 Alhamdulillah, in the seminar today we're going to look at family matters, some critical aspects related to striving to improve our family life and make our family relations in marriage, with raising our children and in dealing with the challenges that arise in our marriage to make that all a means of drawing closer to Allah SWT and being successful in our family life. So we're going to look at this in four sessions. In the first session we're going to look at the purpose and potential of family life. In the second session we're going to look at what's the topic mob of a successful marriage is and some of the key teachings of the Prophet SAW in fulfilling a successful marriage and that ties in with what we will be talking about in the first session of the purpose of marriage. In the third session we're going to look at parenting and some of the keys to being truly successful parents and in that of course there are many broader lessons related to how one is to live a successful family life. And in the final session we're going to look at some of the common challenges that arise in marriage and family life and some of the teachings of our Prophet SAW in responding positively to those common challenges and throughout inshaAllah you're welcome to ask questions. I'll strive not to go into too many details but if you have any questions or even if something doesn't make sense just raise your hand and feel free to ask. And then at the end of each session we'll strive to finish before we and between the sessions we'll be taking a break with me like ala. So in order to understand the purpose and potential of marriage let's start with first principle and it always helps to begin with the broader context. So let's ask ourselves a straightforward question which is what is the purpose of religion itself? That Allah SAW has sent us revelation and this revelation that He sent us is our religion. But what is the purpose of revelation? Guidance? But what is guidance? Because we ask that what is religion? It's a response from Allah SWT to the answer to the servant's call for guidance. The basic human call, basic human need is expressed in Surah Al-Fatiha. Guide us to the straight path. And Allah SWT responds with revelation. The response is immediate. Alif Lamim, this is the book in which there is no doubt. Guidance for those seeking mindfulness. But what is guidance? What is religion? What is guidance? The do's and don'ts that's what it contains but what is its purpose? To be happy. What does that mean? No, that's a very good understanding of happiness. When people want to sound sophisticated they use a bigger word. They say felicity. So it's the return of happiness in the hereafter and the happiness of this life. That happiness is also often referred to as being the good. Because when you find the good you're happy. So the purpose of religion, descriptively, is summarized in one Quranic verse that talks about that state of happiness or that state of good that religion facilitates. All of us know that we ask Allah for two types of good. The Lord grants us the good of this life and the good of the next and protect us from the punishment of the fire. What is the purpose of religion? The purpose of religion is the preservation of human benefits. The preservation of human good or the attainment of felicity and the prevention of harm. So the purpose of religion ultimately is you know anything about economics for example? That's what economics posits. It's maximizing the good for the human being. But how does religion differ? Religion differs is that it has much broader vision because economics number one limits the pursuit of the good firstly to worldly good. So it doesn't look at the eternal good. That's outside the purview of economics in terms of attainment of human good. It just looks at worldly good not worldly good. But also economics looks primarily at good for the human being as an individual. Primarily and in by and large views society as a collection of individuals certainly modern economics. Wonderful book that how modern economics fuels relations and societies. It puts you in a mentality that you're primarily concerned about material good for yourself. What it does is it's relative. People are looking at their own they look at the family unit as other people did with your personal good and that has the understanding of the good in the Sharia as a good for the individual, good for relations, good for communities and good for society as a whole. It's a comprehensive understanding of the good. It's also understanding that the good is not merely material good. There's material good and there's non-material good and then there's spiritual good as well. So the purpose of and the prevention of harm. Eternal harm the punishment in the hereafter and also that which is of detriment to one in this life whether materially or non-materially or otherwise. So that's the broad purpose of religion and this why the Prophet ﷺ said religion is nasiha. Religion is sincere concern. You're concerned for the good. Concerned for the good in your relationship with Allah. Concerned for the good in your relationship with people. That's a broad purpose of religion. Religion has two aspects to it. In the pursuit of that good one way of looking at religious teachings is that at one level religion is straightforward. Religion gives you limits. The word deen, one of the senses is a shield or a restraint. It's what you hold yourself to and in that sense of the intelligent person who restrains themselves because religion is a restraint. It limits what you do. In that sense you know it's a series of teachings. That's the legal dimension of religion. That's not all that religion is because at that level it's not looking at what is the best thing to do. That is delineating the basic. So for example and if you live religion at that level you could actually be a truly miserable human being because they even discuss that who has to pay for the water of the woman's ghusl. The woman has to perform ghusl. They live in the desert and brother Zubayr says Zubayda, you do too much ghusl. It's costing me too much. I'm not paying for your ghusl. And they go to Qadi Masood Khan, not our Masood, but Qadi Masood Zada and say Qadi Saab. Zubayda, it's just taking a shower three times a week. I can only afford once a week. Who has to pay for her ghusl? And the puqa discuss it. They say there's 64 possibilities of the different scenarios. I say it's pretty much all of them. The husband has to pay. I may go into plenty of discussions, of course if he uses too much water. What is this? What is that? But that's, you know, but at this level too, law is a mercy because disputes can arise and if a dispute arises and the two parties are unable to agree, how does it resolve? We have certain minimal limits, but no one would say that husband and wife arguing about paying for water is the ideal case to be in. And one of the dangers as people learn the deen is that they get stuck at this level of the do's and the don'ts. Religion has also come to teach us virtue. Where is that virtue found? That virtue is found in the prophetic model, in the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. But the reality, but you could say, well then why do you need those limits of the law? And the reality is all of us in our own life, we ourselves aren't always operating on standard of excellence. So husband comes home, he feels grumpy. And he says, Bigam what did you cook? He says, I didn't cook anything. So why didn't you cook anything? He says, I don't have to. Now does he have a right to be upset or not? Now in the ideal case, if everyone's following the sunnah, even if he's feeling bad, what would he do? He goes inside the house, he would put on a brush or a stick before what? To comb one's hair, to fix one's appearance, to put on perfume before you enter the house. But he didn't leave without looking like he came out of a hurricane. And wife feeling grumpy, so she didn't open the door, as he can dig out his own keys. She didn't answer the door, he went into the car, got his keys, opened the door, he didn't go to greet him. So what did you cook? He said, nothing, leave me alone. Now at that time, does he have a right to complain or not? That's where the limits of the law help preserve a basic good. But that's not the ideal. So there's a reason why the limits are there. They preserve the basic interest in the relationship. But that's not a suggestion of where the relationship should be living. And the ideal is that one should be striving to live virtue, while aware of those limits of the law. That's the ideal, that one should not be aspiring to do those limits. That okay, I don't have to cook for you. Well, I don't have to pay your medical bills. I'm sorry, I don't want to like disclose too many secrets, but comically, because you know, the basic principles come with responsibilities, basic principles. So I understand the woman to be an independent economic agent. Her wealth is hers, her earnings are hers, but that has consequences. She's not considered to be an economic dependent of her husband or her father. She has a right to be provided, but she's not an economic dependent. She is respectable to her own account. She can choose to pay the Zakat, but she can't demand it from the husband. And the husband doesn't have to compel to do that. Of course, if he doesn't, it's good, she can't. So technically, you know, but just imagine a marriage. I refuse to cook. He says, I refuse to pay your medical bills. Technically, she's responsible for that. After attending a fit class. So he says, therefore, I'm going to start working in order to get myself a health care plan. He says, therefore, I refuse it. I refuse it. Eventually, what happens, they say, you know what? I refuse to be married to you. He says, and me too. And it breaks apart. That's not where you live. But bad scenarios, how do you resolve it? So this is an important critical element to appreciate of the religion. Why? Because very often when people talk about rights and responsibilities, but they imagine that the ideal of the religion is to live according to those minimum standards or a list of expectations. And then many of those expectations are a general case or a general case. They don't apply in every situation that, for example, does every husband have to provide for his wife? Yes. No, that's not actually true. What are scenarios where the husband does not obligated to provide for him? Any example? But even if she possesses wealth, and he's poor, but he's still obligated to provide for his wife, there's a number of potential scenarios. No, assuming, like, you know, the economic sector is higher, the presumption, assuming all else be equal. There's a whole bunch of scenarios. The wife's working, does the husband have to provide for her? Yes, he does. Even if she's working and wealthy. But there's a number of cases where he doesn't have to provide for her. One of them is she doesn't want him to provide for her, right? They get married like actually a friend of mine. They got married, he was still in medical school. His wife was worried because she was a successful attorney. And she was worried she'd never get married. Just like, you know, getting into her mid 30s. So she agreed to marry him. I was like, agree, take on his student debt, to provide, to pay for his university while he finished, you know, the last couple of years, whatever, because, you know, and to take the household expenses until he started working full-time. They agreed to that. Anything haram about that, they will fully agree. Now, technically, at any time she could go back on that agreement, said, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. But, and things are much more flexible. There's all kinds of potential scenarios that exist. So there's limits that in the event of non-agreement, this is, these are the limits, there's also underlying values, right, that values, that there is healthy normal, right, that that's how things, in general, best work out. You know, Sayyid al-Khalija supported the Prophet's life at various stages in, you know, of their life. A number of the leading companions, their wives, provided for them. One of the most notable cases is the wife of Abdullah ibn Masrood, that Rabiullah pleases both of them. She went and asked the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, Ya Rasulullah, Ya Rasulullah, it's the truth is poor. If I support him, if I give him my charity, do I have any reward? So she asked whether she could give her charity to her husband, because he didn't have money. And one of the reasons she asked, because she was also, she was very knowledgeable, and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said he had two rewards. Lucky ajran, ajul sadaqah, ajul sila, ya two rewards. The reward of charity and the reward of making family ties, you know, because he appreciated it and felt what's wrong. He told him to go get a job and support you. But they had a particular situation. She was encouraging him to remain devoted to learning the Qur'an and spending his time in devotion and worship, etc. Because he was one of the closest of the companions. And in a particular period, not throughout, just in a particular period. So they agreed to a particular arrangement. That's fine. Right? So it's important to appreciate this distinction. And that's very, we live in times when a lot of things are in flux and people find themselves in all kinds of different situations. And sometimes people feel very guilty, as if what they're doing is somehow wrong isomically. And it's not. And it's not. Many different arrangements are possible. Many times in Islamic history, people used to travel to different lands and they'd go somewhere and they'd get married. And they'd go to another land and they'd get married. But people would do this willingly. Because let's say some moment, she's a virtuous woman, she's a righteous woman, she wants to be married to a scholar, a righteous person. And you know, she's maybe not so young anymore, etc. So she accepts not necessarily living with her husband. And all kinds of possibilities exist. But these virtues, because they're practical, one distinction between our approach in Islam to virtue, if you look at the Christian tradition, for example, our first draft is written about virtue and ethics. But what I mean is that the virtue is not practical virtues. You know, the embodiment of that virtue is the lessons of Islam. So they're practical virtues. And because they're practical, we have like case studies. Any situation you face, the Prophet ﷺ face exactly the same thing or the like of it or something more challenging and complicated than that. And we have real ways to live that virtue. Now, this is what religion gives us. But there's a consequence to that, both marriage life and our family life. The purpose of marriage. Do you understand? Ask yourself the question. That the Prophet ﷺ told us who are the believers who are highest in faith. The Prophet ﷺ gave us all, he laid out the roadmap. Believers who are perfect in faith. That أكمل المؤمنين الإيمانة. Who are they? He told it. Actually one step before that. You're on the right path, but he gave us the underlying value and its manifestation. So who are the best of believers? That's the manifestation. The Prophet ﷺ said أكمل المؤمنين الإيمانة أحسنهم خلقا. The believers most perfect in faith. And this is a big statement. أكمل. There's not just who have that it's one aspect of faith or importance. أكمل المؤمنين الإيمانة. The believers most perfect. The highest. أحسنهم خلقا. The believers most perfect are those best in character. وخياركم لأهله. And the most virtuous of you. And what I say is best, but خيار خير is virtue. And the best of you or the most virtuous of you are those most virtuous to their family. And the word أهل in Arabic has two principle uses. أهل refers to one spouse, whether husband or wife. But أهل is also more broadly refers to the family. And both are intended by it. And most directly because the person you live with most directly is your spouse. But more broadly your family. The best of you are those best to their families. But he didn't leave it at that. The embodiment of virtue is a messenger عليه صلى الله عليه وسلم. وَأَنَا خيارُكُمْ. And I am the most virtuous of you to his family. So the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم. And this is very, very significant. Why? Because this is not simply a statement of fact. The Prophet ﷺ did not come to just give us facts. They say, oh that's interesting. Anything the Prophet ﷺ affirms is actually a call to act. It's a call to be. What's he calling us to do here in this hadith? What is the Prophet ﷺ calling us to do? It's not this, oh interesting. It's not a theoretical discussion that okay we understand from this hadith that faith is what you believe in when it has levels. And there's qualities of those who have perfect faith. And the people who have perfect faith are those who are best in character. Very interesting. That's not the purpose of the Prophet ﷺ. What is the message here in the Prophet ﷺ saying? The believers most perfect in faith are those best in character. What is the call here? And one of the things to do when you read the hadith is, and it's not considered interpreting the hadith. The hadith is saying something. The Prophet ﷺ says something but there's messages. So when you read the hadith, it's a good just to make it a habit to write down lessons understood. This is before going deeper into it. This is just rephrasing what he's saying as a personal to-do list. What is the call in this hadith? Anyone? Yeah. That strived to, you know, strive to perfect your character. Not just strive to have good character. And one narration, are superior to others in character. So he tells us, number one, that I suppose a faith. So I should be striving to have the highest of faith. Because you are seeking the greatest possible call since to Allah ﷺ. You want the love of Allah. So you have a purpose in life. How do you attain that? The key to attaining that is to strive to be always working on your character and perfecting the character. Which is of course implicit in it. You have to know what good character is. So it requires knowledge. It requires knowledge. And where is your good character tested? Where is your good character tested in the family, right? And this is where the problem distinguishes between akmal and khayr. Because kamal, perfection, sounds like it's bigger than khayr, virtue. But kamal is just like, it's degrees. It's degrees. It can be sort of theoretical. But khayrukum or in one narration khiyarukum, the most virtuous of you, virtue here is lived. It's not just, okay, I want to have good character. I want perfect character. It's tested in it's, in it's being lived and manifest. Where, at how you are with your family. And that is one abrometer. It's like, you know, you want to know what's your temperature, right? Look at how are you with your wife? How are you with your husband? How are you with your parents? How are you with your children? How are you with your immediate family members? Relatives. That is abrometer of where your iman is at. That's where your iman is at. So this one is abrometer. But number two, it's an opportunity. That what are you trying to do in your family? What are you trying to do in your family life? You are trying not only to have a happy marriage. You're not just trying to scare up many of your worldly needs, right? So I kind of like cooking. So I cook and she works, right? You know, for a while that's what my, my father and mother-in-law were doing. My father took early retirement and he'd been cooking even before that because long story. And now actually my mother-in-law doesn't have permission to go into the kitchen, right? It's really, really cute. So let me cook sometimes as you mess it up, right? And they have this cool hydro argument, right? That's not, you know, it's not about social politics, right? Then argue a good diplomat, right? But rather it's, it's about a higher motive, right? This, this hadith tells us that this is the key to successful family life and this tremendous potential in your marriage and in the next family relationship. What is that potential? The potential is very straightforward. That marriage and family life is a key to becoming the best of the believers, right? How? By nurturing faith, by nurturing your faith. But of course that also tells us something in reverse, right? Because if marriage is a means to strengthening your faith, one of the things that would help sustain the marriage is that you need to be working at the things that nurture your faith in general, right? Because if the ultimate benefit of marriage is that the believers most perfect in faith are those best in character and the best of you are the best to their wives. You understand from that as well, that in order, one of the keys to having a healthy marriage as well is that your direct goal in life should be I'm trying to nurture my relationship with Allah. I'm trying to increase in faith and marriage will help in that. But if you're not trying to nurture your faith to become this, then marriage is not going to help anything, right? There's no multiplier effect with zero, right? Because if you're meant at zero or practically at zero, whatever multiplier you give to it, it's not going to increase, right? And that's one of the things in marriage life. The very often marriage life, Allah how that describes marriage and one's spouse, one's children as being a fitna, a trial. And what happens in a fitna is a type of trial in which most people fail. Because there's different words in the Qur'an for tests, for tribulations, for difficulties. But a fitna is a test in which most people fail, right? Or most people struggle badly, right? So this is one of the secondary but critical lessons, right? But marriage itself is a key to become the best believer. How is marriage a key to that? The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us through upholding excellence of character, right? Through upholding excellence of character. And we'll be looking in the second session what exactly is excellence of character? Because we know from the Hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, this one tells it to us that the most virtuous of you are those most virtuous to their spouses. And I am the most virtuous of you to his spouses. But we know from other Hadiths like the Hadith in Abu Dawud, the Hadith we mentioned previously is related by Imam Tirmidhi, that Imam Abu Dawud mentions that the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said. The weightiest of matters on the scales of good deeds, on the day of judgment, what is it? Good character. So this is what marriage is a means to, right? And this is how we approach marriage. What are you trying to do in marriage? You're trying to draw closer to Allah swt. You're trying to earn Allah's closeness, His good pleasure. You're trying to be beloved to Allah swt. And these are the, what Imam Bayhaq in others referred to as, You're trying to complete the qualities of faith, right? Because faith that is high quality faith, right? That is perfected faith. It's faith of one who has kurb, who has closeness to Allah, who has riba, who has a good pleasure of Allah, who has mahabba, who has the love of Allah swt. How are these qualities nurtured? They're not, the strongest thing to nurture, closeness to Allah, Allah's good pleasure, Allah's love is not your worship. It is your marriage and your family life. One of my teachers as a spiritual guide said that there's one class of individual who, when he put them into spiritual training, who benefited the most. You know who that is? One category of people who benefited the most from his spiritual training? Who? No, not teachers. Some of the people who struggle the most spiritually are ulama. Those are good to their families but more specific than that. There's one category of people who benefit, who accomplish the most spiritually. Those who are married, but it's more specific than that. No, they may be, I mean, they may be in trouble more than others, but no. And this is a category of people who very often have fewer spiritual work than many other categories of people, the mothers, mothers. And there's many cases and texts that would confirm that meaning. Very often motherhood is very difficult. It's much harder to do things when you're a mother and you're taking care of your children and all responsibilities of motherhood. But what does motherhood require? Motherhood requires its own quality. You have to summarize motherhood in broader than that. Rahma. I think rahma is connected to the rahim, to the mother's womb. The whole process from birth to raising a child, it is all mercy. Patience is one aspect of that mercy, but it's mercy. And it is the merciful who are granted mercy by the all-merciful, as the Prophet ﷺ said. Be merciful to those on earth and the Lord of the heavens will be merciful to you. So this is what marriage is a test of. That time spent with your spouse. I wish I was doing nephral prayer, someone's really spiritual. That time changing your baby's diaper is worth more if you do it right. Not just in changing the diaper, but you do it the right approach and attitude. That is more spiritually transformative than you're going and praying to rakhas. How do you balance, you know, that often, you know, all the programming that happens, people aren't able to attend? The ideal case, right? One of the things is that the way we do programings at mosques and Islamic centers, etc., should be respectful of people's time. Right? In that, you know, they often people do really, really long program all day, like nine, I don't know if this happens in a bit, but many places they do it from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. People do, you know, for general programs. One is that if someone is a student of knowledge and there's learning, but in general, like especially if it becomes regular, it's not healthy for someone to be week in week out all week, all weekend at the masjid. Right? Because the Prophet ﷺ said, ta'ra ta'ra ta'ra. There's a time for this and there's a time for that. You know, you have a right over yourself, your religion has a right over you, your spouse has a right over you, your children have rights over you, your family, your parents. And the Prophet ﷺ said, a'ati kulla bihaqqin haqqa. Give everyone who has a right, their due right. Our religion is not about either or. It's about proper balance. Right? And this is one of the bid'as of our time. Right? Which is the bid'a of excessive, unnecessary religious knowledge. Right? And I'm, you know, I don't want to name names or anything, but for example, this is bid'a of, actually there's sometimes the agendas of uncles and aunties. Like, I like technology, you know, like big time, right? Like, actually yesterday I was saved. I was about to order a whole bunch of unnecessary tech items from Amazon.com. Just as I was about to order it, because Yishan's house came and knocked on my door at the time. And that took me out of my, my enchantedness. So there's one thing, you know, we were invited to this relative's house, and auntie comes and opens the door. And they'd invited us to their house. We didn't just show up. And auntie was wearing the Sinehouser. I checked them out. I thought about getting them. I ended up getting other headphones. The Sinehouser, noise-canceling wireless Bluetooth headset. So she answered the door, wearing these, and they're huge, because they're like audiophile headphones. You know, I actually didn't say salam first. I was like, Masha'Allah, those are really good. I looked really out of place on top of her hijab, but, and auntie said, she just let us, like she needed 20 minutes listening to them. And it wasn't actually a class. Listening to her recording, but you wanted to finish her class before, and to take, I was, you know, my, my nuts were saying like, if you're so busy, you know, we'll just go home. It's okay. But there's this thing that, you know, auntie is taking these classes 8 a.m. till 3 p.m., five days a week, six days a week, hurting their own health, ignoring their children, like I've had, you know, I have an immediate family in this, in those kinds of systems. And they say, why don't you go and visit your, your grandchildren? I'm too busy, busy doing what? You know, doing this stuff. And is this from the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ? No. Right? It's highlighted when the Prophet, after the time of the Prophet ﷺ, people came to Abdullah ibn Masrood and asked, asked him, can you teach us every day? What did the sunnah Abdullah ibn Masrood say? He said, no. He said, they said, what about twice? What about every other day? He said, no. He said, how about three times a week? He said, no. He said, what about twice a week? He said, no. He said, I'll teach you once a week, because that's what the Prophet ﷺ used to do. I said, and I fear that if I did more than that, you'd grow weary of it and not appreciate it and tire. And of course, this was for a general audience, right? There's different. Some people need to be scholars. They have to be students of knowledge, et cetera. And if you're doing that, then do it properly and then benefit other people with it. But that's not the general case. For the average person, every day for them to be going what you call, dars-hopping, he escapes a little more. But that's not the sunnah. So it's about having that balance. You do everything and part of having that balance is to do things in the right way. It's like you want to paint a wall. If you know how to paint and I'm really bad with handiwork, the one thing I've done many times is paint. If you don't know what you're doing, you end up spending piles of paint because you don't know what you're doing. So just keep putting more on. But if you know what you're doing, even one coat of paint may be enough. Is that correct? And part of it is that you need to know what to do before you put on the paint. That's actually one of the beautiful spiritual advice. This one, if you've probably heard of Mufti Muhammad ibn Adam, has a lot of answers and stuff online. I visited his father, Maulana Adam himself, the original Maulana. I visited him in Leicester and I asked him for advice. He was very sad. He pointed to the wall and he said that your heart is like the wall. And good deeds are like paint. If you don't clean your heart before you do good deeds, you keep having to do good deeds and they won't have any effect. The effect will wear out and you have to keep working on it and still you won't see the effect. But first pay attention on cleaning the wall properly and preparing it for the paint and even a very light coating of paint will be more than enough. And then he smiled. Because they've actually built up the whole neighborhood. They've got a doctor and a girl's school and a boy's school and a Zawiyah and this and that and a bookstore. The whole neighborhood, I call it Adam Town because they've taken over the whole neighborhood. So we've done a lot of building. So the same thing applies that you need to have that balance. You have to have a balance. And sometimes you also have to look at creating win-win situations. Can we go together as a family? Can we go together? Not just to go together as a family, make it something that's meaningful for the whole family. So for example, I travel much less than I used to but now, you know, anytime I'm traveling somewhere that's not too far from Toronto for a teaching trip, I'll take the whole family. And my wife is usually hesitant but I've played the Democrats in those situations. We have a family vote and usually it's four to one. But my wife enjoys it after the fact. She just has a lot of inertia. You try to do together as a family. And then you tie it in. You make it memorable. You make it memorable as a family. You engage the children in it. Because if something that you want to do that you feel seriously about, you should engage your children in it as well and set it up in a way that they would appreciate it. They would enjoy it. So going back to the point here, that what is the spiritual significance of marriage? That the bigger should strive to give meaning and purpose to marriage in family life by having a real purpose in their marriage. What is, why should you be married? Just imagine, I think a lot of you are married already, but why should someone, Zubed is getting married. Why should Zubed marrying Zubeda? Or Zubeda marrying Zubed? That's why people should be married. To come closer to Allah. You ask 100 people, typically they give you these weird and sad answers. Why do people typically say you're getting married? I'm getting old. It's like risk management. If I don't marry now I'll never marry. That's sad. That's pathetic. Why else do people get married? Yeah, I can't find anything. One thing is never say anything that could be used against you. Never get married. Because avoiding harm is given precedence in the Sharia over. So in general, and when it comes, they say fear of life, I'm going to turn this way. They say that fear of life is fear of life. Upset your wife, be prepared for strife. So you have to be very, very careful. And women hear things in incredible ways. Someone will tweet something. Your name is not even mentioned. And they say, did you say that? They see the video on YouTube and they say, that was your voice. They have this sixth sense, so be careful. But people have all kinds of motives why they want to marry someone. I want to marry her because she's a good Muslim. So what? We fall short. And one of the most important lessons, like if you say one hadith that is the most important hadith of the sunnah, what is it? You have to say one hadith is the most significant hadith in the sunnah. Inna mal aamalu bina. Actions are by their intentions. The hadith of intention tells us about what intention not to have in marriage. Actions are by their intentions. And each person shall have whatever they intended. And that's a critical statement in the hadith. Each person shall have whatever they intended. That's a divine blank check. Each person shall have for any action whatever they intended. Ibn Ataillah said the intelligent reflected on Allah's messenger's words whatever they intended. And then the hadith says so whoever's migration was to Allah's messenger, the migration was to Allah's messenger. And whoever's migration was for some worldly matter that they were seeking to attain or a woman they were seeking to marry, their migration was for whatever they migrated for. This has direct implication on exactly what we're talking about. Why should you get married but also why should you be married? And why should you be married? Because the same thing applies in marriage itself. Like last night we're talking about a lot of people lose purpose in their marriage. Why am I married? And they fall into what's called the GSB. You know what the GSB is? The GSB is the general state of blah. Like you know it's married you're like oh my god I have to go home now. It's just like blah. There's no happiness in it. There's no joy. There's no purpose. It's just like one of those things. Oh I have to take my wife for lunch. Sunday afternoon. It's like they're being tortured right? And the hadith talks about and whoever's migration was for worldly matter they sought to attain or a woman they sought to marry. Does anyone know the context of that hadith? The hadith of intention. Why is a woman mentioned there? One of the companions of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is related. It's related became known as muhajir umqais. Muhajir umqais because he migrated from Mecca to Medina in order to marry umqais. Now was that a bad intention in general? Is marrying a bad intention? No it's a it's a noble thing it's a sunnah. Okay so this companion he migrated from Mecca to Medina to marry umqais. Is marriage a bad intention in general? No. And umqais she was a righteous companion of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. This man came and proposed to her and you know she wasn't just going to marry someone because of his claims. He said if you're serious about marrying me show me that you're serious migrate first and then I'll marry you. Intelligent woman. They're like prove that you're serious don't just give me some empty claims. So he migrated from Mecca to Medina but what was his intention in migrating? Marry umqais. Was that a was that a bad intention? No it's a good intention but what's the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam telling us? Don't suffice with merely good intentions. All right all right have the highest possible intention which is get married to that woman for the sake of Allah just as your worldly transactions your worldly trips why are you going to Boston? Of course you answer you answer according to the world of means. All right someone asks you you know you're going on a business trip why are you going to Boston? He said I'm I'm traveling to God they'll be your crazy right so you answer according to the world of means but within your heart it has to be clear why are you going on the business trip for the sake of Allah? Why are you taking your family to lunch? Not just well because if I don't the kids will be mad at me and this no you're taking them to Pakwan or whatever for the sake of Allah right Pakwan for Allah right or whatever it is right right and that's yeah that's very critical because that's what gives meaning to marriage all these mundane things why are you trying to be an active husband so you're helping your wife out you're changing the diaper why are you doing the diaper? They often in marriage it becomes defensive if I don't change the diaper she'll be mad at me if I don't cook the dal as well as the vegetable and the thing he'll be grumpy you know and become very defensive and that builds resentment why are you doing that extra thing? For the sake of Allah that is the underlying meaning why are you getting up at night you know to take care of the they struggle with issues of you know depression and they actually feel under sometimes serious resentment after childbirth why they feel they're losing out but all these things if you do say realize if you're doing this seeking the pleasure of Allah is something that's an opportunity to that you would give thankfulness so you give meaning marriage and family life by having a clear single purpose right that this is for Allah you're doing it seeking his closeness you're seeking his love you're seeking his good pleasure right and this is actually the key to contentment the Prophet ﷺ put it very simply whoever makes their concern one concern Allah takes care of all their concerns or allies their sufficiency in all other concerns and that's actually it's simple right the believer is boring it's one of my teachers mentioned it's like the cartoon that they saw like in Chicago in the 60s and he forgot the name of the cartoon series of this guy who's leaving work right and all these things start happening around him right he's walking down the street and a typewriter falls in the 60s from an office building crashes on the ground you're boring right and then someone runs into a car boring someone trips over a fire hydrant boring right why because they have one concern and similar more and more dramatic things happen right accidents happen buildings fall down and some aliens attack the city it's like boring right similarly the believer is boring why because whatever they're doing if you ask them why are you doing this every why question has one answer which is for Allah it's simple but in a meaningful way right in a meaningful purposeful way and that's what always has to be there now how is that upheld like you know that is the the aim the purpose the direction but how is that number one upheld and number two nurtured the problem that some gave is the key to that as well right the most virtuous of you are those most virtuous to their spouses is by upholding good character and that is the the ongoing struggle that marriage gives you all kinds of relationship challenges sometimes your spouse will be drunk sometimes she'll have bad breath you know sometimes like one sister said can I refuse to move in with my husband we just got married but after marriage I realized that he weighs 30 to 50 pounds more than I thought he did so can I stay with at my parents until he loses that weight and something like how do I know right you know like what the situation is right so in those challenges this is you know this is a thing uphold good you know uphold prophetic character right and this is why we won't touch upon the verse because that takes a lot of that's an investigation in itself but some an assignment to do at home right all these meetings that we've talked about are mentioned by indication in the verse in the Quran called Ayatul Shadi right it's known as Ayatul Shadi many of you may have memorized it by attending weddings okay Surat al-Rum verse 21 okay because Allah SWT says from Allah's signs right and from His signs what does it mean that something is a sign from His signs from whose signs from Allah's signs what is a sign of Allah what is a sign in general what does a sign do it points you right what does it point you to to the right direction it the sign points you to that which it is signifying right what you know what it is a sign to so when something when Allah says from the signs of Allah right what what are these signs of these are things that point you to Allah SWT right these are things that He created you spouses for amongst yourselves so that's one sign the fact that He created the spouses like you He created you created your spouse all the things that lead to you getting married Allah prepare about that you know there's that there's that moment or that time of uncertainty that some of you may be living right now will you wonder will I ever get married and my hair started to thin it to thin you know I have to keep my sideburns short because there's gray hair growing there I'm not looking at anyone I'm looking at that wall right because tempting to look at some friends right and you wonder will I ever get married right yeah it's a sign of Allah that how the marriage gets facilitated right like I don't know how it happened but my marriage my art because I was worried there's no way any sane rational human being would agree to let their daughter marry Faraz Rabani right because one I knew how crazy I was number two I didn't have a job number three I wanted to go overseas and study like a whole bunch of cases but Alhamdulillah both parents agreed on the marriage date before they met how that happened it's a sign of Allah but weird things happen on the way to marriage right it's a sign of Allah so far to Allah let us go to it in order that you find serenity therein right that serenity that you find in the marriage where does it come from that too is a sign of Allah he placed between you love and mercy you marry someone who even if you got to know over a long time you don't really know the person even if you work closely with them you know you got to know them you know from work or from university or from some projects you're involved in you thought you knew them for years but once you marry they're your cousin you grew up with them right but you don't really know them and how Allah placed that love and mercy it's it's it is also a sign of Allah that's why Allah says in this in in this meaning in all of this that we've mentioned before our ayat are many signs for those who reflect but what is a sign a sign is that which points you to Allah what does marriage supposed to do marriage and all that it has how it takes place what it results in of Sukun what it requires of love and mercy all of these properly understood are meant to point you towards Allah and that which points you towards Allah draws you closer to him increases you in faith right and this is the significance of marriage similarly and Allah tells us in the 13th surah verse 38 he mentions his sending of prophets and when you mention something significant right you want to mention something about sister Zubayda she has two legs right and someone here is interested in balaqa when you praise something what do you do and when you're going to praise someone what do you mention about them yeah a distinguishing quality i believe mashallah you know brother asif is a wonderful brother he has two years that's not a distinguishing quality right that's as you consider reprehensible to mention you know you mentioned something that distinguishes someone right so Allah and note the praise here we sent messengers before you and we granted them spouses and offspring right that this is something that is central to what fulfills human potential right that not just marriage but marriage and family life we granted them spouses and offspring that this is part of what is the fullness of human potential which is what prophets represent right and this is why what is the dua of the righteous the foremost Allah describes the foremost in 25th surah and one of their qualities of the righteous servants of Allah and this is a dua every one of us should strive to memorize whether you're trying to get married or are married right or in any barzaki state in the middle is oh lord grant us in our spouses and in our offspring a joy for our eyes and is a complete joy right it's what makes the eyes weep in joy because there's two types of tears there's the tears of sadness and there's the tears of joy and these are the tears of joy right and it's and in kurrata ayan is a coolness of the eyes right because it fills your entire team with contentment right and what are you seeking in marriage you're not just seeking to have a happy marriage that's not what marriage is about you're not just seeking to have children you're not just seeking any of these secondary aims rather the purpose is who is an imam a leader but why well that's a synonym but why does a leader become a leader why why someone supposed to be an imam leadership qualities but what should make someone an imam like a worthy imam and we're not talking about the masjid position of imam but someone who has this the rank of imam they say and following because of what they gather within them of virtuous qualities right so make us not imams make us the foremost of who of the muttaqeen who are the muttaqeen they are the foremost of Allah's creation the most honored of you with Allah are people of taqwa you want to be the foremost of the foremost of the foremost of Allah's servant because the foremost of the foremost are the people of taqwa so you want to be the foremost of the foremost of the foremost right so it's not just give me a happy marriage make me a good muslim give me good children that's by the high standards of the sunnah that's pathetic sorry to be blunt it's pathetic if you make the dua Allah make me a good muslim that's a sad dua it's going against the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam because the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that in Allah He loves the highest of matters and it's in the context of dua although it's a general statement and He dislikes lowly things so the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says if you ask Allah for jannah what do you ask Him for for firdus not because of you being deserving of it but because of the one you're asking from similarly in marriage you set your aim high you set your aim high because you don't say I want to become one of the foremost of our sake wa jannah oh Allah you make us of the foremost of the pious right that is the that really this dua summarizes in it the purpose of marriage right what are you trying to do you're you're seeking Allah you're seeking Allah's belovedness how do you become beloved to Allah by having the qualities that are beloved to Allah subhanahu wa sallam right the qualities and marriage nurtures those qualities marriage requires taqwa because it requires restraining yourself it requires the qualities of good character that we'll be looking at in the second session after the break right that's what marriage does right so it doesn't matter how your spouse is maybe your spouse is miserable right actually some of the early muslims and some of the later muslims said that if you really want to seek Allah swt what kind of spouse should be looking should you be looking for you should look for the worst spouse possible right this is a minority position of course right he said because nothing nothing will test your good character as much as a bad spouse okay and actually one of the later scholars and his biography is actually translated into english his autobiography is ibn ajiba incredible scholar his autobiography is translated into english and it happened to him he was married and at one stage when he was married to this one particular woman she didn't like him and she was a bit rough so it happened for example that he was going back home after some class or some zikr gathering and in many places people used to live on the first floor because if there would be rain and stuff the house wouldn't get flooded right so they used to keep the lower place like for more like the sitting area and stuff and also if it was off the ground it would be cooler as well because there's a lot of heat that comes from the ground and anyway so he was going up the stairs and his wife threw all his belongings at him so he fell with his belongings onto the street right so he was speaking from experience of course the sunnah is that do not do not long to meet your enemy but ask Allah for aafiyah ask Allah for well-being and that's a sunnah right but sometimes the ulama say things like that to make a point it's not meant literally that doesn't mean go and look for the worst person you can find but rather that doesn't matter who you end up with make the most of it right make the most of it and we'll see some of the qualities in that because the Prophet also told us that let no believing man hate a believing woman for certain qualities he dislikes in her because there's certain qualities he dislikes there'll surely be qualities that he likes and he said and let no believing woman hate a believing man because of certain qualities she dislikes in him because there's certain qualities she dislikes there'll surely be others that she likes and but how do you do that you really don't like the way he grunts when he laughs right It's only when you have that higher purpose, you have a sense of purpose, why are you trying to nurture this relationship because you're trying to seek the pleasure of Allah and if you are they say well then it helps you to rise above your lower impulses, so that's the potential of marriage. So this is why we understand the words of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he said marriage is from my way, whoever turns away from my way is not of us and what is the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? What is the word sunnah mean in Arabic? What does the word sunnah mean in Arabic? In Islamic law it means that which is not obligatory but the word itself what does it mean in Arabic? Sunnah. No. It's not following but it is a way that is followed, sunnah is a way that is followed and in general it can be a good way or a bad way, Allah says in the Qur'an sunnah al-awwaleen, the way of those before you, they're bad ways. But a way, what is the reality of a way? The way can be considered as what you follow but a way has a purpose. What is the purpose of a way? What's the purpose of a way? What it makes you reach? What does the sunnah make you reach? To Allah. We say, ihdina sirat al-mustaqeem, guide us to the straight path. The straight path is the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But the straight path, you can look at the path in two ways. If you're short-sighted you'll stare at the path but if you're smart what will you look at? Where you're trying to go because the path makes no, like if you're just looking at the road actually you could crash because you don't, you don't look seeing where you're going. But the person who understands is focused not on the road in front of them, they're focused on where they're going and how they'll get there. The sunnah, the reality of the sunnah is, the sunnah is the way of reaching Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The sunnah is, would you like say the aisha, which you'd ask, what was the state of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? She said, the messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would be in remembrance of Allah in all his states because that's the sunnah. He is the messenger of Allah. He himself is pointing to Allah s.a. Marriage is from my way, marriage is from what Allah has granted me as a means of seeking Him. And that should make us think of what we're trying to do in marriage. And part of this is meant to be some of the most important lessons we learn are not practical only, right, that okay, do one, two, and three, a list of do and don'ts, right? Some of the most important lessons are lessons of reflection, right? And the lesson here is for us, if you are approaching marriage, pause and reflect on what am I seeking in marriage? What kind of person am I seeking? And third and just as critical, how am I as someone looking to get married, right? Because very often you say, I want to marry the ideal person, but what am I? I'm nowhere there, right? So this should make you think because ultimately sad reality is that most people, they don't approach getting married with the right attitude, right? So guys, what was it really looking for in marriage? What's the criteria by which they'll decide? Yeah, look, and they'll put some, well, I hope she wears hijab and inshallah she prays. But you know, that's just like, you know, like side requirements, right? It's like someone who's hiring in an industry where you can't hire foreigners. So the second kind that needs to be a US citizen, it has to be free of criminal charges, etc. But that's not the actual qualities they're looking for. Those are just like details, right? So beware of doing that with Deen, right? Any questions before we take a few minutes break? Yeah. In Arabic, Inna laha yuhibbu ma aali al-umur, verily Allah loves the highest of matters. And dislikes lowly matters, right? Basically aim high, right? Aim high. But how do you aim high? Not by your own self-confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, self-strength, but rather by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, right? By Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Okay, so it's 33 minutes passed. Yeah, we're going to take a five-minute break, and then we're going to come back for the session before the whole, Bismillah-e-ta'ala. Bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim, al-hamdulillahi rabbil al-alameen, wa sallallahu wa sallam wa barak, ala Sayyidina wa Nabina Muhammad al-Qadr al-Aadim, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam atasleeman kathira. Al-hamdulillah, in the second session, we're going to look at some key elements of a successful marriage. What a successful marriage means, right? And this is really trying to understand the practical implications of how one fulfills that call of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that potential that he has placed between you, love and mercy, right? So he's placed it there, meaning the potential for upholding love and mercy in the marriage exists. But how does one fulfill that potential? How does one fulfill that potential? The first thing, and this is a question that I was asked yesterday, and it was an important question that was posed, that what does love and mercy mean in the Islamic tradition? Hey, what is Mawadda? And thereby, what's Rahma? So let's look at classical definitions. One of the really, you know, some scholars were given very interesting titles. And there's a scholar who wrote one of the greatest dictionaries of the Quran. It's called Umdat al-Hufadh, the reliance of the Quranic memorizers. It's by a scholar from Aleppo in Syria, may Allah SWT protect those lands. His name was Al-Sameen al-Halabi, literally the fat Aleppo, literally. And a brilliant, brilliant scholar, he has a great Tafseer of the Quran as well, called Ad-durr al-Masoon, and he's a great Imam of the Arabic language. He discusses in his work, Umdat al-Hufadh, the meanings of this word, wood. I mean wood, right? And he explains that wood, right? The term for love here is deep love for something and longing for it to come to be, longing for the good for it, right? So it's a love that is deep, that is accompanied by concern for the good, for that which one has this concern for, right? And because it's related to the term for a deep valley, right, because the water that goes deep in the valley remains there, it's unshakable. So that's why some people translate mawadda as place between you, deep affection, right? There's a sense of depth in it, there's a sense of stability in it, because it's not just emotional love, right? It is not just infatuation, right? It is not fickle, right? Because you love someone because they're beautiful but then you may find someone more beautiful, right? Like Imam Zaid mentioned, once I was walking with him in Damascus, it's kind of embarrassing if you were walking in the old city, through the marketplace. Imam Zaid said, have you heard the story of that really beautiful woman who this man was crazy in love with? Imam Zaid would ask these weird questions. I said, no, right? He said, well, there's this one man who was madly in love with this woman and he'd always wait outside her house in the old city of Damascus and whenever she came out, he'd walk behind her and tell her how beautiful she was and how much he loved her and how crazy he was for her and how he had no place in his heart for anyone but her and she never, she always ignored him, never even turned around to see who he was and a long time passed and then one day she turned around and she asked him, do you really think I'm beautiful? I said, yes. And finally here she's facing him. He said, do you really think there's one more beautiful than me? He says, no. He says, you know, my sister's over there, she's more beautiful than I am. So she turned to look and she gave him a big slap and she said, that the lover never turns to look. The lover never turns away. Because love that's based on these kinds of fickle ideas, if you love someone because they're beautiful, you might find someone who are beautiful. Beauty itself is subjective. What do you mean by beauty? Because this one's beautiful for this reason, this one's beautiful for another reason. Sometimes you fall in love with someone because they're not so beautiful. Any of you know Shakespeare, my beloved's eyes are nothing like the sun. There's actually an argument to be made that beauty is boring. If any of you like literature, Umberto Eco, Italian novelist and literary critic, he has a series of lectures that he gave in praise of ugliness. And the basic contention was that beauty is boring. Because what is beauty? Beauty is something being free of blemishes. And that's boring. And he makes a long literary argument and it's ugliness that's interesting actually. And just one advice, if you ever listen to the talk that's available online, listen to the audio, don't see the video. Because you know when it rains and pours, I'm watching this old Italian man give a talk and my wife walks in right when he shows some examples of European art. And my wife goes, what are you watching? And then to try to explain to my wife that I'm listening to a lecture on in praise of ugliness. It's not a good place to be. So I'm the last, she doesn't give me a hard time. But I just said, I don't know why that came on. And I just said, and close the video and I closed the browser window. And I was actually working, I have two monitors, I had the thing on, I was listening to it, but right there I decided to show some slide, some European art, right? So it's not that kind of fickle love, right? It's a deeply rooted love. And it's directly related to mercy because what is mercy? Right, mercy has two components. There's a component that's within one's heart and there's a component that's expressed in one's action because mercy, rahma, is concerned for the good. You know, mercy is to care about another and to express that care through words and actions and responses that express your care and concern for them, right? So wood is related, wood is love that has concern in the heart. And the mercy here is the expressions of that love and concern within manifest in one's actions and the expressions of that love and mercy are in the way you conduct yourself with your spouse, the way you speak to them, the way you respond to their words and actions, right? So we have tests. We took the example last night for those, many of you were here, about the case of the swinging rolling pin, right? That when Zubeyda gets upset with you and she's swinging the rolling pin in the air but why you didn't come home before midnight when you're going to take her for dinner, right? That's, you know, that's a test of love and mercy and that's how you respond. How is this upheld practically? It's upheld by what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said through upholding good character. This is a general call of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. What is the key to every human relationship, good character? The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said this in a hadith, right? Again, it's in Sunnah-e-Tirmidhi, right? He advised two of the senior most companions, Sayyidina Abu-Darr-il-Ghifari and Sayyidina Mu'ad ibn Jabal. Both of them asked the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam for advice and he told both of them, اتقل لها حيث ما كدت be mindful of Allah wherever you may be. واتبع السيئة الحسنة, تمحها follow a bad deed with a good deed and it will wipe it out. وخالق الناس بخلق الحسن and deal with people through good character. And this باء خالق الناس بخلق الحسن the bai in the Arabic language enters upon the instrument, the tool, the means. You know, if you wipe the table, you say مساحت الطاولة بيدي I wipe the table using my hand, right? The means or the instrument is what the bai enters into it with, you know, using. And that's the, and the means are necessary. Not for itself, but what it's a means for. So deal with people. What's the means of successfully dealing with people? Uphold good character. خالق الناس بخلق الحسن and the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said furthermore in a Sahih Hadith that you can't reach all people. إنك لن تسع الناس بمالك ولا بجاهك you cannot reach everyone. You can't influence everyone through your wealth nor your status, which is what people try to use to exert their influence. ولكن تسعهم بخلقك, right? But you can reach everyone through good character and another narration and rather let your gentleness and your cheerfulness reach everyone. And that is through good character in one hadith or another hadith, rather let your gentleness which is the distinction, you know, manifestation of good character and your cheerful temperament reach everyone, meaning you can have a positive influence on everyone through good character. Now of course the question that if this is what we need to uphold in marriage, the question is what is good character? Can someone tell, what is good character? What is the definition of good character? Do unto others as you wish to be done to you, right? Which is true, right? And that, you know, there's a prophet, so I'm saying. None of you believe until a wish for others as they wish for themselves. But what is good, that's a manifestation of good character. But what is good character itself? Taqwa, taqwa is either related to good character or it's one aspect of good character. But usually character is very broad but usually when they talk about good character they talk about how you relate to other people. Because a broad sense of character is also how you relate to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. But for the purpose of classification when they talk about good character they're typically talking about how you are with people. Because so they keep how you are with Allah they keep that as a separate investigation because you put everything together if it's not conducive to clarity. So they say good character, the formal definition of good character as Imam al-Qazali mentions, it is an inward disposition that causes you to exhibit praiseworthy traits of the heart and praiseworthy outward conduct. Good character is an inward disposition that causes you to exhibit praiseworthy states of the heart. So you have a good opinion of others. That's important in good characters. You have a good opinion of others. You think well of them. You don't have resentment to people. You don't have ill will. You don't have envy, pride, arrogance. These are inward aspect but they're critical to relationships and that causes you to exhibit praiseworthy outward actions. Because sometimes you could be very smiling. Yes, but Asif, yes, for sure. But inside you're like why do you keep asking me to do things? Why do you keep dragging me out to MCC? So the outward is not enough on its own, right? Because outwardly you could be yes, brother, okay, for sure, brothers. But inwardly you could be very resentful. And you say, how can we get this guy out of here? And it's really the inward that harms relationships more than the outward. A simple, like a street definition of good character is how you are that causes you to act as you do. That's not a formal scholarly definition. It's a street definition. How you are that causes you to act as you do. Now how is that good character manifest? Because that's very theoretical. That's very abstract. One of the most beautiful presentations of good character was given by a brilliant Hanbali scholar, Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali, who has a book that I'd recommend everyone to have a copy of. One of the greatest books of Islam is one of the shortest books in Islam, right? One of the shorter books of Islam, which is the 40 Hadith of Imam Naoui. And I believe Imam Zaid's teaching it here at the MCC. If you don't attend that class, like during the break hit yourself at the back of the head three times and then make an intention to attend the class, right? You know, one because of the book or also because of the person teaching it. Someone is an imbibment of Akhlaq, it's Imam Zaid, like Hafidahullah, okay? And you know, once you'd appreciate the blessings that one has, like there's few people as impressive as this man. Subhanallah. And Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali has a detailed commentary on the 40 Naoui and we're blessed to have it translated into English, the compendium of knowledge and wisdom. And it's available, you can find it, you know, at bookstores if you go to Rumi books or Firdous books, the two of the best Islamic booksellers online. If you don't know about them, Rumi books, which is actually based out of the Bay area. And there's a bookstore here as well in Fremont. And if you're a slacker, you can just buy it online, right? From Rumi books or Firdous books, F-I-R-B-O-U-S books. Another excellent bookseller. And they're very good because they're careful of what they carry. Like you can be pretty sure if they carry a book that it's, you know, that's a reliable book. Ibn Rajab. So he has this detailed commentary on the 40 Naoui called the compendium of knowledge and wisdom. I highly recommend it. He says that good character has five is manifest, compendium of knowledge and wisdom. Jami'u l-ulumi wal-hikam. He says that good character is manifest in five matters. This is not good character itself, but how it's manifest. And this is a very practical way of looking at how it can be a successful spouse. And these five things are the following, right? Number one, good character, the manifestation of good character is that you're keen to fulfill the rights of others. Right, which is why they say, al-mu'min haqqani. So the early Muslims used to say, a mu'min is someone who is careful about rights of others. And the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, a'ati kullahi haqqin haqqa. The second is, and this is a corollary of the first, is that you avoid harming others. You're careful not to harm others. And they say, this is called asasul adab, the basis of good manners. Asasul adab, allatu zia ahada. The basis of good manners that you've not heard, nor harm, nor annoy, nor inconvenience to anyone. That's adab. The third, and this is normally how people understand good character, right? Someone has good character, means that they're positive and cheerful and temperament. That's only one fifth of good character, but it's an important component. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is described very intriguingly in the shama'il, in his description, that Kaanur Rasulullah Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, da'im al humum, right? Da'im al-bishr, right? Or da'im al-bishr, mutawasil al-ahzan. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was always in deep concern, yet was always cheerful. Now this is rare, because some people are very cheerful, happy, go lucky, no concerns, and usually quite irresponsible. There's other people, very responsible, et cetera, but they're kind of boring, stiff, unhappy. But the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was always full of concern, yet he was always cheerful. That's how I said, we never saw anyone smile more than the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So both aspects, right? So being cheerful and positive. The fourth is to recognize the good of others and to respond to it with the good or that which is better. And the fifth is to respond to the bad and wrong of others with nothing but the good. So let's look at these one by one. That being careful to fulfill the rights of others, this comes out of what moves it. It's what moves it is that love and mercy that you have and that you're trying to nurture, right? Because you're either trying to maintain that love and mercy by being careful about the rights of others, but also this is how you nurture it, right? You want to increase in love. Know what's the right of another and strive to fulfill it. One of the scholars put it really beautifully. He said, I noticed that my father never asked my mother for anything. And my mother never asked my father for anything. Because anything my father could want, my mother would get it, would fulfill it before he ever had to ask for it. And my mother never had to ask for anything from my father because anything that she could want, he would get it for her before she'd want it, right? So if it was before Eid time, before Eid time would be coming, he'd already give her some money, he'd say, this is for the Eid clothing. He'd be traveling in a few days time before he could say, okay, let's get my bags ready. He said, by the way, I prepared your bags. There's something needed, he'd fulfill the need before she would ask. Before the month would begin, he said, this is the household expenditure for the next month, right? And so there's a beautiful way of fulfilling rights, right? It emerges out of concern for the good of others, right? And there's more detail that can be mentioned in that. So that's the first aspect. You have to fulfill the rights of the other. Related to that, avoiding harm, right? How do you avoid harming others in relationships? They say there's three basic keys all understood from the sunnah. The first is, and this is the most important, this is the prophetic counsel. Someone came and asked for the prophet, so I sent him to advise them. What did he say? La taqdab, do not get angry. The man thought that's it, he said, awsini, he asked, advise me, oh messenger. He said again, don't get angry. Said, advise me, third time he said, don't get angry. Most harm in marriage occurs as a result of anger. Most divorce happens as a result of anger. No one ever says, honey, I love you, but you know, I think I must divorce you. Most divorce happens out of anger. Most harm happens out of anger. Those hurtful words that are said and that are difficult to forget, when are they said? Out of anger, right? Any abuse that happens, it happens out of anger. So that's one key, don't get angry. And if you do get angry, la taqdab has a sense. One, avoid getting angry, so learn how to temper your emotions. But also that if you do get angry, don't act on the basis of your anger. Cool down your anger. And the Prophet of Islam gave us many teachings related to that. All of them go back to one principle, which is disengage when your anger starts stirring up. Change the subject. If you're standing, sit down. If you're sitting down, recline. Go drink some water, because the Prophet of Islam water cools down anger because anger is like the fire. Go wash your face, which has two things. One, it helps you cool down. But the second is, it gives you that moment of disengagement and those critical moments of thinking things through. Make udu, encourage the Prophet of Islam, right? So don't get angry. And if you have trouble with it, learn about anger management, right? And don't go and just look in some self-help books. The ultimate self-help guide is the sunnah of the Prophet of Islam, right? And there's no more insightful understanding of human temperament and action than the spiritual tradition of Islam, right? There's incredible wisdom. And don't be cut off from that. The second aspect of avoiding harm is the words of the Prophet of Islam. Whoever believes in Allah in the last day should say the good or remain silent, right? What does it mean to say the good? Because some people have the misconception that saying the good means speaking the truth. Yeah. And that is wrong. Speaking the truth is not necessarily saying the good. And I'll give you a real-life example. A good friend of mine who, you know, is foolishly innocent, right? Foolishly innocent. There's an Urdu term called Bholah, right? It's a hard, how do you translate Bholah in Urdu? They think it's like foolishly innocent, right? So it's their 10th year anniversary. So his wife rather optimistically decided to put on her wedding dress. I didn't need to know these details, but I know both of them quite well. According to my friend, she put on about 40 pounds in those 10 years. So she's walking down the stairs wearing her wedding dress. So she asked my foolishly innocent friend, John, how do I look? So my friend being foolishly innocent, he says, honey, you look like a balloon that's about to burst. Okay? Now, that is true, right? It was truthful, right? It was truthful, right? It's truthful, right? But is that saying the good? It almost resulted in divorce. Cause she got really mad. He said, I was only speaking the truth. But I love you. It doesn't work, right? It doesn't work. So what is saying the good? What? Yeah. Imam Naoui explains that saying the good is qulum ma yaglibu ala l-zumni naf'uqu. Saying that which you are reasonably sure will be of benefit. Saying that which is likely to be of benefit in its consequences, right? So your wife, let's say your husband has decided to help with cooking. So he's put so much salt in the eggs that you wonder if he tried to fry it using salt, right? So you ask, how are the eggs? You say, oh, they're absolutely awful. And actually this is, you know, sometimes the way we grow up, you know, in our societies here in the West, it's almost like we're Bedouins, right? Cause Bedouins were foolishly honest or they're excessively honest. And in one level, this is good. At one level, complete honesty is good. You know, you're straightforward. You're not too faced, right? And we live in a, a lot of people are very straightforward. They'll tell it, say it like it is. But the sunnah isn't just to say it like it is. Say it, no, it's not just sugarcoating though. Say it in a good way, right? Say it with wisdom, right? So you have to be careful, right? So you say, Masha'Allah, I love the fact that you, I love it that, you know, you make eggs for us on Saturdays. It's maravid to love. Your answer, just give a hug. Masha'Allah, right? And that's it, sometimes you don't need to. So say the good or remain silent. If you're not sure that what you're going to say will be a benefit, what's the default state? It's silence. If you don't know, stay silent or change the subject, say something else. And the third quality that's very important is to overlook. I used to overlook, right? The Prophet ﷺ commanded by Allah swt that overlook the faults of others, right? To overlook the faults of others. Overlook their mistakes. And there's many, many hadiths about that as well, right? That don't notice every mistake. Don't notice every mistake. Because if you do, the person, the other person won't listen to any correction. Imam Ghazali has this beautiful statement. He said, if you notice every mistake of your child, they will listen to no correction of yours. So you need to know how this went to strategically overlook. So your husband has decided to start doing his own cold shopping because for the first 15 years of marriage, you're buying his clothes. So now he's wearing these trousers to work. It says, how do the trousers look? And you know your husband. He wants your opinion, but he only wants to be praised. So if you tell him, they kind of look like balloons and they look weird. Like what exactly, where in the world did he get those trousers from? Like if you're honest, you say they look awful. And you're still trying to figure out like, what happened? Is he wearing them the wrong way around? Like what's going on, right? But if you say any of that, it won't be a benefit. So what do you do? You have really good taste, right? You just say something nice or you just pretend you didn't hear it. Say, what time do you have to go to work today? Or oh, by the way, the lunch is on the table. Don't forget it this time. So you strategically just ignore certain things, right? That's, and the Prophet Muhammad did that many, many times. And sometimes he'd point it out, right? He told Saydah Aisha, for example, Ya Aisha, I know when you're upset with me. He says, how do I know when I'm upset with you? He says, because when you're happy with me, when you swear, you say by the Lord of Muhammad. I say, the Aisha is a very passionate woman. Like she'd make emphatic statements. But when she would be, but I know when you're upset with me, because when you're upset with me, you say by the Lord of Ibrahim. But the Prophet Muhammad never pointed those things out to her afterwards, like in a good moment. He said, by the way, I know when you're upset with me. But he'd overlook it, right? He'd overlook it. And this is a very important quality, which is why Saydah Anas then said, Sahiptur Rasool Allahi 10 Sineen, I kept the close company of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam for 10 years, and never did he ever criticize me. And never did he say about something I did or didn't do, why did he do such and such? Or why didn't you do such and such? Wa Ma'aba Saffi Wajhi, and never did he frown at my face. And Saydah Anas, of course, when he went into the service of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam when he was 10. So he messed up sometimes. Says, and never did I break anything. And the way he says it in Arabic, never did I break anything, that it happened repeatedly, that he knew he'd do a little chores. So oops, dropped something, bro, tell them, stop. Whatever was destined happened. And part of overlooking is that if someone makes a mistake, you're getting upset about it, or criticizing them for it, won't change the mistake. Your husband didn't buy the diapers. Now you're getting upset with it, won't change the fact that the diapers weren't bought. You're getting angry, you're saying, why didn't you bring it? It's a good philosophical question to ask why, but doesn't change reality. And part of overlooking is what's happened has happened. Look at, okay, what can you do next? So, okay, what's going to be open? Why don't we go together and buy some diapers? Focus on what you can do. The third quality is to be positive and cheerful. And we mentioned the Prophet As-Sum was always concerned, was full of concerns. He had the weight of all creation till the end of time on his shoulders. Yet he was always cheerful. Why? Because the basis of cheerfulness is al-farahubillah, you're rejoicing in your Lord. He, you know, the greatest gifts that you have are constant, life, faith and guidance. These are, you could be in the worst of health, but you're still alive. You have iman and you have guidance. You know, everything else is secondary. And the highest of happiness is al-farahubillah, rejoicing in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Qulbi fadlillah wa bi rahmatihi fa bi dalika falyafrahu, say in the bounty of Allah and in His blessing, in that, let them rejoice. And there's many examples of that in the sunnah of the Prophet As-Sum. Once there's a disagreement between say the Aisha and the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And so the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, to be fair to say the Aisha, he appointed Sayyidina Abu Bakr. He said, why don't we let your father mediate between us? And it wasn't a big argument, but you know, he was just, okay, let your father, he was coming. Sayyidina Abu Bakr was coming. So when Sayyidina Abu Bakr came, he asked, and there's, Sayyidina Aisha disagreed on who should go first. And she said some firm words and Sayyidina Abu Bakr got his ghira, his sense of possessiveness for the deen and for his love of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he got upset and he hit his daughter. He said, don't speak to the Messenger of Allah Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam like that, he hit her. And the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam took Sayyidina Abu Bakr's hand away from his daughter and says, yeah, Abu Bakr, why did he say that? I came to you, that it's not for this that we brought you. And of course, but he was gentle even in the way he stopped Sayyidina Abu Bakr. He took his hand in his hand and he kept his hand. I said, we didn't bring you for this. And this is the positive attitude of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And the fourth quality is to recognize the good of others and to respond to it with the good or that which is better. And one of the most difficult qualities to sustain in a marriage is thankfulness. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam warned. And the warning was in the context, he was talking to some women, but it also applies to men, right? And this is one thing important, that there's some hadiths that seem to be addressing women. But why are those hadiths addressing women? Because the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam will talk in general, but you also have sessions that were specific to women. So when he's talking specifically to women, who would he be talking about? I mean, he's no kidding. He's talking to, because he's talking to women, he'd be addressing them to encourage them and to warn them. He's sent as basheeran wa nadheera. I mean, a bringer of glad tidings and a warner. So he sometimes warned the women. But that doesn't mean that what he warned them about, that it doesn't apply to men. It also applies to men. Just as things he said to men, also apply to women broadly, right? And he warned that one of the qualities that causes people to go to hellfire in marriage is what takfirna al-ashir. You are ungrateful for what your spouse gives you. You take your spouse for granted. You're ungrateful to your spouse. And this equality that both parties need, you always have to not, because the greatest good that other people do for you is the good that you take for granted, right? Like if you work for someone, it's not the bonus that is the good that they do for you. What's the biggest good they do for you is your base salary, right? See, what they provide for you in ongoing, you take that for granted. You're like upset, they didn't give me bonuses. But the salary, so that's the biggest thing, right? Even in quantitative terms. So similarly in marriage, we'll only notice the little things. You didn't make dessert. But they cooked all this other stuff. What about that? So you recognize the good that they do and you respond to it. And this is a quality that applies in all relationships. You want to be a person who's virtuous in society, recognize everyone who does good for you and strive to be thankful to them. How many of us have ever thanked the garbage collectors? How many of us have thanked our teachers in high school? How many of us have thanked people in our life who gave us helpful advice, who were positive influences, who were good friends at critical junctures in our life and to be thankful for them, right? And expressing that in meaningful ways, right? And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he would recognize his siblings from nursing, right? The children of Seyda Halima Sa'diyya who was his mother through nursing, he would honor her children as an expression of thankfulness to what's, you know, to Seyda Halima having nursed him. 40, 50 years, 50 years after that nursing had taken place. And this is a quality of appreciating the good of others in responding to it. And he said, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, that la yashkirullah man la yashkirinna whoever is not thankful to people is not thankful to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And so you should have good recognition habits. Anything that your spouse does, thank them for it. Make routines. Every day I want to notice different things that they do for me and to be thankful and to think of what's the best way of expressing my thanks to them, right? And they say the bridge to love is appreciation and thankfulness, right? This is for the love of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala but also for people. If you keep noticing the good that others do to you and you keep expressing your gratitude for it that appreciation, gratitude and thanks will translate into deep love, right? And this is an essential quality of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And then the test of good character, they say, ma haqqul akhlaq, the thing that tests character, right? Is how you are when you're challenged. It is the bailan moment, right? When she's waving the rolling pin at you, how do you respond then? And this is what made the character of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam tremendous. He was attacked, abused, opposed, wronged at every stage of his mission, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And he responded with nothing but the most beautiful, most dignified, most virtuous of responses, right? His whole life is a testament of that, right? They say the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam never even sighed in exasperation. Sayyidina Anas said, wa ma aadasa fi wajhi, he never frowned at my face. Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, right? To respond to the bad of others, to their mistakes, to their errors, to their shortcomings, to the wrong with nothing but the good. Why? Because this comes from a heart that is full of faith, right? Because the heart that is full of faith sees everything, not as coming, this is what people are doing to me. The believer sees everything that it is, who is the creator of every action? Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. The true believer sees everything as coming from Allah. And every response to what happens, what do you see it as? You're not dealing with people. Yet, you see what's happening to you and around you. This is a test from Allah to you. And what is your responsibility? What is the test? How you will respond to it, right? It's not about people, it's about Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. That's all. So the person's angry with you, doesn't matter. The question is, you see that as being an opportunity, right? What's the opportunity? It's an opportunity to seek the pleasure of Allah, to express your commitment to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, the trueness of your declaration of love. And so someone who understands would smile at these challenges. You say, this is an opportunity to express my love for Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, in action that is beloved. And the core of beloved action is the quality of forbearance, which is very difficult. Forbearance, khilm, tranquility, not to be moved by anger or negative emotion. This is very difficult. This is the most difficult of character traits. And that you not be moved by anger or negative emotion. And for some people, it's more difficult than others. Some Sahaba struggled with this for a long time. Like Sayyidina Omar, he was quite hot-blooded, but the Prophet ﷺ sublimated his character. Afterwards, we know the story when this Sahabi went to complain about his wife and he went to the door of Sayyidina Omar and his wife was shouting at him and shouting and shouting and shouting. And the man knocked on the door, but when he heard Sayyidina Omar not responding, he walked away. Sayyidina Omar had noticed that someone had knocked on the door, but he let his wife finish her shouting and her anger. So he went to open the door and saw this Sahabi walking away. And he said, why did you knock on the door and walk away? He said, yeah, yeah, I'm here with you. I came to complain about my wife, but I saw your wife gets upset with you too. He says, should I not be patient with her? She takes care of me and does all this for me. And is that if she gets upset with me once in a while, should I not be patient with her? But what is the basis of that? What is the basis of that good response that restrained? Imam Junaid said, kana khuluquhu azeeman liyannahu lam yakunlahu hamunsi wa rabbihi The character of the Prophet Muhammad was tremendous that he responded only with good because he had no concern except his Lord. What doesn't entail that you're a rollover, that you just let people roam, you know. The greatest person who has a right over you in creation is yourself. It is against the teachings of our religion to allow yourself to be wronged. Because by allowing yourself to be wronged, you're allowing another, you're indirectly assisting another to be a wrongdoer. So you stop the wrong, but in a right way. You seek your rights in the right way. And you don't seek your rights by wrongful conduct, by wrong conduct, by responding to the wrong with the wrong, it perpetuates wrong. And it's not wisdom. Someone's upset, you get upset back. You compound the harm not just on them, but on you. If even if you're just selfish, if you had a good response, you'll diminish the harm. And this tells us why marriage is so significant in Deen, because marriage nurtures these qualities of character. And it's an opportunity to express all these qualities that forbearance is the best of character. No one's going to test your forbearance like your spouse. It's like my mother-in-law and father-in-law, they're really cute, because they're always arguing about little things. My mother-in-law learned that you sleep, you should sleep, you know, on your hand. So one day my father-in-law, he's pretending, hi, you know, but in a heather body, heather body is a very cute way of saying, ah. And she's like, I said, dad, what's wrong? He said, it's all the sunnah your mother follows, your mother-in-law follows. The sunnah hurts me. I was like, what happened? She says, she's sleeping on her hand, but she's elbowing me all night. And he's like being very dramatic about it. She says, and she says, you should do it too. He said, and he was like, ah, they're a little thick. But these things that arise, these challenges in marriage, what are they? They're all means of working on these five qualities that we talked about, right? Being keen to fulfill the rights of others, not to hurt and harm anyone, to always have a positive attitude, to recognize the good. And if anyone, if the other party does some mistake, that you respond to the wrong with nothing but the good. And part of that is that you focus on how you can make things better moving forward. And to close with this very brief, we just mentioned these, there's certain qualities that you see in the sunnah, the underlying values, right? That underlie the attitude of the believer. And we'll just mention them in passing. They're obvious from the sunnah. One quality is service. The believer serves, right? The believer serves others. Because service is a sign of humility. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says, Sayyidun qawmi khadimuhum, that the master of a people is the one who serves them, right? And it's a sign of humility. So whether you're the husband or the wife, the father or the mother, the sibling or the child, the uncle or the aunt, whatever, you should strive to be the one who's serving, right? Because service is honor with Allah swt, right? Because why do you serve? When you don't serve for people, you're serving for Allah. And Allah is in the assistance of His servant, as long as His servant assists others. And actually, if you want to be able to get your way in relationships, if you serve people, and you're a source of benefit for them, you're a source of good, after that you can do whatever you want, right? Like a lot of problematic social relationships, like you're going to the wedding, but you're going to leave early because weddings have, they disintegrate. They start relatively sane, and then they sink into depravity, or some semblance thereof. So what do you do? Service, go early and help out. Help serve the tea, go greet people, do all these things. You do that, doesn't matter. When you leave, everyone will remember, will appreciate that aspect, right? And same in marriage, be given to service. Another quality that one has to have within, but one has to express, and sometimes we don't do it enough, is respect, right? Respect. Address your spouse, whether husband or wife, with terms of respect, with terms of respect. And respect is not just a matter of the heart. Respect is something that is, that should be expressed in one's actions, right? And this is very important, right? And in our, one of the imbalances of our society, and there's many good qualities that exist in the society, but there's a foolish trend in the last 40 years or so of taking respect for granted. You call professors by first name. I went to, you know, to the Jewish Theological Seminary and senior rabbis, right? Actually, it was kind of one of the comic life moments. One rabbi's name was Rabbi Bert, something or the other, and another's name was Arnold, something or the other. Both senior rabbis and men, you know, great learning, they're calling each other Bert and Arnie. And I was finding it difficult not to laugh, right? It was like, I had to hold myself in, but I looked down and I noticed, you know, Professor Dr. Sherman Jackson was sitting next to me, and he actually put his hand on his head, because, you know, it's not at them, right? But express that respect in suitable ways, right? And even with spouses, because what respect does, it makes other people feel safe towards you. Another quality that's an underlying value is patience. The best way of solving things is time, right? You have a bit of, your wife's a bit upset. The best way of dealing with it is to be patient and it'll go. It's like, you know, the Prophet Salaam said, each of you is a shepherd and each of you is responsible for their flock. If a sheep starts running away, what's the best way of catching the sheep? I just wait, it'll come back, inevitably, right? Another quality is empathy, right? Empathy, don't just focus on what you want. Make it a habit to try to appreciate why your husband, your wife, why they're saying what they're saying, where they're coming from, right? A fifth underlying value is that our D8, underlying quality of a believer is calm. The Prophet Salaam said, عليكم بالسكينة والوقار, hold fast to calm and dignified restraint. Be calm, few things are a big deal. Think about, five years from now, will it really matter? You get rid of the, how come you didn't bring the Abdul Thalachi ice cream? Will it really matter? No, right? We talked about forbearance. This is one of the qualities to read up a lot about, forbearance, that don't be moved by anger or negative emotion. Rather, consider what response will be pleasing to Allah, which is the related thing, right? There's a beautiful Urdu term that doesn't exist in Arabic, right? Which is, they say it's Lillahiyat, right? Which literally you can say, for Allah-ness, right? Or be Allah-centric, right? That's what the marriage is about. It ain't, it's not about you or him or her or the kids or this or that. It is about Allah-sumphalata'ala, all right? And that's something to always keep in mind. Now the eighth thing is, connect with the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Connect with the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, right? That the health of the marriage revolves around striving to be as close to the prophetic akhlaq as you can be. How do you nurture that? You nurture that by having regular routines daily, weekly, of learning about the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, number one. Number two, of striving to acquire prophetic character. Always be working on some aspect of the prophetic character that you're trying to inculcate in your life. Third, how do you connect with the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? By sending blessings on the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, right? Because the more you mention the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the more you strive to draw closer to that light that Allah has gifted us with, right? And one should just have regular routines. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, the people closest to me in the hereafter, and how will we be close to the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in the hereafter? By having closeness to his character and his love in this life, are those who send most blessings upon me. So you should aim, try to send, if you're serious about your Deen, to try to send 300 blessings on the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam per day. And a very practical way of doing that is to say, Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa alihi wa sallim. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa alihi wa sallim. This is very easy to say. And when we say alihi and his folk, right? The aal of a person is not just their family. It's their family, but also all those who ascribe themselves to them. The Qur'an talks about ali-fir'aun. Was that the family of fir'aun? No, it's all those who ascribe themselves to fir'aun. That's in a negative sense. But in a positive sense, the aal of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is every believer. So you intend the specific meaning, which is the noble prophetic household. You also intend the general meaning, every believer. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa alihi wa sallim. You send that throughout the day, right? As you work, as you're at home, et cetera. And this brings blessing to your life and also to your marriage. It's tried and tested and true. So these are some of the elements of a successful marriage, right? To uphold good character, which has these five qualities that we talked about, right? And some of the underlying values. So having looked at that, we were breaking out for lunch. In the session after lunch, inshallah, what we're going to do, if we're going to look at some of the common problems that happen in marriage, and we're going to give an extensive amount of time for you to ask your questions. Bismillahi ta'ala. So we have to go for Zohar right now. So if you have questions, keep track of them now, and we'll open actually after Zohar, we'll give the opening 10 minutes for any questions that you may have. Bismillahi r-Rahman r-Raheem. Al-hamdulillahi rabbil al-alameen. Wa sallallahu wa sallam wa baraka ala Sayyidina wa Nabina Muhammad dil qadr al-Azim wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam atasleeman kathira. In spirit of Allah swt saying, don't say three, but in a very different context. What we're going to be doing inshallah, we're going to jump straight into the fourth session on resolving differences in order to give ourselves more time to take a lot of the questions that arise with respect to marriage and family life, rather than rushing through a lot of content, inshallah ta'ala. So what are some of the common problems that arise in marriage? There's many. But if we try to look at it, that what do most common problems go back to in marriage? It just makes sense that the problems that arise in marriage are typically the result of not fulfilling that basic prophetic command to uphold good character. And most of the challenges in marriage, most of them, the key to them, is to uphold good character. The key to them is to uphold good character. Particularly if you understand what is good character in the full prophetic understanding. And the good character isn't just being nice. Good character is a five dimensional aspect. What were the five things that good character goes back to? What was the first one? Fulfilling rights. The second? Avoiding harm. We'll hear number three. Third is being positive and cheerful. The fourth is recognizing and responding to the good with the good or that which is better. And the fifth? Yeah, responding to the bad with nothing but the good. So some things that you don't think are from good character are from good character. Amongst them, how you deal with financial matters. It relates to good character. Financial disputes also have to do with good character. One is how you deal with them. That however, whatever process of resolving them that you follow, that you do it in the spirit of good character. But also, it goes back to the first point of good character. The good character is your exhibiting, praiseworthy, is having the right attitude and the right action. So dealing with these with financial matters is also from Hussn Al-Khuluk. And that Hussn Al-Khuluk has certain requirements. So what do you do with financial matters? Which is one of the common practical differences that happen in marriage. One critical element that the Sharia takes very seriously is have clarity and definition in the financial aspects of marriage. Clarity and definition. Because usually, how our family finances, one bucket. If finances were a dish, they'd either be biryani or shorba, it's like one big mixture of multiple ingredients. Some kind of soup, everything's thrown into it. But that's not the basis of financial dealings in general. Financial dealings in general. And the basis of what you owe other people is clarity and definition. In any human transaction, the basis in our deen is clarity and definition. On the basis of what? On the basis of clear mutual agreement. Allah swt tells us in Surah An-Nisa, O you who believe, do not consume one another's wealth in wrongful ways, rather, let it be through trade or transaction on the basis of mutual agreement. And that has to do explicitly, the Ibarat al-Nas, the expliciteness of the text has to do with transactions. But the indication of the text is always clear. And that has to do explicitly with transaction. But the indication of the text is all dealings. The dealings, all dealings have to be on the basis of what? On the basis of clear established mutual agreement. Mutual agreement should not be assumed. Because if it's simply assumed, when it's tested, it will be denied. So what is the basic aspect of that? That have clarity of how monetary aspects of the marriage are being handled. And it is particularly pertinent, because complicating factors like common property law come up. In California, you guys have common property law, right? But let's say Zubed and Zubeda got married in California, right? Imam Zaid conducted their wedding. Now, when everything's fine, what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine and et cetera. Although my wife, mine is mine and what's yours is mine, right? That's what my wife's philosophy. I'm like, well, I don't have anything, so. Alhamdulillah. But when everything's fine, there's no problem. But let's say Zubed and Zubeda had that argument. The incident of the flying roller and the rolling pin. Now, next day, Zubed says, I'm moving out, right? Zubed says, well, that's fine because the house belongs to me anyways, right? Because you owe me this much, et cetera. She says the house belongs to me. He says, no, but it was bought with my money. What's Zubed going to invoke? Common property law that I have right to 50% of your wealth, what's he going to say? Islamically, I purchased it, it belongs to me. She says, no, but you didn't mention that you don't, we're not going to follow common property law. So you implicitly agreed to the law of the land. He said, there's no such thing in the Sharia. He says, there is, there isn't. Now what you're going to do, right? It's going to complicate things. So what do you need to do? You need to define these things beforehand, right? You need to define these things beforehand. Either before you get married in the marriage agreement, right, you define these critical elements, ownership issues. Who has to pay for the debt off? Like, you know, they both went to college and let's say, like a good friend of mine. He's, you know, he got divorced and I don't know how. He's ending up having to pay close to $50,000 of his wife's student loans. Because, you know, because she threatened, if you don't pay that, you're not giving any custody for the kids. And this complicates things, right? So the ideal case is these things should be defined in writing beforehand, right? As one's entering the marriage. If not, then while you're married, these things should be resolved with clarity. These things should be resolved with clarity, right? In a manner that's also, that has practical consequence, right, that if it is taken to court or whatever, that this is something that it would have some basis. And that varies from state to state. But, you know, it can be structured. So you have a marriage contract, but you also have a, you know, a marriage agreement where these critical things are defined. And it applies more broadly in family. Let's say Uncle Jamil has another daughter, because Sumaiya. Sumaiya goes to university. So Uncle's very proud. You know, she got into Stanford and she's so proud of her. Says, Biti, you can take the car. Because he has, he calls his car the tank, right? Because Uncle's old school, he still drives a Hummer, right? And he's called it the Hydro Hummer, right? Because inside he's got, you know, like Heather about the artwork or something, right? So he has his Hydro Hummer and then there is the car. He says, Biti, you can have the car. So, Sumaiya goes to Stanford, et cetera. There, in a study group, she runs into Brother Michael, right? And he, you know, he's impressed by her because she's got, she's got a lot of luck. She's obviously religious. She's impressed by him because he's a very sincere convert and takes it mean very seriously. Third year of university comes up. Sumaiya tells her dad that she wants to marry Brother Mike, the African-American convert. Now, Uncle Jamila has a lot of strong points, but cultural and racial sensitivity is not one of them, right? But being a practical uncle, what's the first thing he's going to say? No, before he says no, you have to think uncle, okay? Yeah, give my car back, okay? Give my car back. And now what's Sumaiya going to say? It's my car. You said take the car. What's uncle going to say? I'm paying for it. I'm paying for it. Why just let you use it, right? I said take it meaning use it. Says no, take it you said you gave it to me. He says it's still registered in my name. Says no, but you gave it to me and you saw me redecorate it. Said I let you do whatever you want anyways, right? And they go into, so what happens? One problem is compounded by another, you know? She says I'm moving out of the house. She said go away and never come back but leave the car right here, right? And like it causes big, you know and these things happen all the time, right? So what do you have to do? And this applies in marriage, you're also in family define things with clarity because it reduces the risk in the relationship. It reduces the risk so that if a disagreement happens there's parameters for resolving it. There's parameters for resolving it. How do you do it? You do it with tact, right? So uncle says Betty you could take the car. He says and he wants to give her a hug. I said hold on a second. Let me get pen and paper. Sign on the dotted line. No, right? You accept the hug, thank you, I love you, et cetera. But I said dad I just wanted to make. Are you giving me the car, right? Or am I just using it, right? And we just do it in writing so just to make sure everything's clear, you know? Like you figure out a tactful way of doing it, right? But it diminishes disagreement. This is also significant because there's certain realities. At some stage you might die. Some stage your spouse may die and then what's going to happen, right? Now imagine uncle Jamil, 62, has a massive heart attack and he dies. Now auntie, so they live, they had one big home. Uncle died in his 60s. All the kids are around their 30s, right? Three, four kids. Immediately, what's auntie going to say about the house they lived in? Who does it belong to? To her. Said, he bought it for me, I chose it. And you know, that's when auntie gets all dramatic that she'll cry and use all kinds of emotional hugs. It's mine. Like you're going to kick your mother out, even before they say, are you going to kick your mother out of her house? But practically, the two sons and the two daughters and Zubayda and Sumayya and Jamal and Kamal, right? What are they going to say? They're all in the early 30s, they're all just trying to get established. The house is now worth a million dollars. What are they going to say? Who did the house belong to? Yeah, because when pushed everyone, the human being, the basis of the human being is that they're needy, that they're needy. And when tested, they act according to the reality of their neediness, right? They'll say, mom, we'll take care of you, we'll find you a smaller, we'll find you a nice apartment, you can stay with us. But what are you going to do with such a big house? You're going to be lonely. They'll justify it 101 ways, but push comes to shove. Nine cases out of 10, they'll say, no, the house belong to dad. We should sell it off. And that way you'll have money for your retirement. They'll have 101 justifications. And it's a routine thing. These kinds of things lead to family break up. Why? One, there's no will, but even if there was a will, who owns it? Now, if you take it to court, that's actually a lengthy, costly process. And the Islamic considerations won't be taken to account anyways in it, such as Islamic issues of inheritance. But the fundamental question, who owns it, right? Even if it's resolved in court, that's still going to destroy relationships, right? So it's important to define it. I'm not suggesting how you handle common property law. You can choose to follow it, but agree in writing to follow it. Or you can choose that each person's wealth belongs to them, or you can come up with other intermediate solutions, right? But either way, define it clearly in writing. And the best thing to do, these things to be discussed beforehand, right? What happened, what are other financial expectations? Agree to those in a constructive spirit, because it leads to problems all the time. In the marriage, it also affects the family beyond the marriage. And in general, they say, be close, but transact as if you're strangers, right? Be close. And it's a common thing. People say, the worst people to deal with are Muslims. They'd never go into business with another Muslim. I know the problem is, is this issue of non-definition? Because if you get into a contract with a stranger, you're going to follow all business practices and define everything, et cetera. But you get into a partnership with Brother Zubayr who says, yeah, we're brothers, we won't disagree. So let's start. How are you gonna divide the profits? What's the decision make? How will you make decisions? Nothing's defined. So what happens? Disagreement will turn into dispute, right? Again, you know, transact as if strangers, right? With a good will, don't do it legalistically. Do it in a spirit of your mutual concern with tact, with wisdom, but have clarity and definition. Any questions here before we continue? Go ahead. So two, I guess. One, you mentioned about law of the land. And does that typically only apply when you have an item that, like practicing that item of Sharia becomes like illegal, like if I say I don't want to have car insurance, right? Then you follow the law of the land because you have that car insurance. But not to like, more arbitrary matters. It gets tricky, right? It gets tricky. And there's a difference of opinion. One of the issues is what are you gonna do with the difference of opinion? Because this is something that affects both parties, right? So if something affects, there's one thing, like for example, one party says, I'm not gonna drive because if I have to get car insurance, I'm not gonna drive. Okay, you don't have to. I don't drive, not because of car insurance, just because I'm a slacker, right? Like I don't drive because I prefer staying home, right? There's a lot of random community requests that I don't fulfill. I come to our girls' school and speak to the great three girls about the importance of Quran. Other people can do it, right? Because you have to focus in life. You have to do certain things and not do other things. But there's other things that affect the relationship as a whole, such as who owns what. Now, if the wife takes one interpretation, the husband takes another interpretation, that's going to lead to dispute. Let's say the husband doesn't want to pray at Qiyamul-Lail, the wife wants to pray at Qiyamul-Lail, the one wants to get up, the one who doesn't doesn't, no problem. You can take different opinions, right? He gives the Qama differently, so what? Doesn't affect things, but those differences of understanding that would lead to disagreement and dispute, those should be resolved. Ideally, before entering the marriage, if they're still unresolved, they should come to an agreement on it in a positive, forward-looking spirit. Not to argue, but in a positive spirit, right? To have a mutual, you know, a mutual common agreement, right? Because otherwise, it's inevitable. The party in whose interest it is, is likely to incline towards the legal opinion that suits them. That's not an unreasonable expectation, right? And also because issues such as this, right now where our community is at, they haven't been sufficiently researched, right? Who are the scholars who are engaging in legal research in our community? Pretty much nobody, right? And because those institutions, it takes time to develop those institutions and so on, right? So in the meantime, having this agreement is very important. Any other questions? So let's say, for example, you gave the example of someone passing away and then maybe they didn't agree previously to how it's going to be distributed or they didn't distribute it previously. So in this case, let's say that I feel like I got shortchanged and I go to court and I somehow win a better judgment than what I would have got via Islamic law. In that case, if I did that, will I, to a degree, own something that doesn't belong? Yes, yes, so if one is permitted to go to court to seek one's rights, but if there is a determined resolution to that kind of situation Islamically, then one can only claim to the extent of one's rights. So let's say they were trying to cut someone out of inheritance. So the person went to court and won the case. You can only ultimately take what's within your, but within what's due to you. If you get more than that, the extra you should forego and share between those whom it's a portion to. But the thing to do there is before that is try to get who the inheritors are to come together and agree that we willfully agree to a process by which everyone will get their Islamically due share. Any other questions or go ahead? So let's say in a marriage, if one person wants to go to the fat and if they wanted to be in the beginning and the other partners are like, hey, what is the point? Partners and all that, how do they do that? Yeah, one is to, one way to convince someone is to show them the benefit of the decision. That this will avoid, one explains because these are the reasons. For the health of the marriage, et cetera, so that it doesn't lead to dispute, et cetera, in the event of death, all these different aspects, there's benefit to it. And sometimes it takes time. The other is in some situations, one can make a one-sided commitment too. Like if one party is disagreeing to it, it's not willing to entertain these issues. At least one could say, well, this is what I agree to hold myself to. In a way that neither short changes oneself nor wrongs the other party. So I say, well, this is what I'll hold myself to. And very often, if someone takes that gesture, the other party says, that makes sense. I agree as well. And often that helps, for example, the wife's earning too. So she says, well, I prefer to keep my earnings separate but I agree to pitch in this month and amount on a monthly basis as part of the family thing. So I said, this is what I'll do, right? Because she really feels that she wants to have that financial security, that if something happens, she wants to have her earnings to herself, whatever. So I've seen in many cases, if one party gives that clear definition, the other party says, well, in that case, well, I'm going to also do this and therefore we'll have a common account to which both parties agree to pitch in this amount for household expenses, et cetera. And she says, well, this is how much I wish to contribute. And she says, well, this is how much I'll give but I'll also keep a separate account as well. And we agree to some kind of, so that facilitates agreement. But once you do it in a constructive spirit, right? Instead of arguing, why aren't you doing it, et cetera? It's just sort of sometimes, if you take a step in the right direction, this facilitates moving things forward. Any other questions before we go to the next point? Okay, another issue that leads to a lot of disputes in marriage are religious differences, right? And this is why sometimes, it can sound like a politically incorrect thing to say, but sometimes the marriages of people who are newly religious have more problems than the marriages of people who are not religious in our community. It's like a type of madness, okay? And what happens is that religion becomes a complicating factor in the marriage, right? Because people haven't grown into it, so it becomes something they used to argue with the other party. They don't know how to, they know the law, but they don't know how to. They don't know the spirit of it. They haven't really imbued the underlying values and so on. So how does one deal with disagreements that arise on religious matters, right? And this is where one of the most dangerous categories of people in the Muslim community, who it is? The NRA, the newly religious auntie. They're armed and dangerous. They're armed with a little knowledge and they're gonna cause a great amount of harm through it, right? And they're spectacular. Always coming up with some new craziness, right? And especially now that there's dedicated women's groups, right? Who like, they're like lobby groups for the NRA, right? Like they're promoting that kind of madness, right? So, but when people, that's why sometimes if someone's getting into the Dean, even if they're getting very serious, they say take some time before you marry. Let things settle down before you get married. One, because if you are changing a lot, you know, what you are seeking now may not be what you'll be seeking once that process of change has reached some kind of stability, right? Because sometimes they say, well, I'm getting more religious. Nothing helps someone being religious like a good husband or a good wife. Well, what you choose now may not be the same as who you'll choose, you know? Six months down the road, a year down the road as things settle down, which is why it's good to consult. But if differences arise in marriage, right? Of religious issues, right? One of the aspects is to accept differences, right? The marriage is not a Sharia court, right? Where the husband is the Qadi, because what happens if you treat the marriage like a Sharia court, the husband is the Qadi, he's the judge, but the wife becomes a Mufti. She gives the fatwa, right? And then how will you resolve that? The Qadi says, absolutely not. The wife plays the role of the Mufti. She gives the fatwa that absolutely yes. How are you gonna solve that? And one way, very simple, is that don't try to run the religious life of your spouse. Very simple. If people come and complain, like my husband doesn't do his Sunnah prayers, right? Now if you just think about it, if Zubey is not praying his Sunnah, do you think that Zubey that nagging him is going to make him say, now that you've been nagging me for the last six months, I'm going to start. Do you think that's gonna happen? No, like especially with men, right? Men, nothing annoys men as much as nagging, right? Sometimes women are more practical. They'll say, okay, well, whatever, I'll do it. Just at least in front of them, they'll do it. But men tend to have bigger egos on things like that. But both ways, it doesn't work, right? Women, many women may end up doing something like that, but then they'll show you in other ways, right? And it's not conducive. Let the other party be. I've had people come and tell me my husband doesn't recite Hezbo El Bahar. What do I do? When my husband doesn't recite the Rathim of Amal Haddad, like, does he have to, right? Like, are you his spiritual guide? No, actually, if his spiritual guide knows that he's not reciting Hezbo El Bahar, would he say anything? No, then why are you saying anything, right? Like, so let people be. What is your responsibility with respect to religious matters? Is to command the good and forbid the wrong. When it's likely to be a benefit, when it's likely to be a benefit, like, you're not the judge, right? You're a religious advisor at best, right? So let's say someone's husband, you know, people develop bad habits. He's given up trying to get up for Fajr. Does screaming and shouting help? No. Does Zubair not know that Fajr is fard? Of course he does, right? Sometimes the way we deal with these kinds of problems is that creep up. You've learned that Zubaira doesn't eat, Zabihah meat at work. What are you gonna do about it, right? What are you gonna do about it? So that's where your role is to command the good and forbid the wrong. When do you command the good? When you're hopeful that it'll be a benefit. But when it's not going to be a benefit, you know, it can be haram to command the good. When is it haram to command the good? When it'll be of greater harm, when it'll make things worse, right? And there's a case from the Sunnah that's so shocking that some of the hadith scholars said, this couldn't be authentic, but it is authentic. This man came to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the hadith is in Sunnah Nabi Dawud in elsewhere and he said to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, Ya Rasulallah, Inna mra'ati la taruddu yada la mis. O messenger of Allah, my wife does not turn away any seeking hands. And it means exactly what comes to mind, okay? What did the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam say? He asked him, would you divorce her? And the man didn't say anything, okay? But the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, like, he didn't want to divorce her. He liked her. So he asked him, A tuhibbuhah, do you love her? And the man didn't say anything. It was obvious that he did. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, then enjoy her company. Like meaning that, what are you gonna do about it? You can't, you're not running other people's lives. And sometimes you have to be pragmatic. They're okay, this is a problem, right? What are the practical options? Do you want to leave the marriage? No. Then do you want to make things better? Right? If you can't accept it, then end the marriage, okay? Is the person gonna listen to you? How are you going to improve things, right? Like what are the positive next steps you can take? And sometimes it requires patience with people, right? And many of these things arise, right? That someone's doing something wrong and that's religiously sinful. How do you deal with it, right? How do you deal with it? It's not to say that, you know, your spouse can do whatever they want. But sometimes if something's not acceptable to you, how do you respond to it, right? You should respond religiously in a manner that will make things better, right? If it's completely unacceptable, then it's okay, I want to get out of it. Like you have to seek clearly. But then are you willing to accept the implications of that? But the problem that happens is that instead of, there's two things, some problem happens. Let's say, God forbid, husbands addicted to some kind of sinful act, which is a, you know, many problems like that. You know, and we don't need to mention many harmful addictions that people have. What are the different kinds of vices? Now, how does the, how do you deal with that? Or the opposite, there's women, and I deal with these kinds of things, I don't know, the wife is addicted to some kind of sinful act, what are you gonna do about it? So in those situations, right? One has to think with clarity. Do you want to get out of the marriage? No, then if you want to remain in the marriage, what do you want to do, right? There, you want the Sunnah is to look forward that how can we heal the relationship and restore the good in it? That is the Sunnah concern. Is how can we heal the relationship and restore the good? Not just for the other party, but for you as well. Cause, you know, you have a right, you know? But sometimes instead of healing things to restore the good, we react to them in ways that if you were to just pause and think of your reaction, what are you doing? You're just making things worse. You're just making things worse, right? So, you know, like good friend of mine, he had a bad habit when we were in Damascus, he'd always go home late. So one day he came home late and his, I don't know what his wife did, but basically she blocked the double bed so he couldn't sleep on the bed. I don't know how it happened, I didn't want too much detail. But, so he slept on the ground in the winter time. She poured a whole bucket of cold water on him because he came home late. Now he was wrong. She has a right that he not leave her alone in a foreign city, this and that, but throwing a bucket of cold water on him is not very likely to make things better, right? So of course, sometimes the way you respond to something triggers negative responses. Three or four days later, he shows up late again. I would find out, because sometimes he'd leave home and come and crash in my living room, which had probably made things even worse. So he was going back home late again, and he's going back home late because he's not very happy being at home because he's kind of scared of his wife. Because she'd also kicked him once in the groin and slapped him, done all kinds of crazy things. And he was also, takes two to tangle, right? So he goes home late, she bolted the door from inside. So he was sitting crying for half an hour in front of the house because he didn't know what to do. But then the landlord said, what are you doing? So he left and came to my house, woke me up, I let him stay in my living room. But some responses make things worse, right? So you have to look at how you can restore the good. And sometimes you don't know how to do it. One should consult, right? So whether it's a matter of religious difference or someone's doing something that's religiously wrong, be a healer, right? Someone who brings back the good. And if you don't know, consult. And the mistake that people make is that instead of consulting, people vent. And so what they do, they'll go and complain. Whether to their siblings or to their family or to their friends, they go and complain. But is the complaining help in healing the situation? No, it actually just adds complication. Uncle Jamil goes and tells Zubair, you're a total loser. And you're not a man, which doesn't make things better. But then Zubair tells Zubair that you're a total loser because you told on me. And then other people get involved and the family's got involved and becomes like one Bollywood drama, right? And won't make things better. So you don't vent. Rather you consult. Who do you consult? Someone who you're reasonably sure will be able to make things better through their advice. Sometimes it could be a trusted friend, right? Who has the experience, who's lived. So they'll give you sensible advice. Some things require some religious advice or some spiritual advice. So you go to consult with someone who can give you that kind of advice. Sometimes you need counseling, right? So you choose the right kind of advice, right? Any questions here? Go ahead. How do you draw a line between the one who doesn't have the knowledge and the other who doesn't have the knowledge and the other who doesn't have the knowledge? Hmm. So how do you join between that there's no compulsion in religion and shield your family, if you shield yourselves and your families from the fire? You shield them by taking the means, right? But you can't force the means, right? You can't force the means. And for that one also has to be considerate of context. You have to be considerate of context, right? Because if you, the alama say, if you live in a society where the prevalent situation and the general case is religiosity, then sometimes if you're strongly firm, like if you're stern, what will happen? People go back to the defaults, right? So if you're in a religious society, the prevalent is religiosity. In general or in your circles, that's the case, then if you're stern with someone, what would happen? They would go back to what's the norm, right? And that's how we understand, for example, the actions, many of the actions would say na'amar. He was not harsh. His sternness was out of mercy, right? So this man was praying lazily. He saw say na'amar. So he stood up straight and started looking down exaggeratedly. So say na'amar went with a stick and tapped him on the back of the head. And he said, leisat al-khashiyah ha'una. Said that khashiyah, reverent awe is not here. It's not at the back of the neck. One could say it's against the sunnah. The sunnah is the one stands straight and looks down. What doesn't hunch? But he straightened up and he started looking down, right? Just because say na'amar came, not for Allah, right? But in that context was not harshness. Why? Because the general case was religiosity. And people within them had respect for deen. So if you're firm, people would return towards the normal expectation, to the norms. But in a context where religiosity is not the norm and respect for deen specifically or religion more broadly is weak, then if you're firm, if you're stern, it'll cause people to flee away from deen, right? Which is what the Prophet Salli Alayhi Alayhi wa Sallam said, fa bi ma rahmatin min Allahi l-intalahum. It is from the mercy of Allah that you were gentle with them. Wa lo kuntah fadzan ghalid al-qalbi lan fadda wa min hawlik. Right? Had you been harsh or hard, they would have fled from all around you. And this is the person with the best and most beautiful character. Had he been harsh, people would have fled from him. Says Allah swt, let alone anyone else. And this is why we find sahaba who used sternness. And some of them were very powerful, like Sayyidina Almar. Though his sternness was from mercy. But the Prophet Salli Alayhi Alayhi wa Sallam was never stern, ever. He was firm, right? He was firm, but he would never go beyond that. Because that's the asal, that's the basis, right? That's the basis. So one has to be careful. Particularly in the context we live in, you can't. Sturnness, they say our age is an age of encouragement. It's not an age of warning, right? Because when people don't have respect in their hearts, you know, deep respect. And that's not the norm, religiosity is not the norm. If you're firm, it'll be treated as if it's harsh and people will flee away. It may work in small doses in the short term, but long term, people are going to flee away. Right, so one has to be very, very careful about that, right? And the Prophet Salli Alayhi Alayhi wa Sallam gave us so many examples of that, right? A dramatic example is this Bedouin who came to the Prophet Salli Alayhi Alayhi wa Sallam, right? And was harsh to the Prophet, the story is long, right? Because he asked the Prophet Salli Alayhi Alayhi wa Sallam for money and the Prophet Salli Alayhi Alayhi wa Sallam he said, are you satisfied? He said, absolutely not. You've done me no good and long story. And then the Prophet Salli Alayhi Alayhi Alayhi Alayhi wa Sallam took him aside and gave him more and said, are you satisfied? He said, yes. And the Bedouin went in front of the Sahaba after and said, Muhammad has honored me as a good man and he left. When this Bedouin left, the Sahaba were originally very angry with the Bedouin. The Prophet Salli Alayhi Alayhi Alayhi Alayhi wa Sallam said, the example of me and you and this man is like the example of the owner of a she camel whose she camel is running away. So when the camel is running away, what did people do? Someone's camel is running away. What would people do? They chased after it. And what did that do to the camel? It caused it to run even faster. But then the owner told him, stop. Leave me to my camel. Okay. And the owner of the camel used sweet words and used some fodder and gradually approached the camel while singing and encouraging. And slowly the camel slowed down and then came back and the owner and the camel were reunited. I said, that's the example of me and you and this man. He said, had I left him to you, he would have ended up in the fire. And that's what happens, right? That if there's a family member who's slipping, who's struggling, who is not being religious, that's not the time to take them to court. I said, that's Haram. Who doesn't know that praying five times a day is not Haram? At that time, what they need, they need mercy. You have to be like the owner of the sheep. You have to bring them back. And it may take time. And there's many, many examples of that from the life of the Prophet of them. The man who loved his wife, but his wife had wayward ways. They didn't enjoy her company. And they said, of course, implicit in that is if you love her, maintain the relationship and gradually hope that things change for the better. Take the means of changing them for the better. Use wisdom. And you have to be, sometimes you have to be pragmatic. We don't live in an ideal world. People have mistakes, right? Even, you know, there's this one companion. He fell into misconduct with someone's slave girl and then with someone else's and then with someone else's. Right? And the Sahaba then, you know, and he was punished a few times for it. And the Sahaba were putting him down. Like, what's wrong with you? And they're putting him down. The Prophet of Islam heard it. He said, Like, stop. He said, Don't assist his shaitan against him. Me and the poor guy struggling, don't do things that will make it worse. Right? So you have to be very careful in these kinds of situations. Right? It's not about drawing the line. You draw the line short term, it may work. But will it actually cause the person to want to do that thing? No. Right? And sometimes if one doesn't know in those situations, one should consult. Right? There's many people. One of the problems we have, again, is that venting versus consulting. Right? Then the people go complain, oh my wife, stop praying and stop doing this and that. And you're not even actually asking for advice. And that's actually going against the sunnah. And it's actually a betrayal of the trust of marriage, for example. Right? But there, instead of venting, if you go take the practical means, one of reflecting yourself, how can I improve things? Right? So instead of reacting yourself, you say, how can I help make things better? And number two, if you're not sure, consult. Because for many people, you go to someone experienced. Right? Who is someone experienced in dealing with these kinds of things in the Bay Area? Hmm? Who? Imam Zayi. Imam Zayi, if you go to Imam Zayi, will this be something new that my husband's not praying anymore? He's not praying regularly anymore? He's dealt with it many, many times. He has experience with it. He has wisdom. Right? And in the Bay Area, you have many scholars like that who are people of understanding and wisdom. So you ask them, they'll help you make. You know? And then you follow up with them. Well, I tried this, et cetera, right? So that's the thing, that instead of reacting, you look at what is going to be an effective response. And in some situations, the right response may be that, well, this is too serious. Maybe the best thing is to get out of that situation. Because if it's beginning to affect your own dean and you've tried and it's not working, et cetera, but instead of carrying a heavy burden on yourself, consult. And sometimes it's the act of consulting. Your own asking someone helps you give you clarity and perspective about the situation, right? But be patient with people. Any other questions before we continue? Another of the, you know, one of the most volatile relationships that arise out of marriage. One of the most volatile or potentially volatile relationships that arise out of marriage. No relationship between two human beings. You get married and then a relationship arises that's very complicated. Oh, like mother-in-law, okay. Yeah, in-laws, right? It's very dangerous. Especially of all the in-law relationships, what's the most sensitive relationship? Life and mother-in-law. That's very dangerous. And it makes sense, right? Because the mother feels that she's lost her child because of that woman, right? And the wife feels unease, conscious or unconscious, that he's still attached to her. Food is one of the, you know, dangerous elements in all of this, right? But practically, of course, one, again, one of the advice to the brothers, they say practically, never praise your mother in front of your wife and never praise your wife in front of your mother. And never praise your mother's food because typically, like just common sense, whose food is likely to be better? Your mother who's 45 or 55, or your wife who's 25. Your mother has been cooking since she was five, back in Hyderabad, right? So you've been cooking for 40 years, right? Like meal after meal. Or your wife who's never cooked and doesn't care about cooking. Your mother takes pride in her cooking. You know, your wife sees cooking as like going against everything that is meaningful in life. Whose food is likely to taste better? Like, I mean, common sense, right? But what do you do? Never ever show excessive appreciation of your mother's food in front of your wife and vice versa. Actually, one of my friends used to say that if you visit your mother's house, don't sit facing your wife. I could, she'll be looking at you. And if you're enjoying the food, it's a big problem, right? And actually he said, what he found was that be aware of reflective objects, both mirrors and other things. And you should be an advocate for segregation at that time. Why don't we sit in the living room? Let the women sit on the table. But even then give your back to where the women are sitting, just to be safe, right? I don't appreciate the food too much because you never know when she'll see you. Be careful. My wife actually, my wife's very practical, right? Because my parents live next door. So we go over two or three times. My wife appreciates my mother's food more than I do. She's like, great, I don't have to cook today. Very practical. That's as good to marry someone who's intelligent, right? So I was like, great, I don't have to cook today. We'll just go over next door, right? How do you answer a question that I like so much? Is my food better than your mom's food? No, what you do is you make forward investments. So my wife makes incredible dal. So I go out of my way to praise my wife's dal because that's one thing she makes far better than anyone else I know. I praise, and just forward investments of praise, right? Then she'll feel secure that, but in all seriousness, you have to be very careful there. In order to understand how you deal with family and so on, the first thing to know, what is the right of your parents over you, to start with your own parents? What's the right of your parents over you? You have to summarize it in one word. What do you have to do? Let's say your parents want something from you. What's your responsibility towards your parents? Respect, okay? Obedience, anyone else agree with obedience? Okay, respect, but if you have one right, the parents have over you, okay? Now this is, I don't like to initiate an argument, but I could defend it till the cows go home, but there is absolutely no text of the Qur'an or the Sunnah of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, that commands us unequivocally to obey our parents, none. Whatsoever, there's no, I'll say it again, there's no text of the Qur'an, nor the Sunnah of the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that contains a general or unconditioned command to obey one's parents. Actually, there's no command in the Qur'an to obey your parents, none. The only command related to obedience in the Qur'an is, is to, no, the only command related to obedience directly is not to obey them, which is, and if they struggle and strive against you that you obey other than me, then don't obey them. Yet keep their company in this life in all good ways, in the ma'roof. That's the only command in the Qur'an that has a'a related to parents. Don't say uf to them, that's not obey them, that's just don't be disrespectful. Exactly, all of that, that's what that's, that's upholding the ma'roof, right? Wa qadar rabbuka alla ta'budu illa iyaa wa bilwalidaini ihsana, your Lord, in Surat al-Isra, verse 23 and 24, your Lord decreed that you worship none but him, and that you have ihsan towards your parents. Wa bilwalidaini ihsan, what is ihsan? It's excellent. What is excellent? One explanation, what ma'hu al-ihsan? Bilwalidain, what is ihsan? What is excellence to parents? What is the Surat al-Isra, 17 Surah, verses 23 and 24? They say that the verse is a, what is ihsan? That's one of the strongest interpretations. The ihsan is that one or both of them reach old age, falata kullahuma uf, don't say uf to them. And it's a given. One or both of your parents reach old age, either they will be annoying, it's a given, it's a Quranic promise. It's not, there's nothing unstated, right? There's nothing conditional. If one or both of them reach old age, like it's if, then, right? So what's that? When they reach old age, it's inevitable that either they'll be annoying, you'll be annoyed by them. But in either case, do it to them. Nor rebuke them. But rather, say to them, noble words, noble words meaning words that are respectful, right? Waqfidlahuma jana'ha zunni min ar-Rahma and lower to them the wing of humility, out of mercy for them. Waqfuma kama rabbiya ni-saghira and say, oh Lord, have mercy on them and they raised me when I was young, right? That is the Quranic command. What is, what's the meaning of the Prophets? All the way, the emphasis is too early, right? Big, righteousness here. How did the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, define righteousness? He defined it, he said, al-bir, something. What is that something? In the hadith in the Forty-Naui. Al-biru, something. What is that something? Any of you know the Forty-Naui? He said, al-biru khusnu l-khuluq. Righteousness, al-bir, we have al-bir towards righteousness is good. So what is your responsibility towards parents? Once I got myself in spectacular trouble because I had to give khutbah at a university and I didn't have a lot of experience giving khutbah. Right, so I knew how to give the khutbah but you also have to know your audience. So I was like, okay, I'm going to university and people tend to be distracted. I'm going to, so I gave this really, today I'm going to talk about the greatest myth in Islam about not extremism, not about it. It's about the myth of parental obedience. Suddenly all these people started looking up and I made it quite dramatic and I defend what I said but it was not stated probably with the most wisdom. After this uncle came up, as soon as I finished prayer, I said, as-salamu alaikum, as-salamu alaikum, my dear brothers and sisters, don't listen to this man. The Quran says you must obey your parents. As-salamu alaikum, we must obey your parents. He switched off the mic and he kept shouting. Said, this is wrong, the Quran says obey your parents. It doesn't say it anywhere, right? Sunnah says obey your parents and they're like, take from me, uncle, exactly. But it actually made the point to the whole khutbah that it doesn't say that. If you look, you won't find it. What the Quranic command is, ihsan, excellence. It's haruf, right? Uphold that which is good. It is bin. It is gentleness and respect in word and action and in response to their words and actions. Now it is very possible. There's no necessary relationship between bin, between righteous conduct and obedience. It is very possible not to obey, but with righteousness. And it's very possible to obey without righteousness, and without good character. So for example, like I'm a total slacker, right? Like my mother says, you know, if you could use the toilet sitting where you are, you'd be like, I mean, please, right? Like, you don't move with you, you know? And my mother is like a hyper-activist, right? Even she has back trouble and hand trouble. But, you know, if she's done everything she could do on her little plot of garden, she'll go and take care of like this, like some elderly people anywhere, she'll be taking care of their garden. I'm like, I'm me, like, you know, always. I actually just, because she always keeps cleaning out. There's no one messing the house. Now it's just my mom and dad living in the next door to us. So I'll deliberately, like, you know, I'll have a package of like supari. So I'll just put it between the policies. It's just, because I know that the next day I'll go, so why did you put that there? And now she's like, so I found what you said. I know I'll tuck it in somewhere and within 24 hours my mom will find it, right? And, you know, it's just like, so what happens? Like, you know, if let's say your parents tell you that, beta, wash my car at 8 a.m. on Saturday, do you have to do it? And of course, should you do it? That's a different thing. Yes, of course you should. But it is possible to uphold beer and not listen. He said, I'll do my best dad. Or okay, dad, and you know, you know that dad, that there's cricket games going on this time. You don't know exactly when the game is, but you know that either a game will be going on or your dad will be asleep because you stayed up all night watching Pakistan get beaten up by whoever beating them up this time, right? And you don't know the schedule, but you know, he won't be awake. And he's not going anywhere at 8 a.m. on Saturday. So what do you do? You get up late. Why don't you still wash the car? Hey, or are you just apologizing? Oh, I'm really sorry, I'll do it now. Like whenever he asks, so just give me 10 minutes, I'll do it. And you give him a big hug or whatever, you make him chai, but you don't argue, right? So that's you. Your younger brother who's more Americanized, I kind of like my younger brother. And not my younger brother, I trained him, he does. And you give me permission to mention this. My younger brother, who's 12 years younger than me, he's done so much more for my parents than I've ever done, or my sister, for that matter. But he'd always be in trouble with my parents. Cause like, he's like a Canadian kid, right? So he'd do whatever they say. Like, you know, my dad asked me, for us, we run out of bread, can you go pick up some pita bread from the supermarket? I'd be, could you make some roti? Like, I miss your roti, right? And I wouldn't do it. So it's possible not to listen, but with wisdom, okay? My younger brother would be like, why can't you guys keep a shopping? They're like, what's this? Like, how come I have to always, and he'll be hot and popping and complaining. He'll go get it, and he'll be like, he'll call and say, do you guys need anything else? And, which is actually a really nice thing to do, right? So he'll not just listen to them, but he's like, obedience plus, right? Cause my thing would be, if I'm gonna pick up bread, I'm not picking up other things, so I'm not gonna carry it back. Cause I'm lazy, okay? So he'll like ask for other things, but he'll complain, he'll come back and say, here you go, like, you know, all this stuff, right? Now he's got flies, like now, thunder, like, you know, he actually consulted, good, but he does this one thing, he consults, right? So he said, hi, I'm beginning to get upset. What do I do? I said, keep calm, keep quiet, don't say anything. Cause like my brother tries to imagine himself to be a civil rights activist. Someone in the family saying something that's a bit culturally insensitive or gorelogue, and he'd be like, why are you picking on whiteness? It says, right? So I'll text him, it says, go to the kitchen, right? Like keep quiet, like, there's not the time for your civil rights speech, you're not Martin Luther King, right? We're just trying to like have dinner as a family and go home, right? So you have to know how to, you know, deal with these kinds of things. Part of it is, we're talking in the context of adult children, right? When someone's growing up, they have to listen to their parents, right? But as you grow up, sometimes your parents will make demands that you can't fulfill, right? It's not an either or a thing. It's not do obey them or not. But you try to, sometimes it's not possible. They say unreasonable things. They make excessive demands. How do you deal with it? You deal with it with wisdom, right? With respect, with friends, with gentleness, right? You're like, why don't we have protein set, right? How does this work? Because I don't think it's part of the relationship with the status of Khalil. And also there was two incidents during life of Prophet Salam. Old man came and complained that his son was not taking care of him. And then Prophet Salam advised him to give some money to him. No, there's a few, so there's a balance, right? There's a balance, which is give everyone who has a right their due right, right? So the right of parents is that you be respectful to them, that you do your best to listen to them, right? That you strive to serve them. But the Sunnah is a perfect balance between all rights and responsibilities, right? Giving your parents rights must be done in a way that does not deprive your spouse of his or her rights, that doesn't deprive your children of their rights, that doesn't deprive you of your rights to seek the good of this life and the next, right? And that's the, how do you achieve that balance? You achieve that balance by not having an exaggerated understanding of anyone rights. There's some people who just listen to their husband or just listen to their wife, right? Because they're getting, I need to make this relationship work. But to do that, they destroy all these other relationships. And that's not a balance that's healthy even for that relationship. Because after a while, if you put all your focus on your husband or your wife, when you go resentful, it's because of you that I have a bad relationship with my sister, my brother, my uncle, my aunt, my parents, you know, it becomes like, so the sunnah teaches us balance. So of course you strive to listen, but sometimes you can't, right? Sometimes you can't like, so as for the sunnah, like there's some things, for example, the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam said, the most dramatic saying he said, Anta wa ma lukali abiq. You and your wealth are your fathers. By consensus, this is not meant literally. Because you don't belong to your father literally, right? It's an affirmation of how much you should be differential to your parents, but as an emphasis out of exaggeration. There's other situations, the person who complained about his son, the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam told the son to provide, they said that's because the parents were needy. And if the parents are needy, then they have financial rights over you. But if they're not, they don't, right? So there's a healthy balance, right? And particularly in a situation where there isn't a broad spirit of deference, like most spouses won't be so differential, especially if they're grown up here, to in-laws. Like the husband wants to keep visiting the in-laws all weekend, most people growing up here, though life's not going to be very accommodating to that, right? And vice versa, right? So what do you do? That's where having that clarity, that it's not an obligation to listen to obey the parents. The obligation is to be respectful, to be kind, to, you know, in word and action and response. That helps one approach that you want to serve, you want to do it, but in a way that doesn't exaggerate other considerations, right? And once the key is upholding good character with them, as much as you can, you try to serve, but not in a way that's going to cause other harm. Because my parents, well, the parents said you visited them on Friday night, they want you to come Saturday and Sunday as well. But as a result, you're not going to go to the program on Saturday at the MCC with Imam Zaid, nor will you visit your parents on Sunday. What's that going to do? You'll be upset and it'll cause other imbalances. So that's why it, you have to know what the rights of your own parents are. And if you know what the rights of your own parents are upon you, then a fortiori. The in-laws, what are the, what's the right of the in-laws over, let's say the daughter. Purely legally, what are the rights? Purely legally, none. They have no right of demand over their son's daughter. And vice versa, right? Like, you know, the wife's husband, the wife's husband, the wife's parents have no right of demand over their son-in-law. Rather, they, if they ask something, you should do your best to do it. And that should be the spirit by which you approach it. But you have a right to see how you balance that with the other considerations, with your rights, with your children's rights, with your parents, and to come to a healthy balance. But how do you pursue that balance? You don't pursue that balance on the basis of reason. You pursue that balance on the basis of good character. Like, which in, you know, a lot of people refer to it as emotional intelligence, right? Relationships are based on akhlaq, on character, right? And adab, they're not based on reason, right? A lot of people, because they're like, they're kind of, you know, they're kind of like Bedouins. And so someone's, you know, the in-laws say, well, why don't you come Saturday night as well? We're making a wonderful party. So they say, I'm sorry, I can't come. I've already come here on Tuesday. I came here today. Do you think it's reasonable for you to ask me to come on Saturday as well, right? That may be actually true, right? But the Arab say, leisa kullu haqqin yuqad, not every truth is stated. Because if you say that, what's going to happen? They're going to feel wrong, then they're going to try to prove it in other ways. It's going to complicate things. And number two, it goes against good character. So do you have to go on Saturday night? If your in-laws say, come Saturday night as well? No. But how do you deal with it? Through good character. So they say, let me ask, let me ask Zubeyda, she runs the schedule, right? And let her deal with her parents, for example, right? Or Zubeyda's in-laws are saying, come Saturday night as well? She says, I'm not sure what Zubeyda has in mind on Saturday. So, you know, let me talk to him after, you know? And then you guys agree on something. That's one of the strategies of dealing with in-laws is let the child deal with their parents, right? It also buys you a little time, right? But the key is uphold good character in it. Any other questions before we take a quick break? Go ahead. You talk about excellence. How can excellence be complete in obedience to your point of view? No, because excellence, we take into account excellence in a broader way, right? So the sunnah is give everyone as a right their due rights. So for example, a real life case, a good friend of mine, his marriage ended up in divorce because of his listening to his mother, because his mother says, beta, come and have tea with me after work. So every day being foolishly innocent, right? Every day after work, he'd stop at his mother's house and have chai. Now, of course, the chai would be accompanied by what? By some snack. Some day it's laddu. Some day it would be pakora. Some day it would be this. Some day it would be some chaat. Some day it would be actually just one pika. Some day they'd be like, it's just a snack but it's actually a meal. And this was just a little leftover from last night. But mom actually made it secretly because it comes over like you're looking weak, you know? So he has this and you know, and what's the minimum you could end up spending at your parents' house in that kind of situation? 40 minutes, an hour. So instead of getting home at six o'clock, he's getting home at 7, 7.30. And he's got that contented face of eating his mother's food. And the wife puts, you know, because wife's concerned husband's putting on weight. So she makes some, you know, some boiled vegetables and some, you know, lean, you know, like, you know, grilled soy chunks or whatever. And he doesn't eat it because he had like the chaat and the bhel puri and God knows what else. And the little pieces of kabab, six of them. So what happened? It happened day in, day out. So the wife started getting upset. And of course she expressed the upset in many different ways, right? So she, you know, started snooping. She noticed that the monitor he asked for work had a TV in. So she started accusing him that you're watching TV secretly. And the guy was actually going, I know my friend, he's like pious guy. Poor guy, he read some hadiths about worshipping in secret. So you'd be worshipping in his basement office. She says, you're watching movies secretly at night. And he wasn't. Poor guy was trying to like, you know, pray to the Hajj of the Lord, his wife finding out, right? And you know, and one, you know, and that's where not every demand has to be obeyed. Like sometimes to balance between the rights, how, what do you do? You have to use some discretion and wisdom, right? You don't say, no, you know, some people approach it rationally. No, mom, that's an unreasonable request. I can come once a week. More than that would be wronging my wife, right? That stirs up the mother's jealousy and you know, or other such things, but rather use discretion, right? And very often, like someone wants to get active in the community, it's difficult. Like, you know, I don't know the number of uncles and aunts my wife has in Toronto. Like immediate uncles and aunts. Like last I remember her father has seven or eight siblings in Toronto, maybe more, but it's confusing, right? And then her mother has a couple of siblings and there's other people, you know, it's like, quite complicated, right? So, you know, if we try to visit them as some expectations are, I couldn't possibly do anything else. So what do you do? You can't say, well, I'm sorry, I'm too busy. This is my schedule, so I'm sorry I can't visit you, but you have to use wisdom, right? And you have to see how you do it. Every one of her uncles and aunts would like us to go, you know, at least once a month. It's just doesn't, it's like very difficult. So you have to figure out how you do it. You do the best that you can, but with wisdom and tact, without hurting their feelings or anything. So that, so you're able to give others their rights so their children have rights over it. There's some people who are social in their family that the kids don't get their rights, whether they're worldly rights in terms of, you know, getting a proper, you can, I deal with cases where they're always visiting someone, but children need time for their studies. Children need time to play, you know, the children have rights. Also, the children never manage to learn Quran or learn their Deen why? Because they're always just social hopping, right? And how do you achieve that balance? To know that the rights of others are that you be good to them. And sometimes it requires that tact, right? So one of the ways we deal with it, like my wife, Masha'Allah, is really good at this, is that we try, instead of showing up at every family function, like family functions, mostly what do you do? You plump yourself in a seat and that's it. Do people really appreciate that you showed up to a large family gathering? Not really, like, you know, the social benefit in it, or the relational benefit in it is relatively small. But what we try to do, instead, is that we try to have a schedule, and we're not always successful in it, of visiting these people, right? And many of them are retired. And we have a flexible schedule, Alhamdulillah, so we'll visit them during the day. My wife will go and run errands for them once in a while, right? Because some of them need some help, right? I'm traveling right now, my wife's actually at her parents, right? So if they're quite elderly, they've got this huge mansion, they won't stop. Like, you know, someone tried to tell them once, like, why don't you move to a small house? And, you know, there are two people, they're living in a house, and there's got like seven rooms and a garage for six, and like, I'm like, and they're not able to take care of my father-in-law, like 77 or something, they'll not give him health because he's still ticking, right? He's still climbing trees and doing all this stuff, but, you know, but I learned that, you know, some topics are outside. Because it's a very rational thing. Sell the house, move to a smaller place, you have a lot of money, you can live very comfortably, right? But anyways, so, you know, my wife's staying with her parents and, you know, she's helping them with a lot of little things that need to get done. So, but then once in a while, if there's some family function, they'd kind of like us to be there, et cetera, whatever. You know, some distant uncle from Hyderabad is visiting, et cetera, but I have a class. And, you know, we like our, you know, our kids want to attend my classes, you know? But, you know, so, you know, my wife wants to go too. So, you know, we, how do you balance it? You balance it with wisdom. You look at what meaningful things you can do, right? And that's how, but in that knowing what your parents' rights are, helps a lot. There's a lot of parents who try to be overburdened. Like, I have friends, for example, you know, whose parents said, beta, you can't, you know, for example, you know, the wife has parents in back home and wherever back home may be. And the parents say, beta, you can't go to Pakistan. It's too dangerous. But like, the wife wants to visit her parents back over, they're like, you have to obey the parents? You have to allay their concerns. You have to be respectful to them. But is it, if it was that dangerous, there'd be no flights left to Pakistan. There are still some flights. It is kind of dangerous, but people do survive. The population is growing. So not everyone's being killed, although it's kind of scary, to be honest, right? But sometimes there's some battles that you should lose, right? I've been in a number of times to do programs in Pakistan. My dad said beta, and my dad's like, really easy going. He's one of the coolest dads anyone could have, right? Alhamdulillah. And my dad said, you can't go. And it's actually not a very rational thing, right? But once in a while, you should know when to lose dramatically, right? And that's one of the ways to get your way, is once in a while, I actually personally thought about Pakistan, to be honest, right? You lose dramatically. And I announced it in front of family, said, oh, you know, I got this invitation to go to Pakistan, et cetera. I asked Baba, and he gave me really good advice and why I shouldn't go. And Baba feared. He listens to me even on religious things. And you lose dramatically. And that's one of the things in relationship. You should know when to lose your battles and to do so with the ultimate drama, right? And it works. My dad said, Masha Allah Faraz listens to me. He consults with me, right? And that's one of the things. Part of respect to parents is to consult with them, right? Like I needed to fire someone, like I won't give more details. I asked my dad, because you know, my dad's an Indian experience, isn't it? So you consult with them on life decisions. You don't have to listen. That's what they'll say, right? Even if you're out, my decision, you know, but my wife's, we renew our company. Not like we can either renew it or not. Like it's not a big decision, right? But my wife's like very analytic, right? So she decided, so I said, let's talk to your dad. My wife was actually quite, you know, like, I'm asking her to consult her. Also because my dad, my father-in-law is sensible, but my father-in-law is so like, you know, when my wife asked him, he's like, because we are honored, and that's part of the thing. You consult with them, and when you show respect, you actually earn a space, right? Because they feel comfortable in their relationship. Then you show respect to them. You ask them for advice, and then they'll let you be on other things, right? Then that's, you know, and it's not by being like manipulative, you know. It's very, the Sunnah teaches us balance and pragmatism, right? And one of the things is, you know, if you express respect, you can get your way out with most things. Bullah Alam. Any last question before we take a break? Allahumma salli wa sallim, wa sallim wa bariqa ala Sayyidina Muhammad, wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa sallamat as-salim al-kathira. So the key point that we're making with respect to in-laws is that, and one's own parents as well, is to appreciate that the central right they have is upholding good character with them. Is to be respectful, to be polite, to be kind, to be caring, right? That's the central right. And that should, one should have a spirit of striving to serve them, a spirit of deference, but in a manner that balances their wishes, right? With also the rights of your spouse, your children, and your own rights over yourself. So you try to come up with a healthy, positive balance, right? And when you're unsure of achieving that balance, if you're educated, then what do you do? You have to consult, because sometimes it's not easy. Like I just, I deal with a lot of these cases, for example, their sister, who's very close with her parents, but her parents are getting elderly, the other children have kind of not abandoned them, but they're overseas, and the parents are insisting that she move in with them. But she said, her husband won't move with them, because she's from Canada, her husband's from the States, and her husband doesn't like Canada. Actually, probably more, he's kind of scared of his in-laws, right? So what do you do? Hey, what do you do? If she listens to her parents and moves in with them, it's not only going to endanger her marriage, there's going to be a lot of fallout from that. So what do you do, right? And we discuss it, et cetera, and the solution was quite straightforward, right? Which is, I asked her, are you regularly in touch with your parents? I said, well, I talk to them once or twice a week, I said, no, call them every day, it's free. It's because it's called Skype, right? Even uncle and aunties now know how to use Skype, right? Skype is like, you know, there's a concept in religion called necessarily known of the religion, right? There's certain technologies that are necessarily known of modern life, right? Everyone knows how to use Skype, right? Shiu Khintarim use Skype, right? Actually, Shiu Khintarim use a lot of things that Shiu Khintarim in the West don't, right? There's a greater percentage of Ba'al-e-Shafes on Twitter than there are Western Muslim scholars on Twitter. It's kind of funny. But anyways, right? So sometimes there are intermediate solutions, right? That give a balance, right? That if her husband's refusing and it's going to, you know, she doesn't want to leave her husband, et cetera. So stay in touch with them daily. Yeah, and I know the family, they're quite well off. So would you be able to afford visiting them regularly? He said, I can't take the kids with me regularly. I said, but are you able to go regularly? So basically the solution is, stay in touch with them daily. Visit them, you know, as often as you can on your own. When you're able to, like during holiday breaks, et cetera, take the kids as well, right? Because she has a lot of extended family. Instead of she's comfortable leaving her kids with her in-laws, et cetera. So there's intermediate solutions. Let them come and visit once in a while, right? So they don't feel, it's not, should I move in with my parents or not? Sometimes we create these false dichotomies. Either I listen to them or I don't listen to them. Life is not about either or. The sunnah teaches us very often there's intermediate solutions that take everyone's interest into mind. Kids get very happy if they go visit somewhere else. Kids enjoy when grandparents come because they bring gifts, et cetera. You know, so it creates a reasonable balance. Did they like Anna? Yeah, go ahead. What's the responsibility of taking care of their parents then on their old age? In old age, the... If the daughter has a sign of the situation. Technically, the responsibility falls on all the children together. The financial responsibility falls in accordance with financial means, right? So if let's say there's three siblings, two sons and one daughter. But the two siblings are poor and the daughter is wealthy. Who has the greater responsibility of taking care of the parents? The daughter, because she has more means, right? Normally it would work out that if the daughter is married, very often she would have less means than the sons. But that's not always the case. It's in accordance with ability, right? Both in terms of spending and then also in terms of life situation, right? In terms of... So the... Were we in the middle of a question? Yeah, the responsibility of taking care of parents. Yeah, so the responsibility of taking care of parents. This becomes complicated, right? In that it's a reality that's very sad, right? That's very sad, right? That a lot of times it's one of the externalities, negative externalities of living in nuclear families, right? That very often the parents get shortchanged, right? Or they become perceived as a heavy burden. Like you have a friend of mine who's a social worker in Canada. It's very sad. The kinds of things that happen, like I don't know how things are here, but there's, where I live in Mississauga, if you go to the main, the most famous mall in Mississauga, square one, and you go during a workday, see this really sad reality of the South Asian uncles and aunties who are just walking around the mall. Because what the kids do, because heating is expensive, right? It's freezing cold. So what they do, they don't wanna run the heating. If you keep the heating off during the day or keep it very low, you're gonna save a few hundred dollars a month. So what do they do? They drop the parents off at the mall and actually to save money, they actually give them like a bag with food in it as well because they don't want them to spend money at the, see, right? And they're like, you see the mall, like I don't go to the mall much because it's not a nice place to hang out, but you go, you kinda help, but they're not like huge numbers, but it's a phenomenon. And also it's complicated in things, right? Because people here have a greater sense of privacy and more particular about the way they want things, but in-laws, especially if they're from back home, they'll say, well, you know what? I moved the painting from here to there and causes a fight, et cetera. So they won't let the kids, or some, you know, because both kids need, both husband and wife are working. Other people actually have bolts outside their house. Actually some, there's been attempts to have legislation to ban bolting out from the outside if people are inside. Because they'll bolt the parents in so they don't, you know, because they have like, you know, they have some mental health issue, et cetera. So they go and they get lost outside. And in the winter, that's kind of dangerous, right? So it creates complicated situations. But part, and there's no simple answer to that. And there's no simple answer to that. But part of it is that, you know, one has, in one's decision-making, one has to consider the broader well-being, and to consider what balance of choices will be of the greater, right? Because very often we make very limited decisions, right? Like, you know, in my own family, I know people, you know, they couldn't buy a house anywhere in the greater Toronto area, but just because they got their dream home, they're living 70 kilometers away from their parents, 50 miles. How often are you going to be able to visit your parents if you live 50 miles away from them? Especially in a place like Canada where there's snowstorms and this and that, like, you know, and the parents are getting elderly, right? And sometimes you do have to be a bit directive with parents as well, right? The parents are living in one of the really upscale suburbs. The kids right now can't move in in that area because it's way too expensive, right? But that's where there has to be this sort of thinking, right? Of how can we create win-win-win situations, right? So in that case, for example, if anyone were to listen to me, and of course I'd, you know, they're buying laws, right? Like, you know, like if I said things like this, I'd be outlawed, but there's workable solutions. And I'm working on it indirectly, but I have to be careful because I don't want to antagonize anyone because I have no interest in the whole thing. Like, you know, we visit them a couple of times a week and you know, al-amdirillah, you know, we're, is you look at how can you create win-win-win situations that very often the kids will not be so willing to move in with the parents or have them live with them because it's kind of awkward. Both kids are working, but that doesn't preclude living close to one another, right? And it requires a certain give and take, right? And sometimes you have to be a little lovingly firm with your parents, right? Let's look, because the parents say, why are you living far away from us? So instead of saying, well, we either live close or we don't say, okay, why don't we all try to see somewhere where we can all move into the same neighborhood, right? And that is a mix of affordability and all these criteria. You don't have to live in that upscale suburb all on your own, okay? So to come up with a solution and you try to suggest workable solutions, right? And part of it is to make those, to make workable choices. And one of the things in that is consult because there's people who deal with these things and many people work it out. We have actually parts of our family and I'm sure all of you are familiar where people work out things like that, that they're living, they're not maybe living with the parents but they're living, they found houses next to each other or near each other. And the parents actually ultimately, sometimes they'll resist but they'll be happy because you sold a million dollar home, moved into half a million dollar home which is still a pretty good place but now suddenly you have half a million dollars of disposable wealth. That's not a bad place to be. A lot of dispute is the issue of obedience. Zubair comes back home and the biryani wasn't made. Did Zubaira have to make the biryani? Did Zubaira have to make the biryani? So the majority position within Islamic scholarship is that it's negated to obey the husband. It matters related to the relationship between two parties. It's sunnah, there's a general sunnah which as we mentioned before, it's not an absolute in all cases because they may agree to the circumstances may dictate the country but in general, it is not a modern obligation. In some cultural context, it may be the fatwa may be that the wife has to be the husband in leading scholars of Indian subcontinent for example to say that because of the exaggerated emphasis on the wife obeying the husband that reaches a level of excessiveness in expectations and demands that is not the fatwa in our times. So the husband cannot demand that the wife obey him in matters related to household duties, et cetera, but it is recommended for the wife to do that. All else being equal in the general case, why? Because that's how the Prophet Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam divided work between say Nali and Sada, Fatima for example and that's been the historical norm across human societies that our understanding of gender roles is of complementarity rather than sameness. But at the same time, that's not a rigid complementarity because circumstances may differ. All right, any questions there? Another aspect, matters of intimacy cause a lot of differences, right? Cause a lot of differences and this is one of the areas where one of the scholars in Damascus put it that two of the areas where most disputes arise from are the bedroom and the kitchen, right? And sometimes one is that one has to see there's two aspects to matters of intimacy, right? One is the right of the other party and the other aspect is the sort of emotional relationship between the two parties, right? The elements of love and so on, right? But the Sharia teaches us to be pragmatic. We have ideals but we approach the ideals in a practical manner, right? So how does one deal with these kinds of matters of intimacy? We have an ideal that in general we should strive to have a romantic relationship and all this and courtship, et cetera, but it's also a matter of rights, right? So we distinguish, we see it in two ways, matters of intimacy. One, the right to intimacy is the right of the husband is the right of the wife. And then this is also meant to be a means of nurturing love and mercy. But if you feel that you have an expectation of the role of intimacy in the marriage, okay? Cause what do you do if you look at it in economic terms if every intimate relationship between husband and wife requires romance and courtship and so on, right? The emotional cost, so to speak, of any act of intimacy is too high and one party or the other will opt out, right? And that leads to a lot of detriment, leads to frustration, leads to people resorting to other things, can lead to infidelity, leads to all kinds of things, which are wrong choices, but you know, it comes from an imbalance within the marriage itself. So one needs to distinguish that there's an ideal. It's like the sunnah of intimacy is that there should be romance and love and courtship, et cetera. That's a sunnah, but underlying it is the right. The Prophet, as I'm said, if the ulama say it applies both ways. But, and that's one of the things important to understand. And there's many precedents related to that, that even if the wife is in the kitchen, cooking, busy, the wife chooses. And they say the opposite is also true. The opposite is also true. And that replies to the immediate, it also applies in general. The ones, St. Amar was patrolling Medina and this woman was singing this song in yearning for her husband. And St. Amar was having really good hearing because the number of stories of him hearing women and their complaints, right? But this woman was complaining of her desire for her husband and he heard it. So he asked her, like, what's the situation? And he went with a lot of people. And she said her husband was away on a military expedition and she's feeling very strong desire. What did she do? Said, let me get back to you. So he went and consulted a number of women, including his daughter, say the Hafsa. This how long do you feel a woman, is the longest period a woman could normally expect to be away from her husband, et cetera. And say the Hafsa gave an answer and he confirmed that with a number of other women. So he consulted experts, right, people. And say the Hafsa was one of the fuqaha of the female companions. And she had a lot of experience with women's issues. It was like a scholar and a counselor. He consulted her but he confirmed with other people and he gave an edict, not just a fatwa, an edict that the longest period someone could be away from their family, especially if their spouses were young, in jihad was a certain period of time. And I forget the exact numbers, I'm not gonna mention it. It's either three or four months, but I'm not 100% sure. So this is one of the aspects related to intimacy, right? That you have, try to have a certain norm that this is how you strive to do it, but if one party seeks it, whether you feel like it or just consider it, they're right and fulfilled with balance, right? With balance. And there's many, many, a lot of research recently that these romantic notions of love and intimacy are of great detriment to relations, right? And they're unrealistic. And this is a right for both parties. The right for both parties. As long as it's reasonable. As long as it's reasonable, right? It's like, sometimes, you know, sometimes people are like, why are you always like smiling? I said, if you got the kind of questions I get, you'd be like laughing all day, right? Yeah, because someone asked me just, I don't know how to answer. Someone said, I feel warmth on my, you know, on my rear. What does that mean? We're like, how do I know? That's not a religious question, right? Like, and that was seriously the question, right? And so, you know, one of my friends said, I think I'm gonna get fired from work because of my wife. Why? So my wife keeps insisting I come back home during work hours. What do I do? So I'm gonna, like, you know, and of course, six months before, he'd been complaining of the opposite, right? And, you know, within bounds of reason and sensibility and dignity, et cetera, but this is an area one should be aware of, you know, one distinguishing between what, you know, that there's a reasonable right the other party has that one should not refuse, right? Any reasonable, one should not refuse. Whether you feel like it or not, they say fake it, okay? If you might. And the other is that one strives to fulfill that in accordance with the Sunnah. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam gave us an incredible amount of instruction regarding the physical rights of one's spouse, right? Of course, I got myself in trouble once because a good friend of mine, Musfi Muhammadan bin Adam, like a lot of scholars, he dealt with a lot of issues of sexual intimacy. He said, you know, there's so many problems related to this, I'm thinking of writing a book on it. I said, go, okay? And I gave him, like, yeah, I said, this is a big problem, et cetera. People don't know what they're doing, right? Which is why. And sometimes, you know, one of the ways you can deal with family and in-laws is to be kind of cool, right? I had a cousin getting married. And I was thinking, like, what present should I get him? So a dignified manual on the subject was, three letter word for dummies. So I got that for my cousin, right? And I was like, Faraz, it's so cool, right? I didn't think that a Maldi Sahib would give me that kind of gift. So actually, most people are clueless, right? And actually, there's an ulterior motive, which is I wasn't going to go to visit, I wasn't going to his wedding. I'm sorry, I didn't have this $800 to spend to go to the wedding. And the wedding was likely going to be questionable. So I said I sent a gift with my brother. But people are clued out, right? And just one of the things to learn about as well. Again, and we'll leave it at that on that subject. And sometimes it's good to be practical, right? The last thing on intimacy, sometimes it's good to be practical. One of the scholars in Damascus, he was dealing with this problem and this problem across the world, that all these couples would disagree about frequency and time, et cetera. And he was a spiritual guide, the Syrian spiritual guide. He actually, he just simplified the decision making process. He said, if you're under 35, I think 35 or 34, three times a week. So they actually called it, the weirdo sarif, the bedroom routine. And sometimes it's good to come up with, like there's a problem, instead of saying, okay, what's the problem? Why are you not doing what, just to agree. Okay, why don't, we just set up a schedule. These nights, at this time, et cetera, right? So you set up a practical schedule, but you fulfill it not as a routine, but in a positive way, right? And it's good to be pragmatic, right? Think instead of complicating, let's discuss, let's go to, you know, that the sunnah is about action-based change. You have a problem and say, okay, what can we do to gradually make things better? And that's the act. And if you ever seeking counseling, the most effective counseling that the sunnah suggests, in most cases, is practical action-based counseling, that behavioral, right? That suggests positive behavioral changes. But you can sit and discuss for six months with a counselor, why exactly is your husband hesitant and why do you refuse? And six months will pass and the problem is probably just getting worse and worse, right? So simple steps, look at what you can do to change things for the better. Another area where problems arise is children. All kinds of problems. When to have children. How many children to have? How you will raise the children? You know, what kind of schooling? Public school, private school, Islamic school, which Islamic school, homeschooling, what type of homeschooling, what curriculum? You know, all these things. So how do you approach it? Okay? One practical thing is this again should be something that should have, at least some broad discussion should be made beforehand, right? Because if you think, you know, you want to have at least five children because you're one of six children and your parents are one of eight children. See, at least five children. Your wife's saying, I want no more than two, right? Or vice versa, right? What are you going to do about it? Right? The wife says, I want to delay having children until I finish grad school. But she's still an undergrad. She's not, you know, she's technically right now, she's a dropout. She's hoping to go back to university once you start paying for it, right? So, it's not going to take like four or five years and you want to have children now, right? So these things should be discussed beforehand, right? Ideally, right? And very often people discuss though, if you deal with, like one of the things that makes me feel like an uncle, like I have, you know, I'm Uncle Rabbani, is, you know, what people discuss about marriage, right? I know like someone closely related to me, they call off a potentially good marriage on the basis, I kid you not, of what we games each party like. Because she liked playing Wii Tennis and he thought playing Wii Tennis is the stupidest thing you can do. And they got into an argument about that and they call off the whole thing. Over Wii Tennis, like come on. If you want to really play Wii Tennis, go ahead. You want to play whatever else you play on Wii, get two consoles, like who cares, right? But, you know, a lot of petty things are discussed. You know, are you going to do stitching? I was actually asked that when I was getting married, right? And I just said no, right? But I did admit that I know how to do it, because scouting. But instead of, you know, general things, look at things that are important to you in marriage and you discuss them beforehand. Questions here? But of course the million dollar question is, what if you disagree during the marriage, right? Which is a distinct possibility, right? So what would you do if you disagreed during the marriage? Yeah, I mean, that's all you can do, right? That's all you can do. You can, you know, you can stake your high ideals. I say, you know, sometimes the waves of ideals come crashing on the rocks of reality, right? You can say, okay, I'm only going to home school in this way, et cetera. But your husband, your wife says absolutely not. They have to go to public school. They have to do this, et cetera. So what are you going to do, right? And one of the ways to do it is to look at what next steps we can take. Don't focus on why do you want this and why do I want that and try to like, you know, convince the other person, et cetera. But to focus, okay, what are next steps that we can take? Yeah, and try to see if there's a win-win situation. Possible, and very often there is. But if you try to look at it in a forward-looking way, very often you can allay a lot of the concerns that the other party has, right? Like, you're bent on home schooling. The husband says, absolutely not. So, well, you know, and the other thing, of course, is try to understand what the concerns of the other party are. Because if you can capture what the other party's concerns are, you're likely going to be able to allay them. Right? Or at least be closer to resolution. The final say in that matter. It's not as simple as if the final say, right? Technically, right? Technically, the husband's supposed to be the Amir in the household, right? But who are you leading, right? Leading implies that someone is following too, right? And for someone to be leading and someone to be following, it also entails that they're going in the same direction. Right? Like, if the Amir is one who's leading someone who's going with them, right? But the Amir isn't the one who ties up, you know, the other party and drags them. That's not an Amir, right? So there's, you know, there is that, you know, there has to be a sense of, okay, that yes, there's the idea of there being deference, but let's say, the real life case, let's say that the wife strongly feels that the decision the husband wants to make regarding the children is a detrimental decision. Does she just have to give in? No. Right? So it's more sophisticated than that, right? The leader, the Amir is the leader who's in the role of being a shepherd, being a shepherd. And it requires, you know, it requires one, it requires it's consultative, right? But you have to win over the other party. And also sometimes you have to realize that you want to go that way, the flock wants to go that way. What are you going to do? Right? And sometimes you can get your way and sometimes you don't, right? So it becomes more, it becomes complicated, right? And sometimes you do have to take a stance. You feel that something is either wrong on religious ground or sometimes it's an unreasonable demand, right? It's unreasonable demand. You know, like I deal with cases where a lot of people get infatuated about homeschooling. Sometimes your men want their kids to be homeschooled. Of course, who's going to do it? No mother, when she feels she can't. Not big, not for some religious reason, she feels she'll be too much for her, right? Does she have to listen? No, right? Cause she has rights over herself too. Like it's a, you know, and the problem and the issue with rights is that they're not straightforward, right? And that's part of why marriage is such a potential for earning the pleasure of Allah swt. Cause it's very complicated. There's not, in many situations, there's not just a simple solution. Do this, right? Cause human beings are complicated. There's multiple considerations and impulses, right? So what do you do, right? I'd like the wife, the mother may know that, yes, this may be religiously good for the children, but I might have an emotional breakdown if I stay home all day taking care of the kids. Cause it's just too much, yeah? And so sometimes, you know, you have to say, no, I can't do it. But to do it with wisdom, not just to refuse and start blaming the other party, but seeing, okay, what a reasonable solution. So for example, in my own family, you know, my sister, for example, how does she dare, you know, she's half hydro, right? They, you know, my sister in general, my sister is extremely social by nature, right? Dynamically social. Actually, sometimes, you know, she sets up multiple social appointments at the same time, which is really spectacular. Like once, you know, my sister and her family was at my place and we're having dinner and her phone rings. And it was my, her father-in-law says, Azim, oh my God, I'd agreed to, I'd invited your dad over to our house. So my sister agreed to come to my house, but she'd invited, she'd invited her father-in-law to her place. Your father-in-law alone, her mother-in-law passed away a number of years ago. So, and he had the key to the house. So he was sitting in their living room. And then she got a text message from some friends who were waiting for her at some restaurant. They were like, you know, a reunion of some friends from university. So she made three appointments at once, all right? So my sister was like, and then I just said, Azim, we gotta go. And my brother-in-law, who I admire, because I've never seen him get upset. He's like, the calmest guy I know, right? And the Rabanis were all like pretty hot-blooded. So he's very often the voice of calm and reason in our family, like. He's like, I know, that's finished. So he called his father and says, well, we're just running a little late. You know, why don't you, and he suggested something or the other for his father-in-law to do, all right? And so his father-in-law was placated. But my sister genuinely felt there's no way she could homeschool, right? They'd be just overwhelming friends. She has four kids now, she can't. But they came up with a reasonable solution, right? She works at an Islamic school. So the four kids, their tuition is subsidized. It's a good Islamic school, very good academically, but she's at the school. So she's able to give that extra watchful eye over the kids, et cetera. And they created a win-win situation. So it's not a case where the husband being, it means that whatever the husband says goes. It's not a, you know, it's not like, it's kind of like a president. There's a president, you know, I mean, you guys had this sequestration or whatever it's called, right? Like, you know, the president doesn't have absolute powers. There's checks, there has to be checks and balances, right? So, you know, and that's the challenge of marriage, right? The challenge of marriage, that you have to be committed to making it work. Any other questions? We talked about household duties and chores, so we'll leave them, you know, aside. One of the trivial things that are significant, that cause a lot of dispute and much more than you'd imagine, are annoying habits and personality. He has bad breath, right? He doesn't close a toilet lid. He doesn't close a toilet lid. He insists, I don't know why he stands. It's against the sunnah, right? Or all kinds of things. You know, she leaves her hair, you know, her hair clogs up the drain, right? Only a little, you know, all these kinds of things, right? She puts too much spice in the food, right? She visits her friends too much, right? He hangs out at the masjid for too long. His beard is too prickly. You know, all kinds of things which you may think are funny, but when people are in that situation, that like, you know, sometimes the littlest thing can really disturb a person for a long time, right? It's like Imam Shadr, he said that the spiritual insight of the heart is like the eyesight. The littlest thing that falls in it disturbs it completely, right? But the same thing applies to our feelings. You know, sometimes the littlest thing can disturb your feelings completely. Now you get really upset, why? My wife didn't make dal. You really like dal? No, then why are you so upset? Because she didn't make dal, right, you know? And, but sometimes seriously, like, you know, you think it's silly, but if you look at your own life, there's things like that. My wife, you know, like one friend was complaining, why have never buy soda? She said, do you drink Coke? She said, no, then why are you upset? She said, well, when the guests come, she said, do all your guests really want soda? Probably not. Like, I know his friends are all like, you know, like my friends, they're all like tree huggers, you know, they're all shopper whole foods if they could afford it, but they can't, so they don't, right? They'd have organic halal, but it's expensive. But that kind of, you know, the shekhamza generation, right? Allah is the Greatest. So how do you deal with these issues, right? The simplest, there is, you have 80% of things that annoy you, you should overlook and that's it. Right, because most of them, if you pause and think about it, they're of complete insignificance. You know, someone's like, why are you wearing those shoes again? Like, who cares? He's wearing the shoes, let him wear them. Like, how does it change your life, right? Like most people don't really care what shoes people are wearing, right? Did they, were wearing some useless shoes just, right? Why don't you buy a new pair of shoes? And okay, it's good, they save some money, right? Or, you know, or deal with it in a wise way, right? Deal with it in a wise way. One thing is, you know, you don't like the shoes your husband, like actually I was annoyed, like I was getting embarrassed, my wife was wearing these shoes. And I'm like, what? You know, I wanted to argue with her, like, why are you wearing, why don't you get a new pair of shoes? And my wife's like, you know, like she'd continue wearing the shoes until they last, very, very practical. So what I did, instead of arguing with her, I just went and checked her shoe size so I'd never remember it. Just ordered her a spectacularly good pair of shoes. That made me really happy, right? And my wife's like, why did you get these shoes? But in the end, she couldn't deny they're really good, so she started wearing them. Simple as that, right? And a lot of times you look at, instead of focusing on the problem, see, is there a way to deal with it? That blows away the problem, right? More common is my wife or husband's life. We have too much time here. Why do you keep changing this? No, but the thing is, how do you cause change in your spouse, right? How do you change your spouse? It's called chipology. Chipology, or simply we call it shepherd day, right? But chipology is that you have to understand the temperament of sheep, right? The Prophet, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, told us that each of you is a shepherd and each of you is responsible for their flock, right? And what do the shepherds heard? They heard sheep, right? So what do you do with sheep? And some of you have heard actually in Amman and the neighborhood I lived in, actually my next-door neighbor had a flock of sheep. And what do you do? If you want to get your way with your husband, treat him like a sheep. Don't tell him he's a sheep because then he'll start making some noise, right? And you want to get your way with your wife, treat her like a sheep, right? So each treating the other like a sheep. Now how do you deal with sheep? I spent actually a lot of time thinking about this. My next-door neighbor had a flock of sheep in a suburb of Amman, completely against the law, but he's from a prominent family so they could do whatever they want, right? And it was really cool because he was from a Bedouin family, from the Khadrullah family actually. And it was really cool because Bedouins don't show him. They went to the Prophet's license, they saw one of these Bedouins saw the Prophet's license, keeping his grandchildren. And he said, do you kiss your, do you kiss children? The Prophet said, yes, said, yes. He said, wallahi, we don't kiss our children. The Prophet said, what can I do if Allah has taken mercy out of someone's heart, right? So my next-door neighbor had, his wife died and they're burying her right there in the hill next to our houses. And after she was buried, he broke down crying, and he said, and which is very unusual for a Bedouin, broke down crying, he said, she was a good woman. You know the first thing he said about her? She used to take care of my sheep. He was crying, he was so cute. Because his wife would take, and actually out of, you know, Hajfal-e-Ismanliness, his wife would take care of the sheep in the early morning period when it was cooler and he would take care of them in the mid-afternoon and stuff when it was hot, it was warmer. Because it's much more difficult to be outside at that time. But that a very beautiful relationship, but you notice about sheep, right? That sheep do the wackiest things. Sheep are not rational beings, and human beings are not rational beings, really. Much of what we do is not rational, right? So how do you deal with sheep? Like if you want, well, the first thing with sheep is you have to be patient with them, you have to be patient. It's simple, and that's what they say. Herding sheep, people use it more after you use it deliberately. No, they're just being patient. Because you're walking, you know, the sheep are all going straight. Suddenly for no obvious reason, a sheep bolts and starts running up the hill. And some of the few other sheep will follow. Now, if you start running after them, they may fall over the hill, right? They may do, they may trip over and like, you don't know what will happen. What's the best thing to do at that? In most cases, 80% of the time, this is gonna come right back. It requires attention. The minority of the cases. But most of that, yep, pardon me. That's it, and it'll come back. There's a bit more minority of cases that require some further attention in that. But that's very minor, small case. Most of the time, but then if the shepherd is in cruise control, right? So you have like shepherd in cruise control. Where does the shepherd walk when the sheep are in cruise control? That the shepherd is behind the flock. Who's setting the direction of which way the flock is going? Who's setting the direction? The shepherd, not the sheep. And that's what shepherd is doing. That if you want to get your way in relations, you have to, the other party has to feel that they're going the way that they want. But who's setting the direction? Right? Who's setting the direction? The shepherd. And that's the essence of parenting too. The children have to want to do it themselves. But what they want to do is want them to be wanting to do. And yet, it's still that, right? And it requires wisdom. It requires growing what the right incentives are. And different people are different. Not all sheep are different people, right? Like some people, like my wife, some people's wife spent too much money. My wife even thinks, I know she needs, she needed a new computer. We have to get you a new computer. And it's kind of important because she teaches that and works at Secret's Guidance. Nope. Now you could argue till the cows come home. That has got her really nice. Hi Mac. This is like originally the first, like I bought her. And I just put it where her old computer used to be. And I installed everything. Actually I knew her passwords. Got her email set up with her. Thumbs down. And you know, she can't complain. Like it's like, it's obviously a beautiful machine. Let's see, like, she's really appreciative. I knew when the iPad was coming out. I think my wife was convinced. My wife believes with no hesitation she thought of the iPad before Atlas. Right? I needed some credit. But when it came out, she was refusing to go. It's actually not. I just ordered one for her anyways. And different people, they react in different ways. And you just have to know how to influence them, right? In a positive way. But you have to be careful because a lot of things that talk about how to influence oneself, et cetera, they're actually very dangerous. And you have to be very, very careful about this. One of the most detrimental things that one can fall into is what's called the psychology of influence. There's a lot of stuff about the psychology of influence that is just dark. It's dark. It's manipulative. It's manipulative. The Sunnah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam taught positive ethical influence. If you look at what people talk about, social psychology and psychology of influence, the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam used every trick in the book. But he used it in a positive manner. That was ethical. That was not self-serving, right? But it was out of nothing but sincere concern for the good of the other, right? So when we talk about influencing your spouse, it's not about manipulation, right? There's all kinds of literature out there. And it may work in the short term, but long term it breeds resentment and it's detrimental to relationships. And there's a lot of studies about the detrimental effect of these modes of social influence. Like, so be careful, okay? Because also these, they're based on, the influence is you influence the other party to get what you want. But the Sunnah is that you try to exert positive influence in ethical ways for the good first, the first concern is, none of you believes until they wish for the other as they wish for themselves, right? You want the good for the other just as you want it for yourself. But it's based on a balance that you want the good for yourself and for the other party and you want the good for the relationship as well. So it's not manipulative and that has to be very clear. So what do you do? Learn the Sunnah. And learn the Sunnah of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, right? Hey, a beautiful example of these things and because it begins with it because if you change in the relationship, normally the spouse will change as well. And even if they don't, you did what's pleasing to Allah S.A.W. Someone was critical of Abu Hanifa's student, Abu Yusuf. He said, why do you dress up like this? Because a lot of the righteous would dress very simply, right? In tattered clothing, Abu Yusuf would dress immaculately. Even the wealthy in Baghdad would look at him and be impressed. He dressed like so fine. And he said, look, just as I like my wife to dress up for me, I like to dress up for my wife, right? And you know, and this is a reality that, you know, the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam emphasized as well, that do things that what's going to be pleasing to Allah S.A.W. And that change begins from within. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us, for example, that if you're coming back from a trip, what are you supposed to do? You shouldn't arrive at night. Because people are, you shouldn't arrive unexpected. You shouldn't arrive unannounced. Even in the old days, which is not easy to do, right? They said, send someone to inform them beforehand of when you're coming, right? Like, send a messenger, tell them, I'll be arriving at that time. Even if you arrive, they say it's best to wait somewhere and send someone to tell them that he'll be getting there in the next hour. And wait, don't just go. And imagine you're coming back from a trip riding on a camel or a donkey or walking, but you don't go straight home. Why? Because you want them to be in the best of states. And then what do you do? You don't just show up, right? You're supposed to fix up your appearance. If you're able to, you should change your clothes. You should brush your teeth. You should put on perfume. You should comb your hair before you go inside, right? But you also give the other party the opportunity to do that. And that's the model of a marriage. Both parties are trying to please the other in order to seek the pleasure of Allah, right? And if one did that, then these kinds of things should be cast aside, right? Any questions? We have about 15, 20 minutes. So what we're going to do is to open up the floor. If you have specific questions, we've tried to cover a broad amount of ground, but if you have specific questions, please do go ahead. You talked about, I guess, the video earlier, and then you said that in the instant comment, we feel like it's gone so far on one side that we talked about the other side if there's a recommendation. Is that something that is restricted to that area or something that we could use? No, broadly, like, you know, scholar, that's the default in the sharia to begin with, right? The default in the sharia is what is the reality of a marriage? What is the reality of a marriage, right? A marriage is a willful agreement between two morally responsible human beings that they agreed to come together in a relationship that entails certain rights and responsibilities, right? It is not a relationship of ownership or slavehood or servanthood, et cetera, right? And, you know, however, but there's a balance. It's not, they say, laifrata wa latafriyup, there's neither excess nor laxity, right? But we also know that there is, there are, we have real life models of how a marriage should be. And a pragmatic, you know, and a balanced pragmatism of how things will work. And we have the witness of human history of how relations work out. And there's a clear sense there of complementarity, of, you know, that there has to be a spirit of giving in the marriage, that the wife should defer to the husband and the husband should defer to the wife in particular ways. And there's spheres of where one should defer more to the other and vice versa. And these are ideals. Not all of us are able to fulfill all ideals all the time. Everyone has their weaknesses and where they're at in their life. Just like, you know, in the ideal case, every one of us should be one of the awliya, right? In the ideal case, all of us should be getting up for tahajjud, you know, half the night or a little less or a little more. Because that's what the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam did. The Quran is clear about that. But do we? Right? So we don't operate on the ideal and everything. So the deen gives us pragmatic reality. If you fall short, don't fall completely off the parameters of positive conduct, right? Any other questions? So I mean, in summarizing some of the main points that we touched upon, one, the centrality of upholding good character. But that gives us certain imperatives. All of us should have a commitment to always be learning about the prophetic character, right? And always having a reflective attitude that where am I at with respect to my conduct and character? And what is the standard? The standard is the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam. Critical to marriage are two qualities that one has to restrain. One is one's anger and the other is one's speech. And if you struggle with that, that the cure for confusion is knowledge. But one must learn about those things, right? One must learn about those things and treat one's challenge first. Sometimes you can handle it on your own, learn about it, try to apply what you learn. If you struggle, you consult. How do you approach the disagreements that happen in marriage? The Sunnah teaches us not to be critical, but rather to try to come up with positive solutions, right? The Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam never criticized people. He, so a beautiful example was the son of Um Salama. The son of Um Salama, his name was Umar, Umar ibn Abi Salama. He was a child and food was served in front of him and he was very hungry. So what was he doing? He was eating with both hands from all over the plate. Now, how would most of us correct it, a child who was doing that? And you've taught the child already. So eating with both hands, without saying Bismillah, from all over the plate. What would most of us do, huh? Yell, what else? Yeah, maybe hit them, especially if you're a absurd person, huh? You take the plate away, right? Yeah, and actually that's a form of child abuse, to say one of the things that you should never say to the parents, what's wrong with you? Because imagine if someone said it to you, what's wrong with you? I mean, to be honest, I try to think about things. If someone asks you what's wrong with you, I could get into depression. Like what's wrong with me? That's a, you know, that's a devastating question. If you take it literally, it's a devastating question. What's wrong with you? It's like the ultimate put down, right? I'm honest, if someone asked me that, I'd feel traumatized, right? That wouldn't, but you know, like, I'd want to feel traumatized, cause I like drama, right? But I probably wouldn't, cause I probably just wouldn't care. But, you know, but if you ask that, what's wrong with you, why did you do that? Like how could a child, like a six year old child figure out, why did I do that? The whole reason the child is not morally responsible, cause they haven't reached maturity of intellect. Someone asked you, why did you do that, right? Why did you, at 12 30 at night, eat the third slice of black forest cake? The answer to that is not of any benefit, cause it's already eaten, right? It's already eaten, right? So that's not the question to add, that's being negative. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam never had a negative response. What did he do with this child? And that doesn't apply just to parenting, it applies in relationships as well, broadly and in marriage. Anyone know what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam did? And this is how you always respond to Allah. He told the child, ya Ghulam, ya Ghulam, O dear child, sammillah, begin in the name of Allah. Wa qul bi aminik, and eat with your right hand. And now someone told you, yeah, you know, siti masood, say bismillah. Would you be upset? Okay, sure, I'll say bismillah. And eat with your right hand. Okay, sure, I'll do that. And not, why didn't you say bismillah? Cause someone tells you, why didn't you say bismillah? Your nefs will immediately feel a resistance. What do you say? Why don't you say bismillah? Okay, sure, right? Say bismillah, okay? Eat with your right hand, okay? Wa qul mimayyalik, and eat from what's immediately in front of you. He empowered this person, this child, right? His stepson, right? The son of Umsalama, his wife, from her previous marriage, Abu Salama passed away, right? And so he was in the prophetic household, right? And that's how you focus not on what was done, but how you can rectify the situation in a positive way, right? So your wife, for example, petty things come up, she bought some clothes and you don't like her wearing that particular jilbab cause you feel it's too tight. Now you could put her down and say, I don't like why you wear the, so why don't you wear that other jilbab? You're okay, right? So all that, or to look at a positive way, right? To look at a positive way of dealing with things, right? And also have a good opinion on, they make a mistake, don't assume that they had ill impulses. So if your spouse is sitting, listening to a talk about in praise of ugliness, and suddenly some obscene image comes up, have a good opinion that they didn't know that it was going to be obscene. Yeah, that's happening, you know? You're like, and that was the first obscene image in the whole thing. I was like, aww, right? And anyways, you know? So have a good opinion of your spouse, right? In general, what's the ruling of having a good opinion of others in our deen? It's an obligation, right? So a fortiori would apply in marriage. So these are some keys to dealing with the challenges of marriage. Any other questions? Alhamdulillah. So we'll stop there, bideen-lahi ta'ala. The, in this, there's one final aspect, right? I'll just skip over this just, which is that, you know, part of having a successful marriage is, as the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, we looked at his dua, right? About, you know, sir, his dua, right? Is that never lose a sense of what you're trying to achieve in the marriage. That's the last thing, you know, we've emphasized this in the beginning and we'll close with that, right? That have a, begin your marriage with a clear sense of purpose and strive to renew that sense of purpose throughout the marriage. One of the things that I'd like to point, like what are the purposes in marriage? If you go to the Seekers Guidance website and search for intentions of marriage. One of the great Yemeni scholars, he put together the intentions one should have in marriage. Because sometimes it's very abstract to tell someone, seek Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala's pleasure in marriage. So, okay, but how? And how? So this is a beautiful, you know, dua actually, right? It's a dua of the intentions of marriage that I intend through my marriage to seek the pleasure of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala by and in all these ways, right? Now, of course, which, you know, you want to appropriate the intention. So one of the practical things to do is to the few practical takeover, how do you sustain the purpose in marriage? Number one, before entering marriage, make a clear intention, to seek the pleasure of Allah, but detail out. And sometimes it helps to write it down. It makes it more real. How exactly will you seek the pleasure of Allah through this marriage? For example, when my wife and I were getting married, we were both here. We wanted to go over to you. So we made a very clear intention. You know, one aspect of our intention in marriage is that we're getting married to seek the pleasure of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala by learning the Deen and by teaching the Deen. And we will both support one another in doing so. We're a bit dramatic as well. Asghar, Alhamdulillah, it worked out well because a bit of a dramatic thing. We both said actually in our marriage agreement that if at any time either one of us is a hindrance to the other in learning or serving the Deen, that we will separate without hesitation. And then I gave my wife the right of divorce. That was the only thing. Shiaq didn't ask for it for anything else. Actually, I'd never advise anyone. But we had a clear sense of purpose, but it really helped out because some of the times when we're overseas, there were struggles. There was difficulties. There's some actually, some difficult choices. One of my teachers advised me to go and spend some time in Pakistan. My wife really didn't want to do it in terms of her own choice. But when she, had she refused, I wouldn't have gone. But when the issue came up, she said, if this is what it takes for you, for your learning and serving the Deen, then we're gonna do it. And actually, I was hoping she'd say no, because I really didn't want to go to Pakistan. I was terrified. Not terrified like personally, just, I was like kind of fed up of Desi Deen at that time. My worst fears were actually, it was very good for you. It was the most difficult seven months of my life. No, I didn't complain even one. Why? Because there's a higher purpose. We knew what we're getting ourselves into. Right? Alhamdulillah. So that's, you know, so set that clear intention. Helps to write it down, right? And you know, what I've suggested of the intentions of marriage helps you in terms of what kind of intentions you should have. The secondary intentions are how you will seek the pleasure of Allah. But also personally, the things that relate to you and you should have discussed them out. Make that intention. And it's good to revisit that intention on a regular basis. It's from the sunnah to renew one's intentions. So make high intentions for marriage. Number two, renew those intentions. That reinstills that sense of purpose. Number three, always make a lot of dua for your spouse. My name, not just general. I make dua for the Muslims and she's Muslim. I make dua for the believers and as far as I know, she's still a believer. No, by name, asking for the good for them. Cause that nurtures concern, right? And the Prophet of Islam used to make a lot of dua for individual people. And if you just, you could compile a book of all the individual people of the Prophet of Islam used to make dua for by name, right? And that's an important aspect. The third aspect is guard your heart in the marriage. I guard your heart in the marriage because there's a relationship. Marriage is meant to nurture your faith. It's meant to nurture your religiosity, your akhlaq. But the opposite is also true. In order to nurture the marriage, you need to be nurturing your faith. You need to be nurturing the things that nurture your akhlaq, which is what? Practically, the health of your religion is based on two broad things. What are they? These two broad things are knowledge and remembrance of Allah, Subhanahu Ta'ala. The Prophet of Islam said, This worldliness is distant from divine mercy because laan, which literally means accursed, but it's not an insult. Allah is not cursing the dunya. Laan is al-bo'adhu, al-ti'adu an-rahmatillah. Laan means that something is distant from divine mercy. Worldliness, meaning that in which there's no concern for Allah, distance you from divine mercy. And worldliness is distant from divine mercy except for the remembrance of Allah and that which relates to his remembrance and except for a person teaching knowledge or a person seeking knowledge. So the health of the deen, so that we don't become of what they're called, abna ad-dunya, so we don't become worldlings that you have to have the two prophetic streams of good flowing in your life. What are they? You need to have some kind of connection to beneficial knowledge. On a regular basis, right? With the balance that we've emphasized. And number two, you have to have meaningful spiritual routines of remembrance of Allah, right? And it doesn't mean that you try to like regulate your husband or wife's spiritual life, but you have to create the atmosphere in the house that it should be of the houses where Allah is remembered. And one person is enough for that, right? If your husband doesn't recite Qur'an, et cetera, what you should be doing, if you become a person of zikr of Allah, a person of Qur'an, your spouse will be positively affected. If not in the short term, in the long term, right? And change can take time. Some of the greatest companions, their own spouses, their own parents took 15, 20 years to become Muslim. Abu Bakr al-Siddique, his father became Muslim. You know when he became Muslim? At the opening of Mecca. And would anyone be more keen for their family to become Muslim than Abu Bakr al-Siddique, all ad-dillah, at Anhu? Right? But change takes time. But you just have to keep the net in the water and you'll see the benefit eventually by Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. And so have these routines, right? And that actually gives you the strength to have the right response, right? What is the gift that we have from Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala is that light of guidance in our heart. For a successful marriage, use that light to bring light to your relationship, right? Right? And it's very simple. If you follow him, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, you will find guidedness. What is guidedness? Guidedness is the good of this life, right? And the good of the next. And learn about those Sunnahs, right? There's incredible amounts of Sunnahs of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And learn about them. You know the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was the ultimate romantic. Say that Ayesha mentioned with pride that if she drank from a cup of water, the Prophet sallam would pick up the cup, turn it around and drink from where he drank from. Right? Incredible little things, right? She mentions, and she mentions with pride why she had the duty to convey these things. These things that normally we wouldn't mention to others. But she mentioned the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam used to nibble my lips in affection. And she mentioned it because she wanted to tell people like, you know, be affectionate to one another. And she was duty bound. That's one of the burdens of being a mother of the believer. And all kinds of incredible little things that he used to do, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, and that's one aspect. A lot of times people spend their time foolishly with the sunnah, trying to figure out how did the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam pray? If we don't know how the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam pray now, and you're trying to figure it out 1400 years later, means the deen wasn't preserved, you should give up, go home, and just start crying that we lost. But alhamdulillah, the deen is preserved and was preserved by the great imams of Islam. What should you be focusing on from the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam? There's no hadith that the believer is most perfect in faith, are those who wiggle their finger the most. Or those who raise their hands, or those who don't raise their hands. These are all disputes. Every one of these issues of dispute that you spend your time, waste your time on, the sahaba differed upon, all of them. And you busying yourself trying to figure them out, you either delude yourself or you waste your time. The thing that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam came with, he didn't say, I only came to tell people the specific way of praying. No. I was only sent to perfect noble character. And that's the key, that's the key. And how do you acquire it? You should have a regular connection with learning the teachings of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And with consistency, you'll see the change coming. So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and closing. Rabbana hablana min azwajina wa dhurriyatina qurata ayunin wa ja'alna lil muttaqina imama. Allahumma ja'alna min abidaka su'adaa al ladina tuwajjihum nakhwa sunnatin nabiqa al mustafa sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Allah we ask you that you grant us in our spouses and in our offspring a joy for our eyes and make us of the foremost of the people of piety. We ask you that we realize the meanings and implications of this noble verse. That we realize that we cannot possibly raise our children and have healthy believing families on our own but that we require mutual concern and community in which to raise healthy families. We ask you that we be of those who have long-term vision so that we seek not only to preserve faith for ourselves and our children but for our offspring until the last day. Ya Rabbil Alameen, we ask you that we be of those who seek not merely to get by in this life as believers but that we be of those who raise their aspiration and who seek to be the foremost of the most beloved of your servants, the people of true taqwa. Ya Rabbil Alameen, we ask you O Allah that we be of those who have true reliance upon you and who see the sunnah of your beloved messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sallam as a tremendous and transformative spiritual opportunity, a means and guidance by which we are empowered to make the right choices in our life and in our religion so that we can be people who pursue the good in our own lives, who pursue and promote the good in our own families, who pursue and promote the good in our relationships with our spouses, with our parents, with our children. We ask you O Allah to make us manifestations of the good of those who's very conduct and who states and whose actions inspire others to seek Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala We ask you that we be parents whose children aspire to be like us, that we don't have to tell them the right thing to do but rather they seek the right thing because of what they see of our own conduct and character and actions Ya Rabbil Alameen, we ask you that we be of the best of spouses and of the best of children and of the best of parents Ya Rabbil Alameen, we ask you that we be of those who are humble and honest and sincere and true so that anytime we fall short of that radiant standard of light and virtue that you have gifted us with, the standard of your beloved Messenger Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that we be of those who hasten to rectify, who do not feel shy to apologize and to mend what we have harmed Ya Rabbil Alameen and that when we see difficulties and distress we see these as opportunities Ya Rabbil Alameen to seek your pleasure by responding in according to what will be pleasing to you rather than responding in accordance with our egos and our lower desires Ya Rabbil Alameen, this is our call and you are the one who answers wa sallallahu ala Sayyidina wa Nabina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam atasleeman kathira wa akhiru da'wana anil hamdulillahi rabbil alameen Alhamdulillah, adjazaakum wa ta'ala khayr for your patience. You want the consolation or the answer? Okay. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen wa sallallahu ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam atasleeman kathira As you mentioned, there's a number of hadiths that mention different ages in the development of a human being, right? And those are, they say, lilaqlab, that's the general case. So, for example, with children, they, you know, that, you know, the age of discernment, what's called sinnut tamiz is considered to be seven years. And tamiz, that's interesting. In Urdu, what does tamiz mean? Manners, right? But tamiz in Arabic, actually, Urdu is very useful to know Arabic, because you'll get insights into words that Arabs, because Arabs don't have, tamiz doesn't mean manners in Arabic. But what is manners? Manners is being able to distinguish the right thing to do, right? So the age of distinguishing. Now you can distinguish between benefit and harm, like, you know, if a seven-year-old child goes to the store, they're supposed to be able not to get cheated, right? They don't want to buy a chocolate bar and they say it's $5. If they say no, it wouldn't be $5. But some people may reach that level of maturity and discernment earlier and some may take longer time. That's sort of a general case. But the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, gave specific instructions that from the age of seven, encourage them. And that applies broadly, right? With some children, you may, you know, they have that keenness, that concern, right? And different children are different. My older son, for example, you know, from the age of like, whatever, five or six, he was like doing all his prayers. Number two, you know, he was like, abuji, I don't need to pray right now. And you don't even need to encourage me because the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, said encourage them once they're seven and I'm not seven yet, right? And so what do you do? You know, you give them time. But of course, so it varies. Similar, the age of 40, the significance of the age of 40, it's not textual in the same way. It's not textual in the same way that there aren't specific rulings connected to it. Unlike, you know, these ages with children that from the age of seven, you know, we encourage them to pray. From the age of 10, they may be disciplined for it, right? They may be disciplined for it. But the age of 40 is not, it doesn't have legal consequences in that level. But it's considered to be an age where one attains wisdom, but it's considered, age is considered to be a noble thing in the Deen, right? There's a sense that, you know, your peak age is when you're physically fit or you're physically in full strength or people's outward perceptions of beauty when it comes to women, for example, and then it's all downhill from there, right? But in Islam, you're always rising, right? Because the honor of a person is in accordance with their capacity for good. The honor of a person is in accordance with one, their capacity for the good, and number two for the good that they've done, right? And in both ways, what does age supposed to, what is age supposed to bring with it? Age is supposed to bring with it the coupling of knowledge with experience and knowledge when it's coupled with experience results in wisdom, right? It results in wisdom. And typically, you know, wisdom in most cultures is associated with age, right? Because a wise person is a person who's lived, right? So they don't just know the theory, but they know how things play out in life. So the age of 40 is considered to be a noble age, right? In the sense that some of the scholars actually held in Islamic theology that all prophets were sent at the age of 40. And it's a theological position within mainstream Islamic scholarship. Actually, some of the greatest authorities in Aqidah like Imam Bajjuri in his commentary in Joharat-e-Tawheed and others mentioned that this is a predominant position that all prophets were sent at the age of 40. And there's discussion on that, but at least it was a common thing, right? At least it was a common thing. So it's not considered negative, right? So if someone hits 40 or is about to hit 40, it's not like, okay, it's all downhill from there. No, it is considered to be an age now. We have greater responsibility, right? Because now you have the experience in life that the slight madness of youth is supposed to go away. I have a couple of years still, alhamdulillah, so I could still be childish, right? But now you're an experienced member of the community, right? So now people are going to be relying on your opinion because you've lived, ladi arab saya, fulan haash, so on so has lived. I didn't have that experience. So it's considered to be a responsibility within the family, et cetera, right? So it's not considered to be a downhill thing. It's not a weakening of faculties that's looked at, but rather it's a deepening of one's understanding and thereby one's ability to one pursue benefit yourself because you're still young, you don't know how things work in life. So you make some bad decisions, et cetera, et cetera. And it's less grave to be making wrong decisions when you're 25 than when you're 35. And by the time you're 40, you should know what to do, right? So in your own life, there's a greater sense of responsibility, but now also there's the broader family and community and social aspect, right? Of taking responsibility. And then there's also the realization that this is now sort of the third stage in your life, there's as a young person in the first 20 years and then a middle-aged person from 20 to 40, but now you're in the culmination of your life. And that's not looked at negatively, right? Because we don't see death as the end of life, right? Death is the meeting of your Lord, right? So now someone who hits 40 now, now they should be really getting serious about aligning the direction of their life towards the akhirah, right? Not because they're going to die any time soon. I mean, you know, we take care of our health, but you realize that now you have the maturity, you've lived, you've seen, there's things that people just tell you, right? That sins have consequences, that relationships matter, all these different things that you hear about, now you've lived them. And so there's that, the greater gravity. So it's a time to reflect, right? That which way am I headed, right? So it's looked at positively, right? And also Islam, part of the, one of the wisdoms of dress within Islam, both for, not just for women, but also for men, right? Is that it's meant to imbue a sense of dignity in the human being, right? That we don't, even men, you know, we don't dress in tight clothing and things in a way that accentuates the merely physical, right? The Islamic dress accentuates the human being's reality, which is that we're ultimately a spiritual being, right? So it accentuates that nobility of the human being, right? And that's highlighted in, you know, with age, right? With the graying of the beard, with, you know, with the graying of one's hair, et cetera, this is considered to be nobility, right? The Prophet of Islam told us that, you know, if to, you know, that, you know, the graying of the hair, the Prophet of Islam mentioned a number of things about it. One to express respect to someone who has great hair, right? Number two, that we, oneself, one should take that as a sign from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, right? And of who you are, that you have that sense of responsibility. And thirdly, it's considered to be, the Quran talks about that the warner has come to you from Allah. And what's the warner? Ibn Abbas said, the warner is gray hair, right? That when your hair starts graying, that this is a reminder from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And so it's not a downhill thing. This is a sense of now aligning oneself with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Any questions from the sisters? Already 40 sometimes because the pressure this lifestyle starts truly into the way that you get out of it. But what do you do in your life? Yeah, I mean, a lot of people get in midlife crises much earlier than that too, right? And a lot of it's, you know, because everyone, wherever you are, you carry a lot of baggage. That's just the nature of this life, right? People carry baggage everywhere. Like, you know, you're, they say a person is a prisoner of the social context that they grow up in, right? Everyone comes with their own baggage, right? People from certain cultures can never line up properly, right? As we learned today at lunch, right? It just very difficult, right? Similarly, you know, these notions of beauty and aging and this and that and other things, those are, there's a great wisdom in it, right? There's a great wisdom in it that ultimately these situations that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala places us in, these are tests, right? The whole point of life is a test, right? Alladi khalaq al-moutah al-hayatah liyabluwakum. He's created death and life in order to test you, right? If you don't think you're being tested, then that's the first test you're in is that you don't realize that you're in a test. So whatever situation you're in, it's a test, right? So, and the challenges to respond to it right, right? So these kinds of challenges are opportunities, right? To seek the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and to recognize what a blessing it is, right? Because if everything was easy, you wouldn't appreciate the tremendousness of that blessing that you have, right? And you know, a very simple example, right? You know, a lot of sisters, for example, and it's a reality in our community. For example, a sister is divorced, right? She's 40, said no one will ever marry me and no one will this and no this and I'll never find, and you know, these kinds of things is, you know, actually the problem is if you look at his example, he did not choose to marry, say the Khadija. Say the Khadija chose to marry him. She was 40 or 41, depending how you count her age, right? There's some people who say she was younger than that but that's not supported by most of the texts, right? And what did she do? She took the means, right? She'd been previously married. She had children from previous marriage and this and that and the other. But you know, so that's part of it, right? That one looks at, okay, what, I know it's considered quite unusual for someone her age in that society to be marrying, to actually initiating marriage in this kind of, in a noble kind of way. But she did it, right? So many of, you know, many times, you know, whatever situations one is put in that are age related, part of it just is to see, right? And it's a good reminder sometimes, right? It's a great blessing from Allah, that he gives us these kinds of shocks and Allah SWT tells us in the Quran that every year or so Allah SWT sends us challenges. Sometimes we don't realize that it came and what's the message in it, right? It's a good thing, so one has a midlife crisis. It's like an angelic advertisement. Turn to God, right? That's the thing. And it's much better to feel that kind of challenge and that kind of emptiness or confusion and what is it that one needs to realize that there's a purpose in life? Whereas a lot of people are blissful, are disadvantageously happy, right? And that's one of the things once you be careful, like in marriage, what are you asking Allah for, right? It's one of the worst things you can ask for from Allah SWT is just to be happy, right? Because if you look at marriages and like, you know, I've sort of reached uncle age now, Alhamdulillah, I have this Twitter handle called Uncle Rabbani, okay? And, but you know, I was away, Alhamdulillah, for 10 years. I was overseas, came back and one of the most shocking realizations I had was that my immediate circle of friends, you know, who suffered the most in their deen of my closest circle of friends? Who are all religious folk and, you know, active in the community, et cetera? Who suffered the most in their deen? Wives, no. Like, it was like equal opportunity suffering. Like, there's a lot of sisters who struggle, a lot of guys who struggle too. But who suffered the most in their deen? Hmm? No, no, no. Yeah, those who had happy marriages, this most identifiable group who had the most stagnant religious life were those who had, you know, al-Iswal, okay? Everything's fine, you know? And so what happens? They're just sort of drifting in life. Many of them drifting and sort of stuck religiously. So you go away 10 years, they've not really progressed very much, at least, you know, apparently, as opposed to where they were at 10 years ago, right? Or many of them slipped away, you know, too much, everything seems fine, but inwardly there's a lot of struggle. And conversely, some of the people who benefited the most spiritually in their deen were the people who had the most awful of marriages. Okay? And why? Because if you have a crisis, if you have a failure, you have difficulty, what are you gonna do? You're gonna turn to Allah. And one of the wives of the great and the Lucian Imam, Ibn Arabi, and he talks about her with great admiration. He said that my wife once said that that most of humanity refuses to turn to Allah except in distress. And so a lot of people who are like incredible, incredible things, you know, someone I know quite well, and they, you know, he was cheating on her repeatedly, right? And but when the marriage fell apart, you know, her concern was, well, I, you know, says, I don't have anything against him. I, you know, I wish to end this, but her question was, how do I end this in a way that will not be of detriment to him and his deen? That's a deep, that's coming from a deep spiritual vantage point. Says, yes, I, you know, I don't think our relationship is good for me or the children or him. But how do I get out of this in a way that will not hurt him and his deen? That's coming from it. And, but I, you know, I made it clear that you have a right to seek your right, et cetera. So yes, I, you know, I'm not going to let go of my basic rights, but I want to do it in a way that will be pleasing to Allah, that will be good for me and for him as well. And that's coming from real, you know, spiritual groundedness, right? So that's part of it, is that, you know, those tests are some, are gifts from Allah, if one responds right to them. The thing one should be most scared of is not difficulty. One should be really worried about ease, right? Cause it's, it's not so difficult to be patient. What's really difficult is to be thankful. What's very difficult is to be thankful. And it is few people indeed who are able to be thankful. And Allah, how does that says? Wa qalilum min ibadiyah shakur. And few indeed of my servants are truly thankful, right? That when you have clear manifest blessings, are you able to be thankful? And that's a big challenge in marriage, which is why the dua al istikhara, what do you say? And destined the good for me wherever it may be, and make me content with it. So when those kinds of challenges happen, one is to see the great spiritual opportunity, right? And you know, the spiritual masters say that wurudul faqat a'iyadul murideen, that the times, the coming of times of distress are the festival seasons of those seeking Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, right? That if you knew what a blessing difficulty and distress is, they said, you dance and joy, right? Because it's such an opportunity there to realize who you are, who your Lord is, to recognize His mercy. And there's a lot of good in it if one responds to it right. But there's a couple of things. One is that if that any time one is in an exceptional state, it is a normal state of affairs, but any time was an exceptional state, whether it's difficulty, right? Or whether it's exceptional ease, right? Things are very easy in life. Any time was an exceptional state of difficulty or the converse or ease or hardship or one is troubled, one of the things one should be sure to do is to consult. And one of the very detrimental things that our sense of sort of rugged individualism does is that people don't consult enough, right? And consulting, of course, the people worth consulting, because often what people will do, they'll vent with their friends, but none of their friends can really give them meaningful advice. So that's just like complaining, right? And that doesn't have benefit. But the consult, sometimes there's some trusted friends, whatever, whose opinion you do value and will give you beneficial counsel, an honest opinion. Or to consult those with the learning or the expertise or the understanding, the wisdom, to be able to give one valuable advice. And that's something that one shouldn't underestimate, right? Because a lot of people remain in very difficult places in their life because they're not seeing the bigger picture, right? And sometimes a good friend, that's why one of the benefits of good company, right? That a friend or someone with experience, with wisdom, can help one or with knowledge, can help one see the bigger picture and have the right response. So that's one of the things that if someone is experiencing that crisis, is not to hesitate to consult. The other thing, very often people, when they are in difficulty, there's a tendency, very common, to withdraw. I need time to myself and that's completely wrong, right? Unless someone has a high degree of spiritual maturity, you know, the human being is a social animal. Without company, it's like being a fish out of water. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, Alaikum bil jama'a, be with the group. Wa iyakum wal furqa, and beware of remaining alone. Fa inna shaytan al-qaibun min al-wahid, wahu min al-ithnaini ab'ad, for the shaytan is close to the one alone and is more distant from two. Man arada buhbuhat al-jannah, fal yalzamil jama'a. Whoever wishes for the vast expanses of paradise, let them hold fast to the group, right? To be with other people. And that itself helps put things in context. So someone may be dealing with some difficulty, they're feeling down, et cetera, but you spend time with other people, et cetera. It gives a sense of meaning. It puts your troubles in context, right? And it gives, you know, and one's not just lost in one's own thoughts, right? So there's many, many aspects, you know, off that. Those are two things to put one's troubles in context. One is the consult and the other is to resist the urge to avoid company, right? And then the shaytan comes and says things like, well, I had people over last week, no one has invited me all week. Doesn't matter, invite more people over. You know, you get the extra reward, right? Because it's not about reciprocation, it's that you're trying to do that which will be a means of Allah swt. If they reciprocate or not, that's not why you're maintaining relationships with others, right? So that's, you know, an important element to, wallahu ala, any follow-up or? Okay. You know, Baraka, I love you. So when you see people when they focus on rules and regulations, because of how they look at religion, and then also you have people that look at religion as more of a relationship, right? How they look at each other online, and how the rules then come behind that. And so if you have a situation where it's, for example, in one where some break up the sentence, you know, when they come to a rule, they know it's kind of taking the easy way out or saying, oh, you know, I have a, someone says I can do this, and this other person says I can do this. You can't really, I guess, argue because maybe those are valid opinions. But then how do you address perhaps the more fundamental issue which I think is what I kind of mentioned because it would be as a rule as opposed to something you would do for. Yeah, so some people are sort of legalistic in their marriage or in their relationships, and others are more focused on the relationship itself and a higher purpose in the relationship. I mean, different people have different perspectives and understandings. It's some of the worst marriages are marriages that are fiqi marriages, right? Where every discussion is, my right is one, two, three. And that says no, my right is two, three, and four, right? And they live this sort of legalistic way, right? And the sunnah teaches us to, as one of the poets put it, that is to live in accordance with the law but with love, right, that the law is lived with the spirit of love and that mercy, right? It's not done in a legalistic manner. That's not how the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that law has to be lived in a certain spirit. Otherwise it's very troubling. I have permission to mention it when my sister and brother-in-law got married. I was in Damascus at that time. The first winter, they called me and they said, both of us are on the line. You have to resolve a disagreement between us. Said, we saw in Reliance to the Traveler, well, my sister said, in Reliance to the Traveler, it says that the wife is entitled to a complete set of clothing in every season. And my sister was quite optimistic. They're still in college, right? And they're both working part-time while in college. So, am I entitled? And then before she said that, my brother-in-law jumped in and said, Faraz Bhai, you know, I'm still in college. I can't afford to buy your sister a complete set of winter clothing every season. It's too expensive. And this Canada, you know, you have to, you know, like a proper winter jacket and this and that and boots, et cetera. It's like several hundred dollars, right? So he said, you know, as for the hair oil and the comb and these things they mentioned, that's straightforward. But this other stuff is very different. Every season. So, and sometimes it's actually coming from a misunderstanding of the law, right? Cause that's not the case. The law actually just says that, you know, there's a complete set of clothing. If someone's short something, then that's what the husband is responsible for providing, right, if need be, right? But that's not the, you know, one has to couple that with the spirit. But at the same time, if the other party is sort of legalistic in their approach, you know, you're support, how do you respond to it? You don't respond to rigidity with rigidity, right? Allah swt tells us in the Qur'an, adfa'a billatihi ahsan, respond with that which is better. Fa'idah l-ladi baynaka wa baynahu adawa ka'anna huwa liyun hameem, and you'll find unexpectedly that the person between whom and you was enmity or disagreement or discord will become as though a dear friend, right? So that's the, that's part of the challenge, right? That, you know, you can't reprogram your spouse. They are as they are. So maybe he or she is very legalistic, very formalistic, maybe, you know, they're just, that's how they've, you know, for whatever reason, either that's how they've understood the religion or this is how they feel threatened. So they want to, you know, they want certain certainties. But the way you help the person expand their horizon, the way you see the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in his own relationships is what? Is through excellence of character, right? Right? Respond with that which is better. And part of that is that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam taught us that listen to the hearts of people. And we'll look at that tomorrow when we talk about like some, you know, many of the challenges that arise in relations. He did not just hear what people said, right? He heard their, he listened to their hearts. Because when people say things, their hearts are expressing certain meanings as a result of that. And if you can hear their hearts, then you can deal with the real issues, not the stated issues, right? So for example, you know, sorry, some of you may have heard this example before, but Zubair and Zubeda got married. And that a very rocky first year of marriage. It was rough, right? And they were fighting all the time. And so now it's their first year anniversary. Zubair goes to MCC and he got invited by brother Masood for dinner between Maghrib and Isha. And after Isha, they're like, that was a big meal. We need some coffee. So they sit down and drink some coffee and discuss Masjid politics, right? There's no present politics, but they're plotting for the future, right? Long-term investment, right? So they sit down, get caught up in that. And they say, you know, this coffee was too sweet. Let's go and get some other coffee. So they go for second coffee. And they said, all that coffee, we need to have some dessert. So they go grab dessert. And it becomes 11, 1130. And then Zubair realizes, oh my goodness, I was going to take Zubeda out for dinner. They're not gonna call it their anniversary dinner, but it's a dinner happening on their anniversary date without being called anniversary dinner. So then they end up in a conversation about getting unnecessary advice for Zubair from all the uncles who were accompanying them. So he reaches home past midnight. He reaches in for his pocket and he realized, oh my goodness. He separated the car keys from the house keys, so he didn't have the house keys. And he's like, yeah, I'm gone, right? So at that, he's about to go to ring the doorbell when he sees the shadowy figure. Appearing from the frosted pain, right? And my wife has asked, I don't mention this part, but she's not here. And that frosted figure is significantly larger than when they got married. Because one of the ways Zubeda has dealt with her frustrations in marriage is to eat a lot of ice cream, right? And by stopping going to the gym, right? The frying pan. The other, she has a very dangerous instrument called the bailan, right? The rolling stick, rolling pin, right? And he didn't know that you can actually wrap in Punjabi, right? Because she's like just throwing it down, telling him who he's descended from and where he should end up in the hereafter and other things that, you know, we can't explicitly mention in respected places like this, right? So at that time, what she's saying, if you respond to what she's saying, it becomes a battle of the egos, right? So you're a son of certain animals and where you should end up in the hereafter and this and that and questioning his manhood and questioning all kinds of things. And you know, how are you going to respond to that? Right? By ego, right? To put her down and say, you know, guess why I don't come home? Because it's things like this. And you realize, and you know, it becomes what? It just disintegrates into one moment of ugliness, right? And on the other hand, if someone looks at this situation, right, with a prophetic look, right, how would the Prophet ﷺ respond to a situation like that? He would not be listening just to what Zubeda is saying with her words. But the Prophet ﷺ listened to hearts. What is Zubeda expressing when she's this upset? And we'll ask the sisters because like, no Zubeda's here in person, are they? I get nervous sometimes because once I did a seminar in marriage in Birmingham, UK, and every time I'd mention Zubeda and Zubeda, they'd be like a buzz in the room. And it turns out afterwards that the organizing team was six people, two couples, and the other two people were single. The guy's name was? The sister's name was Zubeda. And everyone used to say to them that you guys should get married. I had no clue, right? So every time I'd mention Zubeda and Zubeda, they'd be like, and afterwards they'd say, do you really think they should get married? I said, who? They said Zubeda and Zubeda. They've gotten married many times. They're confused because I always use Zubeda and Zubeda as an example. So when Zubeda's saying all these things to him, because she's very angry, he promised to take her for dinner, and he didn't come till past midnight. So she's saying all these ugly things and angry things and sad things and upset things. But what is she expressing with the heart? Anyone? That she missed him. What else is she expressing? Disappointment. What else did she, from what her heart is expressing, how does she feel about him? She loves him, right? Now can you do something positive with that? That actually that's a declaration of love. In very complicated disguise, right? It's like a Halloween costume, right? But it's actually... You should be like, Alhamdulillah, she cares. Because she didn't care. She'd be like, Alhamdulillah, she didn't even come. She was really happy. She really didn't care. She wouldn't get upset. They say the opposite of love is indifference. But if you listen to the heart, now you have something to respond to. How would you respond then if you realize that she loves you, she missed you. She cares about you. She wanted to spend time with you, right? Like now you have something to respond with. Of course not in a manipulative way, but with that love and mercy that the Prophet said and he's placed between you love and mercy. There's not just some random thing, right? You can respond to those deeply felt emotions with what? With a heartfelt response, right? And how you do that, we can talk about tomorrow. But that's part of the challenge, right? When these kinds of situations happen, this happens in other things. Parents are upset about something. Parents say the most spectacular things. And sometimes you wonder like, and of course they see logic is like, goes beyond like normal human logic, right? Like parents will say things like, like how could like, you know, I was at a family gathering and I just went to the washroom and I'm stuck there and uncle just explodes on a relative of mine. I'm like, oh my God, I like quickly make wudu. I was like, should I go and not make wudu? I said no, I'll make wudu because it'll help calm things down. Just, my cousin just said, made some general remark, uncle just explodes on him and says, beta, you've so-and-so, get out of my house and never come back and you have this great, and it was like nothing. It was like, it's about gun control. Neither owns a gun. It's very hard to own a gun in Canada, thankfully, right? But my cousin goes and, or my relative goes and says, you know, if I want to have a gun because if someone comes and robs me, I want to shoot them in the face. He shouldn't have said that. Uncle says, you're disgraced with a family. Leave my house and never come back and he lives there. And you know, you know, those kind of, how do you handle them? And you don't handle them rationally because relationships aren't based on reason. They're based on emotion. Uncle got upset for certain reasons. My cousin said what he said. Turns out my cousin had been, you know, robbed three times, like, directly. Like, you know, twice. Of all places in Canada where it's like, it's boringly safe, right? Right? Like, so he's had very traumatic security experiences. Okay? So you have the house. These kinds of situations, how do you deal with them? The issue doesn't matter as much as the underlying emotion that is in the heart. So you have to allay those emotional concerns. Alhamdulillah. At least for a few minutes, they're both calm down. But then Uncle started it again. And then of course, and then sometime it's hard to deal with things. I just told Uncle, Uncle, please sit down. And I started sitting down. I'm going to call 911 on you. Like, what? You're physically assaulting me. Because I just started, Uncle was going out of control again at everyone. I said, Uncle, sit down. I just put him down very gently. I started to solve the problem. You are assaulting me. And those things, what do you have to do? Smile and let things calm down. But this is an important insight. You have to listen to the heart and what people are expressing in these relationships. Any sisters? There's a little kid at the back, but I'm not sure if she looks like she has her hand up. But I'm not sure if she does. Yeah. I don't think it's her hand. Okay, go ahead. You mentioned something that I wanted to ask. Yeah, so our understanding of love and mercy. I mean, the word used for love in the verse, wood is a deeply settled love. There are different terms in Arabic for love. Some describe very strong emotional love. But wood is a love that's deep and settled. And it's related in general linguistic sense for the word for a valley. And the water that's in a valley is going to stay there because that's a low point. The water that could be gushing down the mountain, et cetera. But when the snow melts or when the rain season goes, that dries up. But the water that's there in the valley stays there for a long time. Why? Because it's deep. So it's a deep, unshakable love. It's coming from understanding that this is a lasting relationship. And this love, wood, is you want good for the other. That's why you need wadda, has the idea of wanting good for another. Or wanting of the good. Which is why it's actually very closely related to mercy. They say wood is the deep sense of liking the other person. And it is expressed through merciful conduct. That's one understanding of how the two terms relate. So wood is a deep affection, deep concern for the other. And its expression is mercy. Its expression in one's attitude, in one's actions, in one's responses, that is mercy. So that's the relationship between the two. There's other ways that explain, because the two terms are so rich. But in that sense, that deep love could have a very emotive aspect. Some people are very expressive and very emotional in their love. In some cases, it could be a very practical love. That you think, well, he's my life partner. He takes care of me. Or it could be a very spiritual love. In the sense that you love them for the sake of Allah. Or ideally it should have all three components. Love, they say, has probably three impulses from which it arises. There's an emotional impulse of love. There's a rational impulse of love. And there is a spiritual impulse of love. And ideally the three should be, for love to be whole, it should have all three aspects. They say, if you have a very strong emotional love for someone, it should be restrained by reason. So that it's not expressed in wrong ways. Zubaid falls in love with Zubaida. So regardless of what happened in Romeo and Juliet, you shouldn't climb into her balcony. It's a reason. It's probably dangerous to do it as well, because you've never climbed a balcony before. You could fall and hurt yourself. And Uncle Jamil will shame you in the community and you'll never get to marry her. You temper your emotions with reason. And you look at the spiritual dimension. How do I express that love in a manner that will be pleasing to Allah SWT? But if you have a spiritual love for someone, you love them because they're a person of Deen and Akhlaq etc. But that alone does not help the human relationship on its own unless you nurture the emotional dimension of it. How? By using reason of how you can nurture that relationship. So the three are meant to work together for a meaningful love. And then the expression, the way you express that love, that's mercy. That you're patient with the other person. You express it with gentleness. You're not negative with them. All the aspects. And we look at the two terms tomorrow in some more depth. That's sort of the relationship. So love, the mawadah, is a deep commitment to care for the other person. Its expressions are merciful. One of the sessions tomorrow we're going to look at 11 most common sources of problems in marriage. And I may be wrong, but sort of trying to look at it legally. Fouqaha tries to look for common causes. That's sort of how Fouqh works. You try to look for the underlying causes. And one of the apparent underlying causes for a lot of marital issues is people lose a sense of purpose in their marriage. Then why are we married together? And very often when marriage starts, the marriage itself starts going negative, people can't answer that question anymore. Why did I marry him? Or they have some weird idea that if you think about it rationally, it makes no sense. I married her because she had this amazing smile. That's nice. That was an emotional impulse. But that emotion is not very... The day-to-day of marriage. Are we going to have breakfast together before we head out to work? Who's picking up the kids? This is the battleground of marriage. Or the opportunity of marriage. The day-to-day, what are we going to do about food? What are we going to do about this? All the decisions and challenges in marriage? The fact that he used to give such inspiring announcements after Jama'a. Alhamdulillah. But that has nothing to do with the health of the marriage. So sometimes it becomes a symptom of starting off questionably. My sister is a pretty opinionated person. One day she was really upset. She said some younger sisters were talking to her about marriage and one sister wanted to marry a particular brother. My sister asked why. She said because he has two eyebrows. She's from a culture where being uni-browed is apparently quite common in their men. But by the time you're 30, that's why you end up marrying the guy. You're going to have a sense of crisis or just you forgot. You already had some very idealized notion of what marriage would be. And now you don't know what's going to happen. Either collectively or individually, people lose a sense of what are you trying to do. For a while you're very excited and going from lecture to lecture and like yay Islam. But then things seem to, you're drying out. So you don't have a sense of purpose, right? So that's, you know, one is a collective purpose but also the individual purpose. Someone doesn't really know that all said and done, what am I trying to do in life? Or they may have a partial sense, like some sister is very career oriented, let's say. But it's a very partial, it's a very narrow way of looking at your life. Because you are also married. Like actually I'm dealing with this issue. I got a missed call doing this. Two people I know well and they're about to get married and the sister decided to accept this job where she'll be traveling six days a week. I said, you either accept it or you don't. My friend saying, like, if you're traveling six days a week, the seventh day you're basically going to be like crashing because six days of travel is a big deal. She's like, what's the point of marrying? And she said, this is my dream job. I want to keep it for at least a few years. And sad thing is the sister, I know, I've known her for years, she's not going to be happy in that relationship if she proceeds in this approach. So very often people lose sight of what their bigger purpose is. So that's one of the aspects. Very often sisters go through, and it's not in their 40s, in their early 30s or after having children, they go through a huge crisis because they had certain life expectations, whether worldly, like in terms of career, or religious, which now they have children, everything seems to have less fallen out of whack. So what do I do? Or now they've raised their children a couple of years, and again, to pick on my sister. After her third child was a few years old, my sister was starting to get rather edgy. Why? Because she went to university, and academically, she was very gifted, very intellectual, very thoughtful kind of person. She's like, I'm just managing kids all day, like I'm going crazy. So actually my brother-in-law said, for the sake of your sister's sanity, do you think it's a good idea for her to start working? I was like, please, I was actually going to talk to my brother-in-law about it. So she teaches French at a really good Islamic school. It's actually the top-rated school of all schools, like private, public, for the region. So she's working, and she has a much more sense of purpose. So sometimes it's an issue of everyone has their life expectations, their religious expectations, etc. When someone loses a sense of what their goal was, and that goal in the context of the marriage, it starts creating a lot of tension. And it's terrible to be just drifting in marriage. Because Allah SWT gives us a very practical paradigm. He says, عاشرهن بالمعروف أو فارقهن بالمعروف Live with them with معروف, with that which is good, or part in a way that is good. But one of the things the ulema say that's implicit in that, is live, like have a purposeful marriage. If the marriage, if the purpose of the marriage isn't clear, restore that purpose, restore the good in the marriage. If the two of you realize that that good can't be restored, then parting would be an option. But sort of saying, well, let's see how things work out. That's not in the long-term a good way of dealing with the issues in the marriage. Because they just get things that worse and worse very often. So that's part of it. You know, one has to restore a personal sense of purpose, but also a sense of purpose. What are we trying to do as a couple in the marriage? Any other questions? It's not really, there's a distinction made in the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ between being firm and being harsh. There's times to be firm, right? But there's no time to be harsh. There's no dispensation in the Sunnah or the Prophet ﷺ for harshness. And there's a clear distinction between being firm, right? Which is that there's a limit and it is to be observed. And there's principles of how you uphold that, right? Part of, you know, merciful firmness is that that limit needs to be clear to the child. Like if you're going to set a limit, you make the limit clear. You remind the child of that limit. You give them a sense of understanding of why the limit is there, right? Because ultimately you want to instill in the child, you know, what's your role as a parent? Your role as a parent is not to be the family police officer. That your role in the parent is to instill adab, right? The process of raising a child is called Tehdeeb, the instilling of adab. And what is adab? It is the capacity and concern to act and respond in the right way. So when you are correcting the child, when you are disciplining the child, you are not punishing the child. That's not the Sunnah understanding of disciplining the child. Discipline is not punishment, right? It is not simply correcting the child. So sometimes people, some parents behave like police officers. They are giving fines. Others behave like judges. Wrong. This is my judgment, right? Others behave like their lawyers, right? They get into disputes with the children, right? Others are like, you know, and some of them are like corrupt lawyers, right? They'll take bribes from the children, right? But that's not your role, right? You're supposed to be a shepherd, right? As the Prophet said, what are you trying to do? You're trying to instill in whatever way, and there's many ways, the Sahaba raise their children in different ways, right? Because people are different. Whichever way you deal with the child, you are trying to instill adab. Well, what is adab? Adab is not just do this and don't do this. You're trying to give them the capacity and give them the concern for them themselves to be able to respond to that situation or similar situations in the future in the right way, right? It's a precise definition of adab. Adab is the deeb, you know, the disciplining. Islam, you know, which is the instilling of adab, is you're trying to instill in the child the capacity and concern to have the right... to have the right attitude and conduct and action and response, right? So when they're going to do something, like how do they view situations? How do they act? And also how do they react in the situations they're put in? So that if you weren't there and the same thing happened again, they would have the right response, right? That's the purpose. So whatever strategy of discipline that you take and there's many possible, there means. But this is what you're striving to do as a result of it. And that's how you judge. Is my strategy of disciplining my child successful? Is that are you instilling that concern in the child? Because it's not a question of if you say, if you don't pray, I'm going to do this. What's going to happen if you're not there? They're visiting their grandparents. No one's going to remind them to pray asad or will they do it? That's instilling adab. Whether you do it by being very, very gentle or by being firm, however you do it. But this is what has to get conveyed. And different people have different personalities, right? But in that, harshness has no place whatsoever. Harshness has no place. The Prophet s.a.w. never, ever hit a child, ever. He never hit a spouse. He never hit any of his wives. He never hit a servant. He never hit a child. The Prophet s.a.w. has never, ever even hit an animal. Even when he rode an animal, he wouldn't strike the animal. Rather, he would nudge the animal, s.a.w. And Imam Abu Hanifa took a legal ruling from that. That even if you're riding, let's say in those days, like if you're riding a donkey or a mule or a horse, even if you hit it within the limits of the way you normally hit an animal to ride it, if I'm riding Sidi Masood's donkey, and I hit the animal at a normal, in a normal way, and it dies, I have to compensate him for the donkey. Even though that's not going beyond normal use, but the basis is that you don't have a right to hit the animal. So even when it's excused within certain limits, people have to ride the animal, s.a.w. But that's Khilaf al-Asal. That's going against the basis of how you deal with an animal, let alone a human being, a spouse, let alone a child so vulnerable, s.a.w. So that's one of the areas where there's a lot of misunderstanding of the Sunnah of the Prophet s.a.w. Any other questions? Firstly, there's two separate things. There's hitting and then there's abuse. And even the law makes a different distinction between that. Not every case of physical altercation between a couple is criminally... Not every situation has criminal consequences. So that's just to make a distinction. So the Qur'an does not... There's nothing in the Qur'an in any way justifying abuse that's going against everything we know of the Qur'an and the Sunnah, both in text and spirit and purpose. That's very clear. There's absolutely no place for any kind of abuse. That's very, very clear. Now, then we also have to distinguish then between two types of rulings. Certain rulings lay out... They're simply demarcating limits. And there's other rulings that lay out what is right conduct. What's right conduct? What are you supposed to do? And the other is that if you did this, if it's less than this, you're not criminally culpable. It may be excused, but that does not mean that it's right conduct. That's just laying down a limit that you cannot possibly go past this limit. And the other which is what are you supposed to do? We have to distinguish between the two. So one aspect is there's no place in Islam for any kind of abuse, any kind of violence, anything like that. Then what about just the act of hitting? Many of the leading scholars amongst them, for example, the great Tunisian Imam, Imam Tahrir ibn Ashur in his Tafsir of the fourth surah, verse 34, he mentions that there are certain things that are permitted within an exception and if certain conditions are fulfilled. But then if those conditions aren't fulfilled, what would be the contingent ruling? So in the case of hitting, in the general case, let's say Zubayah and Zubayah got into a fight. So Zubayah was waving the thing, so Zubayah grabbed her and he hit her. Is that going to solve the problem between them? Are there, like in the general case, does hitting solve marital problems? No. Does it restore the good in the relationship? No. Is it if you had a hundred cases, in how many cases does that take place? A striking in which there is no harm and the harm there is both physical harm and other types of harm. That does not leave harmful effects. Is that like, and if you're in that field, if there's a hundred cases, is it a common phenomenon that that would happen, that would not be of detriment? Of course, in the overwhelming case, it would be harmful. And we know that if something, they say, anything whose harm predominates over its good what's its ruling? It's not permissible. They say that's, you know, the intellect would discern that even before revelation. There's something that's overwhelmingly harmful. You're not supposed to do it. Simple as that, right? So the fact that, you know, the Quran gives a limit that in the case of dispute, and there's not just any kind of dispute, right? This is a, you know, it's a separate issue of nushus. It's not that you had a disagreement of nushus, of open violation of, you know, for on the part of the wife. Then all that you have a recourse to is, you know, in principle is a hitting that leaves no harm physical or other. That's all. So it's like saying that if you were even thinking about it, this is all that you could potentially have if it would be restorative. It would, because the context of the verse is of restoring the good in the relationship. But that's not generally the case. That's not, so what would the fatwa be? The fatwa without any doubt whatsoever, right? Is that even a non-harmful hitting would be impermissible. Because the general case on which fatwa is based is that that's not how things work out. So it's not just, so we've distinguished between abuse on the one side, violence, abuse, and hitting, but even the mere act of hitting within those limits would not be permitted because most people do not observe those limits. And even if those limits were observed, it would be in most cases, certainly in our social context, even within those limits, you know, someone went and said to her, don't do that. And she's like, and it's a case of nushus. They say, oh, okay, I won't. That's not how things are. So there's many, many, so that's the thing. So there's absolutely no permission even of that because in some social, some cultural context, something like that would restore the relationship. Someone would say, okay, now I'm going to stop. But that's not the general case. That's not the general case. And it's something that is abused. And that's a principle that has many other applications, right? That there's a ruling in itself, right? But when applying the ruling, one has to look at the context in which it's applied. And to give an example that's also related to marriage, what is the Quranic ruling regarding a man marrying more than one woman? Okay, but is it permissible or impermissible? It's permissible, right? Now, what is, and I say this without hesitation, right? If you want to have a legal discussion on it, inshallah maybe during the Q&A tomorrow or something, without hesitation, right? The general ruling of marrying more than one wife, what is it? Not just in the West, but in most Muslim countries, what's the general ruling of marrying more than one wife? It is absolutely haram. Yeah, absolutely haram. It is in, because there's two separate things. The ruling in itself, you'd be denying the Quran by saying that a second marriage is impermissible, right? So the ruling is, what's the ruling of marriage, of multiple marriage? We say it's permissible and impermissible. It's permissible in itself, but in the general case, it would be impermissible. And not just in the West, this is the case, the leading scholar of the Indian subcontinent said this in the early 20th century, why? If people who know about whether the Arab world, and I've lived almost half my life in the Arab world, 17 years or something like that, in most societies, someone marries a second wife, right? So Zubey and Zubey, things aren't work out, Zubey says, you know what? My cousin Lubna always wanted to marry me. Let me marry her instead. What's the general case? Is that second marriage going to likely succeed? Is the first marriage going to succeed? If there's children involved, is it going to be good? No, it's going to cause one. And then families, there's secondary repercussions. In some cases, communities disown people. It becomes like, you know, to use the Indian term, Hangama, like one big chaos, right? And again, the same thing. There are exceptional cases. There are exceptional cases. And there's a community I went to in California where everyone seemed to have married, everyone else in the community. It was really confusing, like a small community. I can't give too many more details because some of you may know the community. It's not in the Bay Area. But it was really confusing because people say, you know, I had one child from so-and-so and her that really is like very stressful weekend because I had to like reshape a lot of my paradigms, right? Because I was teaching about marriage. And of course, a lot of it, they only married multiple times because their experiments in religiosocial engineering were failing quite miserably. But so that's, again, the ruling in itself is that it's permissible. But when you apply the ruling, you have to look at the context, right? And the context may make something impermissible, right? And that's the case unhesitatingly with second law. There's so many harms in it, along with the fact that it's illegal according to law and we're duty bound to obey the laws of the land as long as they don't call us to something un-Islamic. But even without that, right, if you just look at the principle of benefit and harm, right? And a third example related to family is about a man marrying without his parents' permission. Does a man need his parents' permission for marriage in Islam? Legally, no. Legally, there is no basis to say that a man needs any kind of approval from his father for the marriage to be valid. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know Islamic law. So the Fouqaha will tell you in the fiqh books that a man does not require any permission of a guardian or parent for the marriage to be valid. They'll even say it is permissible for a man to marry without his parents' permission. What is the ruling of a man? So that's the ruling in itself. What's the ruling now of a man actually going out and marrying without his parents' permission? In the general case, there may be exceptions. I just dealt with the case yesterday. The father has Alzheimer's or something, so he can't give permission. And the mother, in the real case, is in a state of clinical depression, and she's been refusing for years to let this person marry anyone. So what does he do? He tries to get approval of the rest of the family, whoever is close. But in the general case, what would be the ruling of Zubayr going and marrying Zubayda without his father's permission? They applied the ruling. No, no, religiously. It would be haram. It would be a major sin. Why? Because by marrying without... And we're not talking about sisters marrying without parents' permission. And we're talking about the general case. In some cases where parents will not agree to any human being for their son or daughter. And you can't marry angels, and angels probably don't want to marry you, and you can't marry Jinn, so who else are you going to marry? And sometimes it gets really freaky. And those are exceptional cases, and those are dealt with exceptionally. But in the general case, it would be a major sin. Why? Because when you apply a ruling, you take into account secondary considerations. What's the immediate consideration if you marry without your children, without your parents' permission? For a man. And same would apply for a woman. What's the greatest detriment of doing so? Displeasing your parents. What's the ruling of displeasing your parents? It's the gravest of sins. The Prophet Salaam was asked about the Mubiqat. The worst of enormities. He says, associating partners with Allah and being bad to your parents. And for those of you who have children, can you imagine anything more hurtful your child could do than to not try to get any permission from you and go off and marry? Who has children here? Can you imagine anything more hurtful than your child say, Oh, Dad, this is my wife, Zubeda. I mean, I think about it. It's pretty devastating. My two sons talked to each other. They came up, Abuji was never going to do that. I was like, thank you. Not that I thought they would. I said it would break my heart. They came up and said, Abuji, we talked about it. We were not going to do that. I was like, thank you. But this is very important. This is why sometimes the people who make the worst decisions in life and deen are people who learn a little Islam. The Arabs say, A little knowledge is far worse than much ignorance. Because most people in our community, whatever background they're from, even in the broader society, most people wouldn't marry without telling their parents. If they have a healthy marriage with many non-Muslim friends, they would all have one of my friends from high school, and we've still been in touch. He's half Spanish, half Polish, half English. Because it's complicated. Because one parent is half English, half Spanish. The other parent is half Spanish, half Polish. So he's like three halves. He wanted to marry. I think he lives in the Greater Bay Area. He wanted to marry an Ecuadorian woman. Now, Spaniards are quite not racist, but they have a sort of looking down attitude towards Latin Americans. Because they say we speak proper Spanish. They speak like these funny Latino accents. They don't know proper Spanish. It's sort of like how Urdu speakers have attitude towards Punjabis. That they're only half cultured. It's like my mother, who's temperamentally Punjabi, one day she was talking on and on. Although ethnically, she's from UP as well, like my dad. She goes, Punjabi culture, Punjabi culture. Finally my dad got to say, what is this Punjabi culture? Punjabi culture. The only culture they have in Punjabi is agriculture. And my dad was just joking. But there's that kind of attitude. But most people who have a basic sense of filial piety, what do they do? My friend took the means. He didn't just go off and marry her. He took his would-be fiance to meet his parents, and they met, etc. And it allayed most of their concerns, etc. And that's an even broader side. That's what good people would do. But sometimes people get religious, and they start going off and doing wacky things. They'll go get married secretly because you can do it. And they find some imam who conduct the wedding, and they're secretly living together as well. And what happens? And those kind of things you don't. But the point that these three cases that we mentioned about hitting, similarly about second marriage, the same thing about marrying without parents permission, all of them, there's a big difference between what a ruling is in itself in our deen, in our deen, and how it is to be applied. Because the ruling in itself, it just looks at the ruling in the abstract. That in itself this is the ruling. But when you're going to apply a ruling, you have to know how does it now interact with the relevant and related considerations. So something could be permissible and haram at the same time. Which is more common. Sometimes something could be haram, yet in a particular context it could be permitted for you. Sometimes it's haram. Sometimes it's haram to leave the haram. So for example someone is supporting his family. And the job that they have is not a permissible job. But if they leave it immediately, this will have many ripple effects. His wife is given a final warning. If you lose your job again, you're going to lose me. Because she's fed up, because he's irresponsible. And she's going to seek custody of the children. And he's got a halal financing, but it's from a very strict and stingy Islamic financing. So it's going to foreclose on there. He's going to lose his house if he can't pay. And so all these things are going to happen. So now that job is haram. There will be haram for him to leave it immediately. Because of the greater harm by doing so. So the ruling that this line of employment is haram does not necessarily entail that you act upon it by leaving it. Acting upon it needs to look at secondary consideration. What doesn't mean that you say, okay well I can't leave this employment. There's a balanced way. What's the balanced way? That you're obligated to seek other employment. Dilligently. And until you find other employment, you may be able to remain in it. So that's something to appreciate. A lot of times people make these errors in their actions. So we're going to finish with final, final question, if anyone has. Yes. I think 10 years and older to handle the peer pressure. How do you... I mean that's very complicated, right? So how do you enable children to give them the strength to deal with peer pressure? It has to come from within. And that's why the formative years are so important. You have to instill in them number one. You have to instill them intrinsic motivation. And that's particularly important in our context because you don't have the broader environment taking care of them necessarily. So you have to instill that intrinsic motivation. The other thing is we set very low standards for our children. When parents who are achievement oriented, they say okay I want my child to go to an Ivy League school, I want them to achieve this and that. What do you want for them in their deen? What are most people's goals when it comes to the deen of their children? I want them to be just good Muslims. That's a bid'ah. There's no dua whatsoever that Allah grant me, children who are good Muslims. You want righteous children. You ask Allah for righteous children. You ask Allah. And make us imams of the people of Taqwa. To do that we have to have spiritual strength ourselves but our children should be inclined towards worship. Children should be, not just praying the far, when will they learn that? Children, it's easy for children to take on things. It's easier to get an eight year old child to pray their sunnah, then to get a 28 year old child to pray their sunnah. It's easier for children to tell them do it, they'll do it. And it'll become a habit. Usually the fault is what? The parent can't tell the child to do it because they're not doing it themselves. They say, the person bereft of something can't give it. If you're trying to, like in being a lifeguard, to save someone, you have to be secure yourself first. Because if you're sinking, you can't rescue another person who's sinking. So if we're concerned as parents, we need to take care of number one of ourselves, to strengthen ourselves religiously. And then to instill in that, in them, like I know, Alhamdulillah, there's many and many people succeed in that. When I was moving back to North America, I was consulting one of my teachers and he asked, what are your concerns going back? And one of my concerns was children. That's what parents worry about. So this Sheikh, Alhamdulillah, he smiled. And he said, you know, I've dealt with many Westerners. He said, the way I see it, the way I understand it, if your state with Allah SWT is good, and you raise your children in a good way, they're likely to come out good wherever you are in the world. And if your state with Allah is not right, and you don't raise your children in a way that's right, they're going to struggle wherever they are in the world. So that's the onus, but it's very possible. I know children, Alhamdulillah, who are like, since the age of seven, they pray Tahajjud every night, or pretty much every night. I was actually visiting one of my relatives, and a good family, masha'Allah. The son, it's like seven, eight, he was in time-out, on the stairs. So I'm sitting there because it's kind of funny, because I used to get punished all the time as a child. My temperamentally Punjabi mother, if I ever tell her, wasn't I a really good child? She starts using language that you can't mention in the message. So I look at the child, and he starts praying on the steps. So when he finished, I went up and said, what were you doing? I was praying Salat al-Hajjah, the prayer of need. I said, why? He said, because mommy was being unreasonable. And I have no one to turn to but Allah. And he was crying. So he was asking Allah to remove me from this oppression. But I shouldn't say anything about mom, because then he was just crying. And then he was going, ya Allah, ya Allah. And he was sitting there, like, head against the wall, he was saying, ya Allah. But that's beautiful, right? That's beautiful, right? But that's something, it has to come from within. And if it comes from within, they say that if you nurture a fire, if you have a weak fire, and you put it out in the storm, what's going to happen to it? It could extinguish it. But if you take proper care of the fire, and you build a fire, and you make it strong, and then you put it out, let's imagine, it's like movable fire, or you remove the shelter from it. You put it in the wind, the more the wind blows, the more it happens to the fire. The stronger it gets. The most vivid example of that I saw was Imam Zaid Shakir, right? Because a lot of us, when we were studying in Damascus, people would be scared of going back to the West, right? We'd be like, so much fitna, so much this, oh my goodness. You know, like, what's going to happen to me? Because you get into this, like, cocoon of hanging out with ulema and going to majalis of ilm and zikr and stuff. It's this idealized cocoon. And you go back to the West, fitna, and people get really scared. So many of us would have discussions on this, like, you know, really foolish discussions. A lot of time wasted. And then one day, once Imam Zaid was going for something, this, like, 97, 98, he was coming to North America for a couple of weeks, and then came back. He came back, and it really felt like it looked like, you know, if you have a fire, that's just going to blaze now. It's like, wow, he looked really like, you know, in this really strong state. He's like, wow, and then I'm just going, wow. And a good friend of mine, and this guy's like a real righteous guy, he says, doesn't it look like a fire that's just, like, going to blaze? Because that's what it is. Like, you know, you go in that situation, any test and stuff just makes you stronger. That's whom imana. And that's how we should raise our children, not be defensive, right? That, oh man, I want to just keep my children Muslim and protect them from society, et cetera. You know, we should instill strength in our children, strength of faith, strength of purpose, clarity, confidence, right? So that they should walk, you know, with clarity and confidence, right? Wherever they are, right? And there's many, many beautiful examples of that, right? It's not, you know, Allah swt has not made us responsible for aspiring to these virtues unless we could do it. And there's many, many people who do that, masha'Allah. So we're going to stop there. We ask you that you grant us in our spouses and in our offspring a joy for our eyes and that you make us and them of the foremost of the people of Taqwa, of those who are exemplars of virtue and mindfulness and all that is pleasing to you. Wa sallallahu ala imam al-Muttaqeen Sayyid al-Awwalina wa al-Akhirin Sayyidina wa Nabina Muhammad Dhu al-Khulq al-Azim wa al-Qadr al-Jaseem Wa al-Alihi wa Sahbihi Wa salam atasleeman kathira Wa akhiru da'wan an-alhamdulillahi Rabbi al-Alamin