 Praise be to God, we seek His help, we seek His guidance, and we seek His forgiveness. We take refuge with God from the evils of ourselves and our misdeeds. Those whom Allah guides cannot be misguided, and those whom Allah misguides shall never find a friend to guide them. وَاَشْهَدُوا اللَّهَ إِلَّهَ إِلَّى اللَّهُ وَحْتَهُ لَا شَرِيْكَ لَهُ I testify that there is no God but Allah alone and without partner. وَاشْهَدُوا النَّسَّيِّدُنَّا وَنَّبِيَّنَا مُحَمَّدَنَ عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ And I testify that our master and our prophet, Muhammad, is a slave and messenger. اللهم صلي وسلم مباركة لهذه النبي الكريم دِلْ قَلْبِ الرَّحِيمَ المَبْعُوثِ رَّحْمَةً لِلْعَالَمِينَ May Allah send prayers and peace and blessings upon that noble messenger that kind-hearted man sent as a mercy to the world. فَأُسِيْكُمْ بِتَقْوَ اللَّهِ فَإِنَّ خَيْرَ مَا نَتَوَاصَ بِهِ بَيْنَنَا تَقْوَ اللَّهِ To commence, I counsel you to be wary of Allah for the best that we can advise each other to is Taqwa. قال الله تعالى في محكم تنزيله اقرى بسم ربك الذي خلق وقال تعالى قُرْ رَبِّ زِدْنِ عِلْمَا وقال تعالى هَل يَسْتَوَ اللَّذِينَ يَعْلَمُونَ وَالَّذِينَ لا يَعْلَمُونَ Allah says in the Quran, read in the name of your Lord who created. And he says, say, my Lord, increase me in knowledge. And he says, are those who know and those who do not know equal? The first obligation of the Muslim as our scholars tell us is knowledge. And many of us hear that and we think that's just scholars saying that's what's best because they're scholars and because they're people of knowledge. But we can't all study and we can't all be scholars after all. But that's not what scholars mean. Let's look at what they say. They use the word معرفة for knowledge. It comes from the root عرفة which means to come to know something, to go from ignorance to knowledge. Allah says, يُخْرِجُهُمْ مِنَ الْدُولِمَاتِ إِلَنُورِ Now this is the purpose of Islam to take people from darkness, the darkness of ignorance, of living a life cluelessly and thinking our lives to be meaningless. Living a life where we are deprived of true contentment and lasting happiness and then achieving after that nothing good in the afterlife. It takes us from that place. It takes us from there to the light of knowledge of understanding who we are, what is our place in the universe, the knowledge of how to live the good life, the life of contentment in this world and eternal felicity in the next world. But why is this, you might ask, why is this the centerpiece of our tradition? Why is the Islamic tradition more so than any other tradition in our history as even the great Orientalists will admit? Why are we so focused on knowledge? Why did Revelation begin with Iqra, with Read? Why does Rumi's Messenger begin with Listen? In other words, why does Allah not just tell us fear God and love God and pray and don't steal and don't fornicate and give in charity? Why is our religion not just a number of commandments? To answer this question I'll ask you a question in return. Someone came up to you and told you you should love Ahmad. In fact, love Ahmad. You have to. Would you love him? You could claim to. But in fact, you would not love him. Neither could you say really that you hated him or that you felt anything towards him as a person. And why? You have no knowledge of him. So how could you love him? How could you hate him? How could you feel anything towards him truly if you don't know him? The same principle applies to Allah. The same principle applies to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the same principle applies to the Sharia in general. We are commanded to know Allah because if we know him, we will worship him. This is himself an entire topic. One of the earliest scholars, he says Whoever knows himself, knows his Lord. In other words, whoever recognizes his own incapacity, his own inability to do things, whoever recognizes that he is not in control, whoever recognizes his utter dependence on Allah, that person will then recognize Allah's complete ability, his complete power over all things, his control over everything, his independence of anyone else. And in this world, we respect people and we venerate people because of their knowledge and we respect and venerate people because of their power and because of how much money they have and because of how generous they are. And if we had true knowledge of Allah then, beyond the, you know, yeah, yeah, we know he's this all-powerful being and in our heads we're imagining this old bearded man in the sky, which if we believe that's a very, very dangerous thing to believe. But if that is how we imagine Allah, but if instead we knew Allah as he truly is, as being all-knowing, as being all-powerful, as being so rich and so independent that he is completely self-sufficient, as being so generous that he creates us all and he sustains us all and he gives us food and he gives us drink and he gives us the health and the strength and the wealth and the intelligence. And even so, despite all these gifts, he does not smite us down when we disobey him. Then if these are all true, then what respect is it that we owe Allah and what sort of veneration is it that we owe Allah? By our very nature, we respect and venerate people that do this. So if we know Allah in this way, by our very nature we would obey him and respect him and worship him as he deserves. And this principle of knowledge applies again to the prophets of Allah, if we believe them to be just some man who lived 1400 years ago, got told some things by Allah and then died and that's that. Then we don't know who the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is. He is the one that said, He says, So whatever I see in them of good, I praise Allah for that. And whatever I see of bad, I seek forgiveness from Allah for you. This is our prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, still in his grave, asking forgiveness for us. And the one who will on the day of judgment be responsible for the debts that we still owe. Who will not enter paradise until he makes sure that we do as well. This is the one whose inspired words are still served as a living guide to us. Applicable to this world that we live in just as much as they were to the world that he lived in. And if we don't understand these things, we don't see the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam as our guide. And we don't follow his example, his sunnah. Instead we think, No, the times have changed and we know more now than we knew then. And why should we focus so much on this dead man? And by doing that, we lose those gems of wisdom that had uncovered only by those people who have knowledge of the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And then finally, the same principle applies and perhaps this is the most interest to us in the United States. The same principle applies to our knowledge of the sharia, of the sacred law. If you don't know why the law says what it does, if you don't understand some basic facets of legal theory, if you don't understand some of the wisdoms behind the law, then the laws of no importance to you, you won't follow it. This forms the core of our tradition. Once a man came to the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and this is a very telling example, he came up and he said, Oh messenger of God, I want to fornicate. And already we can take lessons from this, perhaps not the lessons that we're focusing on, but this man felt comfortable coming up to the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam directly and seeking his advice. And the problem many times today is that we don't know how to approach scholars and people of knowledge for help. And those very scholars don't know how to recognize our cries for help. Most quote unquote people of knowledge, if a person came up to them like this, we'll start braiding that person, throw him out and tell him have taqwa, fear Allah. And that person thereby does not give that person any advice. And the person that comes to him is then in a worse position thinking that that is Islam. But that's not how the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam responded when this man came up and said and told him I want to fornicate. Instead, what the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam did was he sought to give this companion some understanding of what is the wisdom behind this law. Why is it a person cannot do that? So he asked, would you like to catch your mother in that act? And the companion of this visceral disgusted reaction and he said, of course not. So the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam continued and he said, what about your sister? What about your wife? Or what about your daughter? And each time he had the same reaction, he said, no, of course not. This was the first step. This was the first step with the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's response. Reorientation through knowledge, teaching this person some of the wisdom. The second step the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam did was to make dua. He turns to Allah and he places his hand over the companion's heart and he prays that Allah purify this companion's heart. And after doing that, the companion later said by Allah, I came here and nothing was more beloved to you, beloved to me. I went to nothing more than to commit fornication. And after your hand, after the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's hand left me, there was nothing more odious to me. There was nothing less than to commit fornication. That is the way of our prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. There's no condemnation because someone is ignorant. No one is thrown out because they say something wrong or feel something wrong or want something wrong. Instead, we view that as a teaching opportunity, an opportunity to give insight into why Islamic law is the way it is, why the sharia says what it does. A person does not sin because they love sin. The vast majority of sins, the vast majority of times when a person disobeys Allah, if you look at it objectively, it's not because they love it. Most acts of sin people would think to be disgusting acts, to be acts of little benefit. But instead, people sin because they don't understand what's bad about the sin. They sin because they think incorrectly that God's prohibitions are on everything and they're meant to be constrictive and difficult just for the sake of constriction and difficulty. And people sin because they hang around other people that make them think that that sin is good. But every single one of Allah's laws are for a reason, they're for a wisdom. We say that Allah is al-haqeem, that He is all-wise. This is a creedal point that we must believe. What does that mean? For Allah to be all-wise, that means that every single thing that He decreed, there is some musleh, there is some good, there is some benefit, that was not in something that He did not choose. That means every law and everything that He created and everything that He determines, it is all the best possible thing that could happen, whether we understand that right now or not. This is the basis of our trust in Allah, as the Imam of Al-Hassadi famously tells us. And all of that hinders our knowledge. There's a hadith with a prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam says, The virtue of a scholar, of one who knows, over the mere worshiper, a person that worships without having knowledge, is like the brightness of the full moon at night over all the other stars in the sky. And why is that? This is because that this person understands who is it that he is praying to and he has proper trust in that being and he has truly relies on Allah and he has the appropriate humbleness before Allah because he knows who he is and he knows who Allah is. And that's not to say that people without knowledge cannot trust in Allah. It's not to say that they cannot be humble so on and so forth. If someone told you the president was coming to visit you and because of your lack of knowledge you thought it meant the president of this masjid. You might make sure to act and dress in some sort of reasonable way. But in fact when the person said president they meant the president of the United States. If you knew that from the beginning just imagine how differently you would have prepared for that. So Allah tells us, Allah asks in the Quran He says Are those who know? Are they equal to those who do not know? If you look at our books of Tafsir they say that the question here is It's a rhetorical question asked for the purpose of complete negation. In fact this is the strongest form of negation in Arabic. So Allah is saying the people who know are not they are emphatically not equal to those who do not know. Having said this I ask for God's forgiveness. Praise be to Allah. We testify that there is no God but Allah alone and without partner. May prayers and peace be upon his noble messenger. Now we have understood some of the importance of knowledge. What is it that we can do about that? So what I'd like to leave us with are some simple action items that we can take. The first is to find a person with knowledge and study. What I mean here is not formal study not taking a path of knowledge per se but simply reading and listening even if just a tiny bit. And generally finding a person with a lot of knowledge is better than finding a person with little knowledge because they have a better understanding of the reality of Islam more so than an average preacher or an average Amen. And a person is better than a recording but a recording is better than nothing. But we should set a time for that in our lives and do that consistently even if it's just one hour every week we can all set aside that amount of time that I can guarantee. So that's one opening our eyes and opening our ears just a little bit. The second is to engage in this lost practice of reflection. Allah asks us in the horizons and in yourselves do you not reflect, do you not see? Very few people reflect anymore. This is as simple as walking outside and reflecting upon the perfection of creation the perfection of a tree and how it gives you shade the perfection of a car and how it transports you from one place to another the perfection of the human form of the human intellect and being able to do everything that we see around us to be able to make this mess that we are in right now. We can reflect on the Quran while we listen to it on our way to work. We can reflect on ourselves when we're going to bed. We can reflect on these things to use our reason use our hearts. And if we do this we'll be convinced of the truth more surely than if we spent our entire lives reading other people's reflections. Allah does not ask us to believe in anything that cannot be reached by our reason. So if we reflect and if we use this brain that Allah has gifted us as it is meant to we will discover truth. We can reflect even on what we study at school or what we're engaging in at work and we'll discover that those things too bring us closer to Allah. So one, we said read and listen and second to reflect even just a few minutes every day. And then third we should try spending time with Muslims and practicing Muslims. Just spending time with Muslims will encourage you slowly but surely first to incline towards Islam and then to learn more because of that inclination and then you learn more about Allah and then you think more like Muslims. And then the cycle continues slowly but surely until you climb up closer and closer to Allah. So that's it, these three simple things. It's a very simple formula and this whole religion is in fact very simple. There is no difficulty. Allah says He has not placed upon you in this religion any difficulty. This is a religion of ease, of gentleness and of mercy We ask Allah to grace us with that which He loves and is pleased with. I ask Allah to grace us with that which He loves and is pleased with. When his wife is a prophet like Ummahatul-Mu'mineen and we have spent years with them we have spent years with them in mercy and mercy of the Merciful. and prayers and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and upon our masters Abu Bakr, Umar, Othman, Ali and Al-Hassan and Al-Hussein and their mother Fatima al-Zahra and the rest of the companions and the mothers of the believers and those that follow them in goodness until the day of reckoning. We ask also that Allah be pleased with us out of His vast mercy. We ask Allah to give us refuge with Him from the punishment of the fire, from the torment of the grave, from the trials of life and death and from the evil tribulation of the Dajjal, the Antichrist. To conclude, Allah says, surely Allah commands to justice, excellence and charity to relatives. And He forbids indecency, vice and injustice. He warns you so that you may take heed. Welcome as-salah.