 Alhamdulillah, our phrase is due to Allah SWT. We've entered into the last third portion, the final 10 days of the month of Ramadan. These are some of the holiest days of the year. Allah SWT in the Quran takes an oath by these 10 days, by these 10 nights. And whenever Allah SWT takes an oath by something, an oath is called a Qasam, then that thing is truly great, that thing has Taqneem, and it has Tashrif, it has Honor, and it has Majesty. Allah SWT, for example, he says Wala Asr, Allah SWT takes an oath by the Asr. So Asr is something great, Allah SWT says Wabduha wa Laili Ila Sajjah. He takes an oath by Dhuha, and the name, these things are great. Allah SWT says, what do you do? So these are things that are great. Allah SWT says, the Amruka directly to the Prophet Muhammad SAW, he says by your life, I don't remember Allah SWT taking an oath by someone else's life, other than the life of our master Muhammad SAW. So Allah SWT says, Wala Fajr wa Laili Na'ashum. He says, by the Fajr and by the 10 nights. There's some difference of opinion here from the exeggents. Some of the Urnama say these 10 days or nights refer to the first 10 days of Dhul-Hijjah. Others say that these 10 days and nights refer to the first 10 days of Muharram, culminating in the 10th of Muharram, which is Yumi Ashram. Some others say that these 10 nights are the final 10 nights of the month of Ramadan. In the hadith we quoted a few nights ago before the Tawiyah. In Sahih Muslim, our mother Aisha, Rabia Allahu Ta'ala Anha, she says about the Prophet SAW during the final 10 nights of Ramadan. She says, Shantan Mir Zarabu, that he used to tighten his belt or tie his loincloth. Wa Ahya Lailabu Wa Aya Ta'ala Ahlabu, Shantan Mir Zarabu. He's a tighten his belt. The Urnama say that this is an idiomatic expression, meaning something like he used to prepare for serious work. Like what we say in English now, we say to roll up one's sleeves, to get ready for serious work, some serious business. And he would spend his night in the mosque. And he would engage in Salawat, in prayer to Allah SWT, in Zikr of Allah SWT, and into Depth Board of the Quran. He would contemplate the meanings of the Quran. And Jibreel A.S. would descend upon him during these last 10 nights. And they would present the Quran to each other in a process known as Mu'arramah. And this was witnessed by countless Sahaba. So he would step on his Ibadah from Allah SWT during this time. Now Imam Al-Razi, he says, defining Islam. He says, Al-Islamu Al-Ibadah to bin Khalid. Al-Islam is worship of the Creator, while showing compassion and mercy to his creation. So the Sahaba described the Prophet, as Ajwa Dunnas, that he was the most generous of all of humanity. But the similitude of his Jewd, of his generosity during the month of Ramadan, the similitude of his Jewd was like that of raining laden clouds that bless the earth. Not only did he step on his Ibadah during this month and approach Allah SWT, but he would step on his compassion towards the creation. Last night we heard about Tawwiyah from Surah Al-Ahzab. Allah SWT says about the Prophet, SAW. And whenever Allah SWT says, It is tantamount to an oath that Allah SWT is taking an oath. And indeed, indeed, I swear. And in Arabic as a verb that means to be, can it usually means he was. But in the context of the Quran, it denotes Dawam al-Istibrar. It denotes perpetuity and continuance. That indeed, I swear, you have in the Messenger of God and will always have in the Messenger of God, SAW, a beautiful pattern of conduct. For anyone who has hope, Raja in Allah SWT and makes frequent and believes in the last day, has opened the last day and makes Zikr of Allah SWT in abundance. And another ayah in the Quran at the end of Surah Tawbah, Allah SWT says There has come unto you a messenger from amongst yourselves. It grieves him that you should perish. Deeply concerned is he about you. And the ulama say, this part of the ayah is general, that the Prophet SAW has concerned for the whole of humanity. And now we have the tawfsis, now we have specificity to the believers he is kind and merciful. One of my favorite examples of this type of deep concern and love that the Prophet SAW has for humanity, khususan with the muslimin is a hadith of Sahih Muslim when a man comes to the Prophet SAW in the month of Ramadan and he says I broke my fast intentionally and the Prophet SAW said to him you have to fast 60 consecutive days now and the man said I can't even fast Ramadan how am I going to fast 60 consecutive days so the Prophet SAW told him free a slave and he said I can't afford to do that he said 60 poor people and he said with one I have nothing the Prophet SAW himself goes out and gives him some food and he says here take this and feed people he said feed who? he said I am full of poor people he said Wallahi I swear to Allah Ya Rasulallah O messenger of God there is no people more poor more impoverished between the two mountains of Medina than my own family so the Prophet SAW said to him take it and feed your family with it he wanted Muslims to flourish he avoided what Dr. Jackson calls Gacha Islam you know people that are trying to expose the false and others he had Gacha right no the Prophet SAW wanted people to flourish think about the hadith of the Prophet SAW when a man came to him after Salat al-Assam and he said to the Prophet SAW I broke the commandment of Allah so punish me according to the Kitab of Allah punish me according to the Kitab of Allah the Prophet SAW said to him have you prepared Salat with us? didn't you just pray with us? and the man said yes he said yes it's already been forgiven for you it's already been forgiven he wasn't seeking to meet out punishment against the Muslims the Prophet SAW was there is a hadith and there is some weakness in this hadith of the ulama quoted the Prophet SAW said about the month of Ramadan he said the beginning of the month is Rahman the ulama said the first ten days and nights is Rahman because the foundation of everything of anything is Rahman the first ayah of the Quran is in the name of Allah the indiscriminately compassionate the intimately loving the first hadith of children were taught the hadith of Rahman life in the dunya begins in the Rahman in the womb of a mother this word Rahman is related to Rahman the beginning of the month is Rahman Wa al-Satuhu ma al-Fira in the middle of the month is forgiveness it's not be fasted for ten days and we engage in extra worship we have as it were a sin offering Allah SWT in an attempt to have him forgive us Abu Hurra said everyone is forgiven in Ramadan except the one who refuses so they said to him who refuses to be forgiven and he said the one who refuses to make is the fault that there are people who refuse to make is the fault people who believe in God our president was asked during the campaign have you ever asked God for forgiveness he said I never had the need to ask for forgiveness there is actually a difference of opinion among sihrulama who is better the one who sinned and made tauba or the one who never sinned at all ultimately they said the latter is better because he is closer to the rank of a prophet but there is a genuine difference of opinion between the two khunubani adama khattahun wa khiro khattai antawabun the prophet SWT said in a hadith that all of the sons of Adam all of the children of Adam with the exception of the prophets who are the isma they are guarded from consciously disobeying Allah SWT but everybody else is in a state of sin but the best of those who sin are those who make tauba those who reorient themselves literally turned back to Allah SWT and Allah SWT is antawab the one who reorients himself towards us the prophet SWT he is the best of creation he is maasum he cannot consciously disobey Allah SWT yet he says I seek Allah's forgiveness 70 times in the day that our mother Aisha heard him and said heard him say she heard him say glory be to you I am incapable of praising you the likes of which you have praised yourself this is why he is making tauba as Allah SWT because he cannot praise Allah SWT as Allah SWT has praised himself he is also our exemplar he is teaching us how to have adab with our Lord he said glad tidings to the one who finds a lot of istighfar in his scroll on the Yom al-Tiyama in the Hadith of the new Himba the prophet SWT ascended the minba on one Friday he climbed the first step he paused and he said and this was heard by the Sahaba in the front row and then he climbed the second step and he paused and he said and this was heard by the Sahaba and he climbed the third step so after the prayer they asked him what was the meaning of this and he said and I was on the first step and he said the one who meets Ramadan and is not forgiven will enter the hellfire and be distanced by Allah SWT so he said and then he said and he said but did not take care of them did not show piety towards his parents and because of that he enters the fire and Allah SWT distanced him so he said and he said and he said and he said and he said that the one when you are mentioned he does not bother to send then addictions upon him when he hears the name of the prophet he doesn't send and he dies and he is distanced by Allah SWT and he dies and he is distanced by Allah SWT with respect to the first with respect to the first in other words Allah SWT out of forgiveness in Ramadan is everywhere and if you did not maintain it then truly we don't deserve them we really have to work hard not to make toba in Ramadan for not making toba in Ramadan we have to check our Ramadan check our fast and then he said the last part of Ramadan which is the time that we are in is freedom from the fire and this word right the attack on this is a word used in the context of slavery this word means manumission or emancipation that the meaning here according to the urlama is that we've been enslaved by our shahwa by our base desire to the naw and in Ramadan we are essentially purchasing our freedom from the fire by attaining independence from our shahwa we are purchasing our freedom we are manumitting our soul from the fire by attaining independence from our shahwa in the hadith and muslim and tempidih the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam he said hellfire is veiled by desire in other words hellfire is disguised to look like your desire at the same time or sexual deviancy or excessive sleep excessive eating excessive joking this is exemplified by hadith attributed to eesa alayhi sallallahu alayhi sallam when the dunya personified itself and manifested itself to him in the form of an old haggard prostitute she came to eesa alayhi sallallahu alayhi sallam and he looked at her and he said how is it that you are able to dupe and destroy so many men and she said i hide in the shadows this is the dunya manifested as this old woman speaking to eesa alayhi sallallahu alayhi sallam i hide in the shadows and wave men over to me and when they come to me i slaughter them they came to fulfill their shahwa and they found death but where did he go he continued sallallahu alayhi sallam paradise is veiled by detestables in other words paradise is veiled to look like things detestable to our shahwa the shahwa, the base self doesn't want to be active it doesn't want to live life in yatidah and moderation it doesn't want to fast it doesn't want to pray it doesn't want to study the nefs doesn't want these things but this is the road to jannah the four things that we should habitually are nefs and fear and sleeplessness of course the two main sources of mausia, of sin come from the button and the fudge the stomach and the genitals and he called these a shahwa the two base desires book 23 of the yihna is called kassur shahwa the breaking of the two desires in Ramadan food and marital relations during the daytime are haram the purpose is to discipline and purify the lower self the nefs one of the meanings of shaita midzara that we mentioned earlier we said was a figure of speech in arabic meaning that the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam would get ready for serious business some of the yihna say this is a euphemism that you implement a self imposed state of celibacy during the last ten nights of Ramadan to concentrate on his worship even though it's halal to do that this is a training program to become madakani to become angelic the angels they only do what Allah s.w.t orders them to do they don't have volition they are in a complete state of fa'a obedience to Allah s.w.t but in our postmodern society the shakhwate become fully endorsed sometimes you have these movements now body acceptance movement incredibly mysterious, enigmatic a mystery to medical professionals that people are saying there's no relationship between body weight and health that uses acronym haze, healthy at every size no doctor endorses this this is a way of just shifting blame I don't need to change myself for my gluttony it's society's fault that's who needs to change 25% of internet searches deal with indecent material 25% billions of times a day and you not only now have homosexual bisexual, you have metrosexual and sexual these people are they sanction their lust the shakhwate in the Quran the nubs is tripartite we're talking about the nubs we're talking about the lower self the base self that needs to be transformed the anima in latin the psyche in greek we're not talking about the lure or the spiritus which is the nubs soul we're talking about the nubs is tripartite these are mentioned in the Quran and nubs al-amana misoob this is the nubs the lower self that incites towards evil untrained undisciplined we have to work on that we begin training our souls the nubs becomes nubs al-awama the striving soul the striving soul the soul that is engaging in transforming itself and then you have nubs al-mutsma inna the tranquil soul the soul that has actualized the hadith of the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam la yadminu ahadfukum hatta yadbuna hawwahu tada'ni majl awkama taala alayhi sallatu wa sallam none of you truly believe until his shakhwa until his awa is in perfect accordance with what I have brought sallallahu alayhi sallam one of the names of Ramadan jihad the month of intense striving and the sahaba that engaged the mushrikin qazwat badaq and fatahabaka in the month of Ramadan this is the martial or military aspect of jihad which is obviously only declared by legitimate state authority not by vigilantes but there's another aspect of jihad and this is a hadith some people say this is not a hadith it goes all the way back to the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam and it's a hasan hadith a good hadith that when they were returning from qazwat badaq the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam said we are returning from al jihad al-asabar the military aspect of jihad to al jihad al-atmar to the greater jihad and they said ya rasoolallah overcome three to one odds on the battlefield al-mujahid manjihad al-afsa is hadith musta al-ahmar the quintessential mujahid is the one who strives against his lower self his base motives in the obedience of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the question I get a lot especially from the youth is what is the point of fasting is it like a diet plan or something like that which is interesting because the data shows that in many muslim majority countries food consumption increases because we have muslims gorging themselves over eating feasting, not fasting this is incredible this is a fitna the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam he said come min sa'iman when he says come it's either interrogative or rhetorical min sa'iman a prepositional phrase min sa'iman how many people are there that fast that get nothing from their fast except hunger there is an axiom amongst the urlama that the merit of the thing is known by its objective Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that oh you who believe fasting has been prescribed upon you as it was prescribed upon those before you of course you have some Christians that were fast lent you have Jews that fast and then he says in order for you to have taqwa right this is the objective in order for you to have taqwa the word taqwa is related to which is a shield the prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam the fast is a shield that you're guarding yourself from what are known as the seven inroads to the heart and this is something we're supposed to be doing all throughout the year but the human being insan forgets probably the etymology of the word insan is nasya the one who's always forgetting we need reminders we need an animal training program this is the purpose of Ramadan that we have a shield to protect the inroads to the heart and the eye that when we're fasting we see something haram we distract we look away we divert our glances we don't hear something haram the insan we don't talk ill of people we guard our tongues they get the hand we're not stealing things we're not abusing people we're not going to somewhere that's impermissible and then the button and the tharj and the last two are especially harmful according to Imam al-Razza Abu Yazid al-Bustani he said hunger is a cloud whenever a bondsman is hungry his heart rains down with him very differently what we're hearing from the Prophet's father priests now if you look at the Quran in Al-Baqarah 2.183-187 Allah SWT and nestled within these ayat about Ramadan fasting is prescribed Ramadan is the month in which the Quran was revealed if you're sick if you're traveling and so on and so forth right in the middle of these ayat of these ayat we have this seemingly unrelated ayat right in the middle Allah SWT Allah SWT and bring the Dawa to Da'a these ayat are not unrelated you see every surah of the Quran the ayat exhibit a coherent structure according to the rules of semantic rhetoric it's an incredible book Nizam al-Quran Hamid al-Dina al-Farahi and his student, Amin Aqsa al-Islahi who wrote an incredible tafsir of the Quran in Urdu called Zidam al-Quran it's in the process of being translated this is incredible work western scholastics recognize this I mean the best work written in English or translated in English on this topic of the coherent structure of the Quran, it was by a Belgian priest Jesuit priest, Michel Kipers called the composition of the Quran rhetorical analysis the question is what did this ayat have to do with fasting when my servants ask you concerning me say I am Karim I am close to them I answer every supplicant when he calls upon me you heard on my say the relationship this ayat with this section with this cluster of ayat is that fasting is the path to actualize Quran is the path to actualizing nearest to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that when we fast in the digital experience Allah's nearness I'll give you a quick example when fasting causes us or at least it should cause us empathize with those who are hungry the prophet subhanahu wa ta'ala said on the day of judgment Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala asked a group of people you were in the world and you never fed me you were in the world and you never fed me and they will say you are the Lord of the worlds how can we feed you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said if you had fed the hungry you would have actualized food I answer every supplicant when he calls upon me I answer every supplicant when he calls upon me part and parcel to fasting is du'a that we should be in a state of du'a and the most insulted of the du'a during this time I'm going to a mother aisha he said the prophet subhanahu wa ta'ala he said I would constantly recite this du'a Allahumma nimna ta'afoon we have to memorize this that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is al-aafoon which is different than al-aafoon Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has many names indicating his attribute of forgiveness is al-tawaab as we mentioned al-aafoon then you have these intensive forms al-fafoon al-fafar which basically means the one who veils the sin the sin is still there but Allah will veil it but al-aafoon the one who is al-aafoon is the one who obliterates and we trace the sin it's erased completely and we forget about it we don't see it later on the Yom Al-Tiyama and of course any one of these names is later du'a he said that the prophet subhanahu wa ta'ala said that that seek this night in the last ten nights of Ramadan this is when the Qur'an was revealed inna and zallan Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sent down the Qur'an this is called the inzaal the inzaal of the Qur'an is when the Qur'an came down in one shot and one dufaa from the lower to the firmament this is called the inzaal and then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala over the next 23 years revealed the Qur'an peace meal from the firmament to the sacred heart of the prophet Muhammad this is called the tanzi as the Qur'an says that this night is better than a thousand months better than a thousand months a lifetime of worship Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give us a tawfiq to be able to to fasten our seatbelts to roll up our sleeves and get down to serious business and give us tawfiq to catch this lady to come and have the reward of over a thousand months of who can probably have a strong tawfiq a strong tawfiq