 has allowed us to come here on this blessed day of Juma'a. Without the permission of Allah, none of us would be able to partake in this gathering today. And so we recognize the divine hand in our ability to worship Him. In our modern world, we are beginning to see these polarizations of extremes, and they continue to draw further apart. The rich are getting richer, the poor getting poorer, the separation between the conservative and the liberal. But also we find a line growing thicker, and that line is between the Muslim who can hold on to his faith firmly and the one who is blindly wandering these, blindly wandering in this world. So often when faced with lies of atheism and the satanic creed of do thy own will, a developed Muslim can hold his chin high and he can increase in his conviction of belief. But with this on the other side comes the one who has not been given the spiritual tools and the intellectual armor of ihsan and iman, and yet is sent into this world of spiritual warfare. The Quranic warning of, a faraita manitakhadha ilahahu hawah is becoming more and more apparent in our world every single day. The ego has taken authority over the self and has become a tyrant over the mind and the body. In response, our Muslim community turns towards the sciences of purification and psychology to battle these forces of falsehood. Purification to learn how to improve the self and psychology to understand the self. So today we turn to the guidance of the Quran to teach us how do I improve and who am I? Additionally, we ask the questions, what is a soul and how is that soul swayed between good and evil? We begin with our goal, our destination, where we seek to be. Allah addresses in the Quran, ya ayyatuhan nafsul mutma inna. O you soul that has found peace. The soul, the only soul that is worth being addressed directly by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. How do we attain such a soul? A soul that has pleased its Lord and who is pleased by him subhanahu wa ta'ala. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teaches us that the way to attain this soul is very clear in the Quran and he teaches us in the very next surah. The very next surah Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala begins with la'uqsimu bihaathal balad wa anta hillum bihaathal balad wa walidin wa ma walad laqad khalaqna l-insana fi kabad ayah sabuallin ya qadira aleyhi ahad. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teaches us how to attain this nafsul mutma inna by these verses teaching us that we need to live a life of struggle. That we have to use what Allah has given us, our eyes and our tongue for what He has commanded. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in this surah, alam naj'allahu aynayn wa l-isanaan wa shafatayn wa hadaynaahun najdayn. He is telling us that the gifts that He has given us in terms of our body need to be used correctly and then He also tells us the responsibility that we have to others. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says wa ma adraqa mal'uqab wa ma adraqa mal'aqab fakku raqab wa o it'aamun fi yawmin di masgabah yateeman da maqrabah o miskinan da matrabah. He tells us, subhanahu wa ta'ala, that we have to take on the duty of serving humanity, especially those who are the weakest amongst us. But it doesn't end there. It doesn't just end with our body, our eyes, and our tongue. It doesn't just end by giving people support who are in need. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala continues in the next surah, teaching us now to begin to look inward in addition to the outward. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala places the outward as that which is primary. But we must continue and learn how we can control the inward as well. And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says wa shamsi wa buhaha wa lqamar iza talaha wa nahari iza jallaaha wa l-layli iza yaghshaha wa s-samai wa ma banaaha wa l-arzi wa ma tahaaha Allah continues to swear by the day and the night, by the sun and the moon, by the skies and the earth, all of these great opposites representing the good and the evil, the light and the dark, all of which to conclude upon the ayah. Wa nafsim wa ma sawaha fa alhamaha fujuraha wa taqwaha to teach us all of these swears that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala takes, these oaths that He takes comes into the nafs which both has good and evil. And it can be swayed to the right path or it can be swayed to the wrong path. And so the one who is successful is qad aflah man zakkaha, the one who is able to purify it. So if we look at the Quran in this way, the Quran teaches us attain this nafsil mutma inna. Do it by fulfilling the obligations of your body and the obligations of your neighbors and then do it by fulfilling the obligation of your soul that which is inside of you. So through the purification of our souls will our hearts be able to stand over our limbs and guide them to what is right. Our scholars teach us how our soul should be a king and our body its kingdom. This implies that the king rules with justice and love. Otherwise the king would be a tyrant, meaning the fundamental relationship of the correctly placed soul that it should have with the body is the relationship of justice and love. Justice and love should be the two qualities by which we operate within our own selves between our soul and our body internally and also the qualities by which we should act externally in this world. Our conception of perfection thus is finalized in the unity of the body and the soul. And this is unlike those who say that the perfection of the soul is in transcending the body or those who say the soul is merely the mind and it does not exist. We say that the soul is perfection when it is in unity. And with this concept and mindset of unity we must approach this world that we face. So what goes against this concept of unity, the concept that goes directly against unity is of spreading things apart. And so the culture that we live in is directly against this unity that we are meant to find within ourselves as we live in a world of distraction. Our children are taught in schools but they are punished for creativity. In children, especially young children, motivation is the driving factor for learning and motivation increases with activities of interest. So we must monitor what are those activities that our children are interested in. If we allow that interest to continue to be in video games and TikTok, then this will be their source of motivation. As a result we see not only in the young but also in the old, this desire to be influencers on these platforms because that for them is success because that is their path of motivation. Compare this to the child whose motivation and interest is found in pleasing his parents. What will be the outcome of that child? What will his future hold? But this is not possible without the investment of the parent. For if the parent does not read, how will the child learn to read? If the parent does not know how to teach the child how to pray, why should the child bother to learn prayer at all? If the parent isn't motivated to become a better person in and of themselves, how can they expect that same from their son or daughter? This is not from me. This is not something that I am saying but this is the lesson of Ibrahim alayhi salam that he teaches us in the Quran. He says, inna min shiaatihi l-ibrahim if ja'a rabbahu bi qalbin salim So what does Ibrahim alayhi salam say? The one who has a qalb salim, a pure heart wa qala inni dahibun ila rabbi sayahdeen that I'm going to go to my Lord because he is the one who will guide me. Rabbi habli min assalihin Oh my Lord grant me and bless me with a righteous child. Fa basharnaahu bi gula min halim and so we gave him a forbearing son. One of the goals then of purification is the goal presented by Ibrahim alayhi salam to purify your own heart first, not the heart of your spouses or your children, not the heart of your parents or your neighbors but for you to go, you go with your pure heart to your Lord and he will admit you into a garden like no other and bless you with the gift of righteous offspring. And so in these two acts, the purification of the self and in the raising of a righteous family we help maintain the two most important methods of survival that our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam has told us to hold on to at the end of times ourselves and our families. qoo anfusakum wa ahli kum nara la ta'budu wa la ta'budu wa la wa'budu allaha wa la tushrikubihi shay'a wa bil walidaini ihsanah. So to answer the question of who am I, we must accept that we are both responsible to ourselves internally and externally and then to our families first and foremost. And so to answer the, and then to answer the question, how do I improve myself? It is in training your soul and your heart to reign over your body and to reign over your angers and desires. This then leaves us with the question of psychology. What is a soul and how is this soul swayed between good and evil? Here it should be clear that the use of psychology as I am using it here is not what one may initially think when one hears the word psychology. In our time, psychology has taken on many forms, most of which are scientific in nature and deal with appearance and behaviors, allowing it to be a science subject to empirical observation and experiment. The idea of the soul has taken on a religious and non-scientific consideration and it has been replaced with the idea of the mind. We don't have time to go into detail of what it means for a soul to be a soul. So we are sufficed with what Allah tells us, qulirruhu min amri rabbi, that the soul is one of my affairs. But what we can appreciate in the time that we have is how this different conception of psychology from what initially comes to our mind and the idea of the soul changes the understanding that we have of human nature. Using examples of young men, many ideas circulate regarding what it means to be a man from claims of toxic masculinity to simping or being a Chad. Our world is bombarded with what it means to be a man. All of these considerations lack the essential reality that an aspect of us is from God. Wana fakhtu fihi mirroohi and we blew into him from my soul. Thus an aspect of us is called to be like our Lord. Kounu rabbaniyeen, be lordly. Takhallaqu bi akhlaqillah, adorn yourselves with the character traits of Allah. Part of manhood then as an example in our tradition is an idea of ghayrah. In a hadith of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wasallam, he says, inna allaha yaghar, wa inna al mu'mina yaghar, wa ghayratullahi ta'ala, alla yaktiyal mu'minumah harram Allah. That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is jealous and the believer is jealous and the jealousy of Allah is over the believer that he does not go to that which Allah has forbidden. And we know what Allah has forbidden. Inna ma harramallahu alfawahi shamaa wa haraminha wa ma baqan. God has forbidden all indecencies, apparent and hidden, cursing, vulgarity, killing, even if it's in games, pornography, slander, lying, backbiting. We can keep going. All of these indecencies are affecting our young women and men. But our lack of awareness and disconnect with what it means to be human in the disconnect with what it means to be human between the body and the soul is worsening these problems. So two simple and quick examples lies in what it means to be a successful person. Because we are brainwashed with this new idea when we hear the word success, we hear wealthy and educated and then internally we must correct ourselves to redefine success, to mean success in the hereafter. And even though the Quran teaches us rabbana'atina fiddunya hasana wa fil aakhirati hasana we need to really ask ourselves when we say that first hasana in rabbana'atina fiddunya hasana what is it that we mean? Our last example is that of us buying into the concept of the idea of a teenager or a young adult. In our tradition, we have the concept of a person being balig or not. Yet we freely and without thinking accept a redefining of our youth. So much so that the adolescent attitude has been equated with an optimistic spirit which is expressed through a unique expression of identity appearance. Meanwhile, our Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was always described to be optimistic. And then we sit and wonder why do our youth have an identity crisis? The point of all of this is simply to convey a message, a Quranic message. Sanurihim aayatina fil aafaqi wa fi anfusihim that the signs are apparent both on the outward and the horizons and inward within ourselves. Hatta yatabaynyana lahum annahu alhaq until we become sure and certain that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the ultimate reality. So we...