhikr means to remember Allah and it is the state where in some way, shape or form, whether you are manifesting it externally on your tongue or in your mind or through your actions, you are remembering your Lord, you are remembering Allah in some way, shape or form and Allah has really exalted the station of dhikr in the Quran. He's extolled the station. He has said, Remember me and I will remember you, right? So dhikr is very, very important because if you and I remember Allah, Allah is telling us that He will remember us and what else could we want other than Allah to remember us? Right? So now I could be sitting here, right? For example, this discussion, InshaAllah of Allah accepts it. This is one form of dhikr because we're literally talking about Allah. You could be in your car and just saying Alhamdulillah and you're remembering Allah. It's the state of dhikr. You could be entering into the washroom and you're saying the dua that the Prophet ﷺ said before he entered into the washroom. You're remembering Allah. You could be eating food and you're saying Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim. You're remembering Allah, making intentions. You could be at work and you could be thinking, how do I make sure I do this thing in a way that Allah would appreciate? How do I make sure I do something in a halal manner and you're remembering Allah? So these are all different forms of remembering Allah and really the dhikr of Allah is one of the main ways to arrive at nearness of Allah. And all of these traits that we've been talking about these traits of the righteous, they are to facilitate and to help us arrive at a state of nearness, help us arrive at a state of closeness to our Lord. Let's talk a little bit about the virtues of dhikr. So first and foremost, Allah says there are very few things which Allah tells us to do a lot of in the Quran, in His holy book. But in the Quran, He says to do abundant dhikr, to do dhikran kathira, to do a lot of dhikr, to do dhikr in abundance because He knows that it is good for us, right? And He says that, O you who believe, remember Allah in abundance. It is Allah who bestows blessings upon you to bring you out of darkness into light. So doing dhikr of Allah will take us from the darkness and the torpedoity of difficulty into the light of ease, into the light of tranquility. That is one of the ways that dhikr is going to help us. And we are all here in some way, shape or form. We are in some type of darkness, whether it is the darkness of our thoughts, whether it's the darkness of our actions, whether it is the darkness of the society that we live in, whether it is the darkness of our anxieties, of our pasts. And we are trying to get into a state of goodness and of purity. And that's really the journey for the human being that from the beginning of our life, to the end of our life, if we can go from being in a state of darkness to being in a state of light, to being in a state of purity, we have achieved success in this life, right? And when we get into the grave, one of the most amazing parts about the grave, if it is a grave that is hopefully, you know, a good sign for us rather than a bad sign, the grave can be either a really good place for us to be or a very, very dangerous place for us to be. That a good grave is a grave filled with light, that the Prophet's Son would actually make Dua'a. Allahumma ja'alna nuran fi qalbi wa nuran fi qabri that, O Allah, bestow light in my heart and bestow light in my qabr, in my grave, right? And then he would proceed to ask for a variety of other things known as the Dua'a of Nur. The Prophet's Son would ask for a light in other parts of his body and other parts of his life and whatnot. So we are trying to go from darkness to light. And that's the journey that we're on. And we're all struggling in some way or another to try to achieve this state. Dikr helps us get there. Dikr is one way that Allah explains to us in the Quran that you are going to, I'm going to take you out of darkness into light because you are remembering me, insha'Allah. So Allah also says that, and we see this in the hadith, could see that whoever remembers me to himself or herself, I remember him or her to myself. And whoever remembers me in a gathering, I remember them in a better gathering, right? So again, Hamdullah, hopefully we're in a virtual gathering right now and insha'Allah Allah is remembering us in a better gathering, insha'Allah, right? But these are the goals that we have to try to have. We have to remember that, I mean, SubhanAllah, I know I'm sure all of us, we feel a bit of solitude and a bit of kind of loneliness with everything going on with coronavirus and whatnot. And maybe we're under a new lockdown now and we might not be seeing people and we're kind of hoping soon we'll get to see people and a lot of us have this kind of hope that maybe 2021 will be the year which things will change and 2020 might have had its, you know, ups and downs and whatnot. But remember this, Allah is always with us but it just requires you kind of turning the channel on, right? A lot of us, we turn the channel on to occupy our time. We might turn the Netflix channel on or our channel on a phone or whatever it is. But Allah says remember me and I will remember you. Immediately you start remembering Allah and you have to just have that kind of tranquil spiritual realization that Allah is remembering me. O Alhamdulillah, Allah is actually remembering me in this moment. Alhamdulillah, okay. Things are going to be okay. I'm going to get through this issue. I'm going to get through this problem. I'm going to get through this difficulty. So whoever remembers me to myself, I remember him to myself. And Allah says in this Quran, remember me and I will remember you. Right, so this is very, very important. The other thing we have to keep in mind is that zikr is actually, it's a tangible goal. It's a tangible thing. Sometimes we see, you know, we see things that are like kind of tangible and kind of outwardly practical, you could say, I guess, for lack of a better word. And then things that are more internally spiritual. Dikr actually is very, it has a reality, but you and I might not see that reality, right? And we have to learn to see the reality of these things even if we can't fully comprehend them. That there is absolutely nothing wrong as long as someone has fulfilled their other obligations and is doing something meeting their obligations of their family and whatnot for someone to just sit and to just be doing a lot of dikr. Astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, reciting Quran, saying Alhamdulillah, doing Salawat on the Prophet's hand. Right, that's a very, very virtuous thing, but actually you do have people in our time who like look down upon that. They're like, oh, you're just doing dikr. Why don't you go out and do something practical? Why don't you go out and help this way? You don't know the effects of that dikr, how much light they're bringing into the world that's going, taking the darknesses away. These are spiritual realities. Part of this requires us to reorienting our mindset. You cannot have spiritual, you cannot have real change in the world until you have spiritual fortitude built. And once the spiritual fortitude is built, you will then be able to affect change in the world. It doesn't come the other way around. Going out and doing things, quote, unquote, practically, without putting in the spiritual effort and the spiritual work first, it doesn't work. Allah says He does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves. And the inward process begins with dikr. And frankly, it ends with dikr. Dikr is always the goal to always be in a state of dikr because it rectifies the intention somebody has, prevents them from doing things in the wrong way. So, another example we have here of dikr is, Bismillah, right, that we have different types of dikr that we can do. And we also have the Prophet ﷺ, he said, he gave the companions, he said, you know, these are a bunch of different actions. Let me tell you about the best action, though he says, the Prophet ﷺ once said to his companions, shall I not inform you of the greatest of actions and the most pure of your actions, the greatest and purest of your actions in the sight of your Lord. The action which elevates you most, that which is better for you than spending your money, spending your gold and your silver. And better for you than to meet your, you know, meet the person who you're trying to defend yourself with on the battlefield, right? He says to meet your enemy, right, on the battlefield in a valid state of jihad, a valid war that somebody would be fighting. And they said, sure, of course, of course, tell us of what this action is. And the Prophet ﷺ said, the remembrance of Allah, the dhikr of Allah, that there's nothing better than that, right? Now we know there's abundant reward for giving Sadaqah, for giving our money away and charity to the poor. We know there's abundant reward for defending the lands, right, against people who are trying to harm us or harm, we're talking about in a situation where there's actually a proper state and whatnot, not an individual entity type of situation, right? We know that these types of things have abundant reward. If they're done following the example of the Prophet ﷺ, right, and we know there's so many other actions that one has and one could do. But the Prophet ﷺ said that the remembrance of Allah is the greatest and purest of actions. And the Prophet ﷺ also said, there is no action that a human can perform, which is more effective in saving you from the punishment of Allah than the dhikr of Allah. Because dhikr is building up, you could say spiritual fortresses between us and the punishment of Allah. Allah's anger is getting, it's decreased because of the dhikr that we are doing. And so that's something we have to keep in mind. It is very, very, very virtuous. And it's a very, very important trait that we can have. Now, there are different types of states of dhikr one can try to be in. One can try to have, okay, I'm going to have a moment of dhikr every day. I'm going to at the very least try to be in a state of dhikr during my prayer. And then one can try to achieve a state where like, no, no, no, I'm going to be in dhikr like all day long, even if it doesn't mean it's on my tongue, if it's just kind of something permeating inside, right? But dhikr is also easy. It's easy for us to do, right? So, Alhamdulillah, it's easy. Saying stuff for Allah is easy. It's not difficult, but there's a lot of reward. We've all probably heard this idea, the narration that, you know, someone can have all their actions on one side of the scale and then la ilaha illallah will come on another side of the scale and it will tip the scales because of the immense weight of la ilaha illallah. And we actually know la ilaha illallah is known in the traditions is of the dhikr, the greatest dhikr, right? Saying that there's no Lord, there's no God except Allah. But these are the types of things that they have a meaning to them and we kind of like don't even realize how amazing it is that we get to say them and the reward for them we might not see, we won't see until much later, right? So, I'll give you an example. In other traditions, there's like, for example, in the Jewish tradition, you're not even allowed to say that we're allowed to say the name Allah from my limited understanding of the Jewish tradition. They're not even allowed to say the supreme name of God except for on very, very, very specific occasions, right? They're limited in terms of the dhikr that they can do. Other traditions also have many limitations, right? In the Quran, Allah talks about how in order to gain forgiveness and salvation the types of things that Bani Israel had to do, right? Allah mentions that in the Quran. We can just literally sit in a room and just say, SalaqafurAllah, feel sorry, cry, feel remorseful, ask Allah to forgive us and inshaAllah, we'll be forgiven, right? I mean, we don't have to like do intense, intense things in order to reach the state of forgiveness. That's amazing. That's amazing. It's in Allah's hands to forgive whoever he's going to forgive. But dhikr is a really, really pure thing. The other thing Allah says in the Quran that, Verily in the remembrance of Allah, do hearts find rest. This whole topic that we've been talking about is a virtue in a time of vice. What is vice? Vice is a state of negativity. It's a state of darkness that permeates throughout a society. And it's a society that has more vice than virtue that's starting to go downwards. We might think we're progressing in this society. Oh, this technological advancement, this financial advancement and whatnot. But progress is not that type of progress. Progress is not material progress. Progress is spiritual progress. That the better character that people have, the more they take care of one another, the more they're trying to do good in the world, right? The more that they are trying to uphold virtue in the world, that is a sign of progress according to our religion. Allah outlines progress in the Quran, right? But in the time of vice, in the time of vice that we live in, we might get confused. Oh, if I have a lot of money, that means that that's progress. Oh, if I have, if I'm running a company, that's progress. Oh, if I'm elected to this position, that's progress. Oh, if I have this power, that's progress. If I have this many followers, that's progress. And we get confused and we get confused. And so vice, it permeates because it also creates confusion, right? But virtue, virtue, one of the best virtues that we can have is the virtue of doing a panden dhikr of Allah. Having a heart is constantly in the remembrance of Allah, right? And that dhikr, it takes us out of the darkness of vice into the light of virtue. Out of the dulhumat, out of the darknesses into the nur, into the light. And that is our goal. And so, as we've been discussing all of these different traits, and there's so many traits, and we hope that Allah just connects us to the Prophet ﷺ in the purest of ways so that we can have a portion of every single good trait that it is that is out there. But dhikr is one of the chief traits, being constantly, constantly remembering Allah, constantly being in a state of dhikr of Allah is one of the best traits that we can have. So, one of the companions came to the Prophet ﷺ and he said, you know, the laws of Islam, there's a lot for me. And basically kind of implying that like, there's a lot to do, and so give me something to do which I can just hold fast to. Like I want to do something. Give me like a, in addition to all the basics, or the companions would never leave the foundations as we spoke about in the last class. Foundations are essential. But give me something in addition that I can hold on to. And the Prophet ﷺ said, let your tongue constantly be moist with the dhikr of Allah. Let your tongue be moist with the dhikr of Allah. Let's examine that statement a little bit. How does one's tongue remain moist with the dhikr of Allah? How? In order for your tongue to be moist with the dhikr of Allah, your mind actually has to be free enough for you to send the signal to your tongue that you know, remember Allah, right? That's your tongue to be moist with the dhikr of Allah, you have to be in a state and your heart has to be pure enough where it desires remembering Allah. So I'll give you an example. If you are just kind of like going out for a walk, some people will want to say SubhanAllah when they see the sunset or something like that. Other people might just want to listen to music and not really care about what's going on outside of them. The state of the heart will influence what the tongue says. So the Prophet ﷺ is saying, let your tongue be constantly moist with the dhikr of Allah. It also relates to the state that we are in. So if we want to achieve this state where our tongue is constantly moist with the dhikr of Allah, we have to work on the heart. And at the same time, the dhikr will help us work on the heart. So one way is, okay, we realize, you know what? I'm having a hard time focusing. I'm having a hard time doing dhikr. But I'm still going to force myself to do it. Why? Because the dhikr is going to help the heart find rest. So it's actually the beautiful thing where the pure the heart is, the more dhikr the heart will want to do. But in order to make the heart pure, you have to do a lot of dhikr. So this is just about stages, right? We spoke about this last time as well. We spoke about this that there are different stages. Somebody can be at a beginning stage or an intermediate stage or an advanced stage. And so when you and I, if when we're at the beginning, okay, well, we might have to force ourselves. I'm going to sit here. I'm just going to do 10 astaghfirullahs. I'm going to do 20 alhamdulillah. And I'm just going to do this dhikr, right? That's good. But as maybe we advance and we hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, Allah brings us closer to Him, maybe that person and we see this with the righteous that they're always in a state of dhikr. But the person at the beginning might not be able to do that. They might not be able to always be in a state of dhikr. But it's just about starting with whatever we can. The Prophet ﷺ said, Let your tongue be constantly moist with the dhikr of Allah. It begins with just one though, right? Just one or two at the car, one or two different phrases that we might say. And then we continue to progress forward, right? So let's keep this in mind. Let's also think of goals that we are going to have. Let's talk about the types of dhikr. So we're entering into a new, you know, calendar year, a new Gregorian calendar year. And alhamdulillah, we've already been in the new Islamic year for a couple of months now. But if we're talking about the societies that we live in, they follow a different type of calendar. So let's just come up with some goals. Everybody has New Year's ambitions. It's interesting. Many people, we set a lot of worldly ambitions. I want to be in this position by this time. I want to make this much money by this time. I want to retire at this age. But how many people set spiritual ambitions? How many people set spiritual goals? I want to be doing this much dhikr when I'm 30 or when I'm 40, when I'm 50. I want to be in one year from now. I want to recite the Quran once a month, every single month. We have to say Allah make that easy for us. That's a good intention to make. Right? By in two years, I want to memorize one whole surah, one whole chapter, one whole juzh of the Quran. Whatever goal it is that we're going to, I want to memorize surah Yasin. I want to memorize any surah. Right? These are the types of goals we also have to set. We can't only set dunya goals. What kind of people would we be if all we did we set worldly goals? God meets us in the day of judgment. He's like, wow, you really, you asked me for everything, huh? You asked me for a big car, or a nice car, a big house. You had all these goals. And I gave you all that, but like, where were your goals for your deen? Where were your goals for the year after? And we don't want to be embarrassed and be like, Oh God, I didn't make any goals. And if we don't, if whoever doesn't make any goals, you're left to whatever ambition you had. So, so aim high. Right? The Prophet Muhammad, he's indicated, don't just ask for the lowest level of things. Ask for the best, the best. If we ask for jannah, if we ask for jannah, if we ask for those, the highest jannah, these are goals that we have to set. Let's set some dhikr goals. So the first, these are different types of things that the scholars mentioned, types of dhikr that we should do. The first is have a portion of our time where we recite Allah's book. We recite the Quran. We should have a portion of our time where we recite the Quran, right? Even if it's one page a day or a few verses of the Quran a day, let's have a portion where we do that as we go into this new year. And ideally we get to the state where we are doing at least one khatam of the Quran every single month. And if we can't do that, then one khatam outside of Ramadan and one khatam in Ramadan, in Arabic. We're talking about in Arabic. Reading the Quran in English is good. That counts as a form of pursuing knowledge and seeking knowledge, but doesn't get you the reward of recitation. There's abundant reward with that, but there's different all types of different spiritual kind of antidotes and vitamins that the heart needs. And one vitamin the heart needs is to recite the Quran regularly in Arabic. It doesn't matter if you understand that the heart understands it. The spirit understands it. The spirit doesn't speak the language you and I speak. The spirit is speaking the spiritual language. So it understands what you're saying. And through reciting Allah's book, a purity is coming in and it's manifesting inside of the heart. The angels are attracted to the language of the Quran. The Quran is the uncreated speech, the uncreated speech of Allah, right? Or the uncreated words of Allah. So we have to keep that in mind that reciting the Quran in Arabic is very important. And if we can't do it in Arabic, we spend time learning. That should be one of our main goals. Before we set any other ambitious goals that we have in life, if we don't know how to recite the Quran in Arabic, we have to spend some time doing that. Reciting the Quran properly, ideally with tajweed and knowing how to do it, you know, with the right inflections and whatnot. Then from there, we add another goal. Okay, we're going to try to read a portion of the sunnah, the wise of the morning and of the evening every single day at the very least of the morning time. There are different compilations of this. We've mentioned these before. One great compilation is the Weer the Latif by Imam al-Haddad. Compilation of the waz that he collected from the sunnah of the Prophet's son. The Prophet's son generally would read every morning and every evening. Those are the shortcuts. There are secrets for barakah. A lot of people post about like, you know, my five secrets for a successful morning and my morning routine and this and that. The best morning routine is the routine of the Prophet's son. And then any other morning routine can be built on, can be built alongside that and you know, not going to be at the same level of what the routine of the Prophet's son was. But his routine was to recite du'as every morning, right? And they're certain that they only take five to ten minutes. We can read, listen to them on, you know, YouTube or walk around and recite them and read them and whatever it is, whatever is easy for us. But we should try to make that a portion. That should be our second goal. The third goal for dhikr should be to know the du'as of certain actions and to know the reward that comes with it. So for example, when you leave the house, the Prophet's son would say, And then it's mentioned that when you do that, an angel calls out to you and says, You have been protected, shielded and guided, right? That that protection of Allah comes. Now you and I might not see this, but just keep this in mind, like this is how spirituality works. Whatever the Prophet's son said, we do and there's a benefit linked. It's way more impactful than for example, when we leave our house, if we have a security system and we like enter a code and we turn it on and then we know when someone's going to come into our house without us knowing that there's going to be an alarm that goes off. That's like some dunya person created that and it could work. It could not. And you know, usually it's an overpriced type of system, right? That they might implement or integrate into our house. This is the messenger of Allah, so Allah is saying you say this, you're going to be in a state of protection, right? But we have to also remember if we don't do these things, the protection is not nearly at the level of protection we needed to be at, right? So we have to put in the effort. This is very important. We cannot be people who don't put in the effort and who don't do the requisite dhikr, the requisite at the car and then wonder, okay, well, I wasn't feeling in a protective state. If you do all of that, you take all the precautions and then God forbid something happened, okay, we know that there's some tests there. But if we don't do the prerequisites, right? It means it's our, it's a shortcoming of ours for short, for short. The other one could have been a shortcoming as well, but this one is a shortcoming for short that results it in this situation. So read the du'as for certain actions before we eat, after we eat, before we use the restroom, when we wake up, there's a du'a before we go to sleep, a du'a when we wake up, a du'a when we go outside, a du'a when we drink water, a du'a when we eat food and after we all different types of du'as, right? And then from there, we have to just make sure we have the right order of priorities laid out, right? So the Prophet ﷺ, he emphasized to us, Allah emphasized to us in the Qur'an. We have to get our prayers down. We have to have our salat down. Then we add in the other sunnah at the car that the Prophet ﷺ would do, right? But if we don't have our prayers down and we're focusing on extra credit, there's an issue there, right? It might just be, we have to recalibrate a little bit. Shaitan comes at us from different angles. So we have to have the basics down and then we start adding on what are considered the sunnah or the extra kind of credit, you could say. From there, what we do, we add in other oft recited surahs from the Qur'an. The scholars, they recommend that the Muslim is reciting every day surah Yasin, surah Waqya and surah Mulk. Those are the three surahs that the Muslims should be reciting every day. Yasin in the morning, Waqya after us or after Makrib and surah Mulk after Isha. Mulk protects from the grave, the punishment of the grave. Yasin is for whatever intention you have, hopefully an intention to have a barakah filled day and Waqya prevents somebody, inshallah, it's a protection against poverty according to the Hadith of the Prophet ﷺ and hopefully it increases one's spiritual risk and worldly provision. So these are different ways. So before we do all of the other things that we can do to like go out and see protection and earn money and this and that, like we have to take the practical steps before we like put, don't put trust in that, right? Do what the Prophet ﷺ said and do the dikkur and then the dikkur takes us out of the darkness of the difficulty into the light of whatever situation it is that we are going to be in. And so the effects of dikkur, what are they? The effects of dikkur are that they will permeate throughout us and they will help influence the type of person that we are. The person who does a lot of dikkur, they achieve a certain state of softness, they achieve a certain state of tranquility, they achieve a certain state of calmness, they're not easily perturbed, they're not easily angered, right? Because, in the remembrance of Allah, the hearts find rest. So let's just keep that in mind, right? That dikkur has a very, very, very powerful component to it. And we just wanted to read one specific story here of a Sahabi and the approach that he had to dikkur. And so he mentioned that one, one of the Sahabi, he was living amongst the people who were polytheists and he tried to go to Al-Madinah, Al-Manawara regularly, but people prevented him. He wanted to be at the Prophet's son. And so, one day he managed to escape, but some of the people, they found him on the road and they said, No, you're not going any more. You're not going any further. He said, Look, what benefit is it to you if I remain amongst you? There's no benefit. Allow me to go to the Prophet's son and you may take my property, right? So, they, they agreed to this. They said, Okay. And the Sahabi, I think had had quite a lot of property. They agreed to this and they said, Okay, fine. You can go and they took everything he possessed and all they left him were just two basic ragged clothes, pieces of clothing for him to wear two ragged cloths. It says here. And so when he arrived in Madinah, his title became known as Dhul Bijdain, the possessor of the two ragged cloths. And so this man, SubhanAllah, he had a very, very strong attachment to the Dikr of Allah, to the remembrance of Allah. And so once the Prophet's son walked by the Masjid and with other Sahabi and they heard somebody inside loudly doing the Dikr of Allah and someone said, Maybe this person is showing off. Maybe this person is just, you know, showing off. Ya Rasulullah. And the Prophet's son said, No, no, no, no. He is someone who experiences pain out of his fear of Allah, meaning that it's a state and I don't obviously, you know, this is just my limited understanding of this. But Allah knows best. It's somebody who is experiencing a certain type of khashia, certain type of internal fear out of their understanding of Allah, that Allah is the creator of the heavens and of the earth and of the universe and of the galaxies and the stars and the solar system. This is Allah. And he's remembering Allah and so there's a certain type of pain or certain type of awe that he's feeling. Right? And so this man, he went out with the Prophet's Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam on his expedition, on an expedition to Tabuk and it is there that he died and one of the greatest of the companions are the ones who dug his grave and then the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he came and he leveled the floor of the grave with his own hands. He leveled the floor of the grave and then he Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam prayed the Janaza prayer over him and told the companions to pass this man's body to him and then he placed him in his grave and then he said, Oh Allah, evening has come and I am content with this man with I am content with him so you be content with him. Right? And he said this of a man whose tongue was constantly moist with the dhikr of Allah such that the dhikr of Allah it had dominated his entire being. Right? So we first see let's examine this a little bit. We see at the beginning of this story that he was so concerned out of his love for the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and out of his love for Allah and out of his state of wanting to always remember Allah that he was trying to leave this state of being around Mushyqeen, right? When you're around people who are people of darkness it's hard to be in a state of light. He's like, yo, I want to get out of here. I want to go near the good people. So he was that is a state of dhikr. For sure, even whether you're saying it or not it's a state of dhikr because you're remembering Allah and you're doing an action in your life to try to get closer to where Allah would want you to be. And then in his life, in one example we see in this narration that when he was in the mosque, right? He is in this state between him and his Lord. He's loudly remembering Allah, right? Loudly remembering Allah and he's proclaiming, right? The some type of dhikr of Allah. And then we see the end that he has where the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam himself buries him. The greatest of the companions dig his grave and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam makes a dua for him. I mean, you know, all the things that we want in life this man, he left all that stuff behind. He left behind his property. He left behind his wealth. He left everything behind. But he went towards where Allah would want him to go and he went to be near the Messenger of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. I'm not saying we have to leave behind everything. Hamdullah, we're not in a situation where we have to quote unquote emigrate or that we're being threatened to not be able to practice our religion. That's not the situation that we're in. He left it all behind and he ended up near the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and then he died in the absolute best of states. The absolute best of states. Right? And Subhanallah, Allah knows best but if the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam made this dua for him, InshaAllah, he is in one of the greatest places that is possible to be. InshaAllah, Jannah for those who are with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So that's the state that this man ended up in and we see the kind of journey that he had, the journey that he has. So let's, let's keep this in mind. Right? Let's understand the virtue of Dikr. Dikr is your companion in this life. Dikr will be your companion and will benefit you, InshaAllah. You benefit us when we enter the grave and it will benefit us when we enter into the next life. It's something that continues over that good deeds are recorded, right? For us. And so as we wrap up this, you know, all these conversations that we've been having about different traits of the righteous, we first and foremost, we ask Allah to accept and you know, thank everybody for taking the time to watch and ask that you, you know, pardon any errors that we make and pray for us and pray for the umma of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and pray that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is pleased with his umma. And we have to just remember that our life should be a life where we're trying to gain good traits and every day that we gain a trait that brings us closer to Allah is a good day and every day that we gain a trait that makes us farther away from Allah is not a good day. We want to try to be people of traits, people of character traits, people of attributes and being in a constant state of dhikr is one of the best attributes that it is that we can have. And what will that ultimately lead to and maybe we'll talk about this in the next um semester or next season? Ultimately it will lead to a good ending. That's what we want in this life. We want a good ending. We want a good ending. We want to be in a state where we end our life in a good way, when we die in a good way as we see this beautiful story of this companion. Death doesn't have to be this like terrible thing or this scary thing that the society has made a death is the day that inshallah we will meet Allah that we will end get out of the prison of this life that we will get out of the toil and the difficulty of this life. Right. And so for sure one of the other traits of the people of Allah and of the people of righteousness is that they not only constantly remember Allah but they constantly remember death and they remember death as a means of remembering Allah because they know that Allah is the one who who created life and death. He created life and death in order to test you that in order to test you and I to see who will be the best indeed. This is the life that we're living the life that we live if it's in a state of righteousness then inshallah we will pass into a death of righteousness. Right. Allah is the one who created life and death to test us. So we're going to see Allah is going to see where we where we began. He knows how we live our life and then where we're going to end up. Right. And we're going to see that ultimately. We're going to see in the day of judgment. Ultimately we're going to see Allah is going to show us like a movie. This is your whole life. Did you do all this and we're going to say yes. We did all that. Right. And then inshallah the moments where you did dhikr and let's say you repented and that's a form of dhikr that scene will get erased from the movie. Allah said okay that scene is gone and then that scene will go and then something else will go and then he'll give you abundant rewards for something small that you might have done because you did it with such a sincere intention. So let's be people inshallah as we close this out. Let's go into this new year with abundant with great intentions be people of intention be people of good traits be people of knowledge be people who focus properly who prioritize properly be people who love the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam be people who prefer Allah over all else be people who accept the decree of Allah let's be people who are patient with the decree of Allah who are patient with everything that goes on. Let's be people of gratitude and people of shukr let's be people who focus on getting the foundations of our Dean right. Let's be people who go out and try to spread goodness in the world people of mercy people of gentleness people of humility. Let's try to have all of those traits that we mentioned and all the other good traits. Let's just make an intention that we want to be people of goodness and people of care and inshallah Allah will open the door to the rest and that we have to know that we have in the messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam the greatest of examples the best of human beings that the best person to ever walk the face of this earth was our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and he would make dua for you and I every single night that our sins are pardoned and that we get closer and closer to Allah and we have that example of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam we have that connection inshallah to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam let's focus on increasing that connection let's focus on getting closer to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam let's focus on getting closer to Allah let's focus on implementing what it is that we have learned and whatever it is that we have not learned let's focus on making grand intentions to try to implement that and to try to get closer and closer to Allah in whatever way Allah thinks it is best for us but no matter where we're at no matter where we're at let's be people of humility and let's be people who never give up Let's be people who like the sahaba, like this great sahabi that we just mentioned and the other examples that we have mentioned and we haven't mentioned. Be people of firmness, be people of steadfastness. Let's not be people who give up, let's not be flimsy people, let's not be weak people. Let's not be people who get swayed this way and that way based on the currents of society. But people of firmness, people who try to establish a state of steadfastness and whatever it is that they do, people of istiqama, Allah says in the Qur'an that He tells us to be people of istiqama. Let's ask that Allah make us people of steadfastness, make us people of firmness and make us people who approach Him in the state that we're in and if we make it to the next year inshaAllah that with all goodness, with all care, with abundant and righteous traits and righteous deeds. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen. Wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Wa barakah ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa alayhi wa sahbihi al-salam. Rabbana antaqabal minna inna kanta samyol alameen. Wa tawbalina inna kanta tawab ar-Raheem. Ya Allah, Ya Rahman, Ya Raheem we ask that you accept, Ya Allah these attempts that we have done to discuss your religion and to discuss the traits that you like, Ya Rabbil alameen. We ask that you allow these traits to be established into our hearts, Ya Allah. We ask that you allow tranquility and calmness and a sakina to descend into our hearts. Remove our anxieties, remove our problems, Ya Rabbil alameen. Allow us to be people of dikkari, Ya Allah. We do not have much knowledge. We do not have much goodness, Ya Rabbil alameen, Ya Allah. We do not have anything, Ya Allah. We are people of weakness, Ya Allah. We are Your slaves, Ya Allah. But we know who to ask at least Ya'Allah. You have inspired us Ya'Allah to ask Ya'Allah and you have inspired us to ask you Ya'Allah. So we ask you Ya'Allah by the rank of your Prophet ﷺ Ya'Allah and by your mercy and by your Rahmah Ya'Allah that you pardon all of our sins Ya'Allah that you elevate the Ummah of the Prophet ﷺ Ya'Allah that you remove all these difficulties that have manifested throughout the world Ya'Allah and that you elevate us and allow us to focus our life on you and only you and to remember that Ya'Allah that you allow us to become closer to you inwardly and outwardly. We are in every state that we are in and with every good intention that the Prophet ﷺ, may peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, Arabic Peace be upon you all.