 We begin with the thanks and the praises of Allahu Subhanahu wa ta'ala saying to Him Alhamdulillah. And we recognize that without Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala's will and allowing us, His showering us with mercy, without these things we would not have been able to come here to worship Him in the way that He has commanded us to worship Him. And so we recognize that our worship of Him Subhanahu wa ta'ala is a blessing for us and it is beneficial to us and it does not increase nor decrease Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala in any way whether we worship Him or not. As we approach the month of Ramadan, we need to prepare ourselves to make the most of the month. And so insha'Allah the topic for these next few minutes will be how we can prepare our hearts for the coming of Ramadan. There's usually two ways that people react to the coming of Ramadan and you can see this really clearly amongst children. Kids who grow up in an environment where their parents are longing for Ramadan, you see that excitement come into the child and the child is excited to go to the masjid to be with their friends, to have fun foods at Iftar and all of these things. Whether it's related to the actual ibadah of Ramadan or not, you see the excitement in the child that Ramadan is approaching and it's a festive month and I'm going to have fun in it. As opposed to the children who when you ask them, are you excited for Ramadan? They respond by saying, Eh, not really. I won't be able to eat during the day. I have to stay. I have to wake up super early in the morning and I don't like doing that. We always have to go to the masjid that night and I get bored. So you see in children, when you ask them about Ramadan, these two extremes that come up and so we need to look into ourselves and see which of these ends are we falling into? Are we falling into those people who are excited for Ramadan? Our hearts are longing for Ramadan or are we of those people who have this dislike towards this sacred month? So how do we prepare our hearts for Ramadan? What are the steps that we need to take? Insha'Allah we'll just mention a few things that will prepare our hearts for receiving the most benefit from Ramadan. So the first step that we need to engage in is cleansing our heart of sin that we have acquired throughout the year since last Ramadan. And so there's two sins that come to the forefront that we need to be extremely aware of and that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala has created a system in which he's prepping our hearts to remove these sins from us. The first of these was the 15th night of Sha'ban and in this night Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala there's a hadith in which he says, in which Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala will forgive the people except for two on this night of the 15th. Only two people will not receive forgiveness on this night. The first is the one who associates partners with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala and this is through shirk and the second one is the one who has some type of hatred and fighting towards one of his brothers. So in the month prior to Ramadan in these 15 days leading up to Ramadan the two things that come up for us that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is encouraging us to do so that our hearts are ready to receive the light of Ramadan is to end hatred between one another and to forgive one another. So we'll talk briefly about both of these points insha'Allah. Imam Sha'rani a 16th century Egyptian scholar wrote a small book on the rights that people owe to one another. So when you have a companion what are the things that you owe to them? What rights do they have on you, upon you? As he begins to list all of the things that you owe to your fellow Muslim brother the first one he says that you are completely blind to any defect that he has. You don't even acknowledge that it exists. That's the first. Then he says the second one that if one of his defects makes its way into your vision, into your sight if that happens you explain it a way that he was doing something else. Then after that if it persists and you continue to see it within this brother of yours you do not criticize them for falling into the sin but you remind them of the glory of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and he doesn't talk about criticizing a fellow Muslim brother or sister in their sin until way later in the book after you honor them, after you honor their family after you fulfill the rights of their friends, the rights of their families after every time you meet them you greet them with love he continues to list things upon things upon things until he finally reaches the point where he says okay now you can criticize them for the sin that they're persisting in but the initial steps of brotherhood, the initial steps of sisterhood are not to approach the other with criticism and with hatred when there is disagreement you assume the best in the other and then way down the line when you see that this is not something that they're overcoming even then first you remind them of the glory of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala positive reinforcement and until you fulfilled all of these rights you do not engage in criticism of this person in a negative way yet when we look at the relationships that we have with one another how do we disagree with one another? how do we fight with one another? and does it not come from a place of arrogance? does it not come from a place of hatred? does it not lead to bad blood between one person and the other? disagreement in our times has been reduced to I know better than you about this thing you know less than me I am better than you you are worse than me and therefore I need to tell you what is right and you are wrong and this continues this is not the sunnah of our Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam this is not the way of our pious predecessors this is not the way that we should be interacting with one another the first step we need to take when we disagree with someone is to approach them with honor, respect, dignity and love and that is the only way we should disagree with them look throughout our books of fiqh the entire Hanafi madhab open up the books and you'll see disagreements upon disagreements it's built into muslim culture to disagree with one another all of our shuyukh and our imam disagree with one another imam abu hanifa says this imam muhammad doesn't agree with that imam abu yusuf doesn't say and then they all just again and again and then sometimes zufur comes in and then he comes with another agreement and everyone else is proven wrong and so on and so forth it's all disagreement but they do it with respect and dignity and love an example of this in our times is a video of sheikh hamza yusuf speaking to dr. eva brand on sloth the entire conversation probably 80% of the conversation is just them disagreeing with one another of her saying one thing and then him saying something else watch the video they disagree throughout the entire video but there's immense amounts of respect and love between them because they recognize that if we criticize each other if we put each other down if we disgrace each other that's not going to lead us to truth that's not the way that we are supposed to act so the first step in cleansing our hearts and preparing for them is to remove this hatred when it comes to disagreement specifically remove it from ourselves or at least be aware of it at least be aware that something inside of you when you disagree with someone else that something inside of you will lead you towards some type of negative trait negative characteristic just be aware of it Allah SWT says وَمَا يُقَشُحَّ نَفْسِهِ فَأُولَائِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ the people that are protected and saved and aware of the greed that they have within themselves of their own wants and desires they're the ones who are successful He did not say the one who completely is removed this greed is completely removed from them the greed will persist, it stays your wants and your desires they'll remain within you but be courageous and brave enough to acknowledge them and keep them in check so the first step in cleansing our hearts from sin is to remove hatred when we disagree with others the second step that follows from that is to forgive others when they have wronged you and to respond to them with love one of... when the Prophet SAW was sent at the end of this period of Jahaliyah and the Nur of the Prophet SAW came into this world in the body of the Prophet SAW and he came and he restored justice across the lands when righteousness and justice was brought into this world what was one of... what were one of the things that he was combating what were one of the darknesses that his light came to remove Sheikh Ali An-Nadwi from the past century writes one of the major injustices at the coming of the Prophet SAW was the inability for one person to love another person when they corrected them the inability to love someone when they are correcting you when they are bringing benefit towards you you have an inability to show love towards them this was at the peak of Jahaliyah the peak of darkness and oppression that the Prophet SAW is coming to remove this characteristic that is one of the main reasons of justice that he came to restore that you are able to love the one who is correcting you but now what's the state? what is our situation? when someone comes and says brother, this is not exactly how you should be doing it this is a little bit better will you accept some loving advice from me? do you know that this thing that you are doing is actually sinful? what is the response in situations like that? what is the state of our hearts? these things, they are the basics of our religion none of this is new to anyone here none of this is new to not hate people, it's not new we've known it for centuries to love people, we've known it knowledge is not the end goal it's to act upon what you know to be able to put these things into practice to be able to actively take steps towards purifying and cleansing your hearts so that you can receive the bounties of Ramadan so this is our first step in our preparation for Ramadan to cleanse our hearts prepare our hearts by cleansing them of sins I'll just mention step 2 and 3 because we're out of time step 2 to learn about the rules of the fast to know what is correct when I'm fasting and what is incorrect when I'm fasting what is permissible for me what breaks my fast what doesn't break my fast these things are very important without the foundations of the rules of fasting without the foundations of the rules of fasting people will not be able to progress spiritually in their fasts so don't focus just on the spiritual development that Ramadan promises you lay the groundwork by knowing what rules you need to follow when the fast comes in then the spiritual benefits will follow and then all your other benefits losing weight and whatever it may be those will come inshallah as well and step 3 take on more responsibility in Ramadan don't allow Ramadan to be a month of laziness and weakness for you to be a month where you slack off be serious in Ramadan and take on responsibility in Ramadan those people who have ever tried any type of weightlifting or improvement to grow stronger in terms of their physical strength know that if you're curling air you're not going to make big biceps if you're just pushing nothing your chest isn't gonna grow in order for you to grow muscle physically you need to put resistance and progress by taking on more weight in order for you to grow spiritually take on more responsibility in the month of Ramadan accept that responsibility and be prepared to enter the month with the mentality to grow so we ask Allah SWT to allow us to have our hearts prepped for Ramadan so that we're ready to grow so that we're ready to receive so that we're ready to improve ourselves and so that we can worship Him the way that He wants us to worship Him Astaghfirullah Ali wa lakum wa lisa'il al-Muslimin Astaghfiruh Innahuhu wa l-Ghafoor al-Rahim