 I seek salvation from shaitan the accursed, my dear viewers, my brothers and sisters from across the globe, may peace, blessings and protection of Allah be with you at all times. I would like to welcome you to another episode of the Ramadan show with me, your host, Dr. Shabir Tajani. Insha'Allah today we should be covering a vast array of different topics, different topics that will allow you to get the most out of this holy month. I would like to once again remind you to send in your videos and your pictures from wherever you are in the world and I would like to remind you to join us on social media using the hashtag IHTVRamadan on Twitter, you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and also on YouTube, Insha'Allah this show shall be airing tomorrow. Before proceeding on towards the show I would like to start off with a saying from the Holy Prophet peace and blessings be upon him, where he says, I was sent down to perfect the fundamentals and the foundation of ethics, the foundation of morals and akhlaq, the shows that as human beings, if we're following and truly following the path of the Ahlul Bayt and the Sunnah of the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him, we should always try and strive to show the best form of akhlaq, show good morals and ethical values and Insha'Allah that will allow us in his way to prosper in this life and in the hereafter. Insha'Allah in today's episode we'll be talking about self purification and spiritual refinement because you see self purification is a prerequisite towards or to getting closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the whole point of trying to achieve spirituality, trying to achieve morality is to get a purified soul because when your soul is purified it reflects all the good traits of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, if we want to meet Allah who is the most pure then we need to be achieving purity ourselves. One of the main aims of the prophets that have come down peace be upon them all was to try and spread the divine message and help people to purify their souls, referring to the Holy Prophet peace be upon him the Holy Quran says, he is the one who is sent amongst illiterate people an apostle from among themselves who recites to them his verses and purifies them and teaches them the book and the wisdom, Allah in the Holy Quran also says, as we sent you an apostle from amongst yourselves who recites as you, who recites to you our signs and purifies you and teaches you the book and wisdom and teaches you what you did not know so as you can see purification of the soul is so important Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala stresses it many times in the Holy book in the Holy Quran and we've seen across so many narrations so many stories that how the prophets how the aim of the ta'a Hireen alayhim as-salam they have come down to try and help us trying to guide us to purify our own souls so as you may be wondering how can we take practical steps to try and achieve self purification is there specific things we need to dress in do we need to climb a mountain doing to eat specific foods the answer is no no one particular thing will help you to achieve spiritual or self purification rather but it's a combination of different things both physically mentally emotionally and spiritually you need to combine them together to build yourselves up to achieve purification spirituality is built into the very fabric of Islamic beliefs and practices to understand pure towheed the holy Quran says devote yourselves to Allah and assign to him no partners for the person who does not sorry for the person who does so is like someone who has been hurled down from the skis and snatched up by the birds of flung to a distant place by the wind the other way we can learn is through the teachings of the Ahlul Bayt alayhim as-salam practicing devotional acts of obedience towards Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in joining in those acts which he loves his servant to do refraining for those acts or refraining from those acts which he dislikes will take you closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala repetition routine all of these things in a cyclical manner can help you to develop endurance in your aim towards spirituality there are a lot of a hadith that mention that doing anything repeatedly for 21 days make it a part of your nature other hadith say 40 days but the moral is that if you do something in a routine or a cyclical way and do it every day practice something good and make it part and ingrain it into your soul then that way you can get more more endurance at doing these things number four self-knowledge it is important to seek knowledge especially knowledge about oneself you want to know where you've come from what you're doing what your goals and objectives are in life and where you're heading the more you question yourself the more you realize Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala he's so great and so grand so merciful and yet you are so small so humble it will allow you to try and get a better ride at better idea of exactly where you stand as a person and obviously spirituality and connection to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is all about understanding yourself in his eyes understanding how much he loves you despite sustaining you despite being your Lord how close you can get to him number five it is very important to keep good company select the right sorts of friends as we've mentioned before keeping bad company keeping bad friends can actually be detrimental towards your progression towards enlightenment because what they will do is that number one their bad traits their bad bad actions will start to rub off on you and their bad traits will become your bad traits secondly they become a distraction they keep you away from doing good things you see a human being is a social animal is a social creature and if you're always influenced by what's around you if you are surrounded by good people they will influence you in a positive way and on the contrary if you're surrounded by bad people they will be detrimental to your progression inshaAllah we will also talk to you or talk about how to maintain a good relationship with your children in these episodes next always form a connection to the Imam of our time because if you connect to him doors will open up that you never knew of before knowing that he sees you he perceives you he loves you and he's there whenever you call to him will be a good motivator for you because after all the Imam of our time is waiting for us he's preparing for us to be ready for him so that he can come down and he loves when a servant comes to him and asks him for help next it's important to relax yourself meditate because when you think and assess about what's going on in life contemplate you will start to understand yourself better and the first step to purifying yourself is trying to find out where the uncleanness is find out where those negative traits are so they can abolish them from your life and finally I would recommend all of you to read the Quran not only read it in parrot fashion even though just reading it brings many bounties many mercies and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will love you for it but try to make understanding the Quran reading tafsir a priority I would suggest if you don't do this then try and read just one verse of the holy Quran try and understand it read the translation read the tafsir try to get a better understanding of that verse and inshallah you'll see that you'll be able to soar once you understand the secrets behind them finally I just want to talk about benefits of a pure soul obviously we are often told to purify our souls but what's the the benefits of it firstly this success in this life and the hereafter secondly there is satisfaction and comfort of the heart and with satisfaction you get happiness as well thirdly there is steadfastness in practicing Islam in its correct manner and obeying Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the final thought I want to leave you with in this segment is just something to think about to ponder about is that a soul which is strong and a soul that is filled with the remembrance of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala a soul that asks him for forgiveness and turns towards him in the times of need is more able to overcome the hurdles and the obstacles of life because you see when you know and you in the knowledge that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is always by your side and is there to protect you to help you no hurdle will seem high enough every obstacle will be easy to overcome inshallah the holy prophet Muhammad may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him in his progeny has said surely the month of Ramadan is a great month Allah multiplies in it the good deeds and erases in it the sins and elevates in it for ranks for this episode as we go around the world to figure out and to find out how people prepare the day to day lives for the month of Ramadan obviously it's a very different time of the year to every other time of year we come across one of the countries in the Middle East the United Arab Emirates it has cities which are very famous like Abu Dhabi and Dubai but Emirates as a whole has a very distinctive culture and a culture that is very ingrained within the people there the the specific foods that they love in Emirates usually foods that contain a lot of rice and pastry the iftar over there is usually in a buffet style so people tend to come together families come together they bring their own foods and then people can then pick and choose what they eat and they have a buffet style system over there after the iftar the families usually if it's up to the 18th night of the holy month of Ramadan they go out into the towns into the cities and they have you know they spend some time enjoying the delights of the town they have specific play areas in the city little parks where children can play as well and this is a very common theme amongst the people of the Emirates however after the 19th night they tend to be found in the mosques in the Hussainiyas where they perform the Aamal and the Aamal starts at Maghrib time and it lasts all the way to Fajr the specific beauty of the Emirates is that at this time of the year especially there is a public holiday so during the month of Ramadan there will be no one working and if there is anyone working things like stores the opening hours will be restricted so that people can make the most of this month and they can make the most out of this month not only on a physical sense but a spiritual sense as well just like in Lebanon there are people that used to in the past go around and wake people up for Sahur by reciting things on a mic but nowadays it's become a lot more sophisticated there is specific calls from the minarets in the mosques in the cities in the United Arab Emirates like before I would like to ask you to please send in your videos your pictures your blogs please tell us about how you prepare for the month of Ramadan what foods you make how you prepare for Iftar how you alter your working life in order to try and accommodate for this holy month inshallah we look forward to getting your videos and then airing them on our channel so that the rest of the world can also see exactly how you prepare for this month first viewers peace and blessings of Allah be upon each and every one of you and may all your prayers and supplications be accepted by Allah every visitor to the holy city of Karbala after leaving his family his friends all alone and away and after visiting the holy shrine of Imam al-Hussain peace be upon him he comes to these stores that sells souvenirs they take different type of souvenirs with them back home as a blessings from the holy city of Karbala of course Karbala has so many different types of souvenirs one of the shops that we are going to see today is a shop that sells traditional souvenirs these souvenirs are specified for decorating home stores and so on I have with me brother Mansour peace be upon you peace be upon you peace be upon you peace be upon you how are you can you tell us about the sales that you sell here in this place first of all I wish you a happy month of Ramadan and may Allah accept your prayers and inshaAllah be upon them for a month and a blessed Ramadan we have my own business in India, Turkey, and Iran My brother is congratulating the Islamic Ummah and our scholars for the holy month of Ramadhan. He asks God for the blessings of this month and he is saying that we have almost everything that a visitor needs as a souvenir to take with him back home and they have different types of souvenirs from different countries and they bring it here and sell it to the visitors because of the blessings of the holy city of Karbala. He is congratulating the Islamic Ummah and our scholars for the holy month of Ramadhan. He is congratulating the Islamic Ummah and our scholars for the holy month of Ramadhan. He is congratulating the Islamic Ummah and our scholars for the holy month of Ramadhan. My brother Mansour is saying that I asked him about the location of their store. He is saying that we are close to the Maqam of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq, peace be upon him. He is saying that due to the blessings of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq they have a very good selling and as a result or as a thank, as a saying thank you for all the blessings that comes from Allah and Ahlul Bayt. He has assigned a part of the benefits that he gains from the money that he collects here from his selling for the construction of this holy Maqam. For this episode and for this segment of this episode I want to talk about a topic which was actually linked to yesterday's one. Yesterday we talked about mental health and there is a specific facet of mental health that I think we should dedicate a show to in itself and that's dementia. Dementia is obviously a condition that is not very well understood and not very well appreciated and so many of the members of our community suffer from it. Some suffer from it and know about it, others have it and don't know about it. And as a community we must try and understand more about it in order to try and address the problems that these members of our community do face. Firstly what is dementia? Dementia is not only a cognitive decline, we always think about people with dementia as people who are forgetful but there's so much more to dementia than just being forgetful. Obviously cognitive impairment is part of the problem where people forget things that they've remembered recently. They tend to forget things in the more recent history than in the past. Other problems that they face is they face problems with doing day-to-day activities. Some will have behavioural problems. Some people will have struggles to perform day-to-day activities and duties. Things like cooking food. Things like learning or remembering how to do complex processing such as finances. So these are all potential facets of dementia. Obviously the one that everyone picks up on first is the forgetfulness because it's something that has the most profound impact initially. But these other things can also affect someone's lifestyle as the condition deteriorates. Dementia can be broken down into different areas. Obviously the most common form of dementia is known as Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is a condition which is idiopathic which means that we don't know the exact cause for it. There isn't a direct link to another condition or a specific cause. However there are a few predisposing factors such as genetics and also certain conditions that you can have which increase your likelihood of developing dementia or Alzheimer's rather further down the line. Alzheimer's is a condition which doesn't have a cure but there are many studies being done into it. A lot of laboratory research is being done into it at the moment. We're trying to figure out potential medication that we can give for Alzheimer's and ways that we can prevent it from happening. Dementia or Alzheimer's disease sorry is a slowly progressing condition which differs from vascular dementia as with Alzheimer's you see a gradual deterioration over a long period of time. And you know something isn't quite right whereas with vascular dementia first it's a condition which has a very different pathology to Alzheimer's. We know with vascular dementia the specific causes are mini-strokes which affect the cognitive parts of the brain and the parts of the brain which focus on remembering and higher cognitive functions. Now with vascular dementia you can often pick up when someone actually has a deterioration because their deterioration isn't progressive like Alzheimer's it's more step-wise and the steps occur when they have a vascular event. So every time they have a mini-stroke they'll get worse and then they'll go into a plateau phase. They'll get worse again when they have another event and again the same cycle repeats until they deteriorate so much that they are functioning and the quality of life deteriorates so much. Now with vascular dementia obviously we know that there's a genuine cause we know the actual cause for it. And we can do things to limit that. In my talks coming up I will talk about risk factors for cardiovascular disease and vascular dementia comes under that category as the cause for it is the same as strokes. So when I talk about strokes in the upcoming episodes and risk factors for strokes I want you to pay special notice to that special attention to that because it can also cause dementia in the long run. Another type of dementia is called Lewy body dementia and it affects fewer people than Alzheimer's and vascular dementia but yet it is one that has a very distinctive spectrum with Lewy body dementia it usually affects the front of the brain and what happens initially is that people will start not only having forgetfulness but they'll develop Parkinson-like symptoms so Parkinson-like symptoms are tremors and they also have a lot of very vivid dreams and they have hallucinations as well. The specific thing about Lewy body dementia compared to vascular dementia and compared to Alzheimer's with both of those conditions you get a deterioration in vascular dementia it's a more stepwise deterioration in Alzheimer's it's more progressive. Whereas with Lewy body dementia they have a waxing and waning effect so through the day, through the days and weeks they usually have times when they're really bad and times when they improve slightly then again they're really bad and they improve slightly so it's not this deterioration the whole time that you get with the other types of dementia so it's really important to identify that. Obviously when someone develops dementia as a doctor it's very important to refer them on to the right specialist and specialties where they can be treated, seen treated and have the help that they need. Some of these people get medications to try and help them for others it's just symptomatic relief but it's very important to identify dementia before it gets too progressive so that people can have the help that they require. So with dementia what are the things that as a community we can do? What are the things as individuals we can do and how can we notice it in other people as I've explained that dementia isn't just a cognitive impairment it's a problem that affects people with a wide variety of issues such as finance planning, cooking things like being able to do day to day activities things like behaviour. So with these people it's very important to understand that there may be sort of a predisposing problem or an underlying cause for their behavioural problems or for something not quite being right we often see elderly people sometimes unfortunately as a burden when they can't perform certain duties when they become forgetful it's very important that as human beings and as a community as a whole we have patience with them we sit down with them and try to talk to them about the problems that they're facing often as a doctor with the elderly sometimes it takes me a little bit longer to get a history from them but it doesn't mean that I ignore them or don't pay attention we should do the same in our communities because as a community if we're more aware of medical problems we can identify them earlier and if we identify them earlier we can get them treated there are certain things we can do for these people obviously maybe not as a community but as a society at large involve people like your doctor involve occupational therapists who can alter things at home for you if there's someone struggling to do specific activities they can arrange meals for you to be delivered if someone's struggling to cook physiotherapists can help if there's mobility issues caused by the underlying condition obviously with vascular dementia especially people can go on to develop proper strokes and with them mobility is a huge issue inshallah I hope that I've been able to shed some light on this condition but I really think as a community we need to firstly appreciate the condition secondly if someone is suffering from a cognitive impairment someone is becoming more forgetful we should have patience with them try to get them to engage with other members in the community don't just isolate them or push them to one side or sweep it under the rug because it's not a problem that's just going to go away if anything as we age as a population especially in the west there's a problem that's going to become more and more recurrent and we should try and do things now and put process in place now so that in the future when we are faced with these issues we can address them timely and promptly inshallah I pray that as a community we can do more to help those that need our help and therefore as a community we can strive to try and achieve perfection achieve closeness to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala not only spiritually but also physically we can be as healthy as we possibly can be so that members in our community that can help the community that can give a positive contribution to society can do that without the worry of having bad health and illness kindness is a universal human value taught by all divinely revealed religions and in this Islam is no exception this is in part because an act of kindness and generosity can be very contagious and inspirational in creating a better society for all one day Imam Hussain peace be upon him was passing through a farm and saw a slave eating with a dog when Imam Hussain asked about his condition the slave replied, I am in this situation because of my master who takes my labor without anything in return and mistreats me however the slave says but at least I take some joy in feeding the dog and feeding this dog with whatever I have of food when Imam Hussain peace be upon him heard this he called the farmer and offered him 200 dinars to free the slave when the farmer saw this generosity from Imam Hussain he was touched and offered to give the slave to the Imam without any cost the Imam accepted this offer and gave the 200 dinars to the slave and set him free all of this happened because of the kindness because of the kindness of the slave, the dog and the generosity of Imam Hussain peace be upon him I would like to leave you with this quote respected brothers and sisters Imam Hussain peace be upon him says the most generous person is he who offers help to those who do not expect him to help them for today's episode inshallah I want to dedicate this poem to the mercy to mankind that individual that personality that's been our guide from the moment we've been born is none other than Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him inshallah this poem is called you are Muhammad sallallahu ala and it was initially written by myself and my brother Abbas you gave us parity of life you took away the sleepless nights you gave us hope you filled our souls and took us all towards new heights we want to follow your footsteps you are our only saving grace you are the closest to Allah in your heart we all want a place so give us all a helping hand because you are the greatest man you are Muhammad sallallahu ala Muhammad sallallahu ala you are Muhammad sallallahu ala you are the brightness of the day the peace and harmony of night you shine out like a glowing star the one that showers the world with light you taught us it is essential to be truthful and to be fair you taught us how to live our lives you showed us how to love and care a man like you will never find you own our hearts you own our minds you are Muhammad sallallahu ala you are Muhammad sallallahu ala you are Muhammad sallallahu ala you are Muhammad sallallahu ala you are Muhammad sallallahu ala You are a teacher, our God. You are the meaning of our love. Always keep until the moment that we die. You are the stars in your life. You own the planets and the sky on the smallest grain of sand, Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, oh, Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, Muhammad, Sallallahu, Muhammad, Sallallahu. The Holy Prophet Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and his progeny, has said, surely the month of Ramadan is a great month. Allah multiplies in it the good deeds and erases in it the sins and elevates in it the ranks. To conclude this episode of the Ramadan show, I would like to leave you with a final thought, something that can allow you to ponder and reflect, to reassess and self-assess. And that is that, as the loves of the Ahlul Bayt, we have a huge and profound impact upon the people around us. Don't forget your Akhlaq can either attract people towards the religion and the path of the Ahlul Bayt. Or if your Akhlaq is negative, it can push people away from the path of the Ahlul Bayt. Therefore, never forget that your actions and whatever you do will have a profound impact and quite a deep impact on the people and society at large. After all, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, attracted people towards the religion of Islam and towards the oneness of God by his actions, by his Akhlaq. Once again, I would like to remind you to send your pictures in, your videos in, and your blogs into us so we can air them on our TV show. I would also like to ask you to join us on Twitter using the hashtag IHTVRamadan. Don't forget to join us on Facebook, Instagram, and on YouTube. Insha'Allah, this show shall be put onto YouTube tomorrow. I would like to bid you farewell with the following words. Wassalamu alaikum, jami'an wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.