 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillah, Rabb al'Alamin. Wa SalAllah wa Salim wa Barak Alasaiduna Muhammedin, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim. Rabb-e Shahi al-Sadri wa Yusalli. Amri wahlu al-Uqtatan min al-Lessani, afqa wa qawli wa SalAllah wa Salim, Wa barak Alasaiduna Muhammedin, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa salim. May Salat and Salam be upon you. And today we are going to be focusing on a couple of traits that are all very, very related. And those are the traits of being merciful, being gentle and striving to make others happy. As we've mentioned, we are trying to balance this with a mix of traits from traits that directly affect your relationship with Allah and then traits that affect your relationship with Allah, of course, but through the medium of affecting your relationship with other people. And so last week we touched upon the importance of intention and the importance of sincerity in all of our actions. And today we're going to be focusing a bit more on how to acquire this trait of mercy, how to be a gentle human being and how to focus on making other people happy and taking care of the needs of others. One of the most amazing things that you see about the people of Allah is that they are very, very gentle, they're very calm, they're very merciful, they're very kindhearted and they're usually looking out for others over themselves. And the Prophet ﷺ, he exemplified this in the best of ways where he was sent as the rahmata l-alameen, that the mercy to all the worlds that Allah mentioned in the Qur'an and one of the main reasons that he sent him was to be a mercy to all of the worlds. And so the Prophet ﷺ is the best embodiment of the name ar-Rahman on this planet in human form. And so we can all focus on taking a portion of this beautiful name of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. One of the things that we can remember as we go through these traits of the righteous is that all of these traits, they somehow will relate to some manifestation of one of the names of Allah. And there are the 99 names that have been transmitted and then there are many other names that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala only knows. So one of the names of Allah that's so important is the name ar-Rahman, right? It begins, Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, and the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate. We start al-hamdulillahi rabbil alameen, ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, right again praising Allah and then mentioning his mercy and his gentleness. And so it just goes to show that mercy is a very, very, very, very core part of this religion. And Allah created everybody with the potential for mercy. But it just depends. Do we find it deep down inside? And we're living again in a time, we've been talking about this, that one of the names for this class is Virtues in the Time of Vice. There's so many people out there today who just don't have any mercy, right? There's people dying with the pandemic and people don't have any mercy to take precautions or to worry about anybody other than themselves. There are people who are struggling, who are poor, who are hungry, and yet we're maybe only concerned with ourselves and our own situations. There are people who are facing major economic tribulations, at least in this country. And the political elite are only concerned about themselves and their interests and whatnot. So if somebody had mercy in their heart, if somebody has a level of gentleness in their heart, they're going to be merciful and gentle when it comes to thinking about other human beings. And that's really what we want to get to today. This is about taking care of each other. We're living in a time where if we don't take care of each other, we're going to be in trouble. We have to work on taking care of each other in this time that we are living in. And so we know that the Prophet ﷺ exemplified this trade. He was merciful with animals. He was merciful with humans, of course, with mankind. He was merciful with children. He was merciful with the elderly. He was merciful with everybody around him, even the people, even his worst enemies. He would be merciful with them. How? He would pray for them. He would try to call them to Islam, even though they were trying to assassinate him. The level of mercy in his heart is absolutely amazing. And you'll see this with the people of Allah, that they really have a level of mercy and gentleness that they will want to figure out how can they help you? How can they take care of your needs? I remember one time I randomly saw one of the great shiuch of Tareem, which is a city in Yemen, that many of the shiuch from the West have also studied in that area. And so I randomly saw this great shiuch in Medina, in the Masjid of the Prophet ﷺ. And it was right around Fajr time. And I see them right after Fajr sitting and doing the morning of the car. Known as the Wida Latif, that the Prophet ﷺ would do every single morning. Or the Prophet ﷺ would do a certain car in the morning, and those have been compiled into Wida Latif. That's kind of the more correct way to say it. So anyways, they're sitting there, and I just kind of am like, you know, I'm just going to join them, even though I didn't get invited or anything. They seem like nice people. I've met him before a few times. So I just sit there, and then after I finish, I kind of, you know, did my very, very broken Arabic say, yeah, like, I remember, you know, we met this one time. And how are you doing? And just kind of see, and he very, very sincerely asked me like, you know, even though he is a scholar, he is, you know, visiting the Prophet ﷺ, but he asked me, is there anything I can do for you? Like, do you need anything? Do you have any need? Can I take care of any hajjah of yours, any need of yours? And it was very sincere. Like, if I had said, if I could figure out how to say, but if I had said, yes, there's this need of mine, I could really use some help here. I can guarantee somebody like that would have done it. They would have figured out a way, they would have asked somebody, they would have facilitated a way. And one of the things I've seen about many of the people of Allah, that people come to them with all types of needs, this need, this need for the, for they're struggling with this, they need advice here, they're struggling with this situation, they're struggling with their marriage, they're struggling with the need counseling, they're struggling with family problems, and literally they just dump their needs on them, right? Like, can you help me with this? Can you advise me this? How do I do this? I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling depressed, I'm feeling stressed, I don't know what to do. I'm having this problem at home. My kids are doing this. And all sorts of needs. And then it takes a lot, it takes a lot to bear that level of advice giving, let's say, for somebody. But the people of Allah, the righteous, they have so much mercy and they're so gentle, they welcome that. And they spend their time solving other people's problems, giving them advice, being kind to them, being generous. If they themselves can help solve the problem, they'll do it. If they can advise to solve the problem, they'll do it, give advice. If they can facilitate in any way, shape, or form, they will do that. So those are just some of the examples, right? That we mentioned, some of the examples of the people of Allah and how they prioritize Allah's worship and how they prioritize Allah's worship through taking care of other human beings. But that's very, very, very important in the time that we are living in. Just wanna check something real quick. So that's the manifestation. We see this manifestation in the life of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And then we see this manifestation taking place in the time that we live in through the inheritors of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And there are people who have inherited the certain characteristics, certain traits of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And so those are the people, when we say the righteous, those are really the people we're talking about. Those are the people we wanna emulate. The ones who are spending their life trying to be like the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and who have inherited a part of his amazing spiritual legacy as he says in the hadith, the ulama are the inheritors of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The true scholars are the inheritors of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So what is mercy? When mercy comes into somebody's heart, they start to feel a level of compassion for others. That they're first, the way that they respond is not always negative. They're trying to find, have a good opinion of their people. They're trying to be soft and gentle towards them and they're trying to assess the situation holistically. Maybe this happened, maybe that happened. How can I make sure that this person gets the help that they need based on the situation that they're in? And it's a quality that Allah uniquely described the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam as having in the Quran. He says, there has come to you a prophet from among yourselves grievous to you. Sorry, grievous to whom is your burden and concerned he is for you and for the believers he is full of compassion and he is merciful. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was concerned about us. He is concerned about us. Concerned about you. Concerned about me. Concerned about our problems. Concerned about the anxieties that we go through, right? This was something that would trouble him. He would think about the problems of the people who lived in his time and he would think about the problems of the people who were going to come. The people like us who came 1400 years later after the blessed life of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And his mercy extended that far such that he would spend his nights praying for you. He would spend his nights praying for me. He would spend his nights praying for the ummah. And it is one, it is because of those tears. You don't know which tear, I don't know which tear but it is because of those tears that you and me are Muslim today. That you and I have the ability to even say La ilaha illallah Muhammad Rasulullah. That Allah has guided us through the greatest example the Messenger Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and his mercy was so concerned that there are people who are merciful to you in this world. Parents, whether somebody is a Muslim or a non-Muslim parents will be merciful towards their children. But the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and towards their children rather in this life, right? Want to make sure that they get what they need. Want to make sure the baby is fed. Want to make sure that their baby is comfortable. Want to make sure the child as they grow up have all the different things that it is that they need. And of course as they continue to grow they're to look out for them. But that's in this life. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was concerned about people in this life and more importantly in the next life. What was going to be their state? Were they going to be able to survive the questions in the grave? Were they going to be able to wake up on the day of judgment? A day that is reported as potentially being 50,000 years long in the Quran. And were they going to be able to not only survive but wake up on that day in a state of not being completely, and Allah mentions there will be people who they'll be behaving as though they're completely drunk, just completely confused. And the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam didn't want us to be like that. He's concerned about whether or not you and I will get our book from Allah in our right hand, which is a sign of Tawfiq, a sign of success or our book in our left hand. He is concerned whether you and I will cross the bridge, cross the Sirat, you cross over the fire to get to heaven. He's concerned about that. All of these things he's concerned about, whether we make it to heaven, we're all of these aspects of our afterlife the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is concerned about. It takes an immense portion of mercy to have that level of concern. And the more you and I emulate the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the more we get near to the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the more that we emulate the sunnah of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the more that we bring his character into our life, the more that we try to be good human beings, the more that we try to not only uphold his sunnah, but to rectify his sunnah in the time that we are living in. The more traits of ours that start to align with his beautiful character traits, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the more mercy that enters the heart, and the more concern we begin to have, not just for ourselves, but for other people. You will begin to have a deep concern for your family and then a deep concern for your community and then a deep concern for society and then a deep concern for the world and then a deep concern for the ummah and then for the world. And I'm talking about an otherworldly concern, right? The concern not just for this life, but for how are people doing in this life and the next life? That is what mercy brings. And so what is it? Very practically speaking and manifest in having concern and then being nice with people, being gentle with people, trying to make other people happy, trying to take it easy with people. It can manifest in all of these ways. There's not one very, very fixed definition. But Allah mentions, right? And mercy very much links to gentleness. Allah mentions, the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, mentions how much Allah loves gentleness, right? So the more merciful one becomes, the more they start to manifest gentle behavior. And you know what it's like to be around somebody who's gentle, right? We've all been around really harsh, intense people. And especially when there are people who have some level of authority, it's so tough to be around them. They're just so angry and so tough and so harsh and so strict. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was the farthest from that. He was gentle. He was calm. He was relaxed. He was in a state of tranquility. Even though he had a concern for you and I, he wasn't in a state of turbidity. He was in a state of tranquility. And that's the gentleness that he manifested. So he mentions in Hadith that Allah is gentle and Allah loves gentleness. And he gives for gentleness but he does not give for harshness or anything else. It is narrated in the collection of my Muslim. Think about that. Allah himself is gentle and he loves gentleness. And he's gonna give you a reward for gentleness that he might not give for harshness. When you're trying to fix a situation at home, when you and I are trying to fix the situation with our family, when one of our kids or family members or someone does something wrong, we could take the harsh approach or we could take the gentle approach. Make an effort to take the gentle approach. That's very, very, very important to be a gentle human being with other people. So the Prophet of Islam also said, Allah is gentle and loves gentleness in all matters. It doesn't really matter what it is. If somebody does something that's egregiously problematic, really, really wrong, be gentle with them. Gentleness will draw them closer to you and I, then harshness will, right? And gentleness is a type of trait that it immediately just softens somebody. Imagine when you talk spoke about this presidential debate last week, right? Imagine if the candidates, instead of like always going at each other, just were just a bit gentle, just a bit, just, you know, thought a bit empathetic, right? Imagine if the president of the United States had gentleness as a character trait in order to respond to this pandemic. If that was one of the traits that was part of the response to the pandemic or if gentleness was one of the ways in which many world leaders responded to difficulties in the global community. You would have so much more, they would have, first of all, so much more support because people are naturally inclined to our gentleness. I apologize for the background noise. I live right next to a children's hospital and there's a helicopter that, you know, regular helicopters that come. May Allah be gentle with whoever is in that helicopter. Hopefully that child is safe and healthy. But that gentleness is such an important quality. And the Prophet of the Psalm also said, when gentleness is in anything, it adorns it. And when it is removed from anything, it spoils it, right? So if you have some really nice dish or something like that, right? You're gonna want the dish to taste good. Gentleness is like the sweet part of the dish. You don't want something to spoil the dish, right? You pour like vinegar in your dessert and your dessert is ruined, right? You pour something that's not supposed to be in that dish into it. It's gonna get messed up, it's gonna be spoiled. Similarly, the Prophet of the Psalm is saying, when gentleness is removed from anything, it spoils it. Because when you are gentle and merciful, you are measured in your response. You think, how is this going to impact this person? And that's why it relates so much to making other people happy and taking care of other people. Because you wonder, how is he gonna feel? How is she gonna feel when I respond in this way? What are gonna be the long-term impacts of my conversation or of my action? What will come from it? And the person who acts with gentleness, inshallah, only khayr and only good will come from it. And so we see this manifest all the time in the sunnah of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. One of the most famous stories, gotta be gentle with yourself and hydrate when you're thirsty. One of the most famous stories is one time the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and his companions were sitting in the masjid, they were sitting in the masjid at Nabiwi. And a Bedouin came into the masjid. A Bedouin, like a desert Arab who didn't know the rules and whatnot. And what does he come in? And the masjid at the time wasn't like these massajid today that we have. And the floor wasn't like the way we have it today or it's not the way the masjid at Nabiwi is today with like really, really fancy carpets and whatnot. It was a much more, you know, it was an amazing structure because Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam himself and the Sahaba of course built it. But it was a much more, you know, simple structure you could say, just from an outward point of view not from an inward point of view. So the Bedouin came in and what does he do? He starts to urinate in the masjid. Literally like he starts to go to the bathroom in the masjid and the Sahaba like, they're getting, they get up and they're like, what is he doing? How could he, right? And they're like ready to just pounce on him, right? And the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, you know what he did? He said, let him finish. Let him finish. He finished. And then the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, you know, went and he spoke to him and he told them this is a masjid. It's a place where we worship Allah and this is not the place for that type of behavior. And he told the Sahaba to address it, you know, to handle it, to clean it up and everything. And I'm paraphrasing the story here, but I mean, look at that, right? If that, that story always just completely floors me. If you think in this time that we live in, literally today, somebody like walks into the masjid, just, I don't know, smelling bad or dressed in a way people don't like, people lose it on them, right? But there are people who, and so, so, so, so, what happened is the better one, he didn't know. He said, I didn't know. I didn't understand, I didn't realize that, right? I don't know if this was his first time coming to the masjid, my guess would be it was. So he didn't know. And the Prophet ﷺ, he eased him with gentleness. I mean, imagine, he, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, would just imagine if he were with you, he would just win over your heart, right? The Sahaba literally, they would just want to be around him all the time because somebody that gentle to somebody who's doing an act, which is so like in violation of, you know, basic, you know, public code of conduct and you can be so gentle with them. Imagine how gentle he was with the people who were, he close to him, just imagine that. Imagine how happy he must have been. Imagine how nice he must have been with them. They say about the Prophet ﷺ that he made everybody around him, whoever it was that was with him, he made them feel like they were the person he loved the most. And they weren't necessarily the person that he loved the most, right? That they could have been, you know, 10, 15, 20th on the list, but he made them feel that way because his mercy was so expansive. When mercy is in the heart, a certain type of love, you have to have a level of love for yourself and for others for mercy and gentleness to emanate from the heart. And that's what happened to the heart, from the heart of the Prophet ﷺ. So that story is just, we should think about it, right? When if somebody is in a position of any organizational leadership or any, you know, thing with regards to working with the masjid and whatnot, when people misbehave in the community, there are of course the times if somebody knowingly does something wrong and just trying to create fit, now you got to respond in the right way, right? You got to know what to do so they don't create more problems. But when somebody ignorantly or innocently does something they just don't know about, the best response is to handle things with gentleness, especially with kids. When kids are running around in the masjid, right there, to yell at them and just get angry and, you know, forcefully like quiet them, that's not the way of the Prophet ﷺ. You did not see him doing that with his grandson, Sayyidina Mama Hassan and Mama Hussein or the Allah on home. So if that's how he would manifest gentleness with somebody who came into urinate in the masjid, imagine then how he would deal with kids or deal with people who would, you know, maybe not necessarily, you know, be quiet or whatever it was, right? So that's something we should take. And there's another example here where Allah actually commands Musa alaihi salam when he's going to Pharaoh. So the story of Moses and Pharaoh, you know, in short that Pharaoh, Pharaoh, Pharaoh is this like terrible corrupt tyrant, right? Musa alaihi salam is the Prophet, Prophet Moses. Maybe he's be upon him. And so he is given prophecy. He actually grows up in the household of Pharaoh. Pharaoh kind of like takes him in after he finds him when he's young. And Moses, Moses gets this prophecy. He sees growing up the corruption in the household of Pharaoh and the corruption in a Pharaoh as a tyrant. Pharaoh had enslaved the children of Israel, the Bani Israel. And so Musa alaihi salam is sent as a Prophet to not only emancipate them, but to also rectify, try to rectify Pharaoh, try to get, call him right to Allah. And so Allah commands him. He tells him, don't be harsh with Pharaoh. Allah is commanding him to be gentle with Pharaoh. Now this is a man who has murdered people. This is a man who has literally hurt innocent women, children and killed lots and lots and lots of men. This is a man who is enslaved large portions of society. I mean, literally the one of the worst tyrants in history. And he's mentioned in the Quran many times and he's given, he's just for us to see how bad of a person he actually was. And yeah, Allah tells Musa alaihi salam, just be gentle with him, don't be harsh with him. Because if you're harsh, he's gonna reject you immediately. When you were inviting, and this is very important for anybody who is trying to call and invite anybody, whether it's your children, your family members or community members, to call and invite people to the religion. Inviting, right? If somebody invites you, they do it with a level of, a level of courtesy, right? Nobody is gonna invite you to just like, put a gun over your head and just like come over tonight for dinner, right? That's not how they invite. They have a certain invitation, a certain way of inviting you. They might send you a message or call you nicely. How are you doing? What's going on? Would love for you to come over. Would love for you to come to my wedding or birthday or whatever it is, right? And you give somebody the option to say no. Do you say yes or no to the invitation? Similarly, when you invite people, you give them the option to say yes or no. You can't be so forceful that like they have to absolutely say yes. And the people who, a lot of people come to Islam through their hands, they do so. They invite people in a way that is very warm and it always is like, look, you take your time, you know? Like this is the religion and they tell them about it. They teach them about it. They befriend them. They're nice to them, but it's not a forceful matter, right? And so you see with Musa al-Islam that he's inviting for our own and so he can't do so forcefully. Even though at the same time, right? He has to rectify the situation and eventually Musa al-Islam ends up kind of, you know, being victorious and for own ends up passing away without repenting, without accepting Allah as his Lord. But even then he was told to be gentle and not harsh. So how does this translate into our lives? First and foremost, it translates into how we take care of other people, how we take care of first and foremost of our family. It's very, very important that we have a level of gentleness with our families. And that Allah says in the Quran, it is because of the mercy of Allah that you were lenient with them. If you had been ill-tempered and hard-hearted, they would have all dispersed from you. And again, he's telling this to the Prophet s.a.w. So now imagine for us, if we are ill-tempered and angry and frustrated and stressed and always creating problems in the house and hard-hearted and harsh, our family will disperse from us just mentally. I know people, literally the kids and the family are just completely checked out. They don't want to have anything to do with the intense atmosphere that has been created in the family. So they might be there physically, but mentally they are checked out. So people will disperse from us, they will leave us from one point of view. They will just become disengaged if we are harsh and if we are ill-tempered with each other. And so, when our kids do something, let's start with just kids. When somebody does something wrong or someone does something haram, especially religiously, do not be harsh with them. That will absolutely, positively be a formula to make them run away from the religion. That is one of the main issues happening in our time, that there are people who get religious and they have an outward religious understanding without being inwardly gentle and merciful and some child does something small that's incorrect, maybe wear something that's a little bit off or whatever else it is. And boom, harshness comes down and they start to get scared of Islam. And most in those circumstances what I've seen is that people are actually doing things out of fear of their parents, not out of fear of Allah. And so as soon as they get freedom from their parents, they start to disobey and they start to do whatever it is because the fear of Allah and the fear and love of Allah has to be there, right? And the parents have to do so in a way that is following the etiquette and the motto of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And he comes in a hadith where he said that the best of you are those that are best to their family or you could say another narration, the best of you are those who are best to their wives and I am the best of you to my family or to my wives. Right, so he's the best in character to his family. That doesn't mean he's not raising voices, he's not yelling, he's not being harsh and intense. So when somebody does something wrong, that's the first thing in the household. So just take it easy, right? To do our best, but to take it easy and to not explode, especially in matters of religion. If it's a homework assignment or some other school related thing or whatever it is, we have to be judicious about how we approach it and lessons have to be learned from time to time. But when it comes to religion, Allah is mentioning to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that you have to be lenient with them. If you are ill tempered and heart hearted, they will disperse and that happens all of the time. In fact, sometimes from families that are the most outwardly religious, you sometimes have kids who have the most intense rebellion because the religion was misunderstood and applied in a way that was too harsh and too intense. And so that mercy is very, very important. And same thing goes for other mistakes and what not. You can cross apply this. We don't want to spend too much time on each one point, but we can cross apply this to a bunch of other categories and a bunch of other points. The next is then being gentle with our friends, our society, our community, our loved ones to not again be harsh and take people to account as soon as they mess up. Why did you do it? I knew you were going to do it. Of course you weren't capable, right? Like, no. Part of being gentle is to lift people up. You got this. You got this and you need to be positive. We're living in a world full of negativity. A wall on the person who makes other people feel like they can't accomplish something or they can't do something. No, it's about lifting people up in the times that we're living and not bringing people down. And that comes from being merciful deep down inside because if you're a secure and you are merciful, you will try to take care of other people and to try to lift other people up. So what does this now manifest into? This will be the last point in Chela that we'll discuss that taking care of the needs of people and making them happy, right? So you begin to start, you're merciful and you're gentle and then you want to make people happy. You want to like look out for other people. You want to take care of other people. And it's an amazing thing in our religion to make other people happy. It's a great, great, great part of our religion. And it's not that obvious sometimes. Like sometimes, you know, it's actually really obvious, but it's not that obvious. It's interesting. It's like really obvious. Yeah, if you help somebody out, you take care of them, you make them happy that, you know, in Chela, God will be pleased with you. But, you know, when you think about it, sometimes we might be so focused on ourselves and our own worship and whatever it is, you know, we forget about this aspect of taking care of other people. And so there's this amazing hadith that comes in the collection of, let me just pull this up. Even Abidunya, where it has been narrated that when a believer brings joy to another believer, Allah creates from that joy, from the joy. So when you make somebody happy, Allah creates from the happiness that they get. An angel who worships Allah, glorifies Allah and proclaims Allah's oneness. And when that believer is in the grave, the joy which he brought to that person, the happiness you brought to that person, it comes to you in the grave. And says, don't you know who I am? And the believer's gonna say, who are you? He says, don't you know who I am? He says, I am the happiness, I am the joy you brought to so and so. I will now be a comfort to you in your loneliness, right? So now think about it. You and me, we're gonna be lonely potentially. When we ask Allah for the best of company in the grave, we might be lonely in the grave, but if you make somebody happy in this life, Allah will try to, Allah will make you happy in the next life. And so he says, I will now be a comfort to you in your loneliness. I will dictate to you the answers to the questions of the angels, right? The angels of the grave, they ask you and me three questions, right? Who is your Lord? What is your religion? And who is your prophet? SubhanAllah. And those questions are not just intellectual questions we can memorize. How we live our life will be the way we answer the question. So if we live our life worshiping followers, our Lord will be followers. And if we live our life worshiping what other people think, our religion will be what everybody else thinks about us, right? And if we live our life, somebody is our role model, some celebrity, we're gonna say that as this is the person who I follow. But if we live our life worshiping Allah, our Lord, we will say our Lord is Allah. And if we live our life trying to follow the injunctions of this religion, no, we're trying. We might not always succeed, but we do our best. Inshallah we will say our religion is Islam. And when we're asked about the Prophet's Islam, inshallah we will say the Prophet Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is our messenger. So he says, I will dictate to you the answers of the questions of the angels. I will make you firm with the word of steadfastness. I will bear witness for you on the day of judgment. I will intercede with Allah for you and I will show you your station in paradise. This is an absolutely amazing statement, absolutely amazing. When I read this, I was just like, wow, that's what comes from making somebody happy? Look at that. That's what comes from making a human, somebody happy. So focus our time on making other people happy, making them smile, taking care of their needs, trying to help other people out. And inshallah that is one of the many benefits that will come. And there are other benefits that come. So that's for making a human being happy, right? So if somebody wants to get ice cream or something, you take them for that. And if somebody wants to, you know, they need assistance with something or children, especially imagine making children happy, how easy it is to do that. And you're just stacking up all these angels who are gonna come and help you and I inshallah in the grave. So that's making people happy and that comes from a level of gentleness. We should prioritize becoming people of mercy and then taking care of other people and making them happy. And so what else relates to taking care of other people? That taking care of their needs. So we are living in a time where a lot of, I mean, this has always been the case, but a lot of us, we have problems. We have needs. We might need something. And people, we don't know always who to turn to to help us with that need. And the Prophet Sallam, he told, Wana Sahaba, he said, it is better for you to fulfill a Muslim's need. Again, one of these absolutely amazing hadith. Also just, I was completely floored when I read this. It is better for you to fulfill a Muslim's need than to make it-tikaf in this mosque of mine, in the Masjid-e-Nabawi for 10 years. What is it-tikaf? It-tikaf is spiritual retreat where you were engaged in worship all of the time. So imagine if somebody was in it-tikaf, spiritual retreat, in not only any Masjid, but the greatest Masjid, the Masjid of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and he's in that Masjid for 10 years, 10 years. That's 120 months. That's absolutely amazing, right? 120 months, that person is in it-tikaf, in the Masjid of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and just doing worship, worshiping Allah. That the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, it is better for you to fulfill a Muslim's need, one need of a Muslim, than to make it-tikaf in this mosque of mine for 10 years. That just completely changes our perspective. So if somebody has a need, we should focus on fulfilling it. We should focus on taking care. Okay, so how can we help somebody who needs something? How can we, whether it's our parents, or our siblings, or our family members, or other family members, or our community members, or people in society, anybody, to fulfill the need of a Muslim is better than to make it-tikaf, to make spiritual retreat, and be in worship in a state of perpetual worship. Even if you were to be in a state of perpetual worship, just near a living room for 10 years, that would be amazing. Let alone in any Masjid, let alone in the Masjid of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, but just take care of the need of a Muslim. That could take 10 minutes. It could take two hours. You just help somebody out with something, and you will get more reward than what we just mentioned. So this religion, it has two components. It's about serving Allah, and it's about serving humanity. It's about serving, especially the Ummah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So there's the vertical component, which is about building your relationship with Allah, acquiring traits of goodness and virtue, of worshiping Allah through your personal ibadat. And then there's this component of getting closer to Allah through, this kind of horizontal component of taking care of humanity, taking care of the Ummah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And all of those eventually uplift us and make us into whole human beings that are focused on helping, not only ourselves, but we're focused on helping other people. And it was mentioned in the Quran, that about some of the Sahaba, that there were people who preferred others over themselves, over themselves. They cared more about other people over themselves. That's a much higher trade. It starts with being merciful and being gentle and trying to make other people happy and then trying to take care of the needs of other people. And then there are people who prefer others over themselves and they literally will go out of their way to like make sure this person has something, even if it means they have to sacrifice it. So how do we go about implementing this? The first is to remember this is a virtue, right? We said in the first class, knowledge, it starts with knowledge, and then it goes to implementation and then iteration. You work on the trade after you have implemented it and see how you do. So remember how amazing this is. That first, how merciful the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was, that how much Allah loves mercy. If you are merciful, Allah inshallah will treat you in a merciful way. If you and I are gentle, Allah will treat us with gentleness inshallah. But if we are not, we ask Allah for protection, right? We have to be gentle in this life if we want Allah to treat us with gentleness. And we should wish gentleness for other people, even those we don't like, we should wish gentleness for them because we ourselves want to be treated with gentleness. So remember the amazing aspect of these virtues. Then the other part of this is soft in your heart with dicker. Do more dicker and it'll soften the heart. The person whose heart is soft, they regularly, they're crying regularly, they're moved regularly, they've impacted regularly. And that person has a lot of mercy in their heart. And so the mercy will manifest. Even when somebody upsets them, they'll be, the mercy will manifest. Because if the mercy is imagined, it's like a trait that builds up over time. And it takes the situation when the mercy has to come out very specifically for you to realize how much mercy you had kind of been storing deep down inside. The next thing is to then actually start to implement this once you learn the knowledge. And so first and foremost, with anything related to matters of religion, make things easy for people and be light and open-minded and expansive. Don't limit the view of this religion to a very strict narrow view that confines to your and I's limited understanding of the religion that we've acquired over not even much deep study. Right, that always perplexes me, that like people can limit the view of the religion based on the small amount of basic study or whatever we've heard at Khutbahs and whatnot. No, that's not, the religion is vast. The religion is amazing. The religion is vast. It has room for everybody. So don't limit it. If somebody is struggling with something, if somebody is drinking, they have room in this religion. If somebody is sleeping around with other people, there's room for them in this religion. If somebody is depressed and anxious, there's room for them in this religion. If somebody is struggling with some other drug, there's room for them in this religion. There is room for everybody in this religion, inshallah. And this religion is what's going to cure our illnesses. We can't cure the illnesses first necessarily and then enter the religion. The religion itself, Allah will cure our illnesses rather, inshallah through this religion. So keep that in mind. Be open-minded, be expansive. Don't limit when somebody makes a mistake. Your kids make a mistake. If a family member makes a mistake, don't be harsh. Don't be intense, especially mistakes that are like not at all important and contextualized. Part of mercy is having context in the time we're living in when so many people are leaving Islam, when so many people are not practicing anymore, when so many Muslims are engaged in premarital sex and in partying and drinking and smoking and all of these other types of things that we might get caught up in. And then to get upset at somebody and lose your cool for something small that they did, for not looking a certain way or whatever it is. Right now, just take it easy. Rectify the wrong by being merciful because if their own who is the worst of tyrants was commanded to be dealt with with mercy of Musa Al-Islam was commanded to be merciful of their own, surely we can be merciful with other people who are making mistakes and the room will be there. They will come closer and closer to Allah and closer and closer to whatever virtue and value you and I are calling or you and I are being called to, whatever it is, if mercy is there. The second is with mistakes that small mistakes, kids make, family members make, community members make. Let's learn to overlook these things. Let's learn to pardon. Let's learn to forgive. Let's learn to not hold on to things. Let's learn to not be fueled of grudges and intensity. The Muslim community is just so much infighting because people hold on to things so much. That's not the way of the Prophet ﷺ. Of course there were things that between the Sahaba that happened where there are differences but they didn't hold on to them because they knew it was about mercy. It's about taking care of each other. It's not about holding on to things. And the next thing after we focused on being merciful and gentle is to focus on making people happy. Prefer others to yourself and to myself. We need to do that. Figure out, how can I make this person happy? If it's a little kid, how can I make them happy? I buy them this, I buy them a toy. Pick them up and swing them around, whatever it is. If it's another member of your family or a friend or whoever it is, let's focus on making people happy. Bringing joy to the heart of a believer is an amazing thing. If somebody who's depressed, if you call them, if they'll light up, if you call them, let's do that. Whatever it is that we can do, insha'Allah. And then finally take care of the needs of other people. So go out and ask, how can I help? When we start first and foremost, we should start with our parents and then other members close to us, other members of our family and then more broadly other friends and people in the ummah and people in our communities. So how can we take care of their needs? And if somebody has a need, we should be, try our best if we are able to, to jump up and say, yeah, I got you. I'll take care of you. You need a ride, I got you. You need this, I got you. You need to borrow 10 bucks, I got you. You need to, you know, get dropped off here. I got you. You need somebody needs help with the groceries. I got you. Be that person who like, is always in the service of others. And remember, there are many doors to, there are many doors to Allah, insha'Allah. This is one, this is an amazing door to be, to take care of other people's needs. You take care of other people's needs, insha'Allah. And Allah will take care of your needs. Let's spend our time being people of mercy, being people of gentleness, being people who bring happiness to others, being people who take care of the needs of others and being people who try to rectify, who try in the time that we're living in, who try to rectify the societies that we're living in, who try to uphold the sunnah of the Prophet, sallallaahu alayhi wa sallam, and who try to bring joy to the happiness, who bring joy and happiness to the heart of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. What is better if this, this is the reward you get for bringing the heart, to bringing happiness to the heart of a believer. Imagine the joy, imagine the reward that one gets for bringing happiness to the heart of the Prophet sallalla. And our deeds are presented to him. and he can become happy with our deeds in the state that he is in right now. So let's focus and there are people who the Prophet ﷺ he comes to them in their dreams and he tells them that they're I'm happy with you. I'm pleased with you. I'm pleased with you and your family or whoever it is that they're doing. There are people like that to this day. Imagine bringing happiness to the heart of the Prophet ﷺ. Let's make our goal to be people who bring happiness to our societies, who bring mercifulness to our societies, who bring gentleness to our societies, who bring mercy to the society, and who bring, who make, who try our best to make Allah pleased with our actions and to make Allah pleased with our states. And we ask that Allah rectify us and that Allah make things easy for us and that Allah treat us with gentleness and with luth and with kindness and that we do the same for those around us. Wassalaallahu wa sallam wa barakala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala ali wa sahbihi wa sallam wa alhamdulillah. If anybody has any questions, please post them in the chat and I will just check to see and we will we will answer them. Okay, I don't think there's anything right now. Alhamdulillah. May Allah keep all of you happy and healthy and inshaAllah we will see you next week. Jazakum ala khayr. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.