 Bismillah wa s-salatu wa s-salamu ala Rasulillah wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wa ala The reality that we all know is these gatherings speak much more eloquently than any words that we can say upon the tongue They say with the Lisan al-Haal with mute eloquence, everything really needs to be said And on top of that what was one going to say in a gathering like this with so many blessed hearts And so many special people that know much more than myself, there's nothing really to advise the people present with Other than just to simply remind ourselves of the blessing that we are in And this gathering is a ma l-harmin ma l-lahid, it is a manifestation of the words of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala Wa atasimu bi hablillahi jami'an wa la ta'farruqu Let all of you hold together the rope of Allah and do not disperse And we live in a time of great fitna, we all know this Everyone's struggling, everyone's in a time, everyone's finding things difficult And one of the greatest meanings of the rope of Allah, because you will find different interpretations of it Is love and attachment to Sayyidina Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam Our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is the habl of Allah He is the rope of Allah, and if you hang on and clean Not just as an individual, jami'an wa atasimu bi hablillahi jami'an, together Not as an individual, of course as an individual, but together And if we all metaphorically hold this rope In other words, is that at the level of our heart that we attach our hearts to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam And the love of him, we will be holding onto the rope of Allah Ta'ala And when we come together like this to celebrate who our Prophet is Because it's not was, this is not something of the past The reality of the seerah of our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam If you expand your mind begins with the beginning of creation But if that's too controversial for you, at very least you could say That it begins with the first man that Allah s.p. had created And we know the many stories that relate to that And some seerah books go back to this early time And they'll mention La Ta'if, even if they're not rigorously authenticated They're La Ta'if, that these beautiful subtleties that indicate to us That something of the reality of the Prophet Muhammad before sallallahu alayhi wa sallam He came into this earth Things like Zatameher, the dowry of Eve from Adam was salawat upon the Rasul Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, La Ta'if like this And then you move forward a little bit into history And there's no doubt that the seerah of our Prophet begins Before he received prophethood And it begins at very least with his birth But then if you extend to the future, it doesn't end with his return to Allah Jalla Jalaluh Is that he still is very much alive in our hearts And his seerah goes on And it will go on in the grave And it will go on Yomul Qiyamah Because this is when he'll be granted the Maqamun Mahmood And then it doesn't stop there with this day of judgment Which is subjectively experienced somewhere in the realm Of two light rak'as, i.e. roughly two minutes to 50,000 years But it goes on after that, eternally And so the Prophet is very much alive in our hearts For hearts that is truly, a heart that is truly alive And these are gatherings that remind us of this And so that we should bask in the light of these gatherings And we should enjoy And what a beautiful deen that commands us to be happy Allahu Akbar Felyafrahu, it's a divine command If you're not happy, you are in a sense that disobeying Allah You haven't fulfilled the command Felyafrahu What a deen that commands us to be happy Felyafrahu And if we can implement this verse in the way that it was intended By Allah Jalla Jalaluh So that our happiness is different than the happiness Of other people that are walking on the face of this earth You will find that in fulfilling that command And being happy for the sake of Allah All of the things that normally make us sad are drowned out By virtue of that blessed happiness That Nurani happiness That will bring immense light to your heart It will cover up at every other sub-level of your being That from the depths of the spiritual Moving down to the physical and everything in between From the psychological emotional and so forth and so on Is that it will treat it and it will cover it up And it will remove it Because this is the nature of light Is that it reveals And it will that heal you At the depth of your being What a great blessing To be with so many blessed people And again is that all we can say To our dear brothers and our dear sisters Who have gathered here tonight We just need to be patient a little bit longer We're not going to live that much longer in the dunya Everything that's going to come in the future Is in reality near Even if one of us lives to a hundred It's still not that long We're not going to live that much longer So all we need to do is just to be a little bit patient To wait a little bit longer Is to endure the difficulties And just wait for the meeting with Allah And if we live in the right way It's going to be sweet And it's going to be even sweeter If we share that with all of these blessed souls That are here We don't just want to meet here This is just the beginning What we want to celebrate in eternity This is really what this whole thing's about Just a little bit of patience And this reminds me of a blessed hadith Of the Rasul sallallahu alayhi sallam Where he referred to it of the ayama sabr The days of patience In the context of this hadith It's mentioned in multiple collections It's set in the end of time And we spoke today a little bit about These two reprehensible vices That of qibr and that of ujjab And one of the hadiths Speaks of this reprehensible vice Of conceit, of ujjab Referring to it as one of the three muhlikat These things will destroy you And you see these things right before your eyes In the world in which we live And they've always been there But they are pronounced more so in our time And we've all heard them before Is that avarice that is obeyed Desire that is followed Is that everyone who has an opinion Being impressed with his opinion And all you see is a great scholar Make a comment online And then everyone who thinks That they know something jumps in And thinks that they can Every opinion in the democratic society is equal Not every opinion is equal Is that we believe in an hierarchy That the opinion of so-and-so Who doesn't know anything Or hasn't done his research Or hasn't done the background That knowledge that is required To speak on a subject is not equal To someone who knows very well What it is that they are saying But when this same Roughly these same three traits come In a different hadith It comes in a slightly different way And one of the tab'een Asked one of the companions What does he say about the verse In the Quran when Allah says Is that oh you who believe Is if you are guided It will not harm you Who goes astray The people that go astray Won't harm you if you are indeed guided And he asked him about the meaning of this And he said that I asked I asked someone who knew Very well the meaning And he went by that And the prophet went on to say That call to good And forbid evil And that's a very rough and crude way To translate that The concept of Is really deep What you could say in general It is be active in society That do your best To help other people Guide them in the right way And all of the meanings that are behind that In terms of how exactly that we do that With gentleness first and foremost And mercy and so forth and so on This is a very deep concept That when you translate it Like I just did It doesn't fully convey the range Of meanings that are intended by it But anyhow Once you see something else happening And the prophet in this had He mentioned four signs Three that we just mentioned and one more Then the things start to change He says until that you see Among people And that he mentioned the first one Is that you see avarice that is obeyed And you see desires that are followed And in this hadith And people giving preference to the world And then everyone who has an opinion Being oppressed with their opinion What was the prophet's advice After that And he added something else where he says Is that you see affairs That you can't do anything about Or I ate malayadani fi There's nothing you can do about it You can't change them It is beyond your ability to change them What was the prophet's advice In that point At that point Be concerned only about your own self And leave the general affairs of people Indeed there is coming to you The days of patience He called them ayama sabr The days of patience But look at what he said The one who acts in them Will have the reward of 50 people Among you And he's speaking to the companions He will have the reward of 50 people Among you Meaning there's no reason for us to ever loop hope Our prophet opened up the door Of mercy for us 1400 plus years ago So we in our times can find solace Even in the most difficult of times And the intelligent person will understand The time in which we live And alhamdulillah we are a community That has been trained in these meanings As we mentioned earlier That these blessed people That we have present here We all know whose barakah we're in We all know the source of us being here Our great teachers And at the top of the list Sayyidi Sheikh Hamza Yusuf And all of his teachers And his teachers' teachers We all know what's really behind us And the hearts and souls That have connected to these great chains Of transmission back to the Rasul And that have redirected like conduits That light, the light of prophecy To us here in these lands Do we even realize the blessing For us to be here on a Saturday night And to find joy in singing the praises of the Rasul What kind of blessings are these? What kinds of blessings are these? We tend to, we're so immersed in them That we forget them Because it's like light Light is so apparent that it's hidden You don't see light You see other things that it reflects upon But sometimes when things are so apparent That they remain hidden And the blessings that we are inundated with Are like that And so we have to step back in To really remind ourselves About the time in which we live It is a time of fitna It is a time of great tribulation This is a time to worship your Lord To take care of your family And to do whatever little thing That you can do of service Best! And meet Allah upon that Do not overextend yourself You will harm yourself As we were talking about earlier You have to build your spiritual immune system It's no different than your physical immune system You have to build it And the more you build it The more you will be able to withstand The very difficult times in which we live And the more that you will create a shield Between you and all different types of fitna And all of this is found in the blessed sunnah Of our Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam And even if you don't know how to do that It starts by the intention And when you make a strong intention To live like this Despite the times You will find wonders of tofiq from Allah Opening up the doors for you to live How it is that we have been meant to live And then is that you will start to realize Is that despite you And despite what it is that you do Allah is the kareem And once we learn that meaning And you realize that If you were it to be a prerequisite For anyone to serve That they have no faults or no idiosyncrasies Or anything like that No one would ever serve And no one would ever arrive to Allah And the meaning of arrival is coming to know him If those were prerequisites No one would ever attain anything So when you come to terms with that And you realize Is that he is the one that has been providing For you despite all of your mistakes Despite all of your shortcomings He continuously shows you Ihsan and gives you opportunity After opportunity How could you not love Allah And how could you not at least do your small part In doing what it is that you can do Taking those baby steps But if we have that clear conception Is that this is not a time to over extend yourself This is a time to focus On the realization of your own religion Do your best To take care of your family Give precedence to your family And then do whatever little you can do outwardly Without overextending yourself Recognizing that the Prophet opened up this door for us This is following his sunnah And our time doing just that And insha'Allah There will be great good in it It's always a blessing to be here And to be here with so many blessed people And we ask Allah to bless us With tamamen ni'ma A completion of the blessing Such that we meet time and time again in this world Is that we're together in the barzakh We're together yelman qiyamah And we're together insha'Allah In the highest levels of paradise May Allah ta'ada keep us together And may we all collectively hold on to the rope of Allah And may Allah fill our hearts with the love of him And the love of the Rasul sallallahu alayhi sallam And to protect us And to protect our children And our families and loved ones And not leave any one of us behind Ya Rabb al-Adameen To bless us all to attain the greatest good of this world And in the next Wa sallallahu alayhi sallam Wa alhamdulillahi Rabb al-Adameen