 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem Wa sallallahu ala al-hadih, Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam al-ajma'een All day today you have been talking about pathways to Jannah Different types of pathways that enter you into Jannah And Subhan Allah we have reached the middle of Shaaban You walk outside, it is a full moon That means we have two weeks upon us to Ramadan When the month before Shaaban, Rajab entered the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam Would make a special dua consistently Allahumma barik lana fi rajaab, wa barik lana fi shaaban Allahumma balliq nair Ramadan Allah put blessings in the month of Rajab And blessings in the month of Shaaban And allow us to reach the month of Ramadan Why just reach the month of Ramadan? Because if you could just witness it and enter it You're good Insha'Allah The blessings descend SubhanAllah But the scholars say to ready ourselves for Ramadan We are given Rajab and Shaaban Rajab is the cleansing, the month of Istighfar, forgiveness And Shaaban is the month of beautification After you've taken your shower You're meant to perfume yourself in Shaaban To ready yourself to enter the month of Ramadan How do you do so? With the salawat On the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam This is the month of salawat A month of sending our salams to the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam In order to then enter and enter Stop right at the door of Ramadan And be able to witness all of its great blessings So brothers and sisters Today what I chose, insha'Allah In terms of the doorway that I want to share with you Is a doorway that's familiar to all of us But SubhanAllah the scholars say It is not necessarily what everyone does And that is Ramadan Imam al-Ghazali says about Ramadan That there are three types of fasting And he says that some people won't even reach the first level But when they do reach the first level Normally it stops right there And what is the first level of fasting? It is abstaining from food and drink One time I was watching the news, the local news And it was right around the time Either Ramadan had just entered, it was the day before Ramadan And the newscaster is saying on the news The Muslim month of And I thought she was going to say The Muslim month of fasting is upon us Muslims fast from sun up to sun down And she's explaining this on the news And behind her it says the words Ramadan But then she says It is the Muslim month of Feasting What? And I looked a little closer at the screen And sure enough behind her head it says Ramadan Muslim month of feasting And I thought la ilaha illallah Insha'Allah Yeah and SubhanAllah this is the image We have given to people This is what Ramadan is for us A month of feasting A month of feasting SubhanAllah Then that tells us what Imam al-Ghazali was saying is accurate That in order to really truly Reach the blessings of Ramadan It has to go well beyond Not eating and not drinking In Ramadan SubhanAllah That first level Is just the threshold The next levels He says is the fast of the khawas Who are the khawas? They are the elect How do you fast the fast of the elect? He says you fast from all five of your senses You fast from what you see The fasting of what you hear The fasting of what this tongue says The fasting of what you think The fasting of what your limbs touch This is the fasting of the elect It's a higher level of fasting It's a fasting that pushes us to understand It's not merely just leaving food and drink And intimacy in the daylight hours But rather it is actually a full On holistic fast of all five of our senses And then he says And then there is a third level of fasting This is the fasting of khawas and khawas This is the elect of the elect SubhanAllah And this is a high level And when you hear it you're going to say Oh I don't know about that SubhanAllah Because what is it? It's a fasting from anything other than Allah It's not meant to make you feel bad or me Rather if you don't know What the aim is What you're shooting for Then your threshold Is very low Very very low And so we clap and we applaud ourselves For a while I got through the day not eating and drinking But SubhanAllah That is just the basic threshold And so when we think about Why Allah put this month in place And I'll tell you something I want to tell you about how to get Through the door that is only For those who fast in Ramadan What is that door called in Jannah? Babul Babul Rayyan It is only for those who fast Why? Because what Allah is the wajal Of the many many many wisdoms Divine wisdoms of why he had this month One of which is the psychology Of empathy And that's what I want to focus on See we have these two terms In the psychological field We have sympathy And we have empathy Sympathy Is at a distance We are seeing a genocide unfold Right in front of our eyes Destruction, starvation Death and murder And it's hard And it hurts And we are all tuned in Because we are all witnessing What is happening Through our phones Virtually And we're following And we're praying And we're giving in charity Insha'Allah But I'll tell you something That's missing So far everything we said Is sympathy It's at an arms length Where you say Ya Haram Masakin Pachara Pachari Ya Haram Empathy is different Empathy is where You put yourself In the shoes of that person What would it be like if And Allah azawajal In his divine wisdom He knows what he created And he created us as humans To say You are not going to understand What your fellow sister and brother And the ummah is actually feeling until You put yourself in their shoes Actually You do what they do You do not eat And you do not drink And you feel the pings of hunger And only then Have you truly understood What's happening with them And only then Do you love for yourself What you love for your fellow brother The psychology of empathy And Allah's divine wisdom Also determined That a day is not sufficient A week is not sufficient A few weeks isn't sufficient An entire month Why? Enos Jalla Jalla adhu Until it becomes so part And parcel of who we are That you truly feel For your fellow sister and brother And I'll tell you something All that we're witnessing And all that we're watching right now Is one thing And then meeting the actual people Who have experienced the genocide As something else I'm going to share something difficult And I'm going to preface That this is difficult Two weeks ago I was in a conference in Qatar It was an Islamic psychology conference And before I traveled Some sisters contacted me And they said We have here with us in Qatar A woman, a psychologist A professor of psychology From the Islamic University of Ghazza A Jamaal Islamic at Ghazza And she's a psychologist like you And she wants to meet you And I said of course I'd be honored Please, please ask her To come to the conference I said look We're going to warn you She has a difficult story I'm listening They said She is the only one Out of her entire family Who was pulled out of the rubble When that building fell Everybody Mother, father, husband, children Siblings, nieces, nephews Everybody And when they pulled her out And she realized she was still alive She started crying Not for them She said ya Allah What did I do That upset you so much That you didn't allow me to be a martyr like them Ya Allah What did I do That I couldn't be a Shahidah like them Imagine Fast forward to the conference I'm there It's lunchtime We break People are socializing And meeting each other I'm saying salam to many people And here comes a sister Of the many sisters Who are saying salam And I'm saying salam to her And then she says And she stops And she says Dr. Rania I'm Sheyma Hello Sahan I'm Sheyma I'm not It's not clicking Why Huge smile on her face Happy, happy person And she keeps saying another In a third time Dr. Rania I'm Dr. Sheyma Abu Sha'ban from Ghazza Oh SubhanAllah I stop Freeze Like you know when you're just like Shocked I couldn't even recognize her Or understand that she was somebody Who just weeks Just weeks prior She was pulled out of the rubble And here she is smiling Say please, please let's sit down And she sits down Along with some of the other sisters And she begins telling her story Ya Allah What happened after this She said I had nowhere to go My family is gone My house is gone My university is gone Everything is gone Gone, gone What word do I go She says to me I went from house to house To tent to tent To place to place To empty building To empty hospital To empty room Anything, anywhere I could find I had no one And I was hungry And I was hungry I was hungry And like a hungry You don't understand She said You don't understand How much salty water I drank That's all that's available Just to survive Salty water, salty water And no food And when finally, finally Days later Somebody gave her a fourth A fourth of a piece of bread She said it was like They put a gold bar in my hand That's what it was like And she took the first bite And then she said I got so distracted I start taking pictures of the bread That's how long I hadn't seen bread Or touched it or eaten it She goes from place to place Until finally she gets a call And the call is You have no family And here are some children Who are parentless Who also don't have any family And who are injured Accompany them to Qatar For medical treatment So she becomes The surrogate mother if you will Of a little girl Who has casts on Each of her four limbs Who needs to go for Medical treatment and physical rehab And she becomes like her mother In Qatar And that's what she was doing there And they said to her Allah, you keep asking Why Allah didn't take you as a martyr Yet However There is a reason why Allah Still wants you on this earth There is still something He needs from you That is not done yet The fact that she's a psychologist When she went there All of these parentless children She started to work with them And you know what her Subhanallah You know what her specialty In psychology was At the university? Trauma Trauma of warfare So she's taken on These children I said to her Dr. Seymour You have to tell your story To the world Next week As was announced Friday and Saturday of next week I'm hosting at Stanford The annual Muslim mental health conference It happens once a year In different universities This year we're hosting it At Stanford because It's the 10 year anniversary of my lab Alhamdulillah, shukrillah The Muslim mental health And Islamic psychology lab And I said to her Dr. Seymour We have a panel On Palestinian mental health Amongst the many other panels That are happening Your story must be heard But she started to record her story And it was so heavy That she couldn't even record it in one go She had to break it up And eventually we got the recording And we do intend to actually play this At the conference And Subhanallah Please make dua for me We're flying in from the west bank Of the Palestinian minister Of mental health Dr. Seymour Jabir Insha'Allah To make voices That are not heard clear And accurate And in the very places That are denying these stories Make dua for me please Insha'Allah These stories Like Dr. Seymour And Dr. Samahs and so on When I tell you Empathy The psychology of empathy You can hear a story like this And we can tear up And we can say La ilaha illallah But until you feel The pangs of hunger Until you're so thirsty That you can understand What that felt like For the sisters and brothers In Al-Qasr Currently still happening It cannot happen Without something like Ramadan This is why Ramadan comes As a tatheer As a cleansing It comes to purify To renew To refresh To allow you to get to The rest of the year Able To handle whatever comes at us Subhanallah And to still say With full conviction And iman La ilaha illallah Muhammad al-Rusul We pray as I close here I want to say We pray for Deeply Our sisters and brothers In Al-Qasr In Palestine All of it And all of the other parts Of our Ummah That are hurting That are ailing That are oppressed That are tribulated At this moment And we pray that This fasting This month of fasting Isn't just a purification For us It's a fortification To allow our du'as To actually Have the impact They're meant to have Please, remember These sisters and brothers In your prayers In your du'as When you come to break Your fast Every single night Of Ramadan Remember that These du'as That you make for them Behind their backs They don't know Are more likely to be Accepted Than if they knew And remember too That we need their du'as More than they need ours Subhanallah I close here by saying And asking As I think the announcements Were made, masha'Allah That MCC, masha'Allah Has been a wonderful sponsor To many things One of which is Madistan The non-profit that is Supporting all these Mental health efforts That I'm referring to And Alhamdulillah We actually have Our own office Here in Madistan In this building That's Al-Baduk Allah The close of the conference There is a gala It's a benefit dinner And I know many of you Were sad that You couldn't come tonight But he'll be here Exactly a week from now At the gala He's actually the keynote speaker At that gala Insha'Allah Along with Shikhtarik Musleh Who you heard from earlier So please do Come out to the gala There's a few more tickets left We do need your support Insha'Allah Please support the efforts Around mental health And Muslims And allow insha'Allah To grow here And allow us Insha'Allah To continue building This legacy Reviving Really a legacy Of Islam And mental health But we Muslims have What modern psychology Is attempting to teach It's already part of our tradition We just have to be able to Practice it Pull it up Revive it And use it to our benefit Insha'Allah So insha'Allah I think that there are going to You'll be putting an announcement Insha'Allah Brother Muneer And with that I'll close And Brother Muneer Make his announcement Barakallahu fikum Please keep us in your prayers Barakallahu fikum Miftaah program And to all those Who have benefited from this From all of you And peace be upon you And peace be upon you Muhammad And his family And friends All together