 So we're going to continue on in our discussion about the hurdles on the path to Allah. And it's very important for us to remember the first hurdle that we've been talking about. The first main hurdle on the path to Allah is the hurdle of knowledge, the hurdle of knowledge. So if we are able to learn sincere knowledge, then from there our main goal needs to be to repent Allah and to try and achieve a state of sincere repentance by means of which we can purify our heart, we can ask Allah to forgive and pardon and cleanse the sins that we have committed, and that will then allow us to travel the path more seriously. It's important to remember a few things again for those of you who have not joined before. We are covering the book by Mamamazali, which is essentially the hurdles on the path to Allah. We have talked about the first main hurdle, which is to learn beneficial and sacred knowledge. And now the second hurdle that someone is going to face after they have tried to learn proper knowledge is to repent to Allah. And the importance of repentance is because once somebody starts the path and they actively start to be inspired to get closer to Allah, you realize how many sins you've committed. We realize how many sins we've committed, how many mistakes we've made, and we have a desire and a yearning to try and get rid of those sins. And so then we go about the process of asking Allah for sincere forgiveness, for sincere forgiveness for our sins. So there's a couple of things that we want to try and do, that we want to try and do here, inshallah. The first is we have to reflect on what have we actually done in our life that's hard on. Once someone makes a decision that they want to tread the path to Allah, this sincere path of spirituality, the path to Faini Ghamir, we must reflect on what have we done that is hard on in our life, what have we done that's wrong, what have we done that we actually need to seek repentance for. That should put in us a deep urge, an urge to want to really, really deeply repent to our Lord. And that urge should come from within, and it's something that Allah will inspire in somebody. And then it allows for that person to turn to Allah in a completely sincere way. We ask Allah, Allah, sorry for what I've done, you feel remorse, you feel guilt, you feel that almost ashamed before Allah for all the sins in the wrong life that we've lived, and then someone turns their life towards Allah Toba, which is what repentance is. The word for repentance in Arabic is Toba. That's what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said. And he talked about Toba often. Allah talks about Toba as a quality he loves. He says in the Qur'an, Allah, you hit the Tawabi. We hit the Mubahidin. Allah loves the people of Toba, and he loves the people who are trying to purify themselves. So turning Toba is to turn to Allah. It's to turn literally. So you and I may have been living a life where we've been away from Allah, and Toba now is to turn back to Him. And Toba is, there's a one-time Toba, and then there is a continual Toba. The major Toba we make in our life ideally is that time where we say, Okay, I'm going to leave this life of sin and jahlia and wrongs that I've been doing, and I'm going to turn towards Allah sincerely. And then there's a daily Toba where someone says, I made a lot of mistakes today and I'm going to repent to Allah. And then someone might reflect on this weekly and once a year and so on and so forth. So it's important then to realize how to go about repenting, how to go about repenting. And someone has not sincerely repented. The shackles of sin will always prevent them from spiritual progress. Sins weigh you down. Good deeds lift you up. Good deeds are going up towards heaven. And heaven has an angelic and magnetic pull towards heaven. And sins are going down towards hell and it's pulling you down. And so you can think about it metaphorically that the more good deeds you do, the more inclined you are to follow your spiritual nature. And the more sins that you do without seeking repentance for those sins, the more inclined someone is going to be to follow their lower nature, their carnal appetites, their carnal desires. And so that's why repentance though it will cleanse the sins. And it gets to a point where somebody may have committed immense sins, immense sins. And then they get to a point where they repent for those sins. Allah allows them to transform their life and they turn their life around. And then Allah says in the Quran that he gives them good deeds for all of the wrong that they may have done. And he actually turns those sins into good deeds. That's how important repentance is because Allah loves the people who are turning back to him. It's not that sin is that we're never going to sin. We know we're going to sin. Sin is going to happen. Allah knows that we're going to sin. In fact it comes to one narration that if we didn't make mistakes, Allah would create people in our place who would make mistakes and turn back to him. Because it is part of the nature of the human being to forget and to make mistakes. And it's part of the nature of our Lord to forgive us. Alhamdulillah. And that we have a forgiving Lord. So we're going to talk about how to go about the process of repentance. But first let's talk about the reality of sin. You have different types of sin in our religions. You have different types of sin in our religion and in our spiritual development. The first type of sin is a sin that is... This is a sin, excuse me, which would be considered a major sin. And this will create a major amount of darkness in the heart for somebody. A major amount of spiritual darkness in the heart for somebody. And then from there you have categories of sins. You have major sin and you'll have less significant. And then you'll have minor sins and then you'll have mistakes. And then the categories continue to go up until somebody may repent from wasting time. And someone else may repent from not doing enough good deeds. And so the categories of repentance vary depending on how far along someone is on their spiritual path. But when it comes to the major sins, they will completely shackle someone from spiritual progress. Meaning you and I will be trying to progress and then we'll get caught up in a major sin. The darkness of that sin. So it's important to understand the reality of sin and the reality of the darkness that enters you when you commit a sin. And then there's categories of sins and we have to know what these categories are. Because sometimes as Muslims people focus on a small and minor sin, but we're still engrossed in the major sins. Now you have to focus on prioritization here. Get rid of the major sins first, then focus on the minor sins, then focus on what's makru and so on and so forth which is dislike. So among the major sins there's various major sins which you have of course the sin of associating partners with Allah. Where someone actually believes that something has power other than Allah. Absolute power or is associated in power other than Allah. No one really these days for the vast majority of Muslims are not committing that. The vast majority of people are not really committing that. There's of course the sin of kufr before this which is that someone is not in Islam. They would accept Islam and then they would essentially convert. And then you have the sin of shirk. But then there's a lot of major sins in addition to that. You have the sin of murder, the sin of drinking alcohol, the sin of gambling, the sin of intoxicants, the sin of doing drugs. The sin of actually being disrespectful to your parents is considered a major sin. The sin of interest, interest loans, auto loans, student loans, many home loans. These are many of these sins are considered big, big sins. Probably the most ignored sin in the Western world for Muslims is riba. It's interesting. We'll talk about that at some point as well. And so there's a category then of major sins. And you have major sins that you can do with your hands. You have major sins you can do with your tongue. You have major sins that you can do with your eyes. You have major sins that you can do with your private parts such as zina and adultery. You have major sins you can do with your other various other limbs. So the goal of the believer then, the first step is to think about all of the major sins that we might have done or that we are still engrossed in. And then we make a sincere effort to try and repent to Allah. To really sincerely try and repent to Allah for those major sins. And we have to understand the darkness that's going to come into the heart. But the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam tells us about the reality of sinning. Sometimes we think that sinning will only affect us in the next life. And couldn't be farther from the truth. That sinning will affect us in this life and it will affect us in the next life. In this life the way sinning will affect us is that it will result in a darkness in the heart. It will result in depression. It will result in anxiety. It will result in worries. It will result in potential tribulation and problems and a loss of blessing in your life. And many things happen but they don't happen that day. They don't necessarily happen that day. And so you have to keep this in mind when it comes to sinning. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us that when someone lies, when a servant tells a lie, he said that the angels will recoil from the stench that comes out of this person's mouth. From the stench that comes out of that person's mouth. So literally the sin of lying results in a scent for the angels. A bad smell basically that will repel the angels away from that person. All these sins they have realities. They have realities. And why when we wake up to the reality of these sins, we will then start to realize why we need to change. Because we are steeped in major sin many of us. We are steeped in major sin. The amount of problems we have in our life most of the time are coming because of our own mistakes. Because they are our own mistakes. And we don't believe in our religion. We do not believe in our religion that someone died for our sins or something like that. But that's not really a logical concept either. Because how is it that somebody does not have to work hard to actually ask Allah for forgiveness for their own sin. So you have to seek, you have to earn to a degree, right? What it is that you are going to receive from Allah. So that's the first important aspect here is to know the shackles that sin puts you in. The shackle. The way it weighs you down. And how much it weighs you down. And how much problems you are going to have when the sins are. When the sins are. That's the first part. Then it's about saying okay now I want to change my life. So how am I going to leave these sins and move on towards something that is positive. And if somebody is unable to do good deeds. If someone is unable to do good deeds. It's usually according to many of the scholars because the shackles of their sins are still laying them down. The shackles of our sins are still laying us down. And so as a result we are unable to actually engage in good works. We are unable to wake up for the morning prayer. We are unable to pray on time. It's because the more someone sins. The more darkness that comes. The more laziness that develops. And the more sloth that someone develops. And then slowly and slowly and slowly they start to veer from the spiritual path. The more good someone does. The more spiritual life that they get. The more spiritual life that they get. The more spiritual life that they get. And then it becomes easier to do more good deeds. Allah talks about this in the Quran. So it's recognizing the sins that you and I have done. The next thing is okay. How do we figure out what is sincere repentance? How do we figure out what is sincere repentance? Sincere repentance is to recognize and to deeply ask Allah for forgiveness. And to make an intention to never return to that sin. Never return to that sin. How exactly do we realize that? And you have to know that you may slip up at some point in life and back to that sin. But that day when you repent, you have to say, Ya Allah, I'm back to go back to this. I'm sorry for this mistake that I made. I am sorry for this wrong that I've been doing. I am sorry for disobeying you. I am sorry for disappointing you. That is the first part of major sin. That is the first part of sincere repentance. See that people have questions. We have this class on Wednesday. We answer questions during the question breaks. The questions are not answered because there's other attendees. The questions are not answered until the breaks. So please bear with us and we'll get to the questions. And yes, I will. So sincere repentance. What is sincere repentance? You first recognize the wrong that you've done and you feel sincere remorse to your Lord. Ya Allah, I'm really, really sorry for this haram that I've done. I'm really sorry for the mistake that I've made. The remorse and the guilt you feel in and of itself is already a way of repenting to Allah. That's already a really, really, really important part of repenting to Allah is feeling that remorse, is feeling that remorse. The second step, and we're summarizing here, then we'll get into the detail. The second step is that you ask Allah, you verbalize your forgiveness. You ask Allah and you say Ya Allah, please forgive me for this wrong that I've done. And you may pray to Rakat to him. You may have a moment of time where you cry to him and you sincerely beg forgiveness. The goal is for the sincerity to penetrate the depths of your heart. To penetrate the depths of your heart such that you feel so bad that you turn to Allah and you ask him to forgive you and you ask him to never make you go back to that sin. That is, again, amongst the essence of repentance. So you feel bad about it in the first place, the guilt comes. Now you actively engage in what's called Toba, making Toba. You may sit and you may say, stop through Allah some number of times for the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us to make Isthafar at least 70 times a day and some of the scholars recommend a lot more than that for us because we commit many more sins than the companions did, obviously. And then, then you beg Allah to forgive you for this specific sin that you're repenting for and then for all the sins you may have committed. So let's say there's someone who gets caught up in Zina and they feel extremely bad about that in engaging in an infamously relationship. And then they sincerely turn to Allah and ask him for forgiveness for that. InshaAllah, if you make a sincere repentance for doing something wrong, and you feel bad about it and you ask Allah for forgiveness and then you make the, and we'll talk about the final one which is to intend to never do that thing again. InshaAllah, that's a sign of accepted repentance. That means that you fulfill the qualifications of repentance but that it must come from within, it must come from within and sincerity is the utmost important in our religion. That we have to do things with what's called ikhlas, with sincerity because it's linked to purity. And when you do things with sincerity Allah, inshaAllah, will accept it. But when you do things with, you're trying to like say I'm just asking Allah for this but you don't really sin, you don't sincerely actually want to repent to him. You know you're going to go back to the grandstand again tomorrow. Obviously you're not going to be able to trick Allah because Allah says that Allah knows that that is solul, the whisperings of the heart. Allah knows what your heart is thinking. Allah knows what your heart is thinking. So we will first pause here to see what questions there are and then we'll go on. So a few questions coming in online. Okay, so can repentance be done in English? Yes, repentance not only can but should be done in your primary language. So if your primary language is English, in English, if it's Spanish, it should be Spanish. If it's Arabic, it should be Arabic. If it's Turkish, it should be Turkish. Repentance does not need to be done in Arabic. The only thing that's really required in our religion for you to do in Arabic is the formal ritual prayer, is the formal salat that you do. And of course the recitation of the Quran when you're reciting it, then you will do so in Arabic. But otherwise when you are repenting to Allah, you can repent and you should repent in a language that you are going to actually understand. That you are going to actually understand. So again, sincerity is the key here. Remember Allah is the creator of all languages. Allah is the creator of all languages and the creator of all people. He's the creator of diversity. He's the creator of different thoughts and different types of thoughts. So it's not beyond Allah to understand different ways of communicating, obviously. So you should repent and feel bad, of course in your own language. Do you have to mention the sin in the Toba or if it's in your heart? It's okay. So because Allah knows the thoughts of your heart, you don't have to verbally mention something. But for you to actualize the state is the most important. So when you are doing any form of bikr or repentance, the goal is to actualize the reality of what you are doing. It's not to simply say it, right? That's not the goal. The goal is to live the reality of it. And the reality of it will come when it goes into the depths of your heart and that reality really comes when you are sincere. And so it does not have to be verbalized. Allah knows your thoughts. You can have questions or you can rather have ways of speaking to Allah where you don't even verbalize something but that you are still making blotting. Okay. A couple other questions that have come in and then we'll continue, inshaAllah. Okay. What about misprayers because they're sleeping and prayed after? So you should still repent from misprayers and then you pray when you wake up. But you have to get to a point where you identify the root cause of why you're missing a prayer continuously. If it's one off, like let's say once a year someone misses Fajr. Okay. That's one thing that, inshaAllah, will be excused in the long run because you are sincere in most days. But if you're constantly missing Fajr or constantly missing a prayer because of sleep or something else, that means there's a sin that could be bogging you down that you're doing during the day that's preventing you from being up at this very auspicious and amazing time. Because you cannot simply just always sleep through it if something's not bogging you down. It's important to repent from it, but it should not be done continuously that you should feel so bad and at some point you should turn to Allah saying, Allah, please, I'm so weak, I can't wake up, help me get up. But you have to make it a point to do everything in your power to try and get up. So the one thing if someone is just negligent and by negligence here, we need someone who's like, I'm not going to get up, I'm not going to try to do this anymore and they just sleep through. They said their alarm in like 9am or something like that. There's another thing if someone sets five alarms so it's about 5.30, 6.00, 6.10, 6.15am and they're trying to get up for Fajr and they tell their family members, someone to wake them up as well, they just can't wake up. The two are very different states. The second is trying. Allah just wants you to try. The first one is ignoring the command of Allah and it's being arrogant with the command of Allah and they're just thinking it's all good and they're in a very dangerous state and so you have to try and you leave the result to Allah but you have to try hard and when it comes to missing prayers, specifically missing Fajr, you want to treat it as though if you had a flight that morning, if you had a flight really early, 5, 6am, everybody would be up early. Very rarely would we miss the flight but it's more important to pray a prayer on time than this to catch a flight so you have to think about the reality of that. Can du'a be done outside of your five prayers? Yes, du'a can be done outside of your five prayers and it should be done outside of your five prayers. The du'a is not something that's constricted so you have an Islam, something called the time of prayer and then you have something called the sunnah al-qar of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam meaning the sunnah diggers and the remembrances that you would do at various times of the day when you would wake up in the morning, when you would use the restroom, when you would put clothes on and you would leave the restroom, when you would go outside of the house, when you would go to the marketplace, when you would meet somebody, all of these you would have no eyes for. For example, he would say in the morning the alhamdulillah li'a liya alhamdulillah liya liya halayna ba'damah ma'asana walayhimashur that all prays be due to the one who then resurrected us and gave us life after that we were in a state of like, a mini-death which is sleep. So, these are du'as and so it's important to do any du'a. Usually ideally in a state the true people of spirituality, when they get to then we're talking about this, the hurdles on the path to Allah as you cross these hurdles, The people of spirituality, they get to a point where they're always in a state of God, regardless of the time of day. We answered, you do not have to perform Salat al-Tobah to make Toba, but you should regularly pray to Allah for forgiveness from Allah for all your sins, and ideally, at least the times when you're repenting from a major sin, you should offer, we'll talk about specifics shortly, but Salat al-Toba as well as offering charity. If you have been in a Haram relationship, but then later repent, does it take the barakah away from the relationship? It's a good question. Insha'Allah, if you repent and both of you repent sincerely, and you pray to Allah to make you from the people of right guidance and the people of light, then insha'Allah Allah will put the barakah back. But yes, the sin does take the barakah away initially, and so the repentance must be done sincerely, and you must rectify anything that you did while it was in the Haram state, and you should try not to discuss the days of Haram too often, because that's not a day of sweetness, really, you want to talk about. You have to do wudu to make du'a. No, you do not need to be in wudu or kosol to do du'a or duqar other than recite Quran. That's it, that's for when you are in a state of holding the Quran. Otherwise, you should do du'a all the time and duqar all the time. That's the goal. When you're walking outside, talk to God. Du'a is a form of talking to Allah, a form of conversation, and it's important to not link du'a only to prayer or only to a specific time of day, when you are driving, walking, etc. This is a time to get away from heedlessness and listening to music and all these other things, and instead have a conversation with Allah. We'll continue, insha'Allah. Okay, I want to know if you can play with our eyes closed, let me know. Yeah, it's not... If it's going to help you focus more, then you could play with your eyes closed, but otherwise you play with your eyes open, it just really depends in terms of your focus. If you're in a wrong relationship, will you ever get a right to spouse after repenting? Yes, insha'Allah. Yes, if you sincerely repent. So it's important to know that sincere repentance washes you as though you were like new more. It's completely clean. So we have people in our religion. One of the stories that's told in our religion of somebody who eventually became a great scholar, that he used to literally be what's called a highway robber, which is like a gang member at the time, where he would have a gang of people and they would literally just rob people and they were traveling. They would just like jump caravans and then rob them all. They'd take all their stuff and then they'd leave them to go. And sometimes obviously this harm inflicted on the people when you're robbing them. And then he did this for a long period of time. Until one day he made the decision that I'm going to turn to Allah. He made a sincere toba. He made a sincere repentance to Allah. And then he became... He devoted his life to learning the Deen. And he devoted his life to traveling at the spirituality. And then he became one of the great scholars and the great people of knowledge of Allah, of Ma'rifah in our religion. His name is Al-Fudail Ibn al-Hayat. And so there's many stories. There's stories of people who are prostitutes, women who are prostitutes. And then they sincerely repented to Allah and they became great worshippers and great scholars. Repentance can turn change someone from murderer to among the best people. But the repentance must be done. This is why it's so important to repent. Allah loves the people who turn back to him. Allah loves the people who turn back to him. There's a reason I wake up for pleasure without Allah. Alhamdulillah, that's very good if you do. How do you not believe? We love Allah. Okay, so question. Can you still go to heaven if you are gay and you give in to it but have more good deeds than bad deeds? Okay. Okay, so this is very, very, very important for none of us to determine to use. So no human being other than the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam can say who will go where. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam could say this is the person of Jannah. This is the person of fire. The prophets had bad maqamah specifically say maqamah to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And you could say this is the person who's going to be in the highest rank of Jannah and so on. But other than that, only Allah obviously is going to be able to make that determination. So is somebody struggling with the sin? Okay, let's say in this case you mentioned that you're homosexual and you are acting on it. And in the religion of Islam we know that amongst the major sins, we listed them out, right? That sexual promiscuity, heterosexual sexual promiscuity is haram. So is homosexual promiscuity. It's also haram. Anything outside of lawful marriage is haram. Okay, so that's one thing. At the same time, somebody may do a lot of bad deeds and they may also do good deeds. And the weighing is going to happen on the day of judgment. And so it's in no one's place to say this sin other than the sin of shirk that cannot be repented for that if someone doesn't repent before they die, they won't be forgiven for that. But other than that sin, it's not on anyone else to say that there's one sin. This one sin will never be forgiven. You don't know that because you are limiting the mercy of Allah. Allah ultimately starts his book by Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem. Allah has over 99 names. He has many names we don't know and at least a few hundred plus that he's told us. He could have said Allah, Bismillah, that instead of the most merciful, the most compassionate, he could have said the most just, the vengeful. He could have said the destroyer and the compeler. There's a lot of names he could have had. Jabbar, he could have used a lot of these names. He didn't. He used Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem. Two merciful names. He could have also used one merciful name and one more intense name, but he didn't. He used names of mercy because he loves mercy. He sent his prophet, and he gave him the title of Rahman Salil Alameen, mercy to all the worlds. This is in the Quran. He did not give the prophet Salil Alameen the title of that vengeance for all the world or the sword of all the worlds. He could have said that, but he said what? Mercy to all the people who are the Rahman Salil Alameen. So mercy is the basis of Islam. This is important. A lot of Muslims have forgotten this recently. Especially some people who have gone toward extreme tendencies. They've forgotten mercy entirely. That someone does one wrong and they want to hurt them. That's not our way. That's not the way of the Muslim. The standard or rather the common approach we should use is what mercy. Because it's what Allah starts with. Allah begins with mercy. He continues with mercy. And he's going to end with mercy. He said this in the day of judgment that Allah will, his mercy will ultimately outweigh his wrath. It's important for all of us. And guys, we want this. All of us have done a lot of wrong in life. This is also super important to remember. We've all made a ton of mistakes. We've all sinned a lot. We've all said things that are incorrect. We've all argued with people. We've all been disrespectful to our parents. We might have engaged in taking interest loans. And so it's important for Muslims to not pick and choose sins to hurt people over. And at the same time that we are caught up in so many major sins and we that want Allah's justice for some people and want Allah's mercy for us. How does that work? Allah says be merciful to others and you'll see mercy from me in the day of judgment. So don't find one sin and say no. For sure someone is going to hell. For sure someone is going to hell. And then you and I think oh we're safe. We're going to have them. That's not the way of hypocrite. The way of the believer is to say I'm in trouble and to assume other people are going to be okay. That's the way of the believer. This is the way of the Sahaba as well. They did not have some guarantee that oh we're going to all be fine. So all of this to say that for the one who asked this question, you have to strive sincerely to try to turn to Allah. You may slip up on this path if you have a desire that is uncontrollable for you. You have to strive to turn back to Him, to repent to Him every time that desire gets a hold of you and to ultimately make the intention to try to lead that desire for Allah's sake. You have to try. If you don't succeed, at least you try. But if you don't try it all, your state is more perilous. Your state is more worried. But you must try. Never leave this deen. Never let anyone tell you that because you are engaged in one specific type of sin that you are not worthy of Allah's forgiveness, all of those people are more astray. They're in big trouble because they're doing what Shaitan did. Shaitan is the only one who tells people that they can't achieve forgiveness. He told Adam, alaihi salam. He tells people they can't achieve forgiveness. But the Muslim, they give doors of mercy for people. So it's time for the Muslims to stop ignoring the vast majority of sins all of us are doing and to only pick on where the Muslims love to pick on sins that women do. Women are not dressed appropriately. They love to do that. But they don't like to focus on all the sins that the rest of us are doing. Okay. So we'll continue, inshallah. Someone said, sound is off. Is it working there? Okay. So we're going to continue with a few questions and then we're going to get back to the topic of repentance. So yeah, for the one who asked the question, do not worry. You just rely on Allah's mercy. Seek forgiveness. Stay on the path. Pray your prayers. Recite Quran. Do good. Fast Ramadan. And Allah is a merciful Lord. And try. Try to not get caught up in that sin. Try to not get caught up in that sin. But there's a lot of us who are engaged in so much Quran and we've gotten, you know, and so don't don't let anyone turn you away from the path. The doors of repentance are open. Can we buy a house living in the USA? It's almost impossible to avoid increase in buying a house. You can buy a house using what's called a halal mortgage. They use the print the contract principles and shakr and madabra. And those are halal principles that they use. So you can use one of these letters, guidance residential is one of them. There's another one called. But anyways, there's a few different ones. You can just search halal mortgages and you can buy house. They try not to go with traditional. But student loans and car loans are not permissible for the Muslim to take. They're not permissible. So let's get back to it. So we're talking about repentance. And now, so this is for the one who wants to repent. They have to feel bad about the repentance. They have to be bad about the sin. Then you and I have to get into a state where we are going to sincerely ask Allah for forgiveness. Then we make intention to never turn to the sin. What about the person who doesn't feel bad in the first place? That is the question for us because many of us are steeped in sin. We don't even feel bad about it. So we have to ask ourselves what do we do for the one who thinks there's a few diseases here of the heart that are acting up. One is someone thinks I'm going to live for a long period of time. I'll go to Hajj one day and I'll stop sinning then. But right now I don't want to have fun. That's one category of person for that person. They need to reflect on death and they need to reflect on how quickly death can come to you and how easy it is to die when you were young. I know a lot of people who are in their 20s in their teens and they've just passed away suddenly. There's people who have passed away suddenly in heart attack who get cancer and within one year they're gone. We just went to Ajanazah last week except somebody who got diagnosed with cancer maybe 10 months ago, 11 months ago. Then he passed away and it was expected he lived a bit longer and maybe even a few months or a year longer. So you don't know when you're going to die but you have one chance. Your day of judgment comes the day you die. That's your day of judgment. Why? Because there's not really any other way for you to earn the deed except for some Sadik Al-Jaria that somebody might have given you like a continuous charity of some sort. But otherwise that's it. And so for those of us who are delaying repenting because we are comfortable. Imam Ghazali in this text that we're covering, he says you need to reflect on the reality of death and how serious death is. And think about the nearness of death. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us to reflect on death often. Something Muslims don't do anymore because we don't have graveyards around us. We don't often go to the... If you go to Medina and Manawarra they have the Masjid in Namburi. And then about a five minute walk within the same area of high distance. We have what's called Janazah Makri which is the graveyard where many of the blessed companions and the family of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and many other great people are buried. Anyhow, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would go there often to reflect on death and to teach the ummah. The importance of reflecting on death to bury people to do the Janazah prayer and to just realize that you are going to go there one day. These days, what are Muslims? We go all the time to the mall. We go all the time to each other's houses. We go all the time to each other. Maybe we go once a year to a graveyard. That's not sufficient. That means death is not going to be remembered. In the Muslim society we live in, they hide the graveyards in random, random places in random parts of town rather than making them front and center. In Muslim society they would be part of society. The marketplace, there's a Masjid, there's a school and then there's a cemetery. I mean it's all there. So you reflect on death when you're walking to school and you'd be like I probably don't want to make a mistake today. Like I don't want to get caught up because death is real. So that's one of the first things to do. If you delay repentance, you have to remind yourself of death. The next one is for somebody who says, well, my sin really isn't that big of a deal. What's going to happen? Maybe I have to go, this is a terrible thing to say, but maybe I go to hell for a little bit and then I'll be forgiven. And they just kind of ignore that. For that person, you have to reflect on the reality of Allah's punishment. So it's important for some of us to reflect on the reality of Allah's mercy. For others, it's important to reflect on the reality of Allah's punishment. Why is this? Because guys, everybody is in their own spiritual state and they have this specific medicine that they need each time. So you might have a medicine spiritually that you need today that won't apply in the same way to you a year from now. And that medicine might not be applicable to another person today. So if you and I are caught up in a specific sin, but we don't think it's a big deal. We have to reflect on the kind of medicine. And reflect means really seriously reflect. I'll give you one example of a sin that many of us are in, but we don't reflect on. This is known as the sin of backbiting. Of talking bad about people. What is backbiting defined as? Backbiting is defined as saying something about someone that were they to hear it, they wouldn't like it. If it's true, that's what backbiting means. So let's say you say someone is annoying. You backbiting them. If you say someone is overweight, most people wouldn't like to hear that. You talk about it behind their back. You backbiting them. You and I say someone is that we question, why did they do that? It's so weird. That's backbiting because they wouldn't like to hear that in front of them. Backbiting, the punishment of backbiting is that somebody has to eat in the next life. The dead flesh of the person that they talk bad about. This is disgusting. I know that you take their flesh and it's going to be dead like a rotten corpse and you have to eat it. The tongues of people will be getting cut up because of the sin that they've done. Then they have to give their good deeds away to the person they talk bad about. You already don't like them. You talk bad about them in this life and you have to give your good deeds to them in the next life. They take your good deeds, take your good deeds until you run out of good deeds. Then they give you their bad deeds because we talk so much bad about them that now they have a right to take our bad deeds. Or sorry, to take our good deeds and give us their bad deeds. Backbiting is very serious, but it's a sin that many of us we just don't think much about. We might even be coming home from the mosque and talking bad about people at the mosque. This guy did this. This guy did that. The Muslim doesn't do that. He said, speak good to the believer. The one who believes in Allah in the last days should speak good or remain silent. Should speak good or remain silent. Don't talk all the time about people. Avoid it. This includes sports players. This includes all sorts of people. It's not our business what someone is doing. Don't talk about them all the time. It's not our business. The Muslim should mind their own business. We should mind our own business as he said something along those lines. So this is another example of a sin. So we might be immersed in certain sins and we might not even realize their sins. This is why we have to do an examination of the sins of the tongue, of the sins of the hand, of the sins of the feet, of the sins of the eyes, of the sins of the ears. The sins of the tongue will include backbiting, lying, cussing, saying the F word, saying all the bad words that we might say. These are sins of the tongue. That being rude to people, being mean to people, arguing with people, arguing about Islam is a big, big problem. It's a big sin. All these things. Listening to sins of the ears, listening to haram, listening to backbiting, listening to impermissible lyrics. They talk about misogynistic things and so on and so forth. Sins of the ears, sins of the eyes. Looking at haram, looking at pornography, looking at impermissible images. Looking at that, not lowering your gaze when you see something wrong. These are sins of the eyes. Focusing always on the fault of Muslims is considered wrong. Sins of the hand include hurting somebody with your hand, stealing something. And there's more that come with the hand. The sins of the feet include walking to a place of haram or using your feet for something else, haram. So we have to examine which ones of these are we doing. And if we're not repenting for them or we're not stopping, why are we not stopping? That's the question to ask yourself. Do you feel comfortable? Do you feel that Allah won't punish you? Do you feel that it's not a big deal? It's because you're living around a bunch of people in a society which are immersed in sin and nothing is happening right now. Don't think that's not a big deal. Look at what Allah says in the Quran and what will happen. Because Allah is Al-Halim. One of His names is Al-Halim. He's also patient. So Al-Halim is the one who's forbearing, meaning he gives people a lot of time to turn back. But then eventually, if they don't turn back, he seizes them. He doesn't give them any more time. So you have a certain amount of time to turn back to him. But then after that, it's over. And you have to make that call of reflect on the reality of the punishment of a certain sin and realize when you are in your grave all alone on a dark stormy night being completely constricted and all of the creatures of the grave are coming out and trying to bite your hands and take you and take to eat off your skin. All the scary things that are going to happen in reality in the grave. And you only don't have, we don't have the deeds to turn to. We don't have our prayers to turn to. We don't have Fajr to turn to and Gohar and all the prayers and Quran to turn to in our fast. We don't have any of these things. We don't have a relation with Allah. Instead, all we did was watch Netflix all the time and miss our prayers and we were lazy and we talked bad about people and we yelled at people and we got angry with people and we cursed at people and we scrolled and tick-tock all the time. It's all we did. That's all we're going to have with us in the grave. And those things aren't going to benefit you because your family, your friends, your bank account, all of it's gone. And then the punishment is real. It kicks in and it doesn't stop. That's the one of the scary parts about the grave and the next life is these punishments. They don't stop for a long period of time. They don't stop. So we have to seriously realize that if we can't handle our hand getting near a cold, we can't handle like if we touch the stove when it's hot, we can't handle that. How are we going to handle the fire, the jahannam, which is very, very hot. And it's very serious. If we can't handle the extreme cold these days where I'm in the U.S., there was a huge storm. Unfortunately, it would kill over 25, 30 people in certain parts of the East Coast. Huge snowstorm. Just blizzards. Things were frozen. If we can't handle going out in the freezing snow, there are parts of hell that are deadly cold. That hell has parts like caves which are so cold and are reserved for certain types of punishment and which are freezing. And someone won't be able to handle it because someone is not going to be in a state where they have any warmth there. And then there's parts which are completely burning and just beyond boiling. So how are we going to do? That's the question we have to ask. If we can't do it in this life, if we can't turn to Allah in this life, what are we going to do in the next life? What are we going to do in the next life? We are going to be obviously in trouble. So this category of person has to reflect on the punishment. And then you have to talk to your own self, your nuts, and tell yourself, I need to change. I need to change. I can't do this anymore. You must tell yourself that. You've got to tell yourself that. And once you change, and once you make an intention to change, and once you stop doing the same, Allah will help you change. You must take the first step. You must take the first step, as Allah says in the Quran, that those who strive in our way, surely we shall guide them. And surely we shall guide them. So those are the ways to remind yourself of lazy. And then lastly, that remind yourself of how much sin bogges you down in this life. It will bog you down in this life. When we're young, we don't realize it. We just remember when one wants to have fun, wants to have a good time, wants to feel light, wants to sleep all the time. Remember older, the sins catch up to us. And I know categories of people. I know one person who is in their later stages of life, probably early 70s, late 60s, and they are their whole life. There's categories of people, right? Not specific person, but they haven't been praying. They've been praying day and a lot of other things. At the end of their life, the relationship is not very strong with family. The relationship is not strong with kids. They're just kind of alone. There's a very, very kind of depressive nature to their life. They don't have a very deep relationship with anybody anymore. And they're just kind of, they're still caught up in drinking. And it's just not looking too good. There's just, there's no, there's no real purpose left for them. And someone else who's in the same age group who's been trying to turn to Allah and striving to be close to Allah and that they follow this one by the opposite of them. They're happy all the time. They have a good family life. They're always going to Umrah and Medina. That's how they're spending their time. They're sitting with their fellow Muslims and they're spreading goodness. They're doing the decorator. They're doing events and going to events. They're doing, they're living a good life. It seems effective in this life as well as in the next life. Muslims, we have to not only think about that we can't just put it off and say, oh, I'll deal with this later. We have to realize that there's effect in this life that there is an effect in this life and there is an effect in the next life. So then there's the categories of sins. So we'll do the categories of sins and then we'll do questions, inshallah. You have different categories of sins. You have the first category, which is just not doing what Allah has been obligatory on you. So we'll talk about what these sins are in a second. You then have the second category, which are sins between you and Allah. And you have the third category, which are the sins between you and other people. The first category is you just, just disobey Allah when it comes to the five pillars of the religion. So prayer, inshallah, fasting Ramadan, not paying zakat, these types of things. I'm not going to have just to say I'm not going to ever go inside with them. This, these are very serious sins because these are obligations. The first question Allah is going to ask on the Day of Judgment is about our prayers. What did we, did we pray and what did we do with our prayers? And what did we do with our time? These are the types of questions Allah is going to ask us. And if we don't do well with those questions, it's obviously not going to be a good start to the Day of Judgment. So the first thing someone has to do is improve and rectify the haram that we have done when it comes to un-lithitory duties, when it comes to un-lithitory duties. So if we have missed prayers for a good portion of our life, if we have not fasted, if we have not paid zakat, number one, we have to start doing those things now. We must make a firm intention now to not be people who miss our prayers anymore. To not be people who miss our prayers anymore. We have to change. We have to change. Number two, we must make a firm intention to catch up and to start fasting if we don't fast properly, if we don't fast from the bar if we don't pay zakat. These are obligatory. They're very, very important. Many people, we might pray but we ignore zakat. Allah says, we have to establish the prayer and pay zakat. So we have to be firm on our prayers. We must get firm on all five prayers. We must get to the point where when we miss a prayer, we feel really, really, really, really bad. We have to pray the five we cannot be at the point anymore. Doher, for example, ends at 3pm where we're praying Doher at 2.59pm. We've got to start praying when it comes in. How many other things do we do for the dunya early? We show up to class, we make sure that we're doing well on our tests and so on and so forth but what about, what about for Allah? That's the question we have to ask ourselves. So that is the first thing is we have to catch up on the the current ones. Then we have to make up for the past so if we miss prayers in the past we must make those prayers up. If we have missed fasts in the past we must make those fasts up. If we have missed paying zakat, we must catch up on zakat and so on. So these are the types of things. There are a few questions here that answer the what is zakat? So zakat is in Islam it is something due to the poor every year. It's an amount of money that if someone earns a certain amount of money, they're required to pay 2.5% of their standing wealth in charity to the poor at minimum every year and if everybody was doing this properly poverty would not be a problem by the way it is. That is the way that Allah has set things up. So 2.5% the standing wealth that someone has they have to pay in zakat and this is from the time someone earns money and had this wealth and it's also crossed into the state where there is a post-puberty. Which again of course you usually would be if you start to earn money. Another question here is it too late to pray after midnight? No, it's not too late. You should ideally pray a shat earlier if you can but if you need to pray after midnight or you can pray any kind up until fudger you can pray Salat al-Busha up until Salat al-Fudger but again the best better thing to do is to pray at midnight or anything like that. So that's the first category of sins is omitting obligatory duties and I would recommend all of us get on a path where we start to make up our prayers from the path that we missed. Maybe even though we're required to pray from the time we had puberty, if we were Muslim. If we converted we don't have to pray from before we converted but if we were Muslim we must pray from the time we had puberty up until the time we started to then start to properly pray and there what you do if you miss a lot of prayers is you calculate a number of prayers that you missed from the path and you create a tracker and a schedule and you start to make those prayers up and for some I've reached out about this but if you need I have a spreadsheet I created to help you and if you wanted you can email me at my bio askupwiththeidumeo.com and I can send you the spreadsheet to help you calculate your missed prayers. Same thing with missed fasts, you have to calculate if you didn't fast for five years straight in Ramadan that's about 30 fasts per year times five so 150 fasts we have to start making those fasts up we can't just let these things go we cannot let these things go and then same thing with missed zakat you have to pay a zakat a zakat is based on lunar year roughly as long as you're doing it once a year around the same time I would recommend every pick an Islamic month because that's already running on lunar year The second category of sins is sins that you committed between you and Allah these are sins so we talked about the major sins where this could be drinking this could be sexual promiscuity this could be consuming interest and riba and other things these are between you and Allah that Allah knows you committed these and you have to repent to Allah for it and then there's another group of sins which are between you and people meaning you hurt people you stole their money things and so on for the sins between you and Allah you have to leave those sins in order to get repentance and then you have to feel remorse for them leave them and seek Allah's forgiveness and make contention to never return to them if you do that consistently inshallah then you and I will achieve forgiveness for that category of sins which are between us and Allah but we need to make a list and we need to buy each sin on that list we need to work through all of them we need to work through each sin on the list until we work through all of them because if we don't do that we may die and we still have been committing major sins without knowing this is not knowledge to take lightly many of us we treat Islamic knowledge as this like extra thing that we'll do when we have time but we spend all this time learning Shakespeare and reading these other random books in school and all the good things the good things help your brain of course but you know we learn geometry we learn trigonometry we learn algebra we learn biology we learn chemistry and physics and all these things are good but we don't spend any time learning our religion we must learn our religion and we must make sure we are not caught up in these sins and if we've grown up in a life or a family environment in which these things are taken lightly we must be the people who change we must be the beacons of light we must change to ourselves to our homes to our families and to our community because not everybody takes this stuff seriously but Allah may inspire you to take it seriously and He may inspire you to be a means of giving goodness to others so you have to take this seriously don't give up on this and at the same time don't take it lightly okay so question on misprayers how do you make up misprayers many of us have missed a lot of prayers you might have missed 5 years of prayers which equates to a few 10,000 or so all you have to do number one number one you have to calculate how many you missed create a tracker you create a tracker number two you create a schedule of how are you going to make those prayers up misprayers do not have to be made up at a time meaning you can make up a missed fudger you can make it up at 10pm you can make it up at 1am it doesn't matter when time you make it up you just have to make it up so you work your way through them the second thing is the third thing is you don't try to do it all in a short period of time if you missed many years of prayers you give yourself many years to make them up you just have to have the intention to Allah when someone starts the intention Allah will facilitate they will finish they will finish they will finish they will finish the task that they set out to do or they will get the reward for finishing you must start you must start so just that's the biggest thing is make up the missed prayers slowly gradually don't overdo it I recommend if you could do an extra set of prayers each day with your current one so if you do fudger, do an extra fudger a missed fudger a missed bahar with bahar a missed asir with asir that's it, all you have to do if you don't want to do that just do all your fudgers in the beginning so what I mean by that if you can do fudger then just pray let's say the whole day you have some time you can pray a few extra missed fudgers because fudger is easy to look at so it's not difficult the intention then for the missed prayer is just you do qadah qadah is the intention of then make up qadah for qadah for the prayer that you are making up qadah for fudger qadah for asir ok so hopefully that gives some clarity inshallah some questions here any advice on praying on time the biggest thing to pray on time is know that Allah made the entire masjid the entire earth rather a place of prayer for the prophets there's no worries about where you're going to pray just have a prayer amount with you and as long as it's sufficient you can pray in a parking lot you can pray in a mall you can pray in a restaurant you can pray in a park the place does not have to be like it just doesn't have to be visibly dirty but if it's sufficiently clean you don't see clear filth there you put your mat out and you pray and don't make it a big deal it takes 5 minutes you'll see your life will transform shaitan he makes it into a big deal if you take time out to pray in the day you're going to miss this thing and then how you're going to do it and you're not going to find a place and just ignore all of that just start tomorrow pick one prayer go find a place to pray as you're going to graduate if you're in school find a place in school if you have at work they're required to give you a place to pray in most western countries things will change what do we do if we miss Salah from laziness if Salah is missing out on laziness you must pray laziness is one of the worst reasons to miss out on Salah so you have to make it up there's no excuse to not make up Salah out of laziness the excuse may exist for someone who didn't do it out of complete forgetfulness but out of laziness you must make the prayer up this is the consensus of the four four maghams how to pray with their wither is done in set three with your prayer is wajib in some of the schools you pray the wither by doing the fatihah you try to make the intention for it out of the wither and you do your fatihah and your surah and you finish the rest of the prayer and then fatihah and surah and in the third rakah you stand up you do fatihah and surah and you say Allahu Akbar and you do what's called du'a'i konud du'a'i konud has various narrations and then you just have to do at least some du'a you can look at du'a'i konud or some du'a from the Quran or some beneficial du'a and you do that inshallah it will be sufficient for Salah wither so that's what's important for wajib prayer inshallah some schools have different some schools have different they pray two and then one they do three it can be combined prayer you cannot combine the prayer out of laziness you cannot combine the prayer for no reason some of the schools permit combining when you are traveling and route to travel but otherwise traveling meaning you're going to distance of 55 miles roughly or 52 miles or more other than that you should not you can't just come for example you can't combine some of the schools permit combining when it's heavily raining and you're praying in the masjid they would permit combining du'a'i and asr otherwise you can't just combine for no reason but if you missed your prayer if you missed your prayer then you can combine it in the sense that you missed du'a'i so you're about to pray isha you should pray du'a'i you should pray du'a'i and then asr and the hadith that refer to the Prophet's system combining the prayer they are by the four schools they have not been accepted as a sound authority for you to then invalidate the Quran where Allah commands in the Quran to pray on time to pray on time so it's important this is actually very very important when it comes to looking at that solitary hadith without looking at the rulings of the madhab the way of the tradition of Islam is you look at the rulings of the madhab you do not go and look at hadith directly to learn rulings of fiqh that is haram for the average Muslim to do until you learn 10 sciences you first must master the Arabic language then you must master the science of the Quran this includes balaqa and rhetoric then you must include master over 250,000 hadith then you must master tafsir then you must master surah and nahu then you must master surah fiqh and then all the ancillary sciences associated with this that mantif and others you must master now you can go and directly pull rulings directly from the Quran otherwise do not try and go to sahibahari see a hadith and be like oh this is the ruling of the religion you don't know all the hadith guys don't know the ruling of the hadith just stay away from that you will confuse yourself focus your time on purifying your heart and becoming a better Muslim leave the rules of the religion to the scholars who have immersed their life in this religion it's like the example of a doctor who spends years decade studying mastering their science their specialized pediatric cardiologists they understand the heart of the child works they understand the arteries they know the vessel and they understand all these things and they've spent a long time mastering it and then I come along and I'm like I do a little google search and I read one book on medicine and I'm like well doctor I read in this book that this is what you're supposed to do and isn't that right and the doctor's like wait you and I aren't even qualified to have that conversation with the doctor because we don't even have the degree we don't even have a medical doctor so we're not even at the same level then they have to come down to my level and they have to tell me well no that's not how it works then they try to tell me but I'm like but but then I saw on WebMD that it's at this and they tell me no no no that's not how it works and they explain some and then I keep going until the doctor's like you're not why are you wasting time here just let me focus on cardiology and you go focus on doing what you're trying to do same thing with engineering same thing with any science or skill it's only Islam where people have the audacity to try and pull without learning all the requisite sciences to pull rulings directly without going to the qualified scholars and to try and come up with those rules so on that point it's not permissible to combine the prayers for no reason whatsoever according to the vast majority of schools certainly not in the community school which is the school that I here to and at the same time that focus on improving your character focus on the things that are in the hands of the average Muslim for us to do don't focus on these peripheral rulings that one off may make sense and may make sense to apply if someone devotes a good amount of time to them that would be fine what if I can't take my break from prayer so if you cannot take a break at work you must speak to your manager or the person at work to pray guys prayer is not something you can put below your work the manager of the manager is Allah the boss the most pleased is Allah your job is not your boss your boss is Allah Allah says whoever has taqwa of Allah Allah will give them a way out excuse me every problem will give them a way out but it requires taqwa taqwa means obeying the command of Allah so it's difficult but you have to talk to your boss you have to schedule the time I would recommend that right now prayer comes in around 3pm and mugger comes in around 5pm you have a 5 minute break at each of those times where you go to pray and you have a discussion that can guarantee you if you have to do something physical like use the restroom or drink water you would have time to do that at work so prayer is more important than all of those things for the most part so we have to take that seriously do we have tips so that's really for those we'll do a recap shortly but I think that's going to be it what if you understood just understood the 5th up prayer you have to redo the prayer so if you completely were doing the prayer wrong you should work on redoing the prayer but it's unlikely you were doing the prayer wrong you may have just been making certain mistakes in that case you have assumed that enough of prayers in the day of judgment make up for the mistakes you made in the prayer but it would depend on what level of a mistake you were making for example if somebody didn't make wudu ever before praying yes all those prayers would be invalid because it never made wudu if someone never said Allah o akbar never did the takbeer do ahram those prayers would be invalid if someone did not establish the aqan of the prayer which is qiyam standing when the aqan of the prayer is standing pray sitting down for no reason when it's a 5th prayer that would be invalid so there are certain things that depend on the aqan ok so the question about jealousy so the way to cure jealousy number 1 so the way to understand why someone experiences a strong state of jealousy this goes back to being content with the decree of Allah and what Allah is doing for his creation when you are jealous or envious of someone which you are actually doing subtly is telling Allah that he made a mistake you are telling Allah that he made a mistake because Allah is the one who is giving them that thing and you are now jealous that they have that thing and you are questioning Allah why did you give them that thing so it goes back to a disease in the heart that has to be solved of being discontent with the decree of Allah and this is done number 1 by spending time rectifying the relationship of Allah number 2 spending won't make sure you are consistent on your 5th daily prayers then you need to make sure that you are consistent with the decree every day extra remembrance of Allah these are the types of the decree that you must do and then you must spend time reading about how to control anger both religiously and from other books and management type of books so this is the way to approach uncontrollable anger until you immerse yourself in a lot more of the decree to build a distant heart for most people they will exist in the heart of most people ok so I am going to do a few more questions in the room I am going to show you my live