 So just a quick note before we get going that the timing has changed a bit, so we're starting the class after Maghrib instead of at 8 p.m. So Maghrib's coming in at like 8, 12, 8, 13. We'll pray Maghrib, inshallah, and then we'll have the class and then we'll go up until like right before Isha and with Q&A, inshallah, right before Isha. So just something to note as the days get a little bit later, that will be the schedule. And then if it gets to the point where Maghrib gets really close to like nine, then we'll start before like well an hour before Maghrib and finish off with Maghrib, inshallah. Alright, alhamdulillah. So that's just the note for the next week. Great. So we've been talking about a variety of different things. Our topic has been practical spirituality. We're going through this book, The Book of Assistance by Imam al-Haddad. And what we were talking about last week was what are some of the ways in which we encourage other people to do good, encourage ourselves, and encourage other people to do good. And how do we make sure we do it in a very, very gentle and soft way, right? So just kind of a brief, brief recap that if we, when we're struggling with something or we have a family member that's struggling or we have a friend that's struggling, we really want to make sure that when we're inviting towards goodness and inviting towards the religion that it's done in a very gentle, merciful, you could say non-judgmental type of way so that you never turn anyone away from the faith. And what we covered in the last, like maybe three or four months of the type of vicar that someone should be doing and the ways in which we can go about improving our own spirituality and purifying our heart, when those traits begin to manifest in somebody, it becomes, you have a natural desire to want to invite other people towards good. Like you feel concerned, like, oh my God, I'm really, really deeply concerned that struggling with something or this person is struggling with something or this person is getting off the path. That concern starts to manifest like a portion, small portion of the concern that the Prophet ﷺ had for all of humanity which was that he wanted to make sure all of humanity was saved and he wanted to make sure all of humanity knew about this message and knew that the importance of worshiping Allah and Allah alone. And so the portion of that concern starts to manifest the more you and I start to follow the sunnah. When that happens, then you say, hey, I want to help other people and there's a way in which we go about doing that. And again, gentleness is really at the core of that entire approach, inshallah. So we'll go ahead and get into this next topic for today. So what we're talking about today is the importance of relationship building and the importance of maintaining good relationships with a variety of people in our life. So we'll start out by talking about family, our parents, and then others around us. And this is really, really important. Sometimes we think that our religion and our Islam is only about our relationship with Allah, but that's far from the case, right? Our relationship with Allah is measured by how we treat each other. And it's closely measured, especially by how we treat those who are very close to us, those who are in our family, our spouses, if we're blessed with spouses, our children, if we're blessed with children, our parents, if we're blessed with parents and other people who we have close relationships with. And so one of the things that Imam al-Hadad, he begins with, he says that it's very, very important that anything you have been giving charge over, right? Charge in this case, you've been given leadership over. You deal with those different things in a very, very just way. And he begins by saying the first way you and I implement that is you and I have been given charge and control over our limbs, our limbs, our bodily limbs. And so he actually starts with this because he wants to start with this spiritual approach before getting into some of the practical, right? And what that means is if you and I have been given charge over our hands, we've been given charge over our feet, we've been given charge over our eyes, we've been given charge over our tongue, we have been given charge over all the different limbs that the human being has. And with that, they don't belong to us. We're just borrowing them, right? Like they belong to Allah. We always say, إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَجِهِ And that we belong to Allah and to Allah we will return. And so the different parts, the different limbs, the different bodily parts that Allah has given us, those, they don't belong to us. They're on loan. They're just completely on loan. And God has said, hey, I'm giving these to you. These are on loan. Here's what I want you to do with them. And here's what I want you to not do with them. And if you do what I want you to do, you are being a good, grateful servant. And if you do what I've asked you to avoid, or what rather, if you do what I've prohibited, now you're really, really messing up that loan, right? Because that's, and on the day of judgment, every single limb testifies and that you and I aren't really able to speak. What happens when your feet speak for you and our eyes speak for us. And so they'll say, oh, this person that he or she looked at this thing that was impermissible. Someone else's eyes will say, oh, they spend a lot of time looking at the Qur'an, right? So there'll be different narratives that the limbs of the human being are telling and they're speaking on our behalf. And so when someone realizes and the reality of the fact that they're borrowed sinks in, now we stop thinking that it's our belonging, right? You hear often in our time like, oh, no, this is my body. I want to do whatever I want with it, right? It's my choice. You've been given, you and I have been given choice, yes, with a limited degree though. Allah says this is what I want you to do with it. Going against that is just brazenly saying, well, God gave me something and now I'm just going to openly disobey, right? And so the idea of choice here is there. We have a choice of whether to obey or disobey. We have to acknowledge in this case that we are deciding to openly disobey. And this becomes really important when it comes to gratitude that you and I cannot be considered grateful or shakir if we are not using every part of what we've been given for what it's meant to be done, for what it's meant to be used for, right? So gratitude is not just like a thought or it's not just a verbal exercise that we say, yeah, I'm really, really grateful, but we miss all of our prayers because God created our body with a very, very specific purpose. Our body and our soul both are supposed to be spending time in prayer. And that would be like an example. We can't say, yeah, I'm really, really grateful and we treat everybody terribly because we're misusing the specific purpose of our communication is to make sure to enjoin goodness with people, right? That's one of the main reasons why Allah has given us this blessing. And so those are examples, examples of something that he starts out with. And then he says that if you and I start to do this correctly, then if we're ever given the test of leadership over anybody else, right? You and I will know how to treat them properly. We'll know how to be just with people. And so the first way that this manifests is with our families, that if someone is a parent, right, you, you, they are essentially looking after the kids that Allah has blessed them with. And they're also on loan, right? They don't, they don't really belong to that. They belong to Allah. And when someone has manifested a fair and a just way and a merciful way in which the way that they treat themselves, they will also manifest that approach when it comes to our family. And so what are the requirements, what are the recommendations that they give? The first is that you and I, when we have a family, and if we're in a position of leadership, especially in our family, this could be that someone is a parent, this could be someone as an older sibling, that we guide our family towards worship, that we guide our family towards worship, because Allah has put us in a leadership position for a reason. It's not just, you know, so that we can ride shotgun, right? That's not the reason it's one of the benefits, it's not the only reason. There's a specific you to be in that, in that position. And when Allah decides it's time for somebody to be trusted with something, he wants to now see, can you live up to the trust? Can someone live up to the trust, right? And so it starts then when someone is with their family, that you are actually, you gain a level of responsibility. You and, you and I are now responsible for someone beyond just ourselves, right? We are actually responsible for making sure that everybody in our house, if we're in that position of authority of any sort, is worshiping, is worshiping. And we actually, and we ask Allah make it easy for us, but we could be held accountable for that as well. If you get to a point where you were held accountable beyond just for ourselves, right? So if you're someone as a parent, there's a responsibility of making sure that our children are worshiping Allah, are believing in Allah, are staying away from impermissible things, are living moral, morally proper and principled lives. That's really, really important for us to have that perspective, right? If someone is in a relationship, it's very important to encourage each other, right? The spouses have to encourage each other to make sure that we're guiding each other towards good, right? That if you and I are slipping, if someone is slipping, it's the other's spouse's responsibility to, no, no, no, no, hold on, let's, let's, you know, we want to sleep, but and it's the last five minutes and alarm is snoozing, but we got to wake up for fudger, right? We got to get up. I know we're really, really late, we're tired, we're exhausted, long day of work, we got to pray Isha, right? I know that we don't want to go over to this parent's house or this parent's house or the in-laws or whatever, but no, we got to go, it's, we got to maintain good relationships with our families. It's important, right? It's when we are usually in our lowest moments that we have to rely on our spouses in this case to bring us up. That's a responsibility that Allah has given us. It's a very, very specific and important responsibility, right? And so there are three things that, that he recommends that we do, right? First is that we guide each other and people who are in our, in our charge, you could say, towards what is obligatory and away from what is forbidden. It's fairly straightforward conceptually. It's very difficult to implement in our times and in practicality, right? So we see someone like, this could be manifesting, someone's, we're caught up or we're watching or we're starting to get to a show where we know that there's parts of the show that are just completely hot off, right? Like, oh, but it's a good show and I already watched the last five seasons or whatever it is, right? That would be like gently, gently, not, not, you know, going and turning off the streaming device, whatever someone's using and then throwing it, right? Gently saying, hold on a second, sure we should be watching this. It's probably not a good idea, right? Look at the effect that we're bringing into our household, right? And that would be like one way of where someone is guiding, right? If someone starts to, they had a tough day and they're just starting to talk smack about everybody at work, oh my God, this person and this person and this person and I hate all of them and then, oh my God, I can't even get you started by my manager and hold on a second, hold on a second, we're, we just passed it on and on. We're getting into backbiting now. Let's, right? You gently guide them away, gently, right? We probably shouldn't do that. It's not good for you and it's not good for your spirituality, right? And so that would be an example of a way that it manifests and we already mentioned the example of prayer, right? And then all of the different pillars of the religion would manifest, right? If, if we're like, oh, we want to go to a place where it's, we know things are going to be happening that are haram. We gently guide ourselves and our spouses away from that. Yeah, no, hold on a second. We probably shouldn't do that, right? We probably shouldn't do that. So that would be the first thing. The second thing is we don't let anybody in our house make light, make it a light thing to leave obligations. What I mean by that is there's one thing if you and I slip up and we feel that we slipped up, right? We're missing our prayers and we're like, I really feel bad about this. We're like, I got to work on myself. And there's a whole another thing if we're just like a pair of times go and go and go and go and we just, it's like we, we just get become complacent. We don't even care. We become used to it, right? And the two are very, very different. The first category, at least the guilt is there and the remorse is there and someone then is actively working on themselves. So that's the first thing. If somebody and whether it's ourselves or anyone else in our family, if we notice that they're leaving obligations, we have to guide them gently, but we have to at least make them feel the weight of leaving that obligation. It should never be made to be a trivial thing. And sometimes it is in our communities where it's like, there's certain prayers like fudgers, some houses are just like a fudger is completely optional. Like, it's not, it's like, does nobody praise it and nobody talks about it because if you start talking about it, then everyone's going to be like, oh, we really want to hope wait to wake up at 5am thing. We'll do that in Ramadan, right? We just make light of it. And that's, that gets really, really dangerous because now Shaitan has prevented us from number one, repenting and number two, ever working on ourselves. Like I literally met somebody who one time was like, yeah, fudger is like, that was for the people back then before they had electricity and they like, they were able to sleep much, much earlier. But now like, I mean, you know, it's probably just something you do whenever you wake up. And I was very concerned to hear that. But what are you going to do? This is like somebody who's in their 40s or 50s was telling me this. And that was just the mindset that they had. And they had this mindset for like a long period of time. They literally even told me like, I was happened to be staying at the house and like, don't wake my kid up for fudger. Don't wake them up. And I was like, but he's 20 years old, but he's required. But he was like, no, don't do it. I was like, okay. And you know, there's very little that you can do kind of at that point, right? So people have this mentality in the Muslim ummah and in the community where obligations are very, it's like, we might take the spectrums of this, right? So there's one where in certain situations we take obligations seriously. But like it's a wedding and then the wedding, it's all of a sudden someone's getting married or the whole the wedding house is there. And people just forget about being at that point, right? Like all the prayers are completely optional at this point because we're dressed up really nicely or I can't take my shoes off or situations. It's important for someone to be the person who's reminding everybody else. Gently, not in a forced manner, but someone should be. Remember, Salah is about establishing the prayer. Allah says those who become a Salat, not just pray, they establish the prayer, right? And that's a high station in our time that if somebody establishes different acts of worship, they will get immense reward in a way that just doing your own acts of worship has less reward, right? So if you encourage others and you establish it and you are that force of good in someone's life, that actually ends up being a really, really beautiful thing. So there's different scenarios in which sometimes, for example, someone's really good at doing it when we are like literally physically at home, but then we travel and again, we forget about it comes out traveling. It's not about gotta be on a plane. I gotta, you know, go to the airport and have, you know, my vacation, like I'm on vacation from everything, vacation is my obligation. We start to get to a different type of mentality, right? But there are people, if you take the religion seriously and go to Allah in moments of ease, Allah will always be there in moments of difficulty. Without a doubt, He'll be there from moments of difficulty. But if you and I only go to Allah when we need something, there's a problem, right? That's one way of doing it, but that's not the beautiful way. If you only, if you had a, if you, if you had somebody, a friend and you never called them, you never checked in on them, you never, you know, asked how they're doing, you never invited them over. But then every time you need something, you're like, oh, could I get this one thing? Can I help? And the friend is generous. Like, yeah, sure. Sure. But at some point that friend is not going to have the same relationship with us that they will with somebody who's always there. I got you anything you need. I am. I'm present, right? And so that's really, really important to make sure we don't make light of obligations. And so that's the, the second thing. The third is that we teach each other, our families especially, good etiquette and the importance of purifying our heart from love of this Dunya. And what I mean by that is, and what your mama had about this saying here is, we're not supposed to just like do things and then never talk about the impact societies have on us. When you just exist, we just exist in the Western world. Just going out and about, the heart will get tainted in some way or another spiritually, right? You'll, someone will see things. They'll hear things. They'll hear crazy ideas and concepts that never existed before. All of a sudden people are like questioning everything. These new theories are coming out. I mean, they'll hear all sorts of things that will confuse them and that will create a rust in their hearts. And Allah says that, have you seen those hearts that have rust in them? They have a Ra'an, a rust, and this rust, it taints the heart, it messes up the heart, right? And now spiritually, that person becomes really lazy, really lazy. So if you and I are ever feeling really, really like lazy, we don't want to do anything spiritually that there's a, we have to look at our heart and say, what, what did I do that rested it? Did I look at something impermissible and I always listening to something that's Haram? What am I doing that's resting the heart? And then we want to encourage our families to have a focus on purification, right? And the main thing here is to not fall in love with this world, right? So we live here, we work, we should try to excel in our life, excel in our career, excel in our academics, all of that, Alhamdulillah is good, but we cannot be obsessed with it. If our whole focus is money, money, stocks, investments, IPOs, making sure that ever in this very easy to get into in Silicon Valley, right? Like this mindset is like, you know, like it's, it's very difficult to not be in this mindset if you are in the place that we happen to live in, right? And so you have to actively be like, hold on a second, like I have everything I need, Alhamdulillah, I'm getting more is great, Alhamdulillah, but I cannot make this dumb main mission in life such that I compromise my values, or I compromise my religion, or I compromise my extra time, right? Such that I'm always just chasing, chasing, chasing. And what's important here is from a young age, we focus more with our children on, and our siblings and cousins and so on, on love of Allah, than on love of wealth and things. So you'll have, this happens often in certain communities, where like the topic of jobs, career, what college someone is going to go to is like 90% of the discussion growing up. And five, 10%, which is mainly left for Sunday school is the religion. And what that ends up doing is the kid grows up thinking, oh, this is the only thing my parents care about, so this must be the only thing that's important, right? If the whole discussion is, well, this is the job you can get and this is how much money you're going to make and if you do this, this is how much prestige you'll have and this is what people will think of you and so on and so forth. And that's like the focal point of our, of our conversations. And, and very, very seldom do we actually discuss, like, do you know we're going to die at some point and how are you going to stand before Allah if we do certain things that we die and how do we spend our time wisely and how do we go about excelling ourselves and excelling in our religion and praying and making sure we have the prayers down and making sure we know the etiquettes and the rules of, of wudu and of prayer and of fasting and so on and so forth and making sure we spend some extra time reciting extra Qur'an and so on, right? The two are very, very different frameworks. And one thing I've noticed is that some people who focus on the latter, they'll almost always get the former. What I mean by that is someone is, is, is worshiping and is trying to live this life in a way where they're conscious of Allah. The goals that they have with regards to dunya and career and income, Allah fulfills those goals. It's based on the hadith of the Prophet, alaihi salatu wa s-salam, where he said that if you make your focus, your main focus, Allah, and the next life, that Allah takes care of your other goals. If you make that, your goal, Allah takes care of your other goals, right? Or he said something, something to that vein, something, something similar. But if our entire focus is this world, you have no guarantee that you'll get this world or you'll get the next world. You'll see some people, like, they don't even try and just boom, everything's just working out, right? And because they have what they're supposed to be doing correctly. And then there's other people who they're like, always trying, and they're like the person who's putting in the most amount of effort. And sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't. But the, but Allah mentions that the portion of the next life, they have very little of the next life, very little of the next life and very little of what actually matters. And this life was just contentment in the heart. The real richness is contentment, satisfaction, where you feel just in a state of complete peace and contentment with everything you and I have been blessed with and contentment with the decree of Allah and so on. And you don't find that the people who are entirely focused on dunya, right? Go to a hedge fund manager in New York. And they're at the end of the day, most of the time, they're thinking about why did all the other hedge fund managers have better returns than them? And why did they drive a Lamborghini and this person drives a Bugatti? Like they literally these are thoughts that plague their minds, right? It's constantly Allah says in the Quran that this whole life is a competition between each other. You're competing in wealth and how many children you have, and how successful those children are, and how many cars or that in those days horses someone had, and how much land someone has. In this case, how many estates somebody has, and how much investment someone has, how much gold, which in this case would just mean our total kind of sum of wealth and so on. That's the competition. And Allah says, all that's in a vanish. None of this kind of matter at the end of the day because you're not going to take it with you to your grave. And then when someone goes to the grave, they'll regret. All those days were like, all the extra time I had is fine, a little bit extra time, all the extra time I had, I just poured into this so I could just make it one day. And then when I made it, then I would retire and relax, but I could have just been relaxing the whole time and like lived a balanced life. That all of that effort, we will start to regret of why did we waste, why did we overdo it, right? And forget about our religious obligations. So that's the third thing that we want to make sure we guide ourselves and our families, our children, etc. away from it. If we see someone start to go down that path, slowly, slowly, slowly bring them in. The reason why this is so important is because it's the root of other sins. When someone starts to fall in love with the dunya, other sins start to compile on top, right? Someone could just open the door for the brothers, unlock it. So the other sins start to pile on on top of the love. So this is really, really, it opens doors. And if anyone wants to know the secret, and we've mentioned this before, that scholars have said, the Prophet ﷺ most importantly has said, the secret to opening doors super quickly. If you want doors in the world to open, especially doors of career and promotion and academic success and so on, the time of fudger is the key for that. The one who's awake and present as fudger enters or at the time of fudger, and the one who is able to worship from that time until sunrise, but at least if still pray, that's the time provision is being distributed, that the provision is being, they get the most amount of that provision. The people who are asleep, right? Unless someone has a valid reason to be asleep, like they're on their cycle or something like that, that's different. But if someone who's, the obligation was mandatory and they sleep through that obligation, thinking, oh, I have to wake up for something else, like more important later. So I need to make sure I get that sleep. They miss their portion. That's the fastest way, the absolute fastest way to get access to major, major, major success in this dunya even is the fudger prayer and the time after fudger. So we should make it a habit that, inshallah, of course, establish fudger regularly. But if we can pick one day a week where we pray fudger in the masjid and we stay up, if we can, even better is to stay up for a little bit afterwards and to worship and to worship until sunrise. The person who does that, they get the most amount of success, worldly success. And in addition to that, they get the reward for the one who prays in congregation and sits and does dhikr until sunrise and then prays to raka roughly about 15 minutes after sunrise or up until about 10 minutes before lower any time in that window. You call it like 6, 10 a.m. right now up until 1 p.m. They get the reward of a complete hajj in umrah, complete hajj in umrah. And there's people who do this every day of their life. So they're just sitting on top of all these hajj in umrah. It doesn't mean you still have to go to hajj. It's still required. But this is like the reward of a complete hajj in umrah. It's a little shortcuts because you're actually putting in a lot of struggle. And then they'll see their provision will become easy. Their career success will become easy to inshallah. Their promotions will become easy, raises, bonuses. All this stuff becomes much easier because they're doing what Allah wants them to do at the time that in the spiritual clock, the way the spiritual clock of the world is ticking, they're aligned to the spiritual clock of the world. So that's one kind of just, you know, a side note to on the left. So then the next thing he mentions with the principle with regards to our family is we should we want to be really gentle and gracious with them? Again, it should not, harshness should not be in any part of our personality when it comes to our, when it comes to anybody, when it comes to our family specifically. So like if we have a, a, we have children or with our spouses and we see someone slipping or, you know, make a mistake, right? Someone could open the door on the sister side. There's someone waiting. I think it's okay to just keep it unlocked now. I think it should be fine. Yeah. Um, that if, if we have harshness present, Allah mentioned in the Quran to the prophets, all of a sudden that if you were harsh and hard hearted, they would have turned away from you. You don't, nobody, nobody is attracted towards harshness, right? So if Allah blesses us with children or we have younger siblings or with our spouses or whoever else it is, we gotta make sure we take a really loving and gentle approach, right? We want to treat them with nobility and dignity. You want to make someone feel like deep down inside. They have the potential to do all of this, but that maybe we're just not realizing that potential. And then we approach, we approach it the principle with, with a lot of gentleness. And when someone makes mistakes in our life, and to, they make a mistake with us, they make a mistake in the house, someone, you know, break something, whatever it is, the principle here should be forgiveness. And the reason for this is if you and I don't forgive the mistakes that others make, how can we expect a lot to forgive the mistakes we make? Right? We cannot, we should not hold every mistake that our family makes, whether this is our parents, especially our parents, or our spouses, or our siblings or our children against them. We should forgive the majority of them. It might be something really serious where we require a lot of rectification, but the majority of mistakes should be forgiven. That the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that forgive those who are in your charge if someone had like help around the house. He said forgive them 70 times a day. Just forgive and forgive and forgive, because they will make mistakes and they will slip up. In our society, that we don't usually have that type of, you know, that type of help, but whatever mistake someone does make, that there should be a, a significant level of forgiveness. So then before we move on to the, to the next section, does anybody have any questions or comments on this? Yeah. No, you wish for more time, but when we have time, all we do is make excuses. Yeah. So I don't know that's really, really profound that the reality, the reality of seeing sin and reality to see, well, one of the cures to that event is to actually make on dying. You just sit and you just sit in a dark room and you think about the fact that I'm going to die. What is it going to be like? How, how will it feel? Right? If someone has seen someone ever the soul transition, it can be, it can be very impactful to see that, right? It can be very impactful. And so you meditate on that fact. How will it feel? And there's books that are literally written in Mama Ghazali as a whole book that taking from the Quran and from the traditions of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and from the traditions of the companions and the that the experiences of death is called the book on the remembrance of death. Highly recommend that this book, if someone reads it, will shake them to their core, like completely. It's a, well, it's a huge wake up call. There's another book in Mama Ghazali called the lives of man, which is kind of a summary of that other book by Mama Ghazali. But it actually walks you through that and it makes, it makes the topics that are uncomfortable to grapple with a little bit easier to grapple with in our society. They used to actually have in American society, graveyards used to be present as you walked around. So if anyone goes, has anyone here been to Turkey? Turkey, Turkey, has anyone noticed that like you'll be in Turkey and you'll be like in a random market and then all of a sudden there's this graveyard there and then you'll be somewhere else and then there's like another, it's like really, really random. There's graveyards in all these places. And it's kind of like a reminder. You're walking and you're shopping and you're eating the Turkish delights and whatever else it is. And the next thing you know, it's a graveyard. There's not, there's not like a mushroom, it's just a graveyard. And then you're doing something else and you're touring in a bus and there's another graveyard. It's a reminder that someone's like, oh, death. Okay, this is real. So that used to be the case in Western society as well, graveyards used to be common. Then what they did is they said, hold on a second, why do we remember this death thing? This is kind of intense. Let's move the graveyards. Let's first change the name. So they changed the name from graveyard to cemetery and they started to move them into very specific parts of town. Then it was too much even to have cemeteries and was like, hold on a second, this might impact property values and this is probably not the best place people want to live around. So we're going to move them out and we're going to call them memorial parks. And they just, the concept of death is completely put to the side because no one wants to think about it. But if you don't think about it, we'll have to unfortunately be forced with thinking about it at some point and we want to prevent that. Was there another question? Okay, great. Okay, so then going into the next, so we talked about forgiveness. So then we have to know our individual responsibilities as well. These are general responsibilities. If we are in a place of, with our spouses, we have responsibility, with our children, we have responsibility, with our siblings, we have responsibility. And then if someone is a husband, they have different responsibilities and if they're a wife, if someone is a wife, they have different responsibilities. If someone is a mother, there's different responsibilities, a very, very high maqam for the mother, Allah bless our mothers. And if someone is a father, there's different responsibilities. That among the responsibilities that he mentions here, that if you are a father or a husband, that it is incumbent on you to make sure to be in a state of protect, protecting the women of your house. That is a responsibility that Allah has tasked, even burdened the father or the husband with. So what does that mean? That any type of wrong that could come their way, physical, spiritual, there is a responsibility to be in a state where someone is trying their best to protect. Trying their best to protect. And Allah says, there's various verses in the Qur'an, one of them, that there is a supporting, trying your utmost to support and protect women. That is one of the goals, that one of the responsibilities that Allah has given men. And so if someone has daughters, let's say, that it is your responsibility as a man or as a father to protect your daughters in a very, very, very specific way to protect them from the harms of society and to make sure that they are learning the rules of religion. Same thing with our sons. Someone is blessed with sons to protect them from the harms of society and to make sure that they are learning the rules of religion. So that responsibility of making sure that the Deen is taught and making sure the protection is there is a higher responsibility on the father than it is on the mother. That the mother has a portion of their responsibility, but specifically the physical protection in this case goes with the father. And the same thing for someone's spouse. That the husband should have a type of protective aspect with their spouse and make sure, hey, everything could you need anything. This is like a caring type of protection, not an overbearing cultural type that we might see in some societies. This is like a very caring type of protection that responsibility exists. This is part of religion. It's part of religion, which is why he's mentioning this in this guide to spirituality, that someone who you care about yourself and then you start to care about others. Allah says, save yourselves and your families from the fire. So first you save yourself and then you save your families from the fire. And then there's specific responsibilities that Allah has given women that he's given wise and that he's given mothers. And amongst those responsibilities, there is a type of nurturing of our families. And again, in the context we live in today, this is often shared as it's totally okay for it to be shared, but we have to make sure someone is at least doing it. If both people don't have a presence and are not nurturing their children and are not actively spending time rearing their children and making sure they're what's called tarbiyah, that the religious edification is being done, and the spiritual edification and teaching of morality and principles, then you get what we have in America today, which is a lot of problems in society. A lot of corruption, facade, anger, trauma, all of these problems exist in society. And most of the time it's because of neglect, because there was no focused effort on making sure that children were raised properly. That is a huge risk. If someone is going to take the task on to raise children, then that responsibility becomes incumbent. Otherwise, they say, hey, that's not a task that someone wants to take on. So then he shifts from family, we're responsible for taking care of, to our parents. And he says that the first thing is it's incumbent on us to have a very, very deep loyalty to our parents, a very deep loyalty. And what this, and he qualifies this, right? So first this to never, ever even consider severing ties with them, cut off ties with them, that we should never tell to our parents, say to our parents, I'm not going to speak to you again, right? Or anything that would indicate anything that would indicate you could be the most worshipful person in the world and pray all that the Hajj that you want and fast as much charity. But if someone cuts off their parents, doors are closed, completely closed. That it's one of the things Allah hates to treat, to treat, to treat our parents unjustly and to cut our parents off. So that's the first thing is we never cut ties. The second thing he says is that Allah commands us in the Quran. Actually he says lower the wing of humility to your parents. And we don't have wings. So what does it mean? It's like this idea of where we really humble ourselves before our parents. What, that we don't approach them arrogantly. We don't come at them. We don't see them as equals, right? We don't try to go head to head with them. We don't, we limit arguing as much as possible. And if it's, if we do so, it's done with polite discourse and that we try to be as deferring as possible. A lot of difference. Sometimes our parents might want things that we're like we disagree with, right? But if there's no religious problem with them, if it's, if it's just like a small thing, we defer to them because we want to make them happy. We want to make them happy. We don't want to make them upset. We don't even want to put, bring any pain to their heart. And then he says this famous dua that, that we should say often, which is, Oh Allah have mercy on them as they took care of me when I was little. As they took care of me when I was little. And this is big that this is huge that the amount of effort that our mothers go through carrying us in the wombs and the amount of pain and nausea and difficulties and issues and stress and sleep issues and all the things that they go through, right? And many times in societies that did not have as many resources as we're blessed to have in Western societies, many times in societies where there are fewer resources and fewer access to ways to help, all the issues and pain that they go through just in carrying and then in giving birth, the amount of pain that they go through in giving birth, right? The amount of, and then in recovering from giving birth, this amazing experience of delivering and human being, just that alone, we could never, ever, ever pay our mothers back. Nobody could ever pay their mother, just for that, that period alone, let alone everything that comes after the breastfeeding and the, or feeding in general, the diaper changes, taking care of us and making sure that we're okay, the staying up the long nights that when we were sick and making sure that the fever would go away, that giving, buying us clothing and take, and then going and making sure that the clothing fit properly and then doing all the laundry and then preparing the specific types of food that we would eat because we had, we didn't like all the different types of food and then taking us to school and then taking us to our sports games and all the mothers and fathers at this point, both are the specific things that just the mom was doing physically and now we transition into things that both parents are doing and then all the conversations that they have to have when we make mistakes and the lectures that they have to give then we go, I mean, on and on and on and on, all for what? Many times in our society so that when we're 18, we can throw it in their face back, I'm out of here, I can't wait to get out of this place, we say, like, oh my god, and then there just nothing left to feel like, dang, what did I do that was so bad that you can't wait to get out of this place? Like what is, what's going on here, right? After all of that sacrifice and all of that, and then it's almost like we, when we visit them, it's like we feel like we're, we've blessed them instead of that, you know, vice versa, right? Because we're like, oh, I'm the one who left, right? And so there's a huge, huge inversion in the society we live in, people make fun of their parents. I remember growing up, your mama jokes were like a big thing. Now I'm thinking about it, I'm like, how could anyone even come up with that idea? Like how sick do you have to be to make a joke about your mother who did all of this for you? Like what level of corruption and pollution has to be, and there was a whole show about it, the whole show on MTV, I remember, all about jokes, and insulting each other's parents, and like then laughing about it, and making, and this is the shaitan slowly gets, gets to us through these types of things, right? And then, and then all the amount of shows that were there where they would just come make parents seem like, like, like they were the enemy somehow, right? I remember that I was talking to somebody about this and they're like, yeah, like I just hope you know that when a love blesses, you know, us with kids and things like that, they don't, they don't hate us when they're teenagers. And I was just like, do you realize that's only an American society and like a Western thing post-modern world of people hate their parents or like really strongly dislike their parents, have an aversion to their parents and their teenagers? Like that's not normal at all. If you go to societies where things are being done properly, like I've seen children in the place where Imam al-Hadad was born and spent most of his time in Yemen, in Tarim Yemen, where they lived, they're like, they love their parents. They have these kids, like 14 year old sons walking around holding their dad's hand at their service, putting their shoes down, every little thing, taking care. I didn't see them necessarily with their mothers, but I'm sure the excellence was even more in the higher standard. I mean, they literally, they love it. And they have issues, you know, arguments where none of them might happen, but it's not like it is over here, right? Where people just locked up in their rooms and on Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat just can't, you know, posting about all the different annoying things that parents are doing and then kind of have this rebellious nature, right? So that's a very much a Western thing that completely goes against our teachings. And so Allah says, and this is how you know it's a big deal, because Allah says, give thanks to me and give thanks to them. He literally pairs the two. He never pairs something with himself if it's not important, right? So He says, give thanks to me and then give thanks to them. That's how important your parents are, right? That it's required on us to actually give thanks to them and to just show our appreciation and, you know, thank you for everything that you have done, right? And then He says, to try to prefer their needs over our own and give them priority. So if they need something, that we try to prioritize that, right? And we try to try to go out of our way to help our parents with whatever it is that they need and call and check in anything I can do for you, you know, and really, really try to try to assist and go above and beyond. And there's people who this is their door, is their door to heaven. There's a lot of doors to heaven, but I've met people who like, they're just always going above and beyond. Parents have like a financial situation and before they even know it, there's already money that they've deposited in their bank account, right? And any situation is going on, they're there and they go above and beyond. And it's like this concept has been clearly, clearly that concept is settled in, right? So it's really an important, important consideration. And then He says, what does disloyalty mean, right? What does disloyalty mean? That disloyalty is like when, when you could do something good, you withhold the good from them. And you're just like, just don't actively avoid doing good, that would be considered disloyalty to our parents. And then like even constantly frowning in front of them, like constantly making, you know, my mom would say, move and not get better. Like you're just like this, the idea, you're just sitting there like frowning upset about something. Like just doing that, especially when we get into a stage where we breach maturity, right? And, and trying to, we were literally bringing the whole mood of the room down. That's not the right manner we want to have with that parent. We want to be uplifting, right? We don't want to be the reason that causes any distress or pain to their heart, any distress or pain to their heart. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said that the scent of Jannah is perceived at 1000 years traveling distance. 1000 years traveling distance. Like, I don't even know how we would, we would quantify that in our time, right? But like it's perceived from super, super, super, super far away, the scent of paradise. He said, but not by the person who is disloyal to their parents. They don't even get to smell the scent of Jannah. They can't smell the scent of Jannah. What about getting into Jannah, right? Or he says, or the people who cut ties with their family, cutting ties with their family. It does not matter what our family has done. We should never be the one who cuts the ties, right? For like, we might be in a situation where there's a debate, there's a major heated issue going on. We might have to get firm about something, but we should not be the one who cuts ties. And it doesn't matter how much sin someone is doing as well. Where sometimes people think, Oh, someone in my family is like completely caught up in this sin or that sin. Should I just like cut them off? No, you're not cut them off. You have to be kind to them, be gentle with them. It doesn't mean you kick it with them all the time and like, let the behavior impact you or your family, but we do not cut people off in our religion. That's not a thing. And we really try to go above and beyond. If we have, we're now talking about, talking about beyond parents, if we have siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, if we're blessed with these types of relationships in our life, Allah highly, highly, highly encourages Allah and his messenger to respect these ties of kinship, to really, really respect these ties of kinship and to go above and beyond and to enjoying these ties. So we should be the one who like our families all visiting town and we arrange the lunch at our house or the dinner at our house or like call everybody, can we meet up somewhere. You're getting amazing reward, religious reward for doing that because if your intention is pure, maintaining ties of kinship. That if everybody is, you know that there's something going on, there's some tension between people, you get even more reward if you find a nice tactful way to improve the relationship between people. You invite one person over and then you invite a few more people over and then the person they're beefing with just happens to also come over and you're like, oh I didn't invite them, they're just here. And next thing you know, you find a way to improve the relationship and that's even one of the cases in our religion in which you're permitted to say something they didn't even say, you know they said something like really nice about you and they didn't even say because of what you're doing. There's the various few cases in which you're allowed to do that in religion that would be one of those cases, to improve relationships between people. It's such a big deal, it creates so much tension in life and so many problems when there's tension in relationships. When people, especially families, we all, hopefully we all don't know this, but many of us know this that if you have this like, you know, a bunch of aunts and uncles and then like there's one person who's kind of like, you know, semi-strange from everybody else or like creates a lot of problems or everyone's kind of like, oh that person and they never come to anything and you know that if they ever show up there's all this tension, it's kind of strange, it's kind of weird, right, it's literally just one dynamic, one relationship and all it takes is like one fight to mess it up. There's people who will fight with someone in their family and won't talk to them for like a year and purposefully. That's considered at the point now where we're like literally trying to cut them off, right. We don't, we should really, really stay away from doing that and the way we should approach it is that he mentions is we start with the people closest to us and we try to go out of our way to maintain ties with them, right. So our siblings and our parents, number one, out of our way to call them, out of our way to text them, out of our way to start little WhatsApp groups where we talk about random things that sometimes get even annoying but just so that we can maintain good ties, right, go out of our way to do it, right and out of our way to see each other, out of our way to bring people together, out of our way to throw gatherings and you know meals and have people over. This is all part of our religion and sometimes we're so busy with our life so caught up that we forget how important family is. There's people in our, in our, in this world they would trade everything for like a nice meal with their family. There's, that they haven't spent time with their family in years. Maybe father is estranged from the, from the son and mother is having issues with the kids and so on and they have no like real family dynamic and just like sitting together and having a meal with our family in which we like talk and in which we express love to each other in which we're kind to each other, it's such a huge blessing and you only notice the blessing when it's, when it's gone. We kind of just take it for granted because so many people don't have that blessing, right and so this is a really, really important part of our religion and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he told us that the man, the one who maintains kinship ties, they're not the one who just does good when someone does good to them, right. So like if my cousin you know invites me over then I'm like yeah now I'll invite them over, right. It's they are the one who when someone is, is creating issues in the relationship or trying to distance themselves and severing kinship ties they enjoin them again and me enjoining in this case they're the ones who pulled them like oh that's they find any reason to hang out and to try to patch the relationship up that means they'll humble themselves and they'll apologize even if they did nothing wrong that they will go above and beyond to try to improve the relationship that's the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us this is the category of this really, really high rank and know that if this is something that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is saying it means he loves it and if he loves it he'll be happy with you and me if we do it and if he's happy with us Allah is happy with us, right. And so we start to see this really, really important component of our religion come together where there's kind of a whole a wholeness and a wholesomeness that that hopefully starts to enter into into our life. And the last category here is actually the neighbor which is like I feel completely hypocritical saying this because I still haven't even met some of my neighbors and but it is really, really emphasized you know surprisingly a lot in the Qur'an and in the Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam they're always saying that maintain good ties with their neighbors, maintain good ties with their neighbors. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that Sayyidina Jubeel alayh sallam, the archangel Gabriel kept telling him about the neighbor, the neighbor, the neighbor until he thought that the neighbor would inherit from the believer when they died. That's how important the neighbor was. So in this case neighbor and community really important to also have good relationships with them, right. So we should try to again in our western society sometimes we just don't really have that dynamic with our neighbors but at least get to know them send food over every now and then right have that have a positive relationship and then our community we should try to have a really really beautiful relationship with members of the community. If we see somebody in the community struggling a brother or sister we reach out to them is everything okay we take them to take them to take them to a meal you know check in on them right. And the whole goal is that our religion is one that's not selfish we want to be selfless as much as possible. If you see somebody going through something go out of our way to check in and out of our way to make sure that everything is okay. Okay great so you know for the sake of for the sake of time inshallah that basically takes us to the end we'll pause for any questions inshallah that anybody has. Questions yeah oh no see yes go ahead. Yeah great question so the question was that if someone has stepchildren stepfather stepparent stepmother that how would that dynamic work yeah no it's a really good question so from a like a very just like human perspective a lot of it depends on when that relationship came into your life right so someone is like an adult 20 30 40 years and then now like a stepparent enters the situation it's going to be very different than if somebody was young and then someone you know married their their their mother or their father or whoever else it is right so that's the that's the first thing to keep in mind if it's in the situation where you were young and they take care of you they essentially assume the role not the same level but they they do assume the responsibilities of that other parent right and the the role of that other parent and so in that case the maqam is quite high as well you think the maqam meaning the station that we give them the respect that we give them is quite high in this game talking about in the case of a of a parent if it's like a of a really really like awkward situation where someone is like they're not down with it there's no relationship there's no vibe then we go out of our way to try to keep a good dynamic for the sake of the parent who we do have a good relationship let's say someone's mom gets divorced and marries someone else for the sake of our mother and out of our love for the mother we still show respect to the person that you know even if we're like not feeling it right there should still be a level of respect and in higher level than we would just give to like anybody else you know go out of our way to do things but if they're still you're not gelling with them their vibe is just not there then at least maintaining something that would please your mother would be important right and or the father in this case whatever whatever the dynamic is when it comes to children if they are in and I'm not at this point by then like the formal rules of okay this person has now become your mehrum and so on there's a very different type of set of rules in that case but let's say with children if someone marries somebody and then there's they already have children and you assume the role in this case of the father of those children right and if taking care of them and again they're still of that age they're not like already established and married in life and you just see them for you know eat like they actually have there's some level of a of taking care then both sides in this case you would want to assume a very similar parental child relationship familial bond because you are literally have assumed that role and once you've married let's say their mother you have assumed the role of the father in that case right and so this depends now if the father is like not present at all in their life we should feel an extra level of like oh Allah really wants me to take care of them right and then there's different if it's like a divorce situation the father is present there's good dynamic the mother is present and you know we're we're that someone else is in that situation where they're like the step parent and then the the the principles of goodness the principles of gentleness the principles of mercy the principles of child rearing are all still essential for us to implement because they're still we're still responsible for taking care of them as human beings but the like level of parental and kind of respect or dignity or you could say honor that someone gets and the level of investment someone's going to put in it's rare it's possible it's rare that the love will ever be the same though the same pure love that someone feels for a child that they actually had or that they chose to bring into the world that they chose to adopt or something else so hopefully that gives like a rough answer if that makes sense yeah but the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was um he was an orphan yeah so keep that in mind right we all the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was an orphan and a lot of people took care of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam ultimately Allah was always taking care of him and one of the wisdoms that they say is that Allah just wanted to keep him to himself so as many times you see as soon as the Prophet sallam becomes a really deep relationship with anybody Allah takes them out of this life because he was he had a lot of tests that he went through and but he was an orphan and he and the amount of verses in the Quran that emphasized taking care of the orphans so many so many and so you could apply it in this case right where if like the formal status of orphan actually exists or even if it's like a semblance of that situation oh you know that Allah will reward you immensely for going um you know for for for going above and beyond taking care of them was that what you were going to say right right it's just like not there's not even a concept of it the word the word doesn't exist yeah now someone is saying for those who are online that the in in in Algeria right and in Algeria and probably the case in many other Muslim countries but like there's not even a word for stepchild or stepparent it's literally just the same the same subhanAllah that's really deep other questions oh yeah yeah fantastic question the question is that we're talking about different ways that the tarbiyah of children and the way children are raised um let's say in in back home in this case many times in Muslim countries and raised in the west and what are positive things that we can benefit from back home and then positive things that we can benefit from here in the west it's a really good question let me think about that for a second so one when when it comes to and I'm when I say back home in this case like it's going to be traditionally how things used to be done and are still done in parts of the Muslim world and there's parts of the Muslim world that are more westernized than oakland is um so it depends on you know where we're talking so there are amazing things number one the level of family that's present in traditional societies is amazing and it's harder to get used to sometimes because it's like all people are always kicking it with their family and I'm talking about like their whole family not even just their parents but like there's a huge emphasis on family on seeing family on spending time with family and I think that's a really really um that's important and that's clearly a part of our religion which is why it has stuck to the time you know in the time that we live in and it's been there um for centuries right the second that thing that I've noticed um that thing is really really beautiful in traditional societies is work is not everything people are not absolutely obsessed with their work like if you the first thing you do when you meet someone here oh what do you do oh yeah okay when you know what this literally the first thing before you ask them anything else what do you do okay well you tell them something no no what's your what's your what's your what's your position like that that's everybody cares about that that's not often the case um back in traditional society people like they um live so they can work here people work to live or no no no no sorry after opposite it's getting late um that here people literally live to work right over there they just work so they can live their life and you'll often see I remember I noticed this when I go to Pakistan sometimes I'm like it's like a Tuesday and it's like everybody's kicking in at like 6 p.m like all these people are over at your house and you're just like wait what like six it's only six o'clock like why why is why is like that second cousin of yours here right like who are all of these people and you're everybody's like they're hanging out and sometimes they're all they're kicking it like to wait late on weekdays and you're like don't you have work in the morning right it's like uh it's it's it's um Pakistan's kind of like one big party all the time but but there are there there's a balance of that as well you've stopped to wake up for pleasure um but the the the level of uh obsession that we have and I think I don't know if this is unique to just kind of Silicon Valley and urban environments because I have seen places like my wife's family is from Stockton and I go there sometimes and it's like much much more of a balanced way of life where people actually value family and they like send food to each other and they see each other on weekdays and weeknights and there's a big connection to the masjid um so it could just be something that you know is very very present here um but but I would say that back home it's not the sole uh attachment that everybody has and then the third thing I would say is um there is a lot of like respect in some circles that's given to religion and that's given to people of religion and that's given to the people who worship often right so like everybody has that you know grandma or grandpa who's like really really worshipful and worships a lot and there's like a difference in like a respect that's given to them it's almost like a you go to them often it's like a respect for your elders in general right but especially a respect for those who are elder and there's like a type of wisdom that they have and you learn from them you ask them for the I remember I would often ask my grandma I'd be like oh like you know I need to I want to get like a good grade in this class like what the ah should I make she's like just make a du'a for that thing and I was like oh I thought you were gonna give me some like something right but like at the time I didn't even know um and and uh she would just teach us these little things and there was like a huge there was like a matriarch patriarch type of environment that your grandparents create the elders have and I don't know because I don't necessarily see it as often in our in this society but I know it's very very present so I think those three things with regards to western society I think one thing that can really benefit people when they're raising children and when we have families is choice what I mean by that is you actually have to make a choice to worship here or to not worship here like all of us by the will of Allah and by the blessing of Allah on a Wednesday night and 9 32 p.m. right now happened to be sitting in a masjid where we're like talking about the the dean right and so that's an active choice sometimes in societies back home it's not really a choice it's a force full force what happens there is um there's not a deep like internal appreciation I've I've seen that people actually end up having for the religion because they'll force to do it they're forced to pray they're forced to do everything and then they leave that country and it's just like again you know you forgot about the religion entirely right and so that that does that does happen I think that's one really really beautiful thing that we have here and it's important to hold on to that and it's important to spread that out so that would be that would be one thing that that comes to mind uh I think that the second one is in Western societies we have to establish the Muslim community on our own like nobody's doing it for us back home the masjids are built by the state or by the government the institutions are built by the state or the government so they're the community aspect I've noticed in some places is less like you don't just have like a community here we have the lighthouse community and you kick it and you have if thars many times there's the massager there are places people go to pray and there's not always a beautiful community around that it's it's it is in some places but not in others and so that's one thing I think that's really beautiful about we have to because we have to practice by choice and sometimes we have all these people who don't want us to worship Allah we have to go above and beyond to establish community I think it's really important to show our children that that you have this is religion is not just going to be handed we have to do work to establish it versus I think sometimes in other places people take the religion of Islam for for granted we're just like oh yeah we're born muslim everybody's muslim like let's go play soccer right like there's like a kind of a you forget about the big blessing that you've had nothing wrong with soccer but like just in general um we forget about the the blessing so I think that's that's those are two things that come to mind there's a lot of blessings that we have this society I mean the amount of infrastructure that exists here does not exist in most muslim countries back home how honest most of the time not like the political class um but how honest most of the people are here there's very little bribery you need to get things done here it's very different in the muslim world you you people are bribe people left and right to get things done right um and I think people here the other thing I'd say is people here are really productive and um you don't always see that in some societies back home there's kind of a laziness that is crept into the muslims where we've just become really really complacent and relaxed and stop doing things with ihsan and itfan and like perfection and excellence I think people here even their dunya they definitely have it and so that translates to people's deen when they decide to practice the religion it's not I don't know if anybody has anything they would add to that feel free to any other questions yeah yeah it's really really amazing here how many people enter into the religion and then we've mentioned that teaching people the religion like new new people enter religion actually going out of our way to teach them about the religion many times in muslim countries because people are muslim already that you're not really seeing new new people entering into the religion so you kind of forget that the sahaba were all converts like that reality doesn't actually sink in that all the sahaba were converts to this religion right I mean essentially all of them the children of some of the sahaba were born into it but you know essentially speaking and so it's important to see that right to see the journey and the transformation that someone has okay there any other questions otherwise we'll go ahead and just check online okay we'll go ahead and with the duaab is thank you that you pardon us and that you forgive us and that you allow us to implement whatever it is that we have learned that you pardon our mistakes that you allow us to continue the goodness that we had in the blessed month of Ramadan that you allow us to get closer and closer to you that you allow us to have good ties and relationships with our parents and that you forgive our parents Ya Allah that you forgive our mothers and our fathers Ya Allah that you that you can them closeness to you and nearness to Ya Rabbil Alameen Ya Allah that you allow us to have close relationships with all of those in our families and in our communities and all of our loved ones Ya Allah that you allow us to have a deep, deep relationship with the Prophet ﷺ and with you Ya Allah we ask you for everything that the Prophet ﷺ asked for. We ask you for protection for everything evil that he asked for protection from the Prophet ﷺ. Alhamdulillah. Okay, we'll go ahead and pray Isha if anybody could just make the other.