 So I wanted to pick up on the discussion from last week and I'll share this, actually go ahead and share it right now. It's a book by the same author of the previous Halaqa where we were talking about Bidr-ul-Walidain, the rights of parents, and so this book is called Maharrim-ul-Lisan, The Prohibitions of the Tongue. I'll share this as the series of Halaqa, at least up into Ramadan. I think we have about five more sessions. And this book was actually a book that I studied during Ramadan as well. Right before Ramadan, I was studying, at the time I was studying fiqh, like shari'a, sacred law, the legal rulings. But then one of my shuyukh asked me, he said, Rami, what are you going to do during Ramadan? This is in West Africa and Mauritania, and I said, I'm going to continue studying. He said, no, Ramadan is a time for introspection, Ramadan is a time to look inwards and to not just fast, you know, the goal is not fasting, it is a goal, but it's also a tool. The fasting is going to give us the strength that we can focus on other things. We know we get more focused, we get more connected to the Qur'an, we get more connected to the Masajid, we focus more on our ibadah and it's the fasting that allows us to be able to do that. So the fasting at one level is a goal, is the ends, but in another aspect, the fasting is a means as well that we can work on other things, namely ourselves. So he said, I asked him, I said, what's your suggestion? And this is one of the edab of being with a teacher is that you look out for their suggestions. And this is whether we're studying the deen or even if we study the dunya. For those of us who went through public school here in the U.S. and maybe in other countries as well, and definitely in universities, they have academic counselors, right? Or when you go to the professor, even within that subject, if you ask the professor, if he's a professor of anthropology, you're not going to come to him and say, hey, I studied this, this, this and this, let's have a conversation. What would be more proper, the edab, the etiquette, would be to say, you are the expert in the field, what should I study? Any links, any books, any suggestions? What are your suggestions? So that's part of the edab of seeking knowledge is to ask the suggestions. So I asked my sheikh, Murabat Muhammad Alameen, what do you suggest? He said, have you studied the maharam in Lisan, the prohibitions of the tongue? I said, I hadn't. He said, focus on that in Ramadan and memorization of the Quran. And so that's what happens in the school, in the Mahdara's in West Africa. You will have people studying various subjects. They'll be studying usul, foundational understanding of where we derive the laws of Islam. Grammar, nahu, there will be sarf, morphology, tafsir, all of these different subjects. But then in Ramadan, it all focuses on the Quran and purification of ourselves. And one of the main areas that we need to purify, especially in Ramadan, is our tongues. And work on making sure that just like we're not putting any food into our mouths during Ramadan, that we're not actually eating things or putting into our mouths using our tongue speech that is that is improper. And we know there's even a hadith. And when I read this hadith, it was it was very, very, it's very vivid. And it really impacted me. So the hadith is there's two, there was two ladies amongst the Sahaba who had fasted, but they didn't have any food. And so one of the things that the Sahaba would do if they needed food or money, where would they go to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam? Because either he had something to give them or he would encourage other people in the community to give them or he would have something in bayt al-baal. But he was always the person who was giving. He was the most generous of people and he was most generous during Ramadan. This wasn't during the month of Ramadan. They were fasting and nafila fast and they came to him with a bowl. And they wanted some food to break their fast on. And he said, well, you've already eaten. I see the trait. They said, we're fasting. We haven't eaten anything. He said, then why do I see the traces of meat in between your teeth? So we know when we eat meat, sometimes the meat gets stuck in between our teeth. And they said, wallahi, we have not eaten anything. We're coming to get food from you and we've been fasting. He said, but you spoke about so-and-so and you spoke about so-and-so and actually he actually told them in the bowl, he said, throw it up. And they threw up, they started throwing up meat and they said, they were amazed too. They didn't know when this came from. And he said, but didn't you, before this, before you came here, you were talking about so-and-so and talking about so-and-so, you were doing riba, backbiting. And he would know this, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, because he has wahi, he has revelation. Like in the Qur'an in Surah Tahrim, there was some of, two of his wives wanted to, or it's a long story, but they made up a story and he was able to tell them the truth of what happened there. And they said, how do you know this? He said, nabbani al-alim al-khabir, that I was given this, the revelation. So I know what is going on even if I wasn't there. He is constantly getting revelation. So he knew that these ladies, what these sahabi'at had done, which is also a reminder to us that even the greatest of people, these are people who were companions of the Prophet, and about all of them, including these two ladies, what do we say about them? رضي الله عنهم, may Allah be pleased with them. But even these, the greatest of people, sometimes they slip, sometimes they trip, sometimes they fall. He's teaching us a lesson, he's teaching them a lesson, and it doesn't detract from their status completely. So he told them, he said, you were talking about so-and-so, and what does Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala tell us in the Qur'an about Ghiba, ayyuhibbu ahadukum ayyakula lahma akhihi mayyita, that do you want to eat the flesh of your brother who's dead? It's a very vivid picture. It's not just eating the flesh. So in English we even say backbiting, right? So it's eating the flesh of your brother who's dead. And in the tafsid it says, it mentions that why Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala said, you know, he didn't just say, it's gross enough to eat the flesh of another person, cannibalism. Human beings where we have an aversion to it. And even in the extreme situations where it does happen, there's diseases that are occurred by cannibalism, there's psychological issues that are caused by people who eat other human beings, even in times of needs like the soccer players who crashed in the Andes or the Donner Party here in California, they have psychological trauma because of that. So the ayah says, do you want to eat the flesh of your dead brother? So why does Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala say dead? Why would you think like in addition to eat the flesh of your brother or sister for that matter, if it's backbiting against a woman, why does he say mejita? Why does he say dead? Okay, because the person's not there physically. The meat is just cane, okay, so it's grosser. So let's think about this, imagine you tried to eat the flesh of your living brother. What would happen? He'll slap you, he's going to fight back, right? Man, in fact the other day we were at the aquarium, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and my daughter, she came up and she kind of like, you know, she snuck up on me and she scared me. And I turned around and at first I didn't know it was her, and I said, oh, I'm glad it's you, you know. I thought I was going to have to get in a fight right here in the aquarium, you know. That's what human beings do, they're going to, you know, defend themselves. It's a natural, it's part of what's built into us, we're going to defend ourselves. And so if the person is dead, then they cannot defend themselves. So think about Riba, when we speak about another person. They're not there to defend themselves. And just to think about, even in the human interactions, people will smile, we'll smile and we'll talk with person, and as soon as they walk away, oh my goodness, let me tell you about that person. Well, why is that? Why is it that we're more inclined to speak about that person when they're not there? Well, there's a couple things they can defend themselves. There's also the humanity of it, right? You see the person, think about a time that you were angry at a person, you're like, when I see that person, I'm going to tell them this, and I'm going to tell them this, and I'm going to go, you know, they're going to, and then you see them and you're like, you don't say those things because when they're, when they're not there, you forget their humanity. And when you see them in person, it's, you know, you get, you get, this is a living human being. It's the humanity is restored. And it's very interesting, like last week we were talking about narratives and stories and making sure that we're telling true stories and that we're not covering truth with falsehood. Well, names is very, very, is a very, very powerful element to humanity. I'll give you another in this ayah, which is Surah al-Hujrat. So Ramadan is a long month. We have work, kids have school. If you can't focus on learning all of the Quran, focus on Surah al-Hujrat. Surah al-Hujrat has a lot of the, it's the rooms or the chambers. It has a lot of focus on character and the, the, the specific rulings about developing your character. So another name that the, that the Surah goes by is Surah al-Akhlaq, the chapter of character. And in there, in addition to saying, don't do ghiba, don't backbite, it also says, Don't call each other by nicknames. And this is not talking about nicknames that are for endearing a person. Like one time Ali, radiallahu anhu, he's married to the daughter of the prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, Fatima al-Zahra, radiallahu anha. And they both worked. And this is a reminder to us, the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is instilling in people, even those closest to him, Fatima, who he said is a part of me. He's instilling in her a strong work ethic because they needed income. So what did Fatima al-Zahra do? What was her job? Does anybody know? She used to grind corn on the mills and they still use them in West Africa and Mauritania. Has anybody ever seen these, the two rocks, they'll be like the circle one. You can go even to here and at least in Fremont and I'm sure some of the other historical farms, if you ever take your kids to them, they have the old mills. So they'll take two stones and they'll have a place where they'll put the corn or whatever else and they'll turn the stones. It's a very ancient technology and used up until very recently and in Mauritania they still use it. They take two stones, they etch out one side of it so it looks like a grinder and then there will be a little hole to where they'll feed the corn into and then they'll have another stick that they can put into another hole that's been drilled out and they'll turn it. Well what do you think happens after hours and hours of milling the grains with that? Your hands are going to get callous. So that's what Fatima Tuzzara, imagine this, the daughter of the messenger of Allah is doing this work and then Ali, what is he doing in terms of his work? One of his many jobs, he was pulling water from the well. So here he is, you know, it's a strong work ethic. Well, the Fatima had told her, or Ali had told Fatima, go ask your father and see if he can find us a servant, give us a servant. So she told him that and then in the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam went to find Ali and where did he find him? In the masjid and when he found him in the masjid he was laying down and he came up to him and in the hadith it's so clear Ali says he stood so close to me I could feel the coolness of his feet. You know when you get close to somebody, if their skin is hot you can feel it even before touching or if their skin is cool you can start feeling the coolness. He said I could feel the coolness of his feet. And then he called him, ya abaturab, O father of dirt because he's lying down in the masjid and it's a dirt floor. So he has dirt on his body and then he tells him I'll give you something that's even better than a servant. And he said after every, you know, to say subhanallah and he gave him the dua of what to say subhanallah and alhamdulillah sorry subhanallah and alhamdulillah wallahu akbar to say those and then that would be better for them than to have a servant. So he's reinforcing to them again the strong work ethic but the reason I mentioned this story there's many benefits we can get from that story but he called him endearingly abaturab and then that actually became a beloved nickname to him because it was given to him by the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and we have this in our families we have nicknames for maybe for our spouse for our children for our friends and so the Quran is not telling us don't do nicknames completely the nicknames are the mockery nicknames the nicknames that and think about what it does one of the first things that invading armies do and this has been recorded more recently in this century is they give names to the people that they've invaded so the United States we don't even have to mention the names when they invaded the Vietnam what did they think about those names that they started calling the Vietnamese people when they invaded the Muslim lands Iraq and Afghanistan as occupying forces as invaders what did they used to does anybody and I mean that's our people we can they're talking about us does anybody know the names they used to call people in Iraq or Afghanistan the Muslims well in addition to terrorists it's actually you know which is another name you know that they all here in our terrorist I've been called terrorist a couple times once in Ramadan on one of the streets and I wanted to say something back to the person but it was Ramadan and if somebody picks a fight with you in Ramadan what do you say you know I'm fasting so what did I do I waved at him and wallah al-Azim you know what he did he waved back and it's almost like I was like salallahu alaihi wa salam like it weren't it actually works he said hey man you know I'm used to a bad word you know he says you know you beep beep terrorist and I looked at him and I was in my car and he was walking across the street you know if you're going to pick a fight with somebody and you're walking and somebody's in a three thousand pound you know hunk of metal like that's not an even fight but anyway he said so I just I waved at him I didn't say anything I waved at him and he waved right back and it's like human nature like he just he didn't know you know hi how are you doing so yeah they call terrorist but what do they call the the army the soldiers to the Muslims in those countries towel heads rag heads but they had some other ones too moujiz in Afghanistan they would call them moujiz which they get it from Mujahideen they'd also call them hajis hajis now what does that do what it what it does is for the invading army when they do that and they give them nicknames this is no longer Benny Adam a human being all that's just a haji or a mouj or a terrorist or a towel head or rag head or whatever it is it removes the humanity so when Allah is telling us subhanahu wa ta'ala when he's telling us in the Quran don't call people by nicknames it's a very powerful lesson it's don't remove people's humanities they don't remove their humanity even for parents or or teachers one of the things now in modern parenting what they're they tell people and this reinforces for us it's it's the lesson in the Quran they say say a child does something um uh... does something do you say you're a bad child or what you did or your decision or your action was bad which one do you do you talk about the decision you talk about the action because once you especially for a child once you say something like you know your bad for doing like maybe in the parents you know they're true that what they mean is that action that you did right there that was a bad decision and that was a bad action but when we say when it translates into saying you're bad in the child's mind they they're they're they're very absolutist they're black and white thinkers they can't think abstractly especially even before twelve years old children have a hard time thinking abstractly it's very concrete so if a parent tells them you're bad we're saying you're completely bad so it's so then the and and what is that in the process when we say you're bad you know say his name is you know i'm not you know he he's no longer i'm not he's no longer human being he's no longer son all of these honorific titles of what he has well i could come to be any adam we have in noble the son of adam now he's i'm bad and so so so to me when i when i when i see that literature i said well this is a lot of told us that don't call people by nicknames and it removes their humanity so the same thing happens in reba when we backbite people and that's what when people start mocking the uh... each other or other people one of the first things they do is they start making names about them they start you know they'll call them there was actually one student in the school where i studied uh... this was very inappropriate very hard on for the students to have done but the student came and well i'll tell you two stories so once uh... brother who he heard about the school from west africa from article that myself and my friend nabil afifi wrote and when he traveled to the school uh... this brother was his father's libyan his mother's egyptian he was born in oklahoma raised in in in canada so he has uh... a very diverse experience but he spoke arabic growing up so he came to moritania knowing arabic when he's traveling through the desert and it's really interesting you know to see the wildlife they see a hawk now hawk in arabic is sakar or uh... bas there's different names you know for hawks or falcons and so the the moritania who was traveling with them he said all i thought it was a do you know what this is had a lot of food this is a lot of food what is a lot of food in arabic it's a little bird right a little bird and so he started cracking up because he the moritania was trying to like thought he didn't really speak arabic he was trying to explain it like bring it down to him like a little kid you might say all that's a bird well you don't say that's a little bird you know to to an adult like that's a hawk that's a predatory bird you know falcon whatever it was so uh... so then my friend he started for the rest of his stay there he started calling the the guy osvur bird and the kid the guy liked it because it was a kind of inside joke you know and say hey osvur how are you doing so that was okay but then there was another story where students were traveling into the village and one had come into the village with a servant with a person who was known as a hadem and over there actually moritania they they they use hadem to refer to uh... a woman who's like a female a female servant household servant and so forth she happened to be in the group that came into the village they noticed this student had come in with that person so they started calling him hadem and he's like i don't like that but they called him that name so much he actually left the school so this is a school where they're studying Quran and hadith and fiqh and so forth but the power of a nickname or uh... uh... you know it's very it can really affect the person so riba takes away people's humanities nicknames take people away people's humanities and in the story that i started off with the two sahabi at they regurgitated this meat which was actually it was like a physical manifestation of the spiritual the spiritual interaction that had taken place so when we do riba we're not actually eating the meat of another person but spiritually that's what we're doing and in this situation with other sahaba around the sahaba were able to see a physical manifestation as a miracle from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam of the spiritual interaction that they had so it's very important for us to protect our tongues and there's many hadith about the importance of protecting our tongues and being careful of our tongues um... and uh... it's the it's the it's the thing that gets us in trouble the most and the thing that that causes us that we're we're quickest to to make a mistake is our tongues uh... it's even if it's it's we will make mistakes with our tongues quicker than with our eyes or even with our hearts so when people when we start thinking about uh... purifying our souls and purifying our hearts before we even start looking at the root diseases one of the main things that we need to get a hold of is the tongue is is is preserving the tongue and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam mentioned this in many many hadith in a lot of the hadith collections they'll have a section on the preservation of the tongue if you go to iqya ulum ad-din there's a uh... the the revival of the religious sciences by imam al ghazali there's a whole section just on the tongue if you have that book it's available online read through it during ramadan the adhkar of imam al-nawi imam al-nawi has a number of of books and i'll tell you a funny story about imam al-nawi noah is the name of the town or the village where he's from in iraq uh... sorry in uh... syria and so he's noawi noawi well there's another modern usage of the word noawi which means what in arabic nuclear so there was an imam who was giving a khutbah in arabic and he mentioned al-imam al-nawi imam noawi the imam yahya al-nawi who's from the village of noa uh... you know that's his title so the translator said and so the sheikh says the nuclear imam sometimes things get lost in translation uh... in fact somebody recently there was a hadith allahumma inni a'udhu bikim an adhzi wal kassan there's a hadith the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam taught and somebody had run it through google translate and it was just hilarious what google translate had come up with but imam noawi has a lot of different collections he has the forty hadith which most people are familiar with if you don't have that book get that book it's a the forty hadith collections there's a hadith and it's a weak hadith that says if a person preserves or memorizes forty hadith they will get a reward i believe i can't remember the exact but they would have a uh... a reward of jannah or you know there's a huge reward in that the hadith is da'if is weak but many scholars made action implemented this hadith and so they would start collecting forty hadith collections so you'll find forty hadith collections on sadaqa forty hadith collections on bitalwali dayn respect to the parents any of the topics that are in our faith in our dean you'll find forty hadith collections about it and people are still collecting those hadith let's say okay let's just collect a forty hadith collection recently uh... sheikh tamim the imam at masjid al-huda in union city he put together a book it's called forty hadith on the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam dealing with tribulations so all of the hadith you know and just put them together so if a person is going through tribulations it's good to read this collection you can see oh it gives you a good comprehensive view of all of the hadith to talk about tribulations but there's forty hadith about preservation of the tongue or forty hadith well imam know he says i want to do a forty hadith collection that basically instead of summarizing subjects summarizes islam so that was his goal with the forty hadith and that's why it's been so prolific studied all over the umma that if somebody goes through the forty hadith you get a very good comprehensive overview of the teachings and the messages uh... and the message of islam that's why it's really good to have that book available now that there's these apps and so forth you can download the apps there's online commentaries of the forty hadith so the forty hadith is good another book that imam know he has is the adhkar all of the hadith that you say you know we have those little vicar uh... uh... collections what to say when you come to the house what to say when you leave the house on a trip you know usually they're little little books right imam know his book is thick hundreds of pages all of the hadith about what you say at this situation what you say when there's a strong wind what you say when the roosters grow what you say when you know and very very specific it's called kitab al-adhkar and alhamdulillah it's been translated to english so if you uh... if you want to get a book that gives you vicar to do various points of your life uh... that's a great uh... book to have well in that section is a section on uh... the preservation of the tongue so again the point is that a lot of the books that they have are on preservation of the tongue just to mention some that shaykh muhammad bulud mentions that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he said that if a person preserves what's between his jaws meaning his tongue and what's between his thighs meaning the privates i will guarantee for you paradise the two things so those are the two areas that people get in trouble the most what's between the thighs and what's between the the the jaws and even in this we see the the the etiquette in the sophistication of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that he didn't refer to things uh... sariah like uh... what's a good word like explicitly so he said what's between the thighs you know we get the idea but it's a very sophisticated way of saying it and then he said what's between the tongue recently i conducted a nikah over last summer and i was reviewing the the hadith the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says that marriage is half of our dean is half of our dean and so we usually say it's half our dean half our dean half our dean well what's the other half anybody know what's that cleanliness yes there's and there is that had it as well too and you can actually have multiple hadith that says cleanliness is half of faith and marriage is half of faith and we get a couple more there's another one too it's half of faith well that's you can't have three halves or four halves so it's it's just it's really to emphasize the importance of that but in this hadith specifically that says marriage is half of faith in the tafsir they say oh to understand this hadith that marriage is half of faith you have to know this other hadith that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam talked about that whoever preserves for me what is between his jaws meaning the tongue and what's between his thighs i guarantee for him uh... paradise so what is marriage preserves for us what's between the thighs so now the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said you worked for that you didn't go the haram route you with the halal route now work just preserve you know the other half and uh... uh... and it is subhanallah you can see the the the the hikmah and in understanding the wisdom of of all of these hadith together and uh... a number of times people before they get married they come up to me they say oh i want to take a class on marriage in islam and the rights and the responsibilities of marriage and the thick of marriage before i go into marriage well the thick of marriage mostly deals with how to have the contract what are the basics of a marriage in terms of what both have to do and then divorce custody is the basic things that most people don't deal with on a daily basis right you do the aqa most people one time in their life maybe two uh... most people don't deal with the divorce the rules of divorce and custody some people do and they're there for us to know them but for most people we don't have we don't run our marriages by the thick of marriage so what i advise people saying what really the majority of interaction between a husband and wife is is is communication and that's really what what tests us you know before we're married uh... we we have a certain way of interacting and communicating with other people but once we're married now we have somebody every day that we're having conversations with that we're building a relationship with that we have to we have to compromise on certain situations we have to push back on certain situations we have to learn how to communicate now you're forced to learn how to communicate and so what i tell them i said what's more important then learning the thick of marriage to prepare for marriage is to learn the rules the sunnah the coran and sunnah teachings about how to preserve our tongue and what is proper what is improper and that's the the the and then especially then once you have children as well so the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said whoever protects the two matters uh... also he mentioned there's many a hadith about the harms of the tongue there's one hadith that that's all i always think about he said that uh... that that a person will speak a word say something not even give it a second thought and it will drive him or her into the depths of jihannam the hellfire a distance of a journey of five hundred years and that's for something we said they didn't even give it thought maybe it was an intentional how many times have we have we've been hurt by somebody they said something and it was just in passing and then we look back and the person were like they don't even realize what they said and here now that pain stings us and probably now if you think about it it's it's still stinging you and that person doesn't even remember saying it and there's sometimes that maybe we said something maybe we said something to somebody and this especially you learn this lesson if you have kids because our kids will remind us of things that we said right as the parents as dads that we don't even remember saying they're like and it and it hurt them so we really have to be careful of what we say especially around our uh... i mean uh... around anybody but especially our our family so it's it's very important uh... to purify there's also a hadith that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said the easiest of worship is silence so right now the majority of people here that listen you're not talking and you could actually be getting reward for that when you don't talk because your tongue has the ability to speak the haram it also has the ability to speak the halal or just in not speaking the haram is a form of worship but you have to consciously you know think about that so it's not just just by being silent you you get reward because the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said actions are by their intentions binyat well silence is an action because you're keeping your mouth but you have to have an intention so if you if you think you know if like you sit down for halafa or you sit down you know for some quiet reflection and you say you know what I actually now have the ability to use my tongue for the haram to speak the haram but I'm consciously choosing not to now at that point that all that silent session you're getting reward for it and what do you have to do nothing easy that's why the hadith says the easiest of worship is silence so there's all these hadith about the harms of the tongue there's many hadith about the benefits of of of silence many of the benefits that they mention Muhammad Malud mentions he says there's there's nine things I won't go we're running out of time but he says one of the benefits of silence you give a break to your noble scribes kiraman kattibin right every single one of us has two angels writing down our good deeds and writing down our evil deeds and when we're silent we give them a break they don't have to because when at every word I'm saying is being written down every word every action and when we're silent we give them a break and the other thing is that when we say things or when we do things that are that are foul or that are evil that are haram we're doing it in front of two noble angels that are sinless like think of the most righteous person and I'm thinking about people that I've met in my life think about the most righteous person that you've ever met in your life just take a moment to think that one person might be a man might be a woman might be a man and a woman if it was a couple of people you're thinking that most righteous person would you do some of the things that you have done would you do that in front of them and think of two righteous people think of the two most righteous people that you've been around when you get around them don't they remind you to kind of like they help us balance ourselves Hassan al-Basri Sayyid al-Tabi'in the Sayyid of the of the of the next generation after the Sahaba when he would walk into the marketplace and people would see him you know what they would do they would say Allahu Akbar Astaghfirullah Astaghfirullah is it because they think he's Allah? no of course not but when they see a man of Allah a person who's close to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala spiritually he reminds them of Allah and then it causes them to say Astaghfirullah you know it reminds them of Allah and that's one of the signs of the people of Allah that when you see them you remember Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so now imagine those two people when they're in front of you those people that remind you of Allah would we do some of the things would we say some of the things that we do in front of them most of us wouldn't we all wouldn't so they said think about that you have two righteous angels with you all the time that when we do or say things we're forcing them to witness what we do or say and they have to actually write it down so one of the benefits of silence is giving them a break I'll end right there we'll pick up next week I won't be able to go through the entire text but I've shared it with you you can read through it I also have some audio recordings of the entire text but I'll try to begin the series and just encourage us to read that hadith about that to start preparing for Ramadan by being conscious about our tongue we know that hadith where the Prophet SAW said that in Ramadan if a person leaves off food but still talks about people does ghiba they've broken their fast now does it literally mean that they broke their fast and this is important to know so if somebody doesn't do ghiba they're like oh well I broke my fast so bismillah you know let me just go ahead and eat that's not what it means it means the spiritual aspect of the fast has been broken we still have to keep the physical aspect of the fast we ask Allah SWT to give us the Tawfiq to give us success to prepare for Ramadan and to welcome Ramadan the Messenger of Allah SAW at every month when he would see the new moon how many people saw the moon of Rajab did anybody notice the moon of Rajab last couple of nights when he would see the new moon he would actually speak to the moon and make dua at that time Allahumma ahallahu alayna bil amni wal iman wa salamati wal islam wa tawfiq ilimatu hib wa tarda rabbuna wa rabbuka Allah our Lord and your Lord is Allah SWT and then he would say praise be to Allah who has taken away the previous month and he would name the month wa ja'a bi shahri keda like now and brought to us this month Allahumma ballighna Ramadan O Allah make us reach Ramadan so at the beginning of each month he's reminding himself SAW like we're preparing for Ramadan so we have these two months the blessed month of Rajab and then the blessed month of Sha'ban and then to prepare for Ramadan and to start getting into the mode once when we do that Ramadan you know sometimes creeps up on us but if we start preparing it's not just with the extra fast but that's good but it's to start being at the masjid more reciting the Quran more being aware of our actions more thinking about our actions more we ask Allah SWT to give us the tawfiq to do what he pleases