 Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillah, our Lord is the Lord of all the worlds. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon our Master Muhammad and his family and companions. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon him and his companions. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon his family and companions. May the peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon his family and companions. I hope everybody is doing well. So we're going to continue these conversations that we've been having about the traits of the righteous. And we're wrapping up. So I think this next couple of weeks, inshallah, one of those classes will be our last one. Maybe next week, maybe the following week. And what we're going to talk about today is the importance of focusing on the foundations. And we live in a time where there are a lot of really, really different types of knowledges that we could learn. Lots of different types of areas we could focus our energy on. Lots of different spiritual matters we could be devoted to. One of the things that's really, really important in the life that we're living in, and one of the things that's really, really important as a core part of this deen, is to really focus on the foundational aspects of our religion. What does that mean? That we know that this religion has building blocks. The Prophet Salaam actually literally told us that there are five pillars of this deen. And so the pillars are what hold up the house. The pillars are what hold up this religion. They're what hold you and I up. If we are not strong with our pillars, if we are not strong with the foundations, then we are not going to be able to build on top. Imagine that you have a house that you want to build, right? Or a house that you already live in. And let's say that, you know, before you invest too much energy in scoping out where to build this new house, how to lay down the concrete, how to lay down the foundations, you immediately start saying, you know what? I like kitchens. I'm going to start going and looking at nice tiles for the kitchen. And nice cabinets for the kitchen and maybe even the knobs of the cabinets. And then I'm going to look at appliances for the kitchen and I'm going to look at nice back splashes of the kitchen. And so we go and we do all sorts of things. And maybe you could even go and you could actually literally buy all the supplies, hire some contractors and you could build a kitchen somewhere, right? In either an existing house or in the house that you want to eventually build. But if you don't have the plumbing in place, if you don't have the electricity in place, if you don't even have the slabs in place, right? In order to actually build on top of your kitchen is just going to be hollow. It might look really nice. You might actually be able to walk in and people will compliment you and say, wow, what a nice kitchen. Wow, what nice tiles you, what nice tile selection you have all this stuff, but they'll turn the sink on and it won't work. And you'll be like, oh yeah, we didn't put the plumbing in there. They're like, why? And just like, well, it's just so much more fun to build the kitchen. Look, nobody likes to do the plumbing, right? Like who wants to do plumbing work? Nobody's going to go do that. It's just so much more fun. I didn't really want to do it. Oh, they're like, okay. You go, it's nighttime. You try to turn the light on and it doesn't work. And they're like, why aren't the lights working? And you say, well, it wasn't really fun. So I didn't really want to decide to do it. I would rather focus my, I wanted to focus on the backsplash. You know, the backsplash is what looks good. And I mean, somebody would look at you and they'd be like, what are you doing, man? Where's your order of priorities? We talked about prioritization a couple of weeks ago. It's a trait that many of us, we have to refresh ourselves with. We have to try to prioritize what's important. But similarly, that's the approach we have to something in the dunya. And people look at us like, hold on, wait, what? So you built this without plumbing and without electricity? Like, don't you know how the order of construction? Like, don't you understand that order? And you'll be like, yeah, I've heard about it, but it didn't really matter to me. I just want to do what's fun. Again, people look at you and they'll laugh a little bit. For some reason, though, with our religion, we think that's okay. We don't invest energy in learning or practicing the foundation. We're practicing the foundations of this religion, the foundations of vudu, the foundations of prayer. But we want to go and we want to have a connection with God. And we want to have these deep esoteric spiritual relationships. This whole idea that I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. Like these types of concepts. And that's very much prevalent in the modern world. And so we want to access the divine, the divine, the majestic, the great, the merciful, the divine. But we don't want to do the quote-unquote boring work. And I don't mean to put it in that way, but that's the reality of the time that we live in that some of this stuff can be dry and it can have boring aspects of it. But we want to access the fun parts. We want to, oh, I want to feel good. And I want to feel tranquil. And I want to feel calm. I want to feel like I have meaning in my life. I want to feel all these things. And you say, okay, cool, but you're going to do the work to get the plumbing in place, right? And they'll be like, no, no, but that stuff is boring. That's big. Who needs that? Nobody needs that. Nobody wants to do the plumbing. Let's just focus on this other stuff. Let's talk about the spiritual realities and all these big ideas, right? And whatnot. And so this is something that we really, really have to remember. For us as Muslims, these ideas, the inner aspect of the human being, it's accessed through the outer aspect of the human being, right? So if you do not have the outer components correctly done, if you don't have the outer frame of a house, if you don't have the outer frame and the structure, if you don't have the details inside of the walls, right? Before you actually put the walls on, right? Right behind me is a wall with some sheetrock, drywall, and whatnot, everything that's there. But behind that, there's wood, right? And then there's wiring that's going in there. If I just put the wall there and I don't know what goes down, I don't have the right frame there, I'm not going to be able to actually derive the benefit I need from this house. If there's no insulation, the room will get freezing cold in the winter and it will get really, really hot in the summer. But again, it goes out to these ideas of putting in the foundations and many of these things, they take a lot of work and that you can't really see the work that you put in, right? You cover it up eventually. Similarly with religion, you can cover it up, right? You cover up some of that work that you're doing with that inner, that work that you put in is so important because it builds us. Every single time that you and I make a voodoo, or we pray, or we fast, or we give charity, we are cleaning ourselves internally, right? And so that's what we mean here by foundations. What we mean by foundations are learning the basics, practicing them, implementing them, revisiting them, and refreshing them. Just like from time to time, you have to refresh. You know, you might have to change the foundational structure of your house, the roof, you might have to refresh something. The dean needs refresh of the foundation. So let's talk about them a little bit. The first, and the reason I want to mention all this and the reason I mentioned this analogy is because a lot of the times I want to be really real with us that like some of this stuff is dry. It is dry. It's not fun, right? Very few people get like super excited, like, oh my God, I'm going to go and learn like Islamic jurisprudence. I'm going to go learn Fiqh. I'm going to go learn the law. I mean, I'm not saying it should be dry, but the reality is because probably of our own, the state of our own hearts, I know the state of my heart is bad. So some things are dry to me, right? But maybe if my heart was a little bit more pure, some stuff wouldn't be dry. But the reality is we know the state of our hearts, so we accept them. And then we say, okay, I'm going to do the foundations because I need them to build on top of. That's it. That's the whole only goal. I got to build on top of them. It's a goal to build on top because Allah commanded me to learn these things, right? So let's start with a couple of these. Let's start with Wudu and Rosso. Okay, something that like if you were to really ask, there are a lot of Muslims, a lot of us who don't know properly how to make Wudu, properly how to make Rosso, and properly what counts as a real Wudu versus what doesn't count, right? And so we'll spend, you know, 12, 15, 18, 20, 30 years getting an education, going to school, learning this just so we can get a job, working for some company, making a bunch of people other than ourselves, you know, really, really, really, really rich. Alhamdulillah, of course, if we have a job and everything. But we'll spend all that time learning, but we won't spend time learning the foundations of our religion. If you get a new job, you've got to learn the foundations. You've got to learn, okay, maybe I'm a programmer, I've got to learn the basics, I've got to know more than just the basics. You switch into project management or something, you've got to learn what are the different components of project management or whatever it is, right? So similarly, when you engage with the religion, you've got to learn. It's not just as good enough to remember the stuff that like someone taught you 20 years ago or 10 years ago, that refresh is required. Continuing education is required in any real field, right? Whether somebody's a lawyer or a doctor or even, you know, in the world of technology. So let's start with Wulu and Hoso. This is something that's taken lightly by a lot of people. Let's talk about it a little bit. Let's conceptual. If you were going to go to meet someone big, someone, some big hotshot, you know, some celebrity you really like or a prime minister or president or a famous sports player or something like that, right? You had a meeting with them. They say, hey, you know, I want to have a chance to talk to you a little bit. I want to have a chance to meet you. You'd be really excited. And most of us, you know, we would look, we would get a brand new outfit. You know, we would, we would, we would look really clean. We'd get a nice haircut, whatever it is that we could do in order to try and present ourselves in the best way possible, right? And if that person asked, right, let's say there's a certain protocol, like if you go to meet at the White House, hopefully not this White House, but if you had to go to a meeting at the White House, most of the time you got to dress like in a suit, right? You got to look nice. You can't, you don't go to the White House and show up in shorts, right? But if you like go and you meet like a player at the court, at like the NBA, NBA court, right? Maybe you'll wear like more casual, athleisure type clothing. Who knows, right? But they might ask you, there might be a certain protocol. So it might, maybe the people there will request, you know, it's only formal only. There's certain, sometimes certain places, especially back in, in like certain country club type environments, you can only get in if you're wearing like really nice business clothes, let's say. So let's say, you know, you got to wear certain clothes, right? Or if you have a job interview, like the CEO of a company or something. Yo, you got to dress nicely. You got to dress up, right? So they ask you to wear a certain type of outfit. People will do it, right? And then you can get access to the place. Otherwise they'll deny you entry. They'll say, nope, sorry. You didn't meet the dress code, right? Now that's, we will do that. And people would go at length to do that to meet with famous people. I mean, I can think of very few people who would not want to meet with a bunch of famous people and Paul and powerful people. That's like something a lot of people have. For some reason, the human being, we have this thing we want to associate with these types of people, even though there's a lot of reasons why we shouldn't. But the fact is, is that we do. Now, we have a Lord. We have Allah, who is the king of all kings, the president of all presidents, the ruler of everybody, the ruler of all of these people who we consider to be famous and whatnot, right? And he told us certain things he needs us to do in order to present ourselves in front of him. He said, you have to do these things to present yourself in front of me. Otherwise, that special access is not granted. It's not granted to people like that. And it's not accepted according to our law, right? So that cutoff happens. And he said, these are the things you need to do. And many times we take these things lightly. And we say, you know what? It's not a big deal. I can do whatever I need to do. So we will, any, again, if it's a CEO or if it's a president or if it's a celebrity, we'll follow all their rules. If it's a company, we'll follow the rules. But when it comes to our religion, we decide, you know what? That rule, I don't like it. I'm not going to follow it. That rule doesn't really make sense to me. That rule, that's outdated. That's really traditional. I don't like it. I'm more modern, right? Oh, that thing, I don't really, that doesn't really align with my like really, really a new world views that I have. And so we'll just exclude things. And we won't, and somebody tries to tell us and you'd be like, dude, you're still thinking about that old age stuff? No, no, no. Come on, I'm trying to do the, you know, let's be practical about the time that we live in, right? I'm just trying to have a connection. Look, everybody should have a connection. Some of you are talking about here. We'll cover this aspect at the end here. But there is a way, there is a way that the Prophet ﷺ told us to have a connection to Allah and how to present ourselves to Allah. This is not a joke, right? We are presenting ourselves to our Lord. So inner purity is very important, but outer purity for sure Allah commands us to have, right? So what are the things you told us to do? Say, before you come and present yourself to me, you have to make sure you're purified. You have to make sure that you've washed yourself, right? You're not allowed to recite Quran if you, let's say, are in a state of major impurity if you have not taken a ghusl after sexual relations or after menstruation or during menstruation, right? So these are the types of things. Allah has a protocol, right, that we have to follow. And so why are these things important? Because Allah tells us in the Quran, for example, the topic of Vudu, right? Like you're going to meet with me, you've got to have some respect. I mean, it doesn't say like that. I'm just, I'm, you know, adding in things but are trying to make it relatable. But we have to have that respect for meeting with Allah. We can't just say, oh, you know, I'm just going to open up the prayer conversation with Allah. At any moment you can engage in Dhikr. At any moment I can have a, I can speak with Allah at any moment, right? Like I can be talking to Allah right now. Let's say if I wasn't doing this or something like that. Right? You can do that. But when you engage in the prayer which something Allah has commanded us to do, there are prerequisites. So what are those prerequisites, right? We'll just cover them briefly because it's important. We can't take this stuff lightly. We have to spend at least two couple of hours in our lifetime knowing the proper prerequisites of how to make Vudu because the last thing we want to do is meet Allah and be like, oh yeah, I made a mistake every single time. I never really watched my feet to my ankles. I just watched them, you know, below them. And I thought it was okay. And God was like, well, no, didn't you have people who teach you? You're like, yeah, there was tons of videos and, you know, podcasts and everything out there that teach, but I didn't really listen to it. I decided I'd rather watch Star Wars. Like, how are we going to explain that? Right? So we have to think about this. So we have to know these basic things. So I'll talk about the basics, right? For Vudu, for example, depending on the mudhub one follows, you have to know, okay, I have to wash my face completely, completely. I have to make sure, like, stuff's not left out. If it's left out, water doesn't get there. The Vudu doesn't count, right? To our best ability, we don't have to be, you know, insanely have that level of intensity about it, right? But we have to make sure that we do it properly. I have to wipe my head. I have to wipe my head, right? I have to wash my hands. I have to wash my fingers. I have to wash my fingernails. I have to get water up to the elbows. Water has to touch every single part of what I just mentioned. I have to wash my feet up to my ankles properly. And water must reach and flow from all those parts, basically, right? It's not just like, I can't just go like this on my feet. It's not going to work. Water doesn't get everywhere. These things we might think are basic and Shaitan will convince us. Dude, you really still caught up on this basic. Water is water. It's clean. You live in the modern world anyways. Really, how dirty is it? Oh, it's dirty. But really, like, is that big of a deal? Right? And we just take this stuff lightly. Now, then we think, and then we go and engage in prayer, and then we wonder, like, what's going on with my prayer? I don't feel the connection. Stuff's not happening. Well, the foundations might not be correct. And even if, even if sometimes the foundations might not be correct and things might, you know, still be working out, but that's not a sign of it, right? And sometimes somebody might not do any of the right things religiously and outwardly everything seems to be going well in their life. And that's a really, really dangerous sign because Allah's not even giving them a chance. Allah's not even inserting things in their life to wake them up. Many times tests come to wake us up. But acceptance is based on prerequisites. You have to have the prerequisites. Otherwise, the door is not even open. The door for engaging in the salah comes when the prerequisites have been met. So here we're talking very specifically about the wudu. So what are common mistakes that we make in the time that we live? These are very, very common mistakes. I'll just mention two of them with regard to the foundations. And again, the goal here, where this is not a fit class and I'm not a faqi. So the goal here is to go, and what I just covered are the basic, what I call the arkhan of the wudu, the basic essentials, and then you have, sorry, those are called the faraid of the wudu. And if you don't do them, the wudu doesn't count. Then there's things like rinsing your mouth, where we should do because it's sunnah. But let's say we don't have enough water. Okay, we might not do, right? But let's talk a little bit about common mistakes that we make. So it's one common mistake that's rampant everywhere, let's say with nail polish or paint on someone's nails. Talk about nail polish. So we know it's a prerequisite of wudu for water to reach every part. So if someone has nail polish or paint on, water won't reach that part. Now think about the level of effort that we put in. If we're going to go meet, again with the famous person, we're going to look our best, dress our best, do everything it is that they want us to do to present ourselves. And yet we meet with God regularly, hopefully. We engage with Him in the prayer. And we take this type of stuff lightly. Look, I understand it's not like it can seem like it's really not that big of a deal. But the reality is these are basic things. These are called foundations. It's like the plumbing. Nobody sees the plumbing in the house. Nobody likes to work on the plumbing in the house. I don't mean to use a bad example, but if something goes wrong in the plumbing, no one likes to do that work. But guess what? Without the plumbing, the rest of the thing won't work. No one, without the electricity that's hidden, the rest of it won't work. These foundations are essential. And you have a block. If you have a clog somewhere in the plumbing, the whole, like I have right now in my dishwasher pipe, there's some clog and it's messing everything up. I got to like figure out a way to fix that. The whole system will be messed up if there's a block. It's the whole system gets messed up if there's a block with your woo-doo. It sounds like, oh, come on. Is it really that big of a deal? Yes, it really is that big of a deal because Allah commands it in His Quran. In the book that was revealed to the Prophet ﷺ and to us, the book that was revealed, He commands us to do these types of things. He's literally commanding us, like, here's the protocol if you want to have a meeting with me, right? And so, we want to make sure our prayer is not caught up. So what are the basic things? What do we do? Okay, we just don't wear the nail. I mean, you know, if you're a woman, hopefully if you're a dude, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. Anyways, but if you're a woman, just don't wear nail polish. It's not that hard or get the transparent one. But if it's that important to you, the cosmetics are that important to you and you risk all of your prayers not being accepted, right? And the reality is that this religion is based on Allah. It's not based on our own conception. So this whole idea of like Allah, Allah can do whatever He wants but Allah has told us He made certain commitments to us, right? He said this is what my requirements are and He also tells us He doesn't break His promises. So we already know how to do in order for things to be accepted. There is no like, you know, like I can't say like, you know, if I have, let's say, I mean, Hamdol, there's water in here, but let's say like, I'm like, oh, I have some, you know, I've heard someone make this argument. They're like, oh, you can drink beer. I'm like, really? Why? They're like, oh, because the Quran only mentions wine, right? And they didn't understand like alcohol is what, like the fact that Quran mentions wine meant that it applies to all alcohol because they probably didn't understand how religion works. That everything doesn't have to be spelled out in every little detail, right? So that's one example here, right? Hopefully we can take seriously. The second one example, we regularly go wrong with wudu and why the foundations are so important. Regularly, we go wrong with wiping over socks. So in our religion, the only socks you're allowed to wipe over, generally speaking, are what's called khuf leather socks. So let's say somebody makes wudu and then they put on leather socks. Then they lose their wudu. They're allowed to wipe over the leather socks three times with three fingers like this and that counts sufficiently just for this specific thing. This is only based because the Prophet ﷺ told us we could do it. He is the law giver, not me. So now I can't say that you know what, if I'm wearing a glove, I can wipe over the glove because it's just like that. I'm not allowed to make that analogy. I'm not allowed to because this is religion you're talking about. The rules aren't, this isn't, you know, the worldly stuff. I'm not allowed to make an analogy for myself, unless the Prophet ﷺ said it or the Sahaba said it or the Salaf said it or some of the scholars amongst the early predecessors had agreed on something, right? But generally speaking, leather socks, right? We know in Hadith that that's okay. But let's say now, what about like my white hain socks? No, that doesn't count. According to all the scholars of traditional, the traditional madahib, that wouldn't work. I have to take them off. But if I'm too lazy to and I just take shortcuts and I don't care, right? Again, if I was meeting with the CEO, I would care. But with God, it's flexible. It doesn't, this is that we have to examine, right? Why do we have these types of tendencies sometimes? So basic thing, okay? We make sure that we know, okay? And then now there are certain types of socks that are out there that are literally called like wudu socks or like certain type of wool, thick, thick, thick socks that count according to the different madahibs that people follow. But generally speaking, if any thin normal sock that we buy from like Costco or Target or Amazon or Walmart, wherever we buy it wouldn't work. We have to take it off and make wudu over it. And we can't come up with our own, like if I'm feeling lazy, I can't just wipe over my shirt or sweatshirt because I don't want to put my hands up because it's tight or something like that. I can't just make that stuff up. We have to be careful about these. Again, it goes back. If the foundations are wrong, everything will not work out. Everything is going to be cut off. And we have to wonder sometimes, we have to wonder, right? We have to look deep down inside and examine how seriously do I take this stuff? Because I know myself, I definitely have a lot of improvement I can do. So we have to wonder, why do we take these things lightly? This is because we live generally in a time where everybody just wants to come up with their own rules. People don't follow the rules. At every level of government, there's like no rules that are followed. You have a president right now who lost the election who's trying to break the rules and cheat. You have a bunch of different shortcuts. Everybody wants a shortcut. Shortcut this. Shortest way to make a million dollars. Shortest way to make a billion. And so we just want the shortest route to God. I want to achieve the closest spirituality. I want to be super close to God. I want to be a great this, this and that. But I don't want to do any of the stuff. I don't want to do any of the work. That's boring. But I want to achieve. I want to have nirvana, right? These are the types of things that we've got to watch out for. Only shaitan is what spreads quickly. What spreads quickly in this world? What element spreads really quickly? Fire. Fire spreads really quickly. You get light something, God forbid, on fire. We see with these fires in California that we've had. Allah gives all the fires that are out of the world. They extinguish all of them and extinguish the fire in our hearts. All the damaging fires, it comes into one area and if it's dry it spreads really, really quickly, right? Sometimes, but things that need to be built like clay or houses that require building, building takes time, building success, building religion, building character, that takes time, right? Really, really quick, quick, quick success is very, very, very rare. And at the same time, it's usually not, it usually has, if it has that trait of like being way too quick, we got to keep that aspect in mind that things that spread too quickly do have a fiery component to them. So we got to just know this, right? We can't access Allah without His rules. We just can't. It doesn't work like that. We really can't. Otherwise it will become like the other religions, right? You see this in Christianity. There is a, you know, in Alhamdulillah, we still have people who are worshiping Allah. So that's a blessing. It's better than being atheist. But there are so many of these, they have no sharia. There's no law. There's no rules. Oh, I can do whatever I want. I'll be forgiven. Jesus will, you know, will take care of me. All these types of things, right? And I mean, no work effort is put in. I just have to be a quote unquote good person. And what is a good person? A good person is the character traits I think are good. I'm going to do. But the character traits that like, you know, most people think are bad. I might still have them. But as long as I do a few good things, it's good enough. That's not the way our religion works. We have a law. We follow the law. And Allah says in Surah Al-Khaf that He warns us, Have you seen the people who think that they were doing good but their deeds all go to waste? We don't want to be in that people. That's in the Quran. There are people who think the whole time they're doing the correct thing but their deeds will go to waste because the understanding just wasn't there. And we ask that Allah protect us from it. But we cannot take our religion and the foundations of our religion and the sharia of the religion and the sharia of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam lightly. We cannot. We cannot come up with our own laws. We cannot come up with our own rules. We would never do that in the presence of some governor or some president or some king or any other ruler. Somehow in the presence of Allah we have the audacity to say this is not a big deal. I don't really care. Right? So just let's just keep that in mind. Right? So the foundations are very, very, very critical. And let's talk about another point in relation to why we might not focus on the foundations. Many times you and I have these conversations. There's a balance here. Everybody is on this journey to try to get close to Allah. You have to know where you're at. We have to know where the family members that we're speaking to and what not are at. If somebody is deeply engrossed in major wrong actions, don't worry about how correct they get the law. Just help pull them along to Allah. Whatever they're doing. Pray if they're praying or not praying even if they don't follow the law with regards to how they're doing the prayer. Just pull them along. Having some door is better than no door. But look, remember this. When you're early in the path it's very different than when you're later in the path. When you're a baby you learn certain things. Nobody still walks though. Alhamdulillah we heard this in Khutbah from the city of Sundiada the other day. The way you learn to walk like a baby you waddled. Nobody walks like that anymore as an adult. And if you did, people would look at you like, is everything okay? Did you get hurt? Or what's wrong? Something's going on. Yet we learn basic things in religion way back in the day in Sunday school or from our parents when we were really young we still use those same things and we never refresh them. Just like we refreshed how we walk just like we have refreshed the basics of life we got to refresh the other stuff. We have to refresh these things. And we cannot think that what we learned was even necessarily correct and if it was correct that we still remember it correctly. So we have to keep that aspect in mind and we have to remember that many times we think if I don't do a bunch of actions it's all good because God is very forgiving and he's very merciful and you might hear someone say there's one situation in which Allah forgave somebody for every single thing and gave them all their good because of one good deed that they did and they were a completely evil person otherwise. That's true. That's all there. 100% that's there in our religion and we have that hope. But Allah doesn't tell us to rely on those examples. He doesn't. He tells us to believe and He says to act. He says, for example, that the mankind is in loss. He says, by time, mankind is in loss. Accept the people who believe and do righteous actions. So everybody else is losing. Accept those people. God tells us. He doesn't say accept the people who sit and talk about the one time that I forgave everybody even though they didn't do the work required. That's in Allah's forgiveness and inshallah He does that for us because we have a lot of wrongs that we bring to the table. But He defines you have to believe and you have to do the work, right? And so if you think about in this example, in this world that we live in, if someone got a job and you never went to work, you didn't really show up on time. The few times you did go to work, you didn't really do any work, right? And then at the end of the month, you're like, you know, can I get paid? And they'll be like, but you didn't show up to the job for an hour. Why would we pay you in back? Well, you know, I got the job. Like, I'm part of this. I'm part of the organization. Like, can I get the money? Right? Maybe out of the generosity once or twice. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get paid. But most of the time they say, no, you have to do the work and you earn the wages. And most of the time you'll get fired, right? With Allah, somehow we think we don't have to do the work and we can still earn the wage. Oh, I can get access to jannah. I can get access to this. I can get access to that. All of that access comes from Allah's bounty for sure. For sure it does. But just like the person in this dunya who works really hard and then the employer sees that and then they give them the bonus, right? The bonus wasn't part of their agreement, right? They just give them an extra bonus because they saw them working really hard, right? Similarly, Allah sees us working and he gives us these immense, immense, immense spiritual blessings, right? It's not because of our work. We might be doing 1% of what we should be doing, but at least we're doing something. We have to be doing this. We cannot expect to attain anything if we don't do anything. It's just for some reason there's a lot of people, Muslims who think I don't want to do any of the work but I can get all the benefits. But when it comes to the dunya, they'll work up at 6 o'clock, should be the first person to work, put in all the hasso and then be like, of course I got to do this for the dunya. But with Allah, none of this matters because, you know, again, because Allah says in the Quran there's people who have not given him his due measure. And we ask that Allah protect us from being against from those people, right? So the foundations are very important. What are the other foundations, the pillar of our religion? So prayer is the pillar of the religion, but in order to access the prayer we have to have wudu, we have to have wasso, we have to have those things down. If we don't know those things and we don't do those things properly, we won't have a door properly into this deen. The next door is the door of prayer. We have to know the rules of the prayer. We have to know what time does it come in? How do we do it properly? If I make a mistake in my prayer, does it count? What do I do to rectify the mistake? What's considered absolute essential of the prayer? What's considered something that I have to do is such the sahuf or known as wajib of the prayer? What's considered the sunnah of the prayer? Meaning if I miss it, I don't have to do anything. I just have to, you know, the reward might be less, right? These are things we have to keep in mind. We have to learn this stuff. So we should spend some time. It's not difficult. Spend a couple of hours and just learn the basics. And then we commit them to memory and inshallah over time we learn them. But if we're like, you know, advanced in our age or we're getting older and older and older and the time is just passing and we just are doing things in the way we think we should do them. And we're not getting the foundations properly. We are just being deceived. We are being completely, we think that we're progressing but we cannot progress without the foundations. It's impossible to progress without the foundations and that is a fact. We have to know that. All of that progress we think we're making is all just foolishness that shaitan has whispered in our ear to help us think, right? To help us think. The real progress and the real states of heart and all of those things come from establishing the foundations correctly and then building on top of that. All the traits we've been talking about in this class they all come back. If we don't have the foundations correctly we will not have access to those things. We just won't. The next one, fasting, right? The people of Allah are very careful with their fast. They know the rules of the fast. They apply the rules properly. They regularly revisit the rules. We might not fast on an average, on a frequent basis outside of Ramadan if we fast in Ramadan. When Ramadan time comes, of course, it's obligatory for us to fast if we're able to and we're healthy and we don't have a major, major illness. Well, we've got to know the rules, right? I've met Muslims that like, let's say Fajr times at 5.30. It's like 5.32 and they're still eating and they're like, oh, it's not a big deal. Two minutes is nothing with God. Just like, dude, why are you taking it lightly? Why you got to make a light out of this religion? Why make a joke out of the religion? Why don't you go make a joke out of something else? But don't make a, don't change this. You're going to be starving for the whole day and according to the law, you're fasted and count at all because you messed up the order. You didn't follow the law, right? It didn't work. So these are the types of things now again. We got to know where we're at. If somebody is just slowly getting oriented to this religion, it doesn't matter what mistakes they make, how much flexibility they need with the law. You give them the flexibility because they're just getting oriented to it. You don't go intense on them, right? Like when your kids and your parents let you do half fast. I don't know if anybody else had that half rosa where you'd like, you know, start fasting because you wanted to. Then they'd say, okay, you can now you did half rosa so you can eat at lunchtime, right? So basically from like 5 a.m. until 1 p.m. or something you fasted, right? It's like if somebody is really early in the dean, some people do stuff like that to just build up. I'm not saying it's by the law. Obviously they're a kid. It's different. It doesn't apply to them. But there are things that you're going to do in order to get oriented to something. But as you get the found, once you got stuff, once you're practicing and you have the time and all that, you can't take it lightly. You cannot take it lightly. And especially once problems start coming in our life and then we wonder, like, what do I need to access in order for Allah to cure my problem or to solve my problem? And then we wonder why something's not getting resolved. We have to look back to the basics and to the foundations. Right? 100% we do. So that's another example. And then I think we're almost done here. Another example of the foundation is the food we eat. Our religion, our cells and everything in our body is built on the food that we eat. And Allah commands us in the Quran multiple times to eat halal and ta'ib food. There is just absolutely no room for discussion on thinking that it's not mandatory for us to eat. Clean, properly slaughtered halal and ta'ib food. If one is not ready to do it spiritually, that's all good. We're all, again, like I said, different stages of life. 100%. But at least we don't think it's an issue. But again, I know people we all know. When someone else, you go to a certain type of environment and we will do whatever it takes in order to do what the boss says, do what the employer says, get promoted, this, this and that. Allah says, you know, you only eat halal food. No, no, no, no, I don't have to do that. But I can still get really, really, really close to God without doing. The basics. We've got to get the basics. We've got to get the foundation. We've got to get the foundation. We've got to keep that in mind always. Otherwise, if the food is not halal, the cells will not be halal, the thoughts will not be halal, the actions will not be halal. It's just all built. These are very, very like, if we just spend a little bit of time thinking about them, all this stuff hopefully would just make sense to us. But as we start to get the foundations correctly, now we begin to grow. Now we begin to grow. And if somebody does their basics correctly, you now have stuff to build on top of. But if that work, if someone asks you to do a project and you did another project that they never asked you to do and you did it really, really well and it has nothing to do with the business that you're in. But you're like, you know, I did this project and they'll be like, okay, that's nice. But like I asked you to do something and you'll be like, yeah, I didn't do it. But like, can I still, you know, I got to this project and I get promoted. They'll be like, no, you can't get promoted. You're going to be fired. You didn't do your job. Right. And somehow we think, again, I don't want to keep bringing up these examples. We have to keep, you know, these are just ways to remind ourselves. So we have to do the work. We can't do 50% of the work. We have to do 100% of the work. Right. And we have to do it well. And then the foundations, once they're strong, we start to build on top of them. Right. And we start to advance and we start to progress. So this is a recap. The people of Allah, the righteous people, they're very, very careful with their foundations. You won't see if you see a person who you believe to be a person of Allah and they're not careful with their foundations, there's some things wrong there. Right. The people of Allah, they are very careful. They have very strong understanding of wudu, of khusul, of prayer, of fasting, of zakat, of hajj. And then from there, they're building on and their spirituality is increasing. They're not going and learning super esoteric Sufi concepts and trying to have immense patience and tawakkal in Allah and being content and achieving the love of Allah and all of these things. And yet the basics of like dressing modestly are not even there or of making wudu properly are not even there. All of these foundational aspects of the religion, it's just, it's, there are different journeys to Allah for sure. People can have different journeys. Some people will end up getting closer to Allah because of all the mistakes that we've made in our life. Other people will not necessarily make as much mistakes, but we'll get close to knowledge or worship or whatever it is, or just through some divine breeze that takes them there. But that doesn't excuse us from the fact that if we have the capabilities and the abilities, we've got to know the basics and we've got to get them right. And we have to at least have the humility to admit, yo, I'm just not ready yet. I know, for example, there's a lot of things in the religion that when I struggle with them, I just have to admit I'm not ready. But if I'm arrogant and I think, why is this a part of the religion? I don't agree with this. Okay, look, it's not my place. I am the creation. He is the creator. I don't get to tell him that I disagree with something. I don't, right? Like I've met, for example, Muslims who, like, they say, oh, you know, I don't agree with the idea of interest being haram. I think that means like, insane percentages of interest, like 100%, 200% of interest. I don't think credit card interest or a mortgage or anything is a big deal. And again, they have no learning, no knowledge of the religion. They're just applying whatever mistake and understanding they have, and they're trying to come up with the law. And again, how can you do that? How can you come up with your own laws? You couldn't. You would never dare do that in front of a president. You wouldn't try to come up with your own rules for how to run things. Yet we do that with Allah. So we have to keep that in mind. And we have to work and spend some time. So I'd encourage myself and all of us, spend a couple of minutes a week refreshing the foundations with our family or a month or a couple hours every, you know, month or something like that, refreshing the foundations, making sure the proper things are done, basic stuff. And yes, we spoke about this. Yes, it's boring. Yes, it's dry. I get it. Just like nobody wants to do the plumbing and nobody wants to do the electric work. Everybody just wants to design the nice kitchen in the house, right? That's what people want to do. They want to design their living room in the office and whatnot. But guess what? In order for any of that to function, you've got to have the foundations and the basics built. Same thing with our religion. In order for the inner beauty and the beautiful potential that our religion has given us, in order for that to have, we have to have the foundations. We have to believe in Allah first and foremost. We have to have proper wudu. We have to have proper waso. We have to pray properly. We have to learn how to pray properly. Ideally, we pray in Jama'at at the beginning of the time. But we have time to pray within the window. We have to learn to do that. We've got to start doing the basics. We've got to try to eat clean and eat halal if we can, right? We have to try to work towards that. We have to work on our outer aspects. We have to work on our dress. We have to dress in a way that would be pleasing to Allah. All of these things, these are foundations. Foundations are essential. The state of heart is affected by foundation. The state of heart is always affected by the foundation that somebody has. We have to keep that in mind. And lastly, we have to remember when we're trying to work hard on the Deen, there are forces inside of us that are at play that will try to stop us. So you and I have three things inside of us that are kind of constantly duking it out, okay? You have in the middle what's called your heart, right? And so this idea many times we might have in this culture like listening to your heart. That's a good thing many times, but not always. You have on one side of the heart what's called the nafs, the ego. And you have on the other side of the heart what's called the spirit, what's called the ruh, the spirit. The more the heart is influenced by the spirit, the spirit has access to the inner dominion, to the inner world and to the unseen world. And the nafs is like the door to this outer world, okay? To this dunya and to the low things. The more the heart has access to the spirituality aspect, to the spirit, the more pure it becomes. The more you can listen to the heart. That makes sense? The more we can listen to the heart. So when it becomes more pure and we act on the religion the more we can listen to the heart because the heart has become pure. But the more the heart has been influenced by the nafs following desires of the nafs, chasing after the nafs, chasing after dunya and followers and fame and this and that and wanting to do things the way we think the more the heart becomes dirty. And the Prophet ﷺ told us this. He says that there are spots that will come on the heart and he said verily there's an organ in the heart that if it is messed up everything is wrong. Everything in the heart and the body will be corrupt and if it is correct everything will be correct and he said it is the heart. The more the heart is influenced by the nafs the more corrupt the heart gets. Now, that means that when you go to yourself for a judgment, why is it that we ask Allah we have what's called istikhara in our religion we ask Allah and we also have what's called istishara. We ask people who have knowledge or people who have wisdom or parents or elders called making shura, getting opinions and istikhara asking Allah Allah, what do you think about this? We don't just lead every decision to ourselves why is that? Because we can't expect ourselves to just know things and we can't expect ourselves to be pure. So it's similarly with following everything we think is the correct thing because the heart is not pure only the Prophet ﷺ had the purest of hearts and of course Allah inspired him with revelation so even his words Allah says in the Quran the hadith are revelation Allah says that his words are spoken revelation or that's what the ayahs essentially say but that purity of heart is very important and because we don't have that we can't just listen to our heart on everything in terms of our matters with relation to basics of the religion or complexities we have to listen to the law because the law is what governs the heart and the law is what teaches the heart this is wrong so leave it and then the heart becomes pure and then this is wrong so leave it the heart becomes pure and the heart is who we listen to over meaning our inner voice is who we listen to over Allah's guidance and his rules there's a problem there the closer though we get to Allah the more the heart becomes in line with the rules but the minute the heart tells us to do something that is in conflict with the rules most of the time it wouldn't have been the heart it'll be the nafs but the nafs kind of disguises itself it's called the inner enemy Mama Ghazali says it's like a spy inside of you it's like giving information and getting information from the devil and trying to mess you up so the nafs is going to try to mess it they're going to come at you he's going to come at you this is the right thing to do follow what you believe to be true and the whole time he's just playing a big game the nafs likes to do that it's like a deceptive fox that's what the nafs is like and the heart will get influenced by whatever side we let influence it so hopefully we let the spiritual side influence it and we check the heart by learning the law the person who knows the shaitan and the nafs have a hard time messing with them because they have the foundations correct they know they're spending time learning and Allah says that whoever that strives in our way that surely we shall guide them that striving can come through striving for knowledge it can come through striving for worship but the striving comes and then Allah brings the guidance and as long as we accept the guidance when it comes alhamdulillah we just have to keep that in mind so let's just try our best to stick to improving the foundations and just a last note is this all depends on the place that we're at just want to mention right we have to remember the big picture Allah is merciful I don't mean this discussion to keep us to make us demotivated or demoralized or anything we have to know where we're at we have to aspire for a greater if we're at a certain place we have to say how can I be better not how can I go to the lowest common denominator nobody ever wants to just be at the lowest common denominator and everything they don't want to be at the first level the basic and everything they want to get better they want to get more you know ideally more fit and better at life and better in their jobs and people want to acquire more wealth and all these sorts of things similarly we should want to be better with our deen not just be content with having a few of the basics down right but regardless of where we're at regardless of whether we care about this stuff or we don't regardless of whether we follow the laws of the religion or we don't regardless of whether we're seeped in apparent haram or we don't think that we are we just have to keep trying let's just remember that this is not a discouragement we have to keep trying we have to keep trying we have to keep growing we have to keep working on ourselves we have to keep refining and we have to know that Allah appreciates that he appreciates the person who's trying Allah will not inshallah inshallah punish us because we were trying we just can't be arrogant we have to be humble when we approach the religion and we have to take the basics the building blocks and the foundation seriously because these are the pillars and the Prophet ﷺ he is the best of examples he used the best of examples and look at this example of having pillars and then the house and everything is built on top of the pillars so let's get the pillars correct let's get our foundations correct let's go out and seek sources to learn these pillars right and inshallah from there we will continue to grow and we can continue to hopefully get closer to Allah may Allah bless all of you and bless all of us and make this time easy Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim Alhamdulillah Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin Wa alayhi sallam Ya Allah we ask that you encompass us in your mercy remove all difficulties from us remove all tribulations and trials from us Ya Rabbi al-Alamin and give us whatever it is that is best for us in our life protect us and our families and our loved ones and everybody else who is close to us Ya Rabbi al-Alamin Ya Allah protect this ummah of the Prophet ﷺ and remove this difficulty of the coronavirus Ya Rabbi al-Alamin Ya Allah and assist all those Muslims who are struggling in any place and give us Tofeeq Ya Rabbi al-Alamin to be able to act on our foundations and we ask you for everything good that the Prophet ﷺ asked for and we ask that you give us knowledge directly from your presence and give us the knowledge of properly building our religion Ya Rabbi al-Alamin and we ask you for protection from everything evil that the Prophet ﷺ asked for protection for Wa sallallahu wa sallam Wa barik ala Sayyidina Muhammadin Wa ala alaihi wa sahbihi Wa sallam alhamdulillahi Rabbi al-Alamin As-salamu alaykum Rahmatullahi wa barakatuh