 I start in the name of Allah, the Beneficent and the Merciful, and I seek salvation from Shaytan, the Akast. Dearest brothers and sisters, viewers from all across the world, peace, blessings and protection of Allah SWT be with you at all times. Welcome to another show, another episode of the Ramadan show with me, your host Dr Shabir Tajani. Insha'Allah through this show we'll be talking about many facets that can get you prepared and keep you going for the month of Ramadan. I would like to remind all of the viewers out there that would love to hear from you, love to hear what you think about the show and to join in the debate online. You can do this via Twitter using the hashtag IHTVRamadan. You can do this on Instagram, on Facebook and insha'Allah when this video is uploaded onto YouTube you can join in with us on there as well. Also please don't forget to send in your videos from where you are as we would love to get an insight into your life, into your preparations for this holy month. Before proceeding on to the show I would like to just remember a hadith from the Holy Prophet peace and blessings be upon him where he says on the day of judgement Allah SWT doesn't look at your face, doesn't look at your station in this world, rather he looks at your nia, your intention and the purity of your sincerity. Surely if we remember this we will realize that as we go through this month and through our lives it is very important to keep that nia, that intention, that sincerity in our minds so that we can achieve elevation and closest to Allah SWT in this world and in the hereafter. In this episode in spiritual refinement I want to look into a very important aspect in all of our lives. It's not necessarily a trait but it's something that forms a very important part of our social network in day to day being and day to day life and that is friendship. InshaAllah I'll be covering lots of facets about friendship such as who do the aimah tell us what sort of qualities do we have to look for according to the aimah when it comes to friendship and finding friends. Who shouldn't we be friends with and how can we go about making sure that when we do have a friendship we can keep it stable and we can make sure that we stay friends with those people. InshaAllah I'll be doing this segment in two parts the first part today and then the next part tomorrow because it's quite a lot to cover when it comes to friendship. A good friend and a good companion is one of the greatest gifts of God. In adversity a friend is the only refuge at times and is a person for solace for all the burdens of your heart and soul. In this world a world full of hardships hurdles and struggles presence of a true friend is essential for every individual for them to share their burdens with for them to find help and for them to find emotional and social support. Amirul Mu'mineen says the weakest person is one who cannot make anyone his friend and brother and another saying of his is not having friends is like being straight a stranger in one's own land and being a loner there's also a subtle difference between having being a friend or having a friend and being an acquaintance the main difference is that a friend is someone who is there with you in times of grief in times of happiness when it comes to the best part of your life and the worst part of your life the person who will be by your side when you need them the most and acquaintance is just someone who you spend time with not necessarily someone who you share the deepest secrets of your heart not someone who would enjoy in you in your moments of joy and who would give you comfort in your moments of struggle in your moments of desperation the Holy Prophet peace and blessings be upon him has said a man follows the faith ways and habits of a friend therefore it is really important to make sure that you keep good friends and to stay away from bad friends because essentially they will have such a profound impact on your life that you will start behaving like them you'll start talking like them so make sure that those if they're bad friends those negative attributes not become part of you and that's why you should try and have good friends because even if you aren't necessarily the best person the qualities that that good friend has will start rubbing off on you and you'll also start to display those traits yourself Amirul Ma'minin has said the most fortunate are those who have connections with good people this is the this is the reason the religion of Islam exhorts its people to abstain from bad company so it is really important to find those friends who you can learn things from whose good qualities can become your good qualities and it's really important to stay away from those individuals or those friends who are bad company whose bad traits will become your bad traits and those bad traits will take you away from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in this particular episode I'll be talking about who we shouldn't be friends with and then inshallah we will continue this discussion tomorrow and discuss more about who we should be friends with and how we can keep them as a friend so Imam Zain al-Abedeen talking about who we shouldn't be friends with has beautifully summarized this with advice to his son Imam al-Baqir alaihi salam and he said oh my son avoid acquaintance with five different types of people now we have to ask ourselves and really look around our lives and the people who are around us and see whether any of these traits are in those people and therefore we should try to keep away from them the first trait that Imam Sajjad has said is something that we should try and avoid or try and avoid a friend with those traits is don't be friends with a liar he will be like a mirage and trick you at every step when a thing is far he will bring it near to you and when a thing is near to you he will take it very far away from you secondly don't make a transgressor a tyrant or a sinner your friend because he might sell you for a very very low price thirdly don't make a miser a stingy person your friend because when it comes to your time of need he will not be by your side and he will leave you fourthly to not make friends with a stupid person of fool because he will harm you with his stupidity it is possible that even with the best of intentions his foolishness will bring harm to you and fifth don't be friends with those who have deprived the kin of their rights such a person is deprived of Allah's blessings and that person is cursed the dangers of having a bad friend or corrupt friend isn't just confined to this worldly life such friends affect you in such a way when their traits become your traits or their traits rub off onto you that they build up the diseases within your soul and make it difficult for you to repent to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and the lack of repentance makes it very difficult for one to gain the forgiveness of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and it will affect you on the day of resurrection too Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in surat al-furqan he says and the day when the unjust one shall bite his hand saying oh with that I had taken away with the messenger oh woe is me with that I had not taken such a one for a friend certainly he led me astray from the reminder or from the reminder after it come to me so the holy Quran is saying to us that there are two main regrets in the day of judgment number one is not following the holy prophet peace and blessings be upon him and not following his path to guidance and secondly is finding a friend or befriending someone who will divert you away from the truth because surely that person if they have bad traits in them and diseases within their soul slowly those diseases permeate into your soul as well those traits become your traits and their bad habits become your bad habits inshallah tomorrow I shall divulge further into this matter and expand and we can talk a bit about who are the sorts of persons we should become friends with and when we do become friends with them how do we keep friendship with them surely within our society within our communities having the impact of good people is very important making those good people influential within our communities very important because those good traits that they have in them they will try and instill in other people within the community within society and inshallah with good people in society you will improve as a society and get closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala Imam al-sadaq made the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him said if the month of Ramadan remain safe and sound with respect to sins then the entire year shall also remain safe the month of Ramadan is the beginning of the year during this episode as we've been going through the shows I've been trying to look at different cities different countries around the world and see how their preparation the day-to-day preparation for the month of Ramadan is certainly different from other parts of the world and during my research I've come across many cities and many countries and I've seen how different their preparation is and it's very interesting to see how individuals and people in specific places prepare differently to other people around the world today the city or the place I want to focus in upon is the city of Qum many of you know that Qum is considered to be one of the centers of knowledge within the Shi'a world and also has the shrine of lady Maasuma who is the sister of Imam al-Ridha who is buried in Mashhad in Qum the Iftar is very special because the people of Qum I've been told enjoy their sweets quite a lot so there's a mass production of something called Zalabiya which is actually in Arabic which is a very sweet food and people in Qum love this dish and they have it with Iftar when we look at the shrine of lady Maasuma we see that throughout the course of the day there is majlis there is dua recitation of the Quran I've been told that one of the biggest or rather the biggest recitation of mass recitation of Quran is actually Qum when you think about how big the shrine in Mashhad is and then you are told that actually Qum has the largest mass recitation of Quran it makes you realize how magnanimous so how big this recital must be and then during after Maghrib after Iftar there is dua Iftita every night inside the Haram and inside the shrine of lady Maasuma also just like the shrine of her brother Imam al-Ridha inside Qum in the shrine of lady Maasuma the people who are there present themselves and they are given Iftar and Suhoor as well and the people the shrine the people who look after the shrine ensure that people who are there during the times of Iftar have some food to eat I've also been told that there are two specific times of the year in Qum where family members get together the first one of these is Nohruz and the second is during the month of Ramadan people get together in their large extended families they spend time together they eat food together I was told that if Nohruz and Ramadan falls at the same time it is very very sad because people only get together during that one time of the year as I've said before the videos and the input from all of you it's essential so that we can continue to show the world exactly how different parts of the world prepare for the month of Ramadan how you at home go about your day-to-day lives work preparation of food and how you go about preparing yourself spiritually for the month of Ramadan and it is very interesting for us to get an insight to that so if you could send your videos we would be very very grateful inshallah we will try and air these on Imam Hussein TV of Allah the most precious the most merciful dearest viewers of the month Hussein TV welcome may all your prayers be accepted in this holy month today we are in one of the stores in Karbala that produces and sells sweets cookies and cakes so let's go inside and see the atmosphere of the holy month of Ramadan in this specific store of Karbala in the holy month of Ramadan we are all the guests of Allah and one of the blessings of this month is the close relationship between the adorers the believers the family members and friends in this holy month the hearts are very close to one another therefore after after we go and sit together remember Allah and all the blessings that he gave us through the guidance of Ahlul Bayt alayhim as-salam these gatherings are so sweet yet to add the sweetness to these gatherings you might serve your guests with the sweets and today we are in one of the stores in Karbala that sells and produces the best sweets in Karbala tariqna bil halawiyat zahran anzah lojilan anjil bil sabab il ma'rufiyah li aruf jiddi or abi walidi sabab li irtibatum ma'a imam al-Hussein as-salamu alayhi ba'diyan hamil ba'da'a jayda haulin al ba'da'atum ala jodathe ala nizafathe ala yani naht al-nigasaw, taharah this is the most important thing in tariqna from 1884 my son jiddi asas al halawiyat in Karbala he came from Iran to visit Karbala and the important thing in tariqna we stayed here in Qunaw and the most important thing in tariqna and the most important thing in tariqna is the month the month of Ramadan is the month of the people who are fasting after the halawiyat, the increase in the strength of the people fasting is the most important thing in tariqna and if the month of halawiyat has been changed go to Zdabi, Bami, Baklawa and other things that are more in tariqna in general, the month of Ramadan is the month of the people who are fasting because fasting affects people more and then they get used to fasting and the halawiyat is the most important thing halawiyat is good for the month of Ramadan and then it is the most important thing in tariqna when people come to buy the halawiyat the most important thing is the change in the different types of halawiyat viewers of Imam Hussein TV thanks for being with us in this short episode hope you like it and we pray for you that may Allah accept all your prayers and supplications during the holy month of Ramadan and stay tuned for more to come in this episode when we talk about health tips, medical advice we'll be talking more about risk factors for heart disease yesterday we talked about hypertension or high blood pressure and today I want to talk a little bit about cholesterol we hear a lot about cholesterol but what is cholesterol? how is it formed? and what impact does it have on our bodies and on our lifestyle and on our quality of life and longevity of life in the long term? I want to just touch upon ways in which you can lower your cholesterol levels and also medication you can take if your cholesterol levels are not under control firstly I want to talk about what is cholesterol? how is it formed? where is it formed? cholesterol essentially is a type of fat which is made in the liver now cholesterol can either come from foods but majority of it is actually metabolised as created from the liver and once it's made in the liver it spreads around the body there is different types of cholesterol we hear about HDL and LDL basically what it means is high density lipoproteins low density lipoproteins when we hear of these terms we don't actually, some people don't understand what they mean we hear good cholesterol and bad cholesterol what is that? LDL is the bad cholesterol HDL is the good cholesterol and when we eat foods we sometimes hear of foods being high in HDLs or high in good cholesterol and why we should eat it so I'll talk a little bit about that now cholesterol can be affected by the foods that we eat so certain foods are very bad for maintaining low cholesterol levels so foods such as eggs are very bad prawns are very bad people who eat foods that have got red meat so foods that are high in animal fats they tend to cause high levels of cholesterol however, scientists have found that actually high levels of cholesterol are not only diet driven and not only not only dictated by the diets we have and the lifestyles we lead there's a lot of family history and congenital contributions so sometimes someone with a genetic predisposition to getting high levels of cholesterol no matter what they do in a day to day life and how they alter their lifestyle they may never be able to get that cholesterol level down that isn't to say that you shouldn't try scientists have shown that fasting in fact now that we're in the month of Ramadan fasting can actually help you to lower your levels of cholesterol and scientists have also shown that actually fasting for a few weeks at a time or fasting for parts of the year can actually help you to maintain a good low level of cholesterol throughout the year also we are told to do exercise and to watch what we eat and there is no doubt that actually exercise and a healthy diet has a profound impact on cholesterol levels that is why as doctors when we get someone with high levels of cholesterol the first thing we do is try and see if they can modify their cholesterol levels with a healthy diet with a healthy diet and with exercise because cutting out the foods that are high in cholesterol can actually be quite beneficial foods that have been shown to cause high levels of cholesterol foods that you should avoid if you can I think such as hard cheeses prawns, eggs red meats all of these can increase your levels of bad cholesterol, your LDL and also increase your levels of triglycerides which is another type of cholesterol which is very very bad for you there are foods that you can eat to try and improve your cholesterol levels improve your HDL levels, your good cholesterol so these foods are things like oats and oatmeal fish fish is a very, a fish especially those that are high in levels of omega-3 such as mackerel and sardines are very very good for you scientists have shown that foods that are high in omega-3 can improve your functioning of your brain can reduce your levels of cholesterol and also improve your long-term risk of heart disease other foods such as almonds walnuts and other nuts especially those that are not salted can improve your cholesterol levels olive oil is quite high in HDL which is the good cholesterol and as a result will improve your cholesterol level and finally foods that are high in plant sterols obviously some of these foods aren't just regularly available in supermarkets but you can actually buy them from specific shops from very specialized shops and if you can have them then they will improve your bad cholesterol and hopefully get your cholesterol levels down otherwise the other things you can do is just try and stay active try and exercise regularly because when you exercise as you use up the fats that are stored within your body your cholesterol levels can also improve however as I've said before some people who are genetically predisposed to getting high levels of cholesterol because it's metabolized in the liver and it's created in the liver it is very difficult for these people who are genetically more likely to get high levels of cholesterol to actually get the cholesterol levels down just by eating the right foods and by dieting some of these people will inevitably despite their hardest efforts get high levels of cholesterol so what can these people do? obviously for these people it is very important firstly that they get tested and secondly if they found to have high levels of cholesterol to get those levels of cholesterol down because high levels of cholesterol will lead you to developing heart problems, developing strokes and other cardiovascular conditions and diseases the most commonest treatment for high levels of cholesterol in terms of medication is something called a statin now in the United Kingdom the national institution of clinical excellence has advised that for primary prevention for people who've never had any previous diseases or any cardiovascular problems for those people the best prevention for cholesterol is to give them something called atorvastatin and it's a type of a statin which has been scientifically proven to improve your cholesterol levels for those people who are due to start it I recommend that you definitely give it a go and see whether you can you can get your cholesterol levels down by taking the medication obviously with any medication that you put into your body there will be side effects so it's very important to ask your doctor about the most common side effects that you get with these particular medications it has been found that the statins especially can cause two specific side effects but as a doctor it's very important for us to monitor these side effects so the first one is muscle ache if you find that being on statins causes muscle ache especially in the proximal muscles in the muscles of your shoulders and your thighs it is very important to see your doctor very very quickly because for a very very small proportion of the population the statins can cause breakdown of muscle so if you get that then please go and see your doctor secondly the statins can cause problems with your liver function because the statins are metabolized in the liver and as a result they can affect some of the enzymes in the liver so your GP should monitor your doctor should monitor what we call your liver function test which is a blood test which is done after a period of time after starting the medication once you've had those blood tests and if everything is okay then you'll have the blood test maybe once a year or once every six months to make sure that your liver function is stable and that the medication is also working so you'll probably also have your cholesterol levels measured during these blood tests what I would like to say obviously as we're working our way through these risk factors for heart disease and talking more about heart disease is that especially from those communities where heart disease is prevalent such as the Indo-Pac community it is very very important that you keep an eye on these risk factors and if you can limit them and try and reduce them as much as possible try to do that because at the end of the day your good health is not only important to you and not only important to your family but important to all of us as the Muslim Ummah because we try to benefit from each other in any way possible and your good health will be of benefit not only to society but inshallah when the Imam reappears it will also be of help towards his army and towards the preparation for the ultimate fight between good and evil today Islam is the greatest force among the world its enemies cannot do it any harm it is like a mighty oak which the storms of the world cannot approve yet there was a time where this mighty oak was a tiny sapling and desperately needed someone to protect it from the hurricanes of idolatry and polytheism which threatened to uproot it Muslims may have forgotten this fact but Islam cannot forget its its infancy this is where Abu Talib and Khadija played a significant role in protecting the tree of Islam they made Islam invulnerable Abu Talib protected the sapling of Islam from the attempts of misbelief and heathenism while Khadija irrigated it with her wealth she did not let the sapling of Islam die from drought as a matter of fact she didn't even let it wilt from neglect Islam was their first love and it was a love where they passed on to the children and grandchildren if they, Abu Talib and Khadija had protected the tree of Islam from its enemies during the lifetime Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa alaihi wa sallam and had irrigated it with the vast quantities of gold and silver then their children have done the same however was their holy blood of course their blood was the most sacred blood in all creation after all it was the blood of Prophet Muhammad himself the last and the greatest messenger of Allah the chief of apostles and all prophets Khadija going back to Khadija Khadija was an eyewitness of the birth of Islam she nursed it during its infancy through its most difficult and through its most formative years Islam was given the shape and design in the home of Khadija if there was a home which can be called the cradle and axis of Islam it would be the home of Khadija this was the home of the Quran the book of Allah and the religious and political code of Islam during this episode I want to dedicate this Nashid recitation this recital, this poem to a piece of poetry that me and my brother Abbas have written which is titled show me which way to go where a servant asks his Lord for guidance where a servant asks his Lord to guide him onto the path of his love I want to tell you where do I start this is the test of my heart I feel I've drifted drifted apart you've always promised you'll never fall you know me better than myself wanna get closer to you so help me on this road so show me which way to go got to that point I am so scared can't see the light chasing this world I've lost my sight I can't tell wrong to this whole road on this blind road I'll tell you what I see I see destruction in front of me make my heart faithful and strong I know that you'll so show me which way to go Imam Sadiq may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him as said if the month of Ramadan remains safe and sound with respect to sins then the entire year shall also remain so the month of Ramadan is the beginning of the year as we conclude this episode I would like to leave you with a final thought something to get you contemplating and that final thought is it takes nothing to follow the crowd it takes everything to stand alone after all Amirul Ma'mineen said that I've lost so many friends because I've followed the truth as we've said many many times during these episodes intention is the most important thing and if you keep Allah SWT up most in your mind then you will always stand for truth whether you're standing alone or by the side of someone else I would like to once again thank you for watching this show and inshallah we hope that we've been able to inspire you and to allow you to make the most of this holy month of Ramadan until the next show I would like to remind you once again to send in your videos and your pictures to show us how you prepare for the month of Ramadan and finally I would like to remind you once again to join us on social media, on Facebook, on Twitter on Instagram and on YouTube lastly I would like to please ask you to remember us in your du'as and most importantly please don't forget to pray for the reappearance of the hujjah alayhi salam with these final words I would like to bid you farewell wa salamu alaykum jami'an wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh