 This religion of Islam, one of the meanings of the word Islam and one of the aspects of the essence of this religion is that it is a religion of peace. It is a religion of salam. We say to each other, when we see each other, salamu alaykum. After all, that's how we miss after we take each other's hands, give each other's hugs, but inshaAllah Allah lifts this from us and we're able to do that again. The Prophet SAW told us to spread peace. He encouraged us to be people of peace, to bring peace inside of our souls and for us to create environments of peace. Environments of peace in our homes, first and foremost, and environments of peace in the societies that we live in. The home especially is supposed to be a place of peace. One of the words for home in Arabic is Masqan, which has the same root as the word Sakina. Sakina means tranquility. The home is supposed to be the abode of tranquility. It's supposed to be your daughter salam, your abode of peace. The place where you go to chill out, the place where you go to relax, the place where you go to have a calm time, the place where you go, you hang out with your family, you hang out with your spouse, you hang out with your kids, you chill. That's what the home environment is supposed to be. A place of repose, a place where there's not really supposed to be, you know we're going to have moments of tension, but ideally the norm is there's not too much tension, there's not too much stress, there's not too much anxiety. That's one of the goals that we should aspire to for our home environment. That we want ourselves and our children to feel relaxed, to feel calm, to actually enjoy being at home. All of us, and probably at this point we've been hooked up for a while, maybe we want to get out of the house a little bit. But in normal times, right, when we do go out and then come back, where we actually have a degree of enjoyment. Not that you can't wait to get out of here. Right? And it's supposed to be ideally another aspect of a peaceful environment is one in which the relationships are strong. You actually like the people that you see there. You don't just want always to go home and you're like, I can't wait to get away from these people and this person. No, you actually have strong relationships. You can't wait to hang out with my son. We're going to do this and this together. The son says, I can't wait to hang out with my mother or with my dad. I can't wait to go and eat dinner with my family tonight. I'm so excited to catch them up about my day. Where that environment and that relationship is a strong one. And one which actually builds the desire inside of us to want to further continue the relationship. To want to continue to deepen that family bond. Another quality of a peaceful home environment is one in which Allah is obeyed. A home that is filled with the ticker of Allah. Allah says in Surah An-Nur, He describes the homes that are flowing with the ticker of Allah. As an aspect of Nur, as an aspect of life. The homes in which Allah is obeyed. In which the salawat are prayed. In which ticker is done. Our homes that draw the angels towards them. Our homes of peace. Our homes of tranquility. And generally speaking, the Prophet ﷺ would also tell us, Hey, these are the things not to do inside of your home. Because these will attract the sheykh. These will attract the jinn. These will detract the angels. This will bring dark energy into your house. Versus this will bring positive energy and light into your house. So as we think about this, we should evaluate, you know, where are our homes at? All of us have some type of home environment. And some of us, if we're parents, or if we're, you know, in a position, or if we live by ourselves or we live with roommates, whatever situation we're in, but especially if we're parents, that we have a way to kind of craft the home environment. And some of us, especially let's say that if you're a kid, you can craft it to a degree, you can influence it, but you might not be able to call it a shock. You're not necessarily going to make all of the fool. So we have to think where are we with regards to these tenets of a peaceful home environment. Knowing that this religion is one piece. Knowing that this religion is one that enjoys calmness, enjoys tranquility. And we examine where are our homes at with this? Are we, do we come from homes that are filled with yelling and disagreements between husband and wife, between mother, daughter, father, son, mother, son, father, daughter, are we arguing all the time? Are all the siblings always fighting? Is everybody just yelling at each other? You know, there's a difference between when you're young kids and you're poking fun and when you're actually a little bit more mature and you don't have a friendship with your siblings and you just see them as like a little bit of an enemy, right? And as an intense type of rivalry. That's not the way of our tradition. And do we have environments where our kids actually enjoy coming home to? They say, you know, I can't wait to be home. I can't wait to hang out with my friends, with my family. Or do we have an environment where our kids are just dying to leave? Like you can read it on their foreheads. Like cannot wait to get out of here. Cannot wait until Friday night when I can escape and go do my thing and then come back. Because if we are doing our part, we have to do what we can and trust in Allah. But if we are doing our part and we are trying to create a peaceful home environment, generally speaking, everybody will actually contribute. Because the human being, naturally the fitra of the human being can incline. Fitra meaning the primordial nature of the human being inclines towards family. That's the primordial nature of the human being. And this society that we live in, or in the West, that's been disrupted. They make it seem like family is this weird thing. Once you're 18, you have to move out. Parents are somehow like evil and you shouldn't obey them. And there's all these different cultural influences that have gotten in the way in this society. By that, I mean generally speaking, Western society, that doesn't make the home seem like a fun place. It doesn't make the home seem like a place that you actually enjoy. So we examine where are we at with the stress level. Are we seeking ways to get rid of our stress? And it's all we do. You come home and there's always background noise. You can hear CNN anger talking in the back or some other news anger talking or some show playing. It's always just some noise. Everybody's always on their screens. Nobody really looks up at each other. Nobody really has organic conversations anymore. Everybody just wants to run to their rooms. Dinner is the one time people are kind of sorted together, but not really still preoccupied with their own situations. We have to think what if we accept it as normal and what is the ideal? How do we go about aspiring for that? And examine what the impacts of a negative home environment could be. That studies show that a house that is filled with tension, filled with stress, filled with anger, leaves very detrimental long-term impacts on the people in that house. Fortunately for most of the children. The children who grow up seeing stress have far more health issues. They have far more issues in their own relationships. They have far more difficulty actually developing positive emotional relationships with their spouses in the future. And they certainly have difficulty not repeating the pattern, meaning that they also do the same to their kids. And we wonder why am I doing this? Sometimes we introspect. I remember speaking to somebody and we were talking about why you do a specific thing at home, but that's how it's always been done, that's how I saw it done. Most of us don't grow up in like five houses. We grow up in one house. We grow up in the house of our parents. Maybe we'll go to the house of our uncles and aunts and we'll see a little bit near there, but generally speaking we grow up in one environment. And so if we see something we think that's just normal. This is just how I'm supposed to talk to my kids. This is just how I'm supposed to talk to my parents. This is just how I'm supposed to talk to my husband. This is just how I'm supposed to talk to my wife. But if we take a step back and study the methodology to sum it up, the Prophet ﷺ will see. Hopefully we'll see that we're doing things in line, but if we're not we'll see a very different type of approach. Oh, this is how the Prophet ﷺ did it. Oh, he didn't raise his voice. Oh, he didn't yell. Oh, he didn't have this intensity. Oh, this is how the wives of the Prophet ﷺ work. This is how the way he treated kids, the way he treated children, how compassionate and merciful he was with his grandson, Seymah Imam Hassan and Imam Hussein. We're the Allahu Anil. We study that and we feel, okay, this is now I know kind of sort of what the ideal is, then you have to figure out what the steps are to try to emulate it. The other thing that ends up happening if the home environment is not peaceful, the relationships are not wholesome. Remember, Allah has created a family relationship with each other. Every child needs the attention of every parent. Parenting is not the job of one parent or the other. In early years, you will of course have there's certain things that only the mother can do, but as the children grow up, especially in the society that we live in where there's so many forces of darkness and evil pulling our children apart so much big time, the children need active parenting for both parents, active presence of their mothers and their fathers, active older siblings, active friendly dialogues, friendly relationships. What ends up happening in many times, I've seen this, that if one child is not getting the type of attention that they need, they go and they seek it elsewhere. They'll go and they'll seek it with a boyfriend or a girlfriend. They'll go and they'll say, well I wasn't getting this attention from my father, from my brother or from my mother, right? So now I'm going to go and I'm going to see this type of attention elsewhere. And then of course we wonder like how is this happening and of course get upset, right? How could this be happening? What are we supposed to do? How dare they get in a relationship? But how often do we examine our own shortcoming? That it's not just about saying, this is haram and this is halal, that's easy. You can give a textbook to somebody, they can study that, it's about living. This is what I need to do in order to ensure that my kids don't get caught up in this or that. Same thing in the society that we live in. A large percentage of Muslim children smoke, smoke weed, they smoke cigarettes, they have these jewel pens now, they smoke nicotine cartridges, different flavors. A large percentage. Parents don't know because you can literally hide it and it looks like a USB stick. And you can just do it in the bathroom or you can do it when you go out for a walk. But what is it that leads that child to that stress, to that stress relief? Because it is a form of quote unquote, stress relief, we don't. Most of us don't know that the long-term impacts on our anxiety and depression will be far more when we engage in drugs and when we engage in something impermissible. But that's what it leads to because the environment was not one at home that cultivated stress relief. So now I have to seek it elsewhere. If everything is always tension, if everything is always yelling, then, well, if I go and I just kind of get high, get away from this for a little bit, I'll be calm. And I see, I can count this example, especially when you live in a suburb and there's absolutely nothing else to do for most of these kids. It ends up happening. And so then we, of course, somebody finds out that the camera comes down. How could you do this? Don't you know it's not allowed? They know it's not allowed. But something was wrong that led that. So we have to get a couple layers deeper than just the first layer. What are we doing to potentially create as mothers and fathers, as brothers and sisters, as children, what are we doing as well to create stressful or stress-free environments? What are we doing to create a boat of peace, to create a boat of salam, to truly create a boat of Islam in our household? So how do we go about addressing this type of environment? If we are in a negative environment, how do we flip it around and make it positive? If we're in a not ideal environment, how do we start to improve it first? And foremost, remember that the change comes from within. It sounds like corny and cliche, but Allah says it in the Quran. He says, Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what's in themselves. That when you and I begin to make the effort to change ourselves, change our behaviors, behaviors we might be practicing for 20, 30, 40, 50 years sometimes. Behaviors we might have seen growing up for even longer than that. Until we make the effort to change, we cannot expect the environment to change around us. Tests will come. Difficulties will come. Yes, Allah protect us. He says that your families, your children, your wealth, these are test-free. He says that. But it doesn't mean you have to fail the test. The test can come and you put the effort in it, Allah can give you and I the ability to get the A on the test, to succeed in the test. Then we go about identifying what are the main issues in my house that I got fixed? If I have any ability to influence, or if I just have the ability to listen in some way or another, how can I bring about a peaceful environment? Allah says in the Qur'an, Successful is the one who purifies himself and destroyed is the one who isn't. And He says in the Qur'an, save yourselves and your family from the fire. Teaching us that it is our duty to save ourselves first and foremost. We have been, you know, you put the little mask on yourself before you put it on others. Save yourself and your family from the fire. To figure out how can I help myself and my wife or my husband and my children in the home environment? And then we start listening. We know what the problems are. We start addressing the big problems. So if the problems are that's always stressful and always tense, what are the issues that create stress and tension? I mean, I know many, many, many times like, you know, a child will get to high school and like the topic of grades is only thing parents talk about. What are your grades? How are the grades going? What about college? Do I actually work in college advising? So I see this all the time. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with asking a couple of questions. But if that's the only conversation that we're going to have, well, the child, the student will feel a little bit like, well, don't you want to talk about something else? Let me tell you about this. Let me tell you about that. You don't want to hear it. You just want to focus on what we think is the topic of most importance. Do we go about saying, okay, and then it creates stress. It creates a fight. Or maybe it's the topic of clothing. It creates tension. It creates disagreements between mothers and daughters or fathers and daughters. How do we go about addressing that? How do we come up with a tactful way to have more difficult conversations without exploding ourselves or letting our children explode at us, right? If siblings are constantly fighting, there's specific topics you fight about. First, identify them. Then look inwardly. Okay, do I have a tendency to get really upset about something? What are my trigger points? What am I going to get angry at? We all get angry. It's human nature to get angry, but it's prophetic nature to control that anger. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, the strong man is not the one who's going to beat the other person in wrestling, aka in our times of the jacked bodybuilder. That's not the strong man. The strong man is the one who controls their anger when they're upset. So when we're about to lash out and men and women in this case, when we're about to lash out at our husband, or at our wife, or at our kids, at our son, or even far, far, far worse, if we're going to lash out at our parents, how do we restrain ourselves? What are we going to do to control that environment? There are to control that trait that we have so that we can have this goal of creating a peaceful home environment. I was a son and joined many viewers for anger, of which, say, I would have been lying to the thought of the king. Leave the situation if you can. Sit if you're standing. Lie down if you're sitting. Go and do water with cold voodoo for anger. It's like fire. It makes you rise. You see people when you say to me, get up, that's important that they're about to, you know, go to blows until somebody holds them back. Right? Because that fire is burning inside the person that makes them rise. So we have to know, okay, when I'm going to get angry, we have to think the long-term impact, one or two fights that are serious could really damage the home environment and it could create a tense type of situation where kids don't want to be there and it's our responsibility to try to fix that. It's our responsibility to try to change that. Then the other thing is, do we have prejudice? Do we have serious, serious issues that we're holding on to? I do know quite a few situations in which one parent or one child will literally have a grudge with the other parent or child or a grudge with the sibling and they almost never talk. They're very awkward suddenly going and just do your thing, eat the food and then that's it. There's no actual laughing. There's no loving. Because of some big fight, it didn't even start over like a really critical topic and even if it did, nobody ever forgave. What does Allah say in the Qur'an? Those who restrain their anger and they pardon others and barely Allah loves those who are always trying to do good, loves the people of excellence, that's the virtue we should aspire to. Let's not settle for the bare minimum. Nobody settles for the bare minimum with their salary, with their job, with their dunya. Let's not settle for the bare minimum with our spirituality or with our home environment. Every one of us has some way to improve. Let's try to figure out what can I do to bring a better home environment? How do I let go of the grudges? How do I forgive somebody in my family who I've been arguing with? If they're in my household or outside, but especially starting from within. And then the fourth thing is evaluate. What are the inputs that are going into my home? Specifically, the Prophet ﷺ told us to evaluate our food and our income. He said that the one who eats halal will do good things and the one who eats impermissible will do the impermissible. So what are we feeding ourselves? What are we feeding our families? Are we stopping by at the McDonald's or the Chick-fil-A and picking up chicken sandwiches that we shouldn't be eating? And do we know the spiritual impact? It sounds like a small thing that has a spiritual impact. Eating impermissible food on soul, on the heart. Is our income permissible? Are we attaining it from permissible sources? Everybody knows what industry we're in. Are we working within permissible industry? Because something that starts from Iran cannot then go and be purified. It has to be purified as essence. Are we engaged in interest? Is interest impacting our home? The Prophet's Islam indicates many times where interest will impact the home environment and will impact the barakah in the home. Any haram that we do, someone's drinking, somebody's smoking, those are obvious things that we all know this is going to break darkness. But what are the other things we're doing? They're a little bit more unseen that are going to break darkness. And then the next, the final thing is to invest in your home spiritually. Make an effort. Pray together at home. At least one of the prayers. And this time, most of us are working from home. Pray the prayers together. Make it a thing. We're going to pray as a family. We're going to do thicker as a family. We're going to read a hadith. It's once a day, it's too much. Once a week. We're going to do something though where we discuss and where we try to improve ourselves. Put away the television. Put away the screen time. Have very limited time for that. Do other things instead because that, all the darkness that comes in from these screens, there's positive aspects of it as well. I'm not saying it's all that. But all the darkness that comes most of the time, it ruins the desire to want to kick in with other people. It makes us just solo people. We just want to be by ourselves. That's not what we were created. We were created to be communal people. We all feel it right now. We don't have as much community in this COVID situation. And then make it a team effort with your kids and with your family, with your spouses to like, let's fix this together. What can I work on? This is one thing that's very difficult. It's very difficult for us to ask somebody who we love, hey, can you tell me a couple of things that I can work on? Because we don't want to hear it. Mama Razali, he says that when it comes to fault finding, he said the people who are closest to you are going to be able to point out the most fault. And the one who doesn't accept the fault is like the person who, they have a scorpion on them and somebody comes in and they said, yo, you got a scorpion on you. They try to take out like, no, no, no, no. I don't want you taking the scorpion off. Who are you to tell me the scorpion on me? Then the scorpion bites them and, you know, they get poisoned or they die. These are spiritual scorpions that are sitting inside of us, the intense anger, the intense yelling, the intense desire to bring stressful environments. All of these are spiritual diseases that are harming us. Yet somebody points them out and says, what are you talking about? You're the issue. You're the issue. Maybe they are the issue. Maybe we're also the issue. It's likely of both sides type of thing. We have to have the confident enough, the mature enough, as fathers, as wives, as mothers, as husbands, as sisters, as brothers, whatever role we play as sons and daughters to have those conversations. What can I work on? Because the one who works on themselves, Allah says He will guide the one who strives. So we just have to put in the effort and let Allah do the rest. Let's make that intention to try to live and try to create peaceful environments in our home because that is where if the home is peaceful, everything else in childhood will be peaceful. The heart will be peaceful. The community then starts to become peaceful and the society starts to become peaceful. But if the home is messed up and it's a place of tension and it's not that muskun like it's meant to be, things start to happen. So let's evaluate what are the things that we're holding onto and we need to seek professional guidance, therapy, these types of things to help us unwind a little bit. Dig deep. Why did I learn this from? Why am I doing this? Why do I have this type of behavior? And I don't have to have this behavior. And lastly, any time you're in doubt about something, just think with the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam do this. And whatever image you have of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam it's going to be a good one because he's the messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And we try to aspire to that example. We're coming up on Ramadan. It's a month of change. It's a time of change. The fire to change, inshallah. We ask that Allah bless us in what remains which is you are peace. We ask you for peace. Allah allow our homes to be a boat of peace, Allah allow our relationships to be full of peace and tranquility and happiness and enjoyment, Ya Rabbi, la ilaha illa Allah. And give us good in this world and give us good in the next world. Rabbanat al-Nafidun, ya hasnathum wa bil-a'afirat, ya hasnathum wa bil-a'afirat, ya hadabinat. Wassala allahu wa sallim wa barakala sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alim sahbim. As-salamu ala alaikum wa barakatuh.