 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem Alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin wa sallallahu wa sallim wa barak ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallim Alright, so it looks like one of the live streams, the one on Facebook was working, but the one on YouTube was not working So we're just gonna go ahead and, you know, resume, insha'Allah I'm just gonna go over what I was talking about Apologies for the repetition for those that are watching on the Facebook live stream Bismillah What we were talking about was the love of the Prophet ﷺ And again, sorry for the issues, I don't know what was going on with the YouTube live stream there So today we're talking about the love of the Prophet ﷺ And the love of the Prophet ﷺ is one of the most important traits that people of Allah have That the people who are righteous have Because the Prophet ﷺ, he is the door to Allah He is the one who came down with this message He is our leader, he is our role model He is the one that we follow And of course he is the one who opened up this door to accessing Allah Who opened up this door to believing in Allah Without him we would not even know about Allah And so it's very, very important that we learn about the Prophet ﷺ And that we have a certain love for the Prophet ﷺ in our life And as I was mentioning, there are different ways that one can reach Allah One can walk, one can run, one can crawl And then what the scholars mention is that there are ways to fly to Allah And flying to Allah is done when one loves the Prophet ﷺ When you have a love for the Prophet ﷺ That gives you access to things that take far longer to get And stations that take far longer to have access to When one does not have this same level of love And so in this blessed month of Rabi'ul Awal And this blessed evening that it is the 12th of Rabi'ul Awal And tomorrow is the day of the 12th of Rabi'ul Awal The blessed day that the Prophet ﷺ was born Let's work on increasing our love Let's work on making intentions to restore The sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ Or to bring birth to the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ in our life And what did he say, Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, about loving him He said that none of you will truly believe Until you love me more than your father, your children, and all of mankind Right, so more than your parents, your own children, and all of mankind None of you will attain true belief until the love of the Prophet ﷺ Is more than the love of your own children, your own family members, and all of mankind And so the Prophet ﷺ should be, in terms of humans, the top of the list When it comes to how much we love somebody Now love is not just talk, talk is cheap You can claim to love somebody, but what do we do when they ask us to do something? Do we help them out? Do we do that thing? Do we obey? Love is more than just going through the motions and saying things Love is about following, love is about listening, love is about thinking about them Love is about yearning for them, love is about missing them Love is about praying for them And love is about spreading something that they would want spread In this case, the Dean of Islam Love is about following their teachings Love is about making people who they love happy So the Prophet ﷺ told us to love his family for his love He said love my family, he said love me for Allah's love And love my family to get my love So let's focus our intentions on this blessed evening And how to increase our love for the Prophet ﷺ Why? Because our faith cannot be complete As we've been talking about these traits, we mentioned at the beginning of these classes That a certain trait will give you access to a certain station And the more traits that you and I acquire, the more this kind of Imagine there's like puzzle pieces And you're getting this puzzle piece of patience and of gratitude and of contentment And of being satisfied with Allah's decree and other types of traits That they help to fill the believer But none of you will truly believe until you love me More than you love your parents and then you love your children And so you could say the pinnacle of belief And the perfection of belief can come only with loving the Prophet ﷺ It is the foundation and it is also one of the highest stations Is to be immersed in love of the Prophet ﷺ There's so many reasons to love him If we can't think of them, we should try and reflect First, think about all of the different things that the Prophet ﷺ did for us All of the different things that he did for us That the sacrifices that he made If you read this era of the Prophet ﷺ You and I will see that he at times would go for weeks without warm food And he would just have to eat dates and water And he continued to sacrifice and continued to sacrifice For what? So that you and I could be here today saying la ilaha illallah That he would spend his nights not sleeping like most of us do But praying, not for himself But for you and for me, saying ummati ummati ummati ummati That's what the Prophet ﷺ did for us That he would spend his days in the excruciating heat of the Arabian desert Trying to prevent people from attacking this great religion And defending this great religion And getting hurt on more than one occasion And seeing his loved ones pass away before him in battle and outside of battle Why? So that you and I could be here today saying la ilaha illallah There are so many things that he did That's literally not even the tip of the iceberg And he would spend moments that he could have spent doing other things He would spend them teaching and he would spend them spreading good So that what? So that you and I could know what that good is That he would control his own anger He would give up his own right People would come to him and they would harm him And yet he would still be generous to them and give to them Why? So that you and I could learn how to be good human beings And so that you and I again could be saying la ilaha illallah There are so many things that he did for us When we reflect on these stories, it's not just about reading them Let's read them, let's reflect on them And let's think about how to apply their teachings to our life When we think about these stories It begins to inculcate a certain type of love for the Prophet s.a.w. In our life And another thing if the past can help us When we reflect on the past, when we reflect on the life of the Prophet s.a.w. But also remember on the day of judgment And nobody will be able to help you It comes in a hadith that on the day of judgment Just to start the judgment Humankind will go first to Adam s.a.w. And they will ask Adam s.a.w And ask your Lord to begin the judgment We waited long enough Quran mentions that And we ask that Allah shortened the standing on this day But the Quran mentions that people will have to wait for 50,000 years That's how long the day of judgment will be 50,000 years We can barely wait a couple of weeks or months at home Because of this pandemic Imagine having to wait for 50,000 years for judgment to even begin And so it's mentioned that They go to Adam s.a.w. Ask your Lord to begin the judgment And Adam s.a.w says no He's remembering the mistake that he made He says nafsi nafsi And then they go to Sayidina Nuh s.a.w And they say ask your Lord to begin the judgment And he basically says no And he tells them to go to a different prophet And they go to Sayidina Ibrahim s.a.w Ask your Lord to begin the judgment And Ibrahim s.a.w is reflecting on his own judgment And he says no He says go to Issa alaysalam Or sorry, go to Musa alaysalam And they go to Sayidina Musa alaysalam He says ask your Lord to begin the judgment And he says no And he says go to Sayidina Issa alaysalam Goes to Issa alaysalam And Issa alaysalam, they say, ask your Lord To begin the judgment And he says no He says go to Sayidina Rasulullah s.a.w The prophet s.a.w And they go to the prophet s.a.w the Prophet ﷺ mentioned this and they say ask your Lord to begin the judgment. The Prophet ﷺ said this is my station, yes this is my, and I'm paraphrasing the hadith here, I, you know it's very shortened and I definitely missed parts of it so this is not the full, full, full hadith, but just taking parts of it so that, you know, we can keep things going. But then the Prophet ﷺ, this is his station. He has a station on the Day of Judgment known as Maqam al-Mahmood, the praiseworthy station, literally the praiseworthy station. His name is Muhammad ﷺ, the one who is praised, that's what his name means. And he's attained this Maqam al-Mahmood, the praiseworthy station on this day. And so he asks Allah to begin and he makes a Sajda and he makes a dua that nobody has ever made before just so that the judgment can begin. And then throughout the judgment he is there for you and for me to ask Allah and to intercede for us. Everybody, everybody knows in terms of the scholars, his unanimous consensus within the scholars that the Prophet ﷺ has this position of intercession on the Day of Judgment. He is known as the one who will intercede and he says he will intercede for those people of his Ummah who committed major wrong actions. So that gives us hope. Many of us have committed major wrong actions and we regularly continue to commit major wrong actions or we commit minor wrong actions. The Prophet ﷺ will intercede for us and he will ask Allah to forgive us. And Allah has a special love for the Prophet ﷺ because he is who? He is Habibullah. He is the beloved of Allah. He is the chosen one, the last and final messenger. Allah is most favorite. Allah is beloved. And so what the Prophet ﷺ asks, inshaAllah Allah will give. And so that intercession freezes, the Prophet ﷺ is focused on that day freeing as many people from the fire as possible and ensuring as many people get into Jannah as possible. And so he is there standing, begging Allah, Allahumma sallim, sallim, begging Allah to not throw people into the fire. That's what he is going to do for us. And he has already done so much for us. So how can we not love him? How can we not think about him? How can we not sense how eutations upon him? How can we not go and visit him in Medina and Mana'ura? Allah opened up Medina and Mana'ura for us to visit again, inshaAllah. That how can he not do that? How can we not do that? We have to have love for the Prophet ﷺ. And he also, Allah himself has given him a certain station. So right, if we're, if we don't reflect on all the things that he's done for us already and that doesn't inculcate love, and then if us reflecting on what he's going to do for us on the day of judgment, if that doesn't inculcate love, let's look a little bit at what Allah has said about the Prophet ﷺ. Allah himself has praised the Prophet ﷺ. And if Allah has praised him, then that means we should praise him and we should hold him in high esteem. And so Allah says in the Qur'an, ورفعنا لك ذكرك. He says, And we have elevated your mention. And it is also mentioned that the Prophet ﷺ's name is next to Allah's name on the throne, on Allah's throne. لا إله لله محمد الرسول الله. Right? That, that with the Shahada comes Muhammad Rasulullah ﷺ. So look at this. Look at how much, look at how Allah has raised his Messenger ﷺ. Look at the station that he has given. That should inculcate a certain level of reverence and a certain level of honor. And hopefully that then translates into love for the Prophet ﷺ. That the throne is above the entire, all of the heavens and all of the earth. And whose name does it have on it? In addition to Allah's name, it has the name of your Messenger ﷺ, of our Messenger ﷺ. And so the companions, they knew this. The Sahaba, they knew this, right? They were literally obsessed with the Prophet ﷺ. And so anybody who, and this is just a side note, but anybody who ever, you ever hear anybody who says like, oh, you know, you don't go to extremes and love and you know, there's such thing as too much love and too much praise, completely ignore them. They have no idea what they're talking about. Let them focus on, you know, loving their, their athletes and their celebrities and all this. And you and I, let's focus on loving the Prophet ﷺ. That should be our goal. Love the Prophet ﷺ. Learn about the Prophet ﷺ. Don't worry about other people say, because a lot of confusion is out there these days. The companions were obsessed with the Prophet ﷺ. Literally, that if his, when, when his hair would get shaved or cut, they would fight for, to get a hair, a blessed piece of the hair of the Prophet ﷺ. Why? Because they knew of the barakah in that hair. These are, these are sound narrations. Khalid ibn al-Walid, the famous general known as the unsheathed sword of Allah, he would take a hair of the Prophet ﷺ and he would put it in his battle helmet. And they said one time in the battle that the, the, um, I believe that his helmet fell off and in the middle of the battle he goes and he's looking for this helmet because it has the hair of the Prophet ﷺ. Ready to, literally he could have been, you know, his own life could have been gone. But he's looking for what? For the helmet that held the hair of his beloved ﷺ. And through that he claimed many of the victories, right? And that, through that barakah, they were obsessed with him. They would collect the Prophet ﷺ sweat because it smelled like perfume, literally obsessed with the Prophet ﷺ. And I think trying to emulate him, making sure that their, their stories that, you know, people would lose in the, in the battles. Um, and I'm forgetting the name of the, of the Sahabi'at, but that, uh, uh, one of them, she lost literally her, they came to her and they told her, your father has passed away. And she said, what about the Messenger of Allah ﷺ? And they said, your son passed away in the battle. She said, what about the Messenger of Allah ﷺ? She said, your husband passed away in the battle. She said, what about the Messenger of Allah ﷺ? That's that their, their concern was. I mean, literally so concerned about the Prophet ﷺ. So much so that they literally would sacrifice anything for him. That's how obsessed they were. And I'm not even getting and I'm literally again, not even scratching the surface here. You can have stories after stories. The love that Sayyidina Abu Bakr, Sadiq had, radiAllahu anhu, for the Prophet ﷺ. It's unparalleled. So much love for him. So much love for him. That he was willing to give up anything, his life, anything for him. Sallallahu anhu sallam. And emulate him in every single way possible. And I'm not just talking about, uh, inward or outward one way, every single thing. The way the Prophet ﷺ walked, the way the Prophet ﷺ spoke, the way this Prophet ﷺ thought, the way the Prophet ﷺ sat, the way the Prophet ﷺ gestured, the way the Prophet ﷺ moved, every single thing about the Prophet ﷺ. Because he is our role model. He is our role model. And if we just took him as a role model and we stopped all of this, every, taking all these other people as role models, there are all these, so many of these problems, um, that exist on the planet could be solved. And if we took him as a role model and even how to respond to the way people even like this stuff that's going on around the world when people quote unquote try to defame the Prophet ﷺ, that happened in his own life. And his sunnah was not to respond with retaliation and with intensity and with anger. No, that wasn't his sunnah. So if you're going to claim to love him, let's follow his sunnah in our actions and that will be a achievement of his love. And so in a beautiful story and example, when the, the, the, the Prophet ﷺ when, when his, when he passed away, many, uh, when he passed away, many of the Sahabah, they couldn't do, they couldn't bear it. It was too much for them because literally it was like the love of their life that was passed away. They loved being with him. And Sayyidina Bilal, he decided, Sayyidina Bilal, the mu'addin, the famous mu'addin of the Prophet ﷺ, he was one of the, the famous mu'addins of the Prophet ﷺ, he said, he decided to leave Medina because he couldn't be in the same place that if he went outside and he went to the alleys, he would think about the Prophet ﷺ. Of course, in the masjid, he's thinking about the Prophet ﷺ when he's walking on the streets, he's thinking about the Prophet ﷺ. He goes to the market. He remembers this is where the Prophet ﷺ and I would be, right? He's always thinking about that person. If anybody's ever lost somebody close to them, you know that in the places where you, where the beloved was, where the person was, you think about them a lot and you're, um, uh, missing them even more so in those places. And so Sayyidina Bilal, he left to Syria and so he didn't come to Medina for a while and at some point, and this is narrated that Sayyidina Bilal, he had a dream and a dream where the Prophet ﷺ came to him in his dream and he said, Oh Bilal, what is this, you know, estrangement? Where, where have you been? Why haven't you visited me? And so Sayyidina Bilal, he leaves, and he comes to Medina and he comes to Medina and everybody's like asking him to make the Adhan again because it would be like the days when the Prophet ﷺ was there. And he said, No, like he couldn't, he couldn't get himself to do it. And finally, one of the grandsons of the Prophet ﷺ, Sayyidina Imam Hassan and Imam Hussein, they approached him and they said, Oh Bilal, wouldn't you make the Adhan? And he said, you know, how can I deny the grandsons of the Prophet ﷺ? How can I deny the family of the Prophet ﷺ? And so he, you know, gets up and he begins to make the Adhan, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. And he continues, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Then he says, Ashadu an la ilaha illa Allah. Allah, Ashadu an la ilaha illa Allah. And then he says, Ashadu an la Muhammad and he just breaks down completely. He's in Medina, he just saw the grandsons of the Prophet ﷺ. He's in the city where he used to call the Adhan for the Prophet ﷺ. And he just breaks down, weeping. And as the people hear him say, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, as he begins the Adhan, the people, they come out and they're in tears, they're weeping because they think, wait, it's, it's, he's making the Adhan. Maybe the Prophet ﷺ is back. I mean, they don't, to them, the voice of Sayyidina Bilal making the Adhan was like the voice of the person who would make the Adhan when the Prophet ﷺ was there. And so they're just weeping and crying and they come out and they're crying and Sayyidina Bilal, he can't even finish because he is just weeping out of how much he's missing the Prophet ﷺ. That just goes to show us like just one portion of the love that they had for him. Look at that love. Look at, what is that? What kind of, what kind of heart does that take? What kind of attachment does that form? And these are the people who are the greatest people to ever walk, ever, ever step foot on this earth after the messengers are the Sahaba of the Prophet ﷺ, the greatest people ever. And look at their love for the Prophet ﷺ. Look at how much they missed him. Look at how much they would weep. And these are men and women. Yes, many of these great men would spend their time weeping, weeping, weeping because they missed the Prophet ﷺ. That is their attachment to him. And so this love is very important because without this love, you and I, we're going to have a harshness to our religion. The people of love, they have a gentleness about them. We spoke a few classes ago about gentleness. It takes love to formulate mercy and it takes mercy to formulate gentleness. You and I need to have that. And so the people who have this love, they have a certain light demeanor. They have a certain approach that is very, very different than the harsh approach that many folks, many people take to religion. And so what happens when we begin to love him, we begin to change inside. A certain change starts to form inside. And we desire to be with him and we desire to long for him. And one of the things we should remember is you and I, the Prophet ﷺ, he said, one of the sahaba, he came to the Prophet ﷺ and he said, he said, he said, something along the lines of, you know, Ya Rasulullah, I, he said, when is the hour? This is what he said. Sorry for the delay. He said, when is the hour? And the Prophet ﷺ, like, when is the hour? The day judgment. He said, what have you, instead of answering, he said, what have you prepared for the hour? And the man said, not much of extra prayers, like extra Nawafil prayers or extra fasting. He said, but I love Allah and his Messenger. He said, I love Allah and his Messenger. And the Prophet ﷺ, he said, he's a famous hadith. He said, you are with the one you love. You are with the one you love. And the sahaba, they said, that was literally their happiest day for many of them, the second happiest day after the day that they took their Shahada. Why? Because you are with the one you love, that you can attain through love, but you cannot attain through action. How can you attain nearness to the Prophet ﷺ in the next life? You and I, I mean, we can't do the level of prayer. We don't have that level of nearness to Allah. We can't recite that much Quran. We can't, I mean, we can't go on the Isra Miraj. There's all these things we can't do, but you are with the one you love. If you and I love him and we have a deep love inside the Prophet ﷺ, he said it. And what he says is true. That's what happens, right? And so if we have a love for him, we're going to be with him, inshaAllah, in the next life. And we can spiritually be with him in this life so that we can then attain a station of nearness to him in the next life. And so this love, it begins to change you in the inside. It begins to change you. And if somebody thinks love can't change you, you know, you just have to meet anybody who's ever been in love, right? Like somebody who's, you know, just about, first gets married, just about to get married. You'll see the first, the sparks of love, it changes somebody. Their demeanor changes, their approach changes, right? That the approach for somebody who finds this love for the Prophet ﷺ, who stumbles upon the love. Many of us, we have a relationship with Islam where the love is an intellectual concept. We say, oh yeah, we love the Prophet ﷺ. We like do a couple of things. We try to do some of the outward so he knows all of which are good. But the love is an inward reality that is, that emanates a certain type of quality about us, that emanates a certain type of missing him, yearning for him, celebrating him, thinking about him, praising him. That's, those are just some of the signs of that love. So it has a major impact on the human being. So let's talk a little bit about how we begin to love him. So the first thing we can do, we're going to talk about five or six things. The first thing we can do is we can read about his life. Read about his life. Read about, in this month especially, read the Seerah of the Prophet ﷺ. Many good books for this, the famous book by Martin Lings, Muhammad, his life and his teachings. That's an example where there's, you know, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf has a whole biography of the Prophet ﷺ on YouTube, that like, you know, that one can listen to and other. I believe Qalam Institute has a Seerah podcast. There's a lot of different ways for us to learn about the life of the Prophet ﷺ. So learn about his life and then think about ways you and I can apply the teachings of his life into our life. The second thing that we can do is get to know his traits. So there's the Seerah and then there's what's called the Shama'el. The Shama'el is like the traits of the Prophet ﷺ, his character traits, also his physical attributes, his physical traits, what he looked like, right, how he walked, how he ate, those types of things. So we should also read the Shama'el of the Prophet ﷺ and there's, you know, a beautiful translation of the famous Shama'el Tirmidhi that was recently done. So that would be another example here. And what that does is it gives us a sense, okay, this is how he behaved, this is how he was at home, this is how he was when he was with his companions, this is how he was in this situation, this is what he looked like, this is how he smiled, this is how he walked, this is how he ate his food, this is right, how he sat down, all of these different things we'll begin to learn and that starts to inculcate a certain type of love. And for some of us, this might sound like, you know, like, wait, why do we need to learn all of these things? Well, what the Prophet ﷺ say, none of you will truly believe until you love me more than all these other people, right? And so if you have other ways you can inculcate that love, that Bismillah, let's do it, but these are just some of the ways and traditionally many of the ways that were done to inculcate the love of the Prophet ﷺ. The third thing that we can do is do a lot of Salawat upon him, a lot of the Rood Sharif, so you say Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad, Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad, Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad, right? Do a lot of the Rood Sharif and especially tonight and tomorrow and at the time of Fajr tomorrow, spend a lot of time doing Salawat upon the Prophet ﷺ because the time of Fajr is the time that the Prophet ﷺ right before Fajr is when he ﷺ is reported to have been born. And so he says in the Hadith, the Prophet ﷺ says, whoever sends Salam to me, whoever says, assalamu alaika ya Rasulullah, the Prophet ﷺ responds to him and an angel gives him that Salam and the Prophet ﷺ responds to him or her with his Salam. And so the Prophet ﷺ mentions you as well. And so we should send Salam to the Prophet ﷺ, right? Many different ways we can do that, but to say assalamu alaika ya Sayyidina Rasulullah is one way that we could do it. That's the third thing we should do. And Salawat will literally transform you inside. They'll transform you. It'll increase the love. So it's intellectually, you gain the knowledge, you reflect on the knowledge of the Seerah and the Shemail. It forms a certain type of love. Then you do the Salawat upon the Prophet ﷺ and a certain type of, you know, it's like a formula and there's like a mixing that's happening or it's adding a certain type of sugar and a certain type of sweetness. Then what do we do? We go and we emulate the Sunnahs of the Prophet ﷺ, right? He has many Sunnahs, inward Sunnahs and outward Sunnahs, all of which are important, right? So like, you know, one of his Sunnahs, wearing the turban, I'm wearing specifically because it's Rabi al-Awil and it's the 12th. The Rabi al-Awil, I said, okay, let me, let me try to follow the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ tonight, right? So to dress in white during Jumma is a Sunnah, to have a beard for a male is a Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, to try to be patient in all your situations is the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. These are examples, inward Sunnahs and outward Sunnahs of the Prophet ﷺ, to eat with your hands, to eat while sitting down, to drink water while sitting down. Examples of Sunnahs of the Prophet ﷺ and all Sunnahs are amazing. Let's focus on the outward Sunnahs and the inward Sunnahs. Sometimes people focus too much on the outward ones. We need to do both outward Sunnahs and inward Sunnahs of the Prophet ﷺ and then that's the fourth thing. The fifth thing is to actively spend some time learning to yearn, learn to yearn, learn to yearn for the Prophet ﷺ. Just sit and close your eyes and try to force yourself to miss the Prophet ﷺ. I'm going to think about my Nabi ﷺ, I'm going to think about him. For some people, if they've been to Madina, it's about thinking about Madina and they might have a certain type of emotional reaction because Madina has a certain effect on the heart because the Prophet ﷺ is literally there. But for other people, it can come in various ways. So just sit and think and yearn for him, yearn for him, yearn for him and miss him. And from there, try to express your missing for him. So many people of the past, they would write poetry about the Prophet ﷺ or they would write poetry to the Prophet ﷺ as though they were saying it to him. Let's do things like let's try to bring that into our life. These are ways in which one can increase love. We spend so much time writing statuses and posting pictures about ourselves or our situations and talking to others on social media and snapping this and liking this and liking that. Let's spend a couple of minutes a day trying to deepen or a couple of minutes a week trying to deepen our relationship with the Prophet ﷺ and it will bring amazing things into your life. First and foremost, it will reorient our life to what's important. What's important is not to follow all these celebrities and follow this politician and this person and this famous person and what's Kim Kardashian doing and what's Kanye doing and what's Jay-Z. None of these people are relevant. No, what's important is to follow the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. We should have, just like you see all these signs out there of people who are for different politicians, there should be a sign inside of us that is for the Prophet ﷺ. That we should have the banner of the Prophet ﷺ deeply embedded inside of us. That's how much we should be trying to think about him. These are all things that we can do and then the last thing we can do or one of the other things we can do is to visit him. Visit him often. Visit the Prophet ﷺ often in Medina. Try to make an intention to go to Medina. If we're able to go to Umrah and go to Medina, try to do that regularly. People who love the Prophet ﷺ, they don't want to be away from him for too long. One of our teachers, I mean literally he used to go every couple months, you'd see him and he'd be like sending WhatsApp messages and he'd be in Medina again. Just for five days and then he'd come back. He just literally couldn't be gone too long. I couldn't, you know, we would say his home, that's his home and he's coming to visit us when he comes back to the bay, right? That is the love, the way that the lovers behave. Should be having that special type of love. So what are these things? The first is to read about his life. The second is to read about his traits, his shama'il. Third is to do a lot of salawat upon him ﷺ. The fourth is to emulate his sunnas. The fifth is to learn to yearn for him and to actively spend time missing him. The next one is to write poetry, sing about him, sing nasheeds, listen to nasheeds, things like that, knots and whatnot. And the last is to spend time visiting him. And these, and what happens when you begin to do this, your relationship becomes active. And an active relationship with the Prophet ﷺ is much better than a passive relationship with him. Some people, they literally just, we treat it like, oh, he came, he delivered the message and he's gone. That's not it. He's an active part of your life. When you say in the proof for this, you say in the prayer, as-salamu alayka ya ayyuhan nabiyuh, you are saying actively in the prayer as, oh, peace be upon you. Oh, Prophet ﷺ, right? There is an active relationship and you send the rude sharif upon him. When you pray the funeral prayer, you have to send salawat upon the Prophet ﷺ. There's so many times where the Prophet ﷺ is such an integral part because an active relationship with him is what is needed. And so this happens and one begins to form this active relationship and then people begin to dream about him. He comes to them in their dreams and again, that relationship deepens. But that's not necessarily the only sign. You can have love for him without that happening. But that generally happens to people that the love increases and they'll start to have different types of spiritual dreams and then maybe even a dream of the beloved Prophet ﷺ. And then their love, of course, increases even more because when you see him, what's better than seeing him? What light is better than his light, ﷺ? And so let's spend our time doing that. And last thing I just want to mention briefly is, you know, again, there's no such thing as too much love or too much praise of the Prophet ﷺ. You will have many people who on this blessed day of the Maulid, of the birthday of the Prophet ﷺ, who are going to try to spend all this time instead of just thinking about the Prophet ﷺ, going to try to spend all this time trying to tell people don't do this, this is innovation, that's innovation. Look, first of all, the name Muhammad means the praised one. And Allah himself praises him in the Quran. So there is no such thing as praising him too much and mentioning him too much. Whether you do it here, whether you do it in the gathering, whether you do it in this place or that place, that's sufficient proof for praising him and for loving him, right? The second thing is, the love of him is something we have to have. So now you have to come up with how are you going to love him? For some people, the best way to get the love is to celebrate him, is to think about him, is to sing about him, it's to gather with other people and to celebrate his life and to celebrate the fact that he was born. That is one of the best ways to get the love of the Prophet ﷺ. For other people, that might not be the case. But remember this, that back in the day, as we mentioned with the Sahaba, love of the Prophet ﷺ was a natural part of their daily life. And same thing for the Taba'een and the generations that came after them. That for them, they didn't have all these distractions. For them, life was about following the Messenger ﷺ. That's what their life was about. These days, you know, we've all heard this saying, right, where somebody says, oh, you know, you don't have to do that. It's only a sunnah. For them, it was, how could you leave that? How could you leave a sunnah? A sunnah was so important. So when the sunnah is such a big pillar of your life, of course the love of him is going to be such a natural part of your life. But these days, the sunnah has been forgotten. And you and I have to find ways then to revive the sunnah. So the love then was already a big part of their life. Now these days, that love is no longer a part of many of our lives. So we have to come up with different ways to get that love. And so why is celebrating him, why is that so important in these times that we're living in? To go to these gatherings and to do Salawat upon the Prophet ﷺ, to read about him, to hear speeches about his life at these gatherings, all these types of things. Sing about him. Why is that so important? Because this gets the human being excited. It moves the heart. The spiritual poetry that these people write that is then sung in these mawalid, in these maulid gatherings. It moves the heart. And when the heart moves, the yearning begins, and then the missing begins, and then the crying happens, and then one begins to develop the active relationship. There could be other ways to do that, but this is one way that works really, really well. So it's on you and me to figure out how are we going to increase in our love. Do what works for you, but don't hate on people who are going to do something that throughout history has always been done and has been a critical part of our religion. That's why it's so important. Don't let people in these times confuse you one way or another who say, don't do this thing, don't do that thing. People in these days are so confused. We have a concept in our religion, and we'll try to end with this, known as beneficial innovation, abhidahasana. What is that, for example, the first adhan that was added to the Jumma prayer? That's example of abhidahasana. You see clocks in masjids that tell the time. That's not, there was no clocks at the time of the Prophet's time, but it relates to active worship. It's something that's done now because people have a different way of telling the time, and so on and so forth. People use their phones to tell the prayer times, use your phones to read the Quran, all of these types of things that weren't done back then. These are all considered beneficial things that were added to, right, that are additive to our religious practice. And yet all of these things, right, there's no, there's no harm in them. And so remember this, and especially if the people come and who try to discourage one from celebrating the life of the Prophet's Salam and to try to discourage one from having a large amount of love for him, that in the time that we are living in, there's many things that we're doing that are wrong. Let's just be honest, many things that we're doing that were wrong. The last thing that's going to be wrong compared to all that stuff that we're doing is celebrating the life of the Prophet's Salam. No way. People, there are people who literally, they spend time on WhatsApp videos and going on Facebook and watching movies and sports games and celebrating when a sports team wins, you know, the World Series and what not. And then it comes to the birthday of the Prophet's Salam and there's a problem. Why, wait, we can't do this. That's called shaitan, just completely confusing people. Don't let shaitan confuse you. Celebrate the life of your Messenger, and if you are somebody who spends time and where we are people who spend time in all these other frivolous activities, don't then stand up on the day when we should be celebrating and say anything about it. Just, you know, just try to find some way to increase your love, but don't let these argumentative things get in the way because these are not the, all of these other things, the Facebook, the Instagram, the Snapchat, the television, these are considered the innovations. These are the innovations that we are engaged in, right? But loving the Prophet's Salam, singing about the Prophet's Salam, praising the Prophet's Salam, that's not an innovation. That is something that is a core part of this religion. It is a core part of this religion. And so celebrate your Messenger, but if you are somebody who you spend all of your time reading a hadith, reciting the Quran, learning, learning the Seerah, learning Fiqh, learning the Sohof, learning how to clean the heart, doing other adhqar, spreading the Deen, you might not need a certain type of gathering to get the love flowing because literally your whole day is the love. But if we're like the rest of us who spend our time doing all these other activities and going to work and, you know, watching this show and doing all this other stuff, we need concentrated places of time that we can go and just focus on Sayyidina Rasulullah, and that is why celebrating the Maulid is so critical. It's such a critical part of gaining this love. That is why we should celebrate in this day that we are in whatever form it is that we choose to celebrate. Don't hate on those people who are going to do it. Don't let this become an argumentative thing. Find ways to increase the love. Give charity because the Prophet's Salam loved to give charity. He himself would fast on Mondays because it was the day of his birth. Tomorrow happens to be a sunnah day, a Thursday, if we can fast, it would be something good. If we celebrate with food and eating because it happens to be a great, auspicious day, that's also great. There's many different ways of things that we can do. Don't let restrictive mindsets with limited understandings in the time that we're living in get in the way of having an expansive day. May Allah expand our hearts. May He make this day full of love for us and may He allow us to truly inculcate and have a deep love for the Prophet's Salam, to emulate his sunnah, to emulate his teachings, to really truly understand what it is that he wanted us to do, to spend our life serving him, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and serving Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, and to remember that he is our messenger and he is our master in this life. He is our messenger in the next life. He is the one who is going to intercede for you and I on the Day of Judgment. He is our role model. He is the one we should follow. So let's try to follow him. Let's try to increase in love for him. Let's yearn for him. Let's miss him. Let's send Sallahu Alaihi Wasallam upon him. Let's pray for him and his ummah. Let's pray for this ummah because that is one of the best things that we can do and one of the things that makes the Prophet's Salam the most happy is when we pray for the ummah and when we help this ummah in any way, shape or form. May Allah increase you and me and all of us in love. May He give us abundant love for the Prophet's Salam. May He give us the ability to think about him regularly and the ability to follow him and the ability to be among the people that he is happy with and to be among the people that he is pleased with and to be among the people that he is not displeased with and to be among the people that he is so happy with that he gives us a large embrace, inshaAllah, in a dream in this life and inshaAllah, when we meet him on the Day of Judgment and he gives us an embrace and a hug and it makes us feel that all of the things we went through in this world were all worth it because now we get to be with our beloved Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Wa Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam Mubarak Alaa Sayyidina Muhammadin Wa Alaa Aalihi Wa Sahbihi Wasallam Wa Zakim Al Khair Wa Sallamu Alaikum Wa Rabbi Al Awal Mubarak and Mawlid Mubarak to all of you. Sallallahu Alaikum Wa Sallam Alaikum Please keep us in your prayers and sorry again for the technical issues at the beginning.