 I was in a um I was walking with my son in target and we were you know I had a cart and he just told me mommy look at this he was showing me something so I turned around for like I don't know even a five seconds maybe and by that time a woman with her she was she had a stroller she walked past me and I almost hit her I didn't I didn't even come closer but I almost did and I was like oh I'm so sorry and she just looked at me so harshly and gave me that like like even just look up disgust and I was like oh my god it was like the most innocent thing and it was like five seconds but you could tell like she was just so angry so you have a lot of angry people out there and you know all the blah blah but the point being is you know we have these different aspects to our being and you know in our faith we don't believe that we believe that you know that the intellect has to be nurtured it has to be you know it can overcome right if you with knowledge with as they say knowledge is power right with knowledge with proper understanding you can overcome both your appetitives and your irascible soul and and have proper you know in conduct I mean you can have people who are civilized and actually conducting themselves the proper way but that needs to be nurtured and so we don't have this idea of original sin but we do have the responsibility is on parents of children to be able to give them this these tools right so that they can overcome their nefs otherwise what you have you have you know if you if you don't teach a child to restrain themselves you don't teach a child to not give in to every impulse or every desire they become very dangerous as adults right and this is again the world that we live in you have a lot of unfortunately people who did not have parenting they did not have taterbia they did not have a parent or anyone really present to be able to teach them how to practice restraint how not to say whatever's on your mind you know there's a lot of this um you know these notions in our society to just speak freely say whatever you want do whatever you want you know give it to every desire every whim and this is now normal that's the normal message if you if you practice abstinence for example I mean I work with youth all the time and I hear this all the time if you're abstinent from certain behaviors in this society you're considered the strange one right you're considered you know weird yeah prude prudish or there's square right there's something wrong with you and that's why peer pressure is real right it's a very real thing that's why a lot of teens are afraid to disclose and specifically teens of with a faith background there there's immense pressure not to talk about their faith openly because the backlash will be so severe you know you'll be ostracized you'll be made to feel like there's something wrong with you so this is because the predominant culture believes that you should just give in to whatever you want to do all the time whereas our faith is all about teaching restraint I mean Subhanallah so much of what we do is to inculcate restraint you know and so it's a very important quality to have so alhamdulillah then he goes on to say we're almost done with this he says on page 8 if you're if you're reading along this matter relates to the fact that the heart is a spiritual organ the unseen aspect of the heart contains a bad seed that has the potential of becoming like a cancer that can metastasize and overtake the heart the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis for example lives latent in the lungs of millions of people when its carriers age or succumb to another disease that weakens their immune system tuberculosis may start to emerge this analogy illustrates that there is a dormant element in the human heart that if nurtured and allowed to grow can damage the soul and eventually destroy it the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam stated if the son of Adam sins a black spot appears in the heart and if the person repents it is erased but if he does not it continues to grow until the whole heart becomes pitch black incidentally this notion of associating the color of black with sin is not racist in its origins this attribution has been long used even among black Africans who refer to a person who is wretched as black-hearted the Quran says about successful people on the day of judgment that their faces become white in chapter 3 verse 106 this does not mean white as a hue of skin rather it refers to light and brightness which are spiritual descriptions not associated with actual color a black person can have spiritual light in his face and a white person can have darkness and vice versa depending on one's spiritual and moral condition imam al-qasadi considers ailments of the heart to be part of the adamic potential he believes one is obliged to know this about human nature in order to be protected other scholars simply consider these ailments to be predominant in men that is most people have these qualities but not necessarily everybody it is interesting that imam al-Qud says it is impossible to rid oneself of these diseases completely this implies that purification is a lifelong process not something that is applied once and forgotten purity of heart never survives a passive relationship one must always guard his or her heart there is a well-known hadith which states that every child is born in the state of fitrah many Muslims translate this into English as every child is born a Muslim however the hadith says fitrah which means that people are born inclined to faith with an intuitive awareness of divine purpose and a nature built to receive the prophetic message what remains then is to nurture one's fitrah and cultivate this inclination to faith and purity of heart so that is the section on introduction to purification that we just finished down are there any questions yes that's a very good question so just for those who are watching the sister was asking about how in the modern context we're often you know focusing a lot on the mind and thinking and the intellect as a mental process but then in our tradition we always focus on the spiritual heart right the so how is there a connection so if you look at the beginning of the book i don't remember the exact page but in the translator's introduction there's a whole discussion on this it's really fascinating where she comes actually talks about the connection that there are in fact neurons right in the heart right so that there is a communication between the mind and the heart right and so it kind of he's bringing in all of these more modern ideas together to show the relevancy that in fact the heart and the mind are communicating and there is a deep connection there so i would definitely say read that yeah of course yeah if you read it he does obviously a much better job explaining it but i can read one section here he says here the dominant theory states that the central nervous system is what controls the entire human being with the brain as its center yet we also know that the nervous system does not initiate the beat of the heart but the but that it is actually self-initiated or as we would say initiated by god we also know that the heart should all of its connections to the brain be severed as they are during during heart transplant continues to beat and then he has much more commentary on on the fact that we do have only recently have we discovered that there are over 40 000 neurons in the heart so it's a very lengthy mommy much more lengthier discussion but i would say read that and it'll it's very insightful subhanAllah yeah but an excellent question just like you're looking at subhanAllah but i've always thought about that too like because we hear so much about you know the heart and so how is there so i found that really enlightening mashallah yes yes cleansing right excellent question mashallah so i again these are all questions i've even had in the past as well subhanAllah but you know this idea that yes we in our tradition we don't have there isn't an emphasis on trying to seek out you know another human being to confess our sins to but there is absolutely value in having a guide or a teacher because like you said we can be blind to our own faults to our own blemishes right and so that's why in our you know traditional aslam there is always a focus on having a guide a spiritual guide a spiritual master someone that you can turn to for that type of heart work to help you to do that heart work um and if you look at you know syed Ahmad Zarruq who um who talks about you know the in his in foundations of the spiritual path and if you look at you know the agenda to change our condition or she comes in imam zade also are talking about how to transform oneself there there is always the emphasis that if you can find a spiritual master look for one yes but if you can't then what do you do right what do you do then and so people have to really uh if they are able to seek out a teacher to have that relationship with that would be ideal because yes someone who's already on the path who's been down this road before can certainly help facilitate you know it for for you but also to be able to you know see certain things that you don't see like the hadith you know al-mu'min al-marat al-mu'min right the believer is a mirror for the believers so to have someone who's got the knowledge and has the ability to see in you certain qualities or just to help you along is really important but it's not always easy to find that person right and i think that's the challenge that a lot of people have today because we don't have as much as many scholars or teachers as accessible as previous people you know where just a few centuries ago you could find masajid and and teachers and guides everywhere but nowadays they're very hard to come by so then the question has been posed well what do you do so our scholars say that the in the absence of a spiritual guide to do that for you the salawat would be a spiritual guide like that to have the practice of doing at least some say 300 to 500 salawat every day would be as i guess you know would would be in emplacement of a scholar for you in that it will start to you will start to cleanse within right as opposed to having someone necessarily point things out to you the purification process will happen by way of the salawat so that's kind of you know the i think for for most people today who don't have access that would be the recommendation is that you just start getting in the habit of doing that salawat that cleansing process you know seeking Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala through that exercise and then the effect of that would be you're polishing that's that heart you're polishing it from the disease and inshallah you'll come out purified but if you can of course it would be best to seek someone who's on the path and ask you know if they would help you along or in even group settings like this i mean i think that's like i said why i've always felt that this was so important because one-on-one it might be difficult but when you come in spaces right where we all have a common goal and we're all like helping and i mean i've been in so many of these hadakas where you can see and people will come to me afterwards and it's like there's you know these light bulb moments that happen right these moments of like real realization these openings these what we would call you know fattah like there's spiritual openings that happen even in larger gatherings because when you read something someone says something someone shares something and then subhanallah you know you feel this transfer this inner transformation happening so there are different ways to get there i guess but ideally yes another person would be would be ideal i remember in the very beginning of our studies 20 something years ago some of the sisters and i we we were doing this work together i mean i'm really aging myself but it was a long time ago and you know over 20 years ago right and we decided i remember a group of us that we were going to come together just for the sole purpose of telling each other what we thought our diseases were and i was like man we were really bold for for opening up that conversation with each other i mean it definitely bonded us because it's not easy to hear right so what do you think my diseases are we would that was the prompt so what do you think my problem so what do you think my diseases of the heart are and then you have someone else like well and you know that's not gonna go well the nurse is really it hurts it hurts to hear that right but it was like insightful i remember a very good friend of mine she told me something that to this day i will not forget it she said your problem is is you think you can control things and it was insightful because you know i never thought of myself as a controlling person but i think what she was trying to help me see is that you need to let go you know don't think that you can control outcomes because like when you're a if you have like a fixer mindset you know like i'm a fixer mindset so i'm thinking always like oh if you do this this should happen right so you kind of get in this very logical you know mindset where you think you you have the answers to things but she pointed that out to me and it was very done very delicately but it was it was always something that i reflected on like that's i didn't think that about myself i didn't know that but she was watching and you know kind of picking up on certain things and it benefited me because i realized she's right i no matter what you do you cannot control outcomes you know we could all conspire together and have the best plan but if Allah swt doesn't want it there's no way it's gonna happen you know and that's a i think a really good spiritual lesson to learn so that's the benefit of having good company and good Sahaba teachers if you can have them is that they will um because there's direct nasiha you know there's direct like what what we did but there's also indirect you know knowledge of being transmitted indirect nasiha being transmitted um you know that that you'll pick up on just really subtle things like because people have adab most of i mean much like i've been very blessed to be with really amazing sisters and and also some of our male teachers and brothers and i've always found one of the consistent things is the best teachers that i found don't come right out and directly correct you they won't like make you feel the embarrassment of what you're doing right but they will indirectly very like nudge you in the right direction in a very gentle way and then later you'll be like oh i know what they're doing i see what they led to do you know yes that's a very good question and i think all mothers we can relate to that we all have had those conversations within ourselves i think you know um in my experience i found that when we focus on the behavior that we want to have right which is like to be really to not do certain things we might be overlooking the source of why we do it in the first place and to me that's more of the focus right why do you have a meltdown in the first place why do you lose your cool in the first place because if you can get to the root issue right and source that and then resolve that i feel like then you don't have to worry about the the rest will kind of follow through but what we intend to do is just because we feel so guilty it's a very guilt-driven impulse right be like i'm never going to yell at my children because we feel bad but if you for example and i've mentioned this before but i think it's worth mentioning like i because i had to do this for myself i when i'm my kids were small i was like and i told my husband i'm like there are times where i feel like i'm losing control of myself and i don't like that feeling because i tried to be very controlled like with my emotions with my words i try to be controlled so i said when i feel that wave of like you know frustration building up it's like welling up within me you know i need you to support me and know right to how to support me so for example and i'm totally you know put an all out there now but like in my family my husband has always done the nighttime routine for my the kids right ever since they were young he just thought was his thing he wants to do their duos put them to bed i'm like that's fine good i've been with them all day please take them but there was a point where he kind of got a little loosey goosey you know what i mean or like it was way past their bedtime way late and then you know how it goes man of two boys it's not a very busy like loud household but they're still rambunctious at times so around 10 or 9 30 when it's my time because i always tell him nights are mine i need my quiet time i need peace i need to have certain things i want to get done i don't want to hear noise i don't want to hear running around i don't want to hear fighting in the bathroom i don't hear none of it you know so i told him i said if i find that my nights are being encroached on or like you know you're taking my time i'm gonna start you know i feel and so i said if you hear me one time say because i'll call his name hider like why are the boys still awake why are they still up like that's your cue to know what to do then please take care of it like nip it in the bud because next time it's not going to be pretty you know so i had to kind of give him all these guides to pay attention to my cues you know and once like even with my boys when i started letting them know pay attention to my tone pay attention to how i'm speaking because i don't yell i really try not to yell at my house but i have we all you know i think lose it and i hate when i yell because then i get frustrated and i say i don't it's like a rule i have for myself that i broke but i didn't break it because i wanted to i broke it because no one's listening to me so once i kind of communicated my needs and i feel like i really sourced the issue which is you know the nights need to be controlled better and i need to have more like more you know things just handled better i feel like it got better right from that point forward but if you don't speak up to the source i feel like then you're just gonna keep you know each each time it's gonna you know keep losing it and then you you're the one that sits with that guilt and you keep beating yourself up and it's just this vicious cycle so maybe for all of us if this applies to try to figure out what is your trigger is it the noise level that bothers you are they disobeying a direct request okay and then that's the next question why you know because i feel like if you can get to why are they disobeying even that like what is it what agreement can we come up with um and even for my kids for those who are parents i think it's really important to teach your kids the art of negotiation like i i went with i taught my kids i said we need to you need to learn to negotiate which means if i have a request and you have a problem with that request and you have to convince me you know but i want this to be a mutually beneficial exchange not just like giving a command and that's it because i feel like kids will respect your wishes much more if you empower them to negotiate terms right and if you can do that and teach them to do that i feel like you won't have the struggle of why aren't you listening to me as much i don't know that's just my philosophy but i hope that answers or helps yeah it's it's difficult but don't beat yourself up and also pay attention to your cycle because we're it's real our cycles absolutely impact us i feel like we have to do a much better job as women to advocate for ourselves if that's if your hormones are are part of it like if you know yourself that you get much more irritable and agitated around that time advocate for yourself like my kids know i have i have a run a household of boys so they know it is my time or it's about to be my time better stay away you know i would give them warnings and i think they appreciate it because they know yeah yes that's an excellent point and i do think it's really important to mention like the different stages because your son is how old though yeah see so when they're younger it's like a different type of right mom guilt that we have and then when they get into the teenagers it's like it evolves into something very different but it's a really great perspective because i think for parents of younger kids that ability to be self-accountable to realize like i'm the adults right they're younger i need to model good behavior is really good like you said for the purification process and then as they grow older it is i think kind of doing that just sourcing how we can communicate better right because i feel like you know that you're now dealing with many adults they they learn to talk back more and you don't see it's it's just a different set of variables but i think but in both cases i always try to tell them be gentle with yourself because i don't think unless you know a woman really has some anger management issues and real problems i think most moms we really try our best to give love and to be the best versions of ourselves but we lose it because something else isn't being supported or what we don't we we don't feel supported in in some other part and maybe trying to figure that out smelling on the street this is kind of what the future of the heart is these are the i don't know signs and the symptoms right and you know the next few months are going to have conversations about this and hold on it's i find it very helpful because when i choose my temper and i can have that conversation later i apologize i should have done the easy and you know whatever you can have it open and you can because i was a teenager pretty recently no it's very helpful and it's excellent excellent advice i think really really relevant to bring your family members into whatever you're working on because language is effective right so if you have a shared language around these topics which is what you're speaking about and also even temperaments like understanding your temperament and understanding your children's temperaments is really helpful because what it does is it validates right everybody like we're all on equal playing field right and that's why i love this topic for children too because it humanizes them it humanizes us and like you said as an adult i can tell them yeah i've got this disease and mom is working on this and i need your duos and i need your support and please make it easy for me and we can kind of all do it like you said together and so it's very excellent as you had a good reminder for all of us that whenever when we're dealing with our family whether it's spouses parents children to not um individualize some of these things like there's certain things like prayer doa but i think when it has to do with real you know like a process like this where you're trying to become a better version of yourself and really trying to you know embrace a new like all these virtues and character qualities that you want you should want to be including you know your family in that process so it's a very very good reminder thank you yes well yeah i'm sorry i say yes yeah in a marital context because in a or with because in a marital context i've found i really think we have to i mean i know the language now is so bizarre around gender and and the differences between men and women and i don't i'm not going to go there but i feel like we've got to come back to reality and realize that there are differences between the way men and women process information and a lot of times men they don't retain some of these you know cues and guides that we give them because they're visual learners oftentimes and also we have like these emotional attachments we make to some of these conversations so we're very emotionally involved whereas with men it's information right so it's like if you're trying to give information you know or like relay something to your to a spouse then kind of understand it from his lens which is this is information and how do you best retain information especially if he's juggling a full-time job he's got all these other things going on sometimes visually so like a calendar maybe would be helpful right which is like these are the days where i need this time off or please or my you know my cycle is coming on this i'm just letting you know ahead of time because that is information right but if just thinking like oh i told you you should know um and then be in tune with me and be sensitive to me next month and the month after the month after it no no you're sending a poor man up to fail trust me i've done it it doesn't work but when you give them a like ahead of time or like like i said even there's apps now where you can share like okay just let you know this is the next week you know be forewarned and you know the drill and then you can even make a wish list of things that you request and just send it like a text message you know here's my wish list for this month you know and that way it's information and they can process information much better than the song and dance that i think a lot of women do which is like how could you forget and then we get all like emotional and then they're like what's what happened you were fine yesterday and now you know you're not talking to me i'm out and you know the cold so because we we put too much expectation on them to be in tune with us the way like a girlfriend would right like your friend or your sister because we're so emotionally connected we may empathize and because we have the same context we can feel right but men have a very different you know process so i think just understanding those differences will help i hope that you know but excellent questions and comments you guys mashallah yes that's a very good question so some i think women in general we are conditioned to deflect compliments and praise because many of our cultures and even families may have taught us that you're being arrogant you're being conceded if you take a compliment if you you know take ownership of something like who do you think you are and so we don't want that negative association so we just kind of but there is a healthy balance and the best way is to recognize that when someone is giving you a compliment to don't deflect it entirely but redirect it right to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala because whatever good you have is from Allah we weren't born with anything like virtue of our own right it's all from Allah so if a co-worker recognizes um some work of yours just like thank you very much but in your heart of hearts don't let it seep into the heart where now you think like oh i'm so amazing because my co-workers you know gave me some recognition but in your heart of hearts recognize that it's all by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that you have to have success that you have the family the upbringing the opportunity the means to be able to do whatever you've done the skill set the faculties it's all from Allah and to be able to just redirect that praise to him is a healthy way to still accept it so that you don't belittle yourself right you never want to belittle yourself and also in a professional context too that might harm your career right um and a lot of i mean there's an entire books written especially on women and how they don't advance because of this tendency so it doesn't in many ways harm us but if we can learn to accept it in the moment without making this big production like oh thank you so much i'm so wonderful but just like thank you graciously accepted but then in your heart of hearts thank you so much and that's that's a good way to stay balanced okay thank you so we are going to stop for a prayer and then we'll be back here for inshallah all right welcome everyone we are so honored and excited tonight to be able to host yet another shahada here at mcc i've lost count to be honest of how many we've had mashallah tabak Allah keep continuing to increase them and we have one or more than one every single day inshallah but we're very honored to have our dear brother our young uh congregant brother yesen here who i was just informed this is his second facilitating his second shahada this month so our young congregant yesen has mashallah is doing the hard work he's out there and he's doing this hard work and he's mashallah reaching the hearts he's brought his dear i think best friend or close friend romeo today and i'm gonna pass the mic on because apparently they have an incredible story that i'm really eager to hear so i'm gonna ask brother yesen to go ahead he's also going to facilitate the shahada which i love it's beautiful their friends this is going to be a memory for a lifetime that they will have inshallah so yesen please welcome us to or share with us your story Bismillah assalamu alaikum um so basically this story began yesterday uh last night i like around five o'clock me and i decided to call up romeo i want to go ask him about something right and then the conversation just eventually evolved into like life in general and how like today's society there's so many issues you know issues of mass community how men are not really men nowadays how um the world is just influenced by like corrupt people and then slowly over time i just i started to like i told romeo about islam and how it fixed every single one of these issues 1400 years ago these issues of like uh masculinity i told romeo about how right yeah how like islam Jesus had to be a true man yeah i like just blew my mind yeah yeah so i told romeo about all that right i told romeo about how you should stop playing video games stop yeah you know what i'm saying stop watching all these movies he's wasting of time right i told him how islam it makes you constantly improve every single day every single day you just want to be a better person every single day you want to get closer to jenna right so i just told him about that i told him how like in islam the whole like concept of it is like consistency you're always consistent you're consistent with your prayers you're consistent with your like you're thicker you know and consistency always like leads to success if you know what you're doing and i told romeo that he wants to seek the truth and romeo's he really did and i was like all right i want you to look at the quran and supon a lot i showed him a video and they explained about the mathematical you want to explain how you felt about that yeah yeah he told me to watch this like 13 minute video that basically explained this so i watched it and in a part of the video it mentioned how basically like everybody that's read the quran had gone on sorry about that um they shed tears and i was like that's that's wild so i um i listened to the first 15 verses of it and it was so crazy like i actually started shedding tears from it i was like wait i don't i was just mind blown i was like i'm still like really shocked right now my bad about that but it's it's wild yeah supon a lot i showed him the first 15 verses of surabhaka and it basically talks about how like this is the book for those who want guidance right and romeo said you know he wanted the truth he wanted to seek the truth unlike the majority of people today romeo like he honestly like wanted to seek guidance he did not want to reject it he did not want to like waste time you know and because of that supon a lot a lot made me the means of him to be guided he won't explain to you what happened like last week's school you know yeah yeah you want to go okay so basically okay so like what happened was well lie you know i just i felt really bad that i knew about islam i felt really bad about like my non-muslim friends how they don't understand it they don't get it and it like it will lie i broke my heart right so like i remember sometimes at night i prayed to headdred prayer right and i and i would always ask a lot to do it you know i'm just asking a lot you know guide my friends guide them to the truth guide them make them see the truth and then supon a lot you know romeo had this yeah like like out of nowhere like i just started thinking about like the truth more and um um i don't i don't even know how to explain it like it was just it was just weird like um i was just living my normal life and like one like the middle of the day randomly i was i just started thinking really deep and i was like i don't i don't i want to start like working i want to start like making my days more productive i don't want to just like kind of do nothing most of the time like i was starting to get tired of doing nothing you know yeah i was it's just like i was just like romeo i felt bored of life you know i've always felt like there was something even more out there more and more greater than me and then supon a lot you know like uh me and romeo i'll just connect and by the way we hadn't at that time like when school ended right like in like what may june 1st we hadn't speak i haven't spoke to romeo since like yesterday in like a month's time and then immediately me and him clicked right away right it was just out of nowhere yeah out of nowhere we had like a deep discussion for like three hours right just talking back and forth like i can't remember everything but like it was just so mind-blowing man like you know supon a lot like yeah it was um that conversation it was also really nice to connect with him for all the things we're talking about because there's only like one other person that i'm actually friends with that i'm actually able to speak about um you know like society and like just a lot of deep things and um it was it was just like a really nice conversation my really nice mind-blowing conversation yeah you know because like again majority of our age group you know they're just like they don't they're not men you know they're not true men you know they don't think they don't want to use their brains they're just they just want to play on their playstation all day they don't care about knowledge and supon a lot of you just like let them go outside you can see like the beautiful world instead of that you know they'd rather like stay home waste their time on like Netflix movies nothing that benefits them and when i realized this like it really like it just killed my it killed my hopes for like you know i just i hated it i was wasting time it was just it was killing me and i hated it so much and i wanted to see truth i want to see knowledge and then like we'll lie and like after that i just started learning more and more about islam i started learning about the masculinity and manhood over civil law civil law based on them and how he's like the perfect role model right yeah i was telling him about him and supon a lot you know yeah you want to explain how the miracle to quran how muhammad could not read or write you know salt or something oh so remember i was talking on the dinner table how like i would start to wear that muhammad started something he could not read or write but he came out with something like the quran yeah when he was when um when he was telling me this yesterday about that i i'm like still kind of speechless on it but yeah that that was literally my reaction i was just i was just speechless like i didn't know what to say like at all i was just speechless like i still am a little speechless right now like kind of like my back for that but um it was just yeah like i said it was really nice conversation and it made me want to you know learn more about this and i want to um every night actually i was gonna listen to i'm gonna listen to 15 verses of the cut on every night and i already did one yesterday so you know how did i you know like lie it's like the only one message i just want to give to people out there it's like you know what brother muneer said that muslims are like the biggest criminals out there because like we have the truth we have the knowledge but like a bunch of us especially the youth they're like ashamed of it they're ashamed to go pray they're ashamed to say i'm a muslim they're ashamed to grow the beard they're ashamed to like do anything and then like you know lying sad you know like the jabbies they refuse to wear the jabb and muslim men they refuse to pray they refuse just like to do anything because they're embarrassed they have this inferiority complex they think like you know that we're lesser than like these you know non muslims so it's just completely wrong like because we have the truth you know like we're being criminals here like you know arafa he replaced the trust amongst us right every single one of us become dais every single one of us spread the message of stamp because we all have that capability you know like olai you know if it was if it wasn't me like if if it was any other muslims romia would have came to the same conclusion that's the beauty of his stamp but like most of us like we just refuse we were just embarrassed and like it says it's sad because you know why we have the truth you know like why do we not want to spread the truth why are we embarrassed by it why are we like you know lying to ourselves you know it's messed up you know so like that anything um i'd like to talk about this morning okay go ahead so last night um i couldn't really sleep for a minute because um off of everything that he told me i should i was still like just really just mind blown like i i literally just couldn't go to sleep like i so much energy for no reason and i was just so shook like i i couldn't go to sleep so i think i ended up going to sleep like one o'clock and i woke up at six so i didn't i didn't get like too much i didn't get like too good sleep like usually i'd get like i'm like eight or nine hours of sleep um you know because i try to get out of the sleep but this morning i woke up like like i've never had that good of sleep in like weeks no no not weeks months like like it was actually mind blowing and then and then he called me and then he was like how do you feel i was like dude i haven't had this good sleep in a while like what and then he was like yeah that was like the same thing for me like i had like two hours of sleep and i still felt like i just i just slept really good and i was like dude that's like it's i'm struck yeah like like he really we really experienced the same thing like it's so it's wild it really is you know yeah another another thing my bad another thing i'd like to add on with that is um even when i did wake up like i didn't i didn't want to like do what i normally did like i didn't want to like just hang out or do nothing at my house like i actually wanted to be productive with my day so that's what i was doing i was being productive and like i was enjoying it like it was dude i've never enjoyed it like like not to come out wasted right yeah i got that i got that yeah that's like most like doing work like that hasn't been too enjoyable like that but like this was the first time like i actually really enjoyed working which was yeah for uh yeah it's the same for me you know because like with the whole prayer thing i was like i'm i'll admit this i was not really the most practicing muslim until like recently december right i figured it out like when i started praying my five prayers when i started being more consistent with this now and i started improving myself oh my like i love working now you know it's very easy for me i'm gonna just like just to be productive and now i just for some reason i hate this i have this hatred of just wasting time i have this hatred of just sitting there and doing nothing right yeah it's just so boring like i can't stand it like you know i always gotta improve i always gotta gain knowledge i always gotta do something you know and it's you know yeah um like uh today my friends asked if they could hang out with me so i was like sure so i invited them to my house and we were hanging out for like a good two hours and i was like i literally just looked at all my friends i was like dude like we're not doing anything y'all can just like go right now i'm not gonna lie because i like i started getting a headache because they were just i mean they were having a good time and i was sitting there like dude we're doing nothing like i don't want to do nothing like y'all y'all can just go right now so yeah you see that yes i don't know would you like to say anything else or are you ready ready you're ready i don't know what i'm ready for but i'm ready for it so i'm gonna explain to you what the shahada is so the shahada is basically a declaration of faith you're telling all these people now that i'm a muslim and once you say these words layla and allah muhammad and was like well it's the greatest well i'll slow it down for you know right it's the greatest it's the greatest one of the greatest statements of all time because you know like well like the word layla and allah there's no god where they worship except allah that is so powerful you know like that could honestly like save you from like hell yeah like legit there'll be a man on the yomo kiyama on the day of judgment right he'll have all these sins and he'll be like um and he's thinking to himself i'm gonna go to hell right and then there'll be one card that says layla and allah and it'll be put on this good stage right you know what happened all his bad deeds his mountains of bad deeds dropped immediately because of that one statement alone and because of that he went to jinnah the heaven like yeah that's how powerful that statement is and it's so powerful in the fact that after once you say it you're like a new muslim you're like brand new you're like a new born baby every single thing that you did i don't care how bad it was no sins any sin bro it's forgiven immediately yeah so so prepare yourself man okay it's a simple statement bro no pressure you know yeah yeah okay ashadu repeat after me ashadu ashadu la la ilaha ilaha my bad that's all it's good no that's fine okay i'm gonna say in english now you're gonna repeat after me okay i bear witness i bear witness that there is no deity that there is no god that no wait would you say that that there's no that there's no deity worthy of worship worthy of worship except allah except allah and i bear witness and i bear witness that muhammad that muhammad is the servant is the servant and messenger of allah and messenger of allah Allah muslim allah but allah like you know allah like you know now you're a muslim every single thing you just did it's forgiven you know that's why and so it's like inshallah man so inshallah i'll teach you how to i'll teach you the fatah with the first chapter and then i'll teach you how to pray today inshallah yeah and i got you said money it has like the box right yeah so money it has like the muslim box and it will teach you it'll help you out we have muslim programs out there okay so don't worry man don't feel overwhelmed just take it one step at a time all right all right here you want to oh no no it's fine it's fine it's in the it's in your office it's yeah okay i'm not that heavy so when he's bringing it up so you want to tell us how you feel like dude like that conversation last night was actually so mind-blowing yeah like not and especially coming here like i felt so welcome into this like um like i appreciate their dinner yeah no problem yeah i got you but anytime yeah go ahead i know you don't have to okay so like when new muslims convert to Islam some of them they choose a muslim name but you don't have to choose a muslim it's you know oh okay yeah it's fine you can keep roaming if you like but you know yeah all right all right so shallah so i'll start you off this is your prayer man inshallah you know so yeah when we pray five times a day we face mecca right you know the black you kaba right yeah we face that direction and then we pray right and inshallah bro we got you a bunch of books right by hamsa yes sir right so like it's by hamsa yusuf he's a famous muslim preacher you know everyone knows him he sometimes comes here right so then i'll leave that book right here um you know let me have this book the book of assistance for new muslims this is gonna help you out a lot all right i'm gonna tell you right now for a long time you're gonna be you might feel lonely but just trust me these books are gonna be like your best friends bro all right all right the next book is um this being a muslim a practical guy it's gonna help you out trust me like okay life is gonna all right and this is the greatest book of all time the good eye yes sir yeah so this is the qur'an and it's oh my shallah is even with the last sermon so like it's the english translation you can take that be careful with it it's the word of allah directly right yeah it's like the one of the it's the greatest book of all time there's gonna be nothing like this book until the day of judgment there'll be nothing so just take care of it um you know read it and uh trust me any any questions you have any stressful situation that you're gonna have you're gonna find it in this book eventually i just gotta read it you know okay you gotta think over it yeah so this is this is your new muslim guy i appreciate it and i got you at any time so again don't feel overwhelmed we're gonna take this baby steps you know yeah yeah