 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, Allahumma salli wa sallim ala Sayyidina Muhammad al-Muhalli al-Ali wa sahabi al-Ajma'in. It's been a while since we've had halaqah and insha'Allah everybody is refreshed. I know having the kids at the house for a couple of weeks sometimes is not refreshing for the parents. I know the kids are like, yeah, we got school off. I saw a comic one time where first day of school after summer and the kids are like, oh, they're so sad. And the parents are like, yes, you know, alhamdulillah. So last time we were ending, it's ending up the topic of the rights of parents, as per the Islamic tradition from the Quran and the Sunnah and the examples of the early generations, the Salaf and from the opinions and advice of the scholars. So we ended up on the idea of rukuk and disrespect of the parents and that there are two types of rukuk, one which is a kabirah, an enormity, a major sin, and one which is a minor sin. And we discussed the difference between the keba'ir and the saghair of the major sins and the minor sins and how the major sins require a toba. A person has to actually be conscious of what was done and go through this process of having remorse about it, being conscious of the sin, making an intention to never return to that sin and so forth. The saghair of the smaller sins, Allah can forgive through many different ways. And any of the ahadith that we hear where the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam says, you know, if you do wudu, then how many sins actually are removed through the wudu? When we do wudu, how many sins are removed? A sin, a drop, right? Every drop of the wudu, one sin is washed away. And because of this hadith, certain scholars like Imam Shafi'i said, for that reason you shouldn't wipe your limbs after wudu. Other scholars said, no, even if you wipe the limbs, Allah knows how many drops would have been. But it was that important and that much on their mind that some of them said, don't even, like, that's, it's sacred. Those drops coming off of your body after the wudu are sacred. Now, you don't want to take it too, too crazy. You know, sometimes you go and after somebody's done wudu and it's like water world and they're like, brother, what happened? And it's bad enough in the masjid, especially if they don't clean up after themselves. But imagine when they do that in public restrooms, right? So it's bad, it's difficult enough for us to be known as the people who stick our feet in the sinks, right? Unless you have one of those nifty alternatives, everybody's got to, or some people have a hack, a life hack around that of how to avoid that. So also walking towards the masjid. How many sins are removed when we walk towards the masjid? One per step. All of those ahadith that talk about if you go to the Jumu'ah prayer, between Jumu'ah and Jumu'ah, your sins are removed. If you do this, your sins are removed. All of that is talking about the Saga'ir, the smaller sins, the minor sins. Now, when we say Saghira, a minor sin, it's not to take away from that. It's not to detract from the fact that a person has disobeyed Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Because ultimately, we don't know what Allah will hold us accountable for, what He will forgive us for, what He will reward us for. There's one of the scholars, Ibn Al-Qasim. He's the main student of Imam Malik. And Imam Malik was one of the people, the early generations, who preserved the sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And his main student is Ibn Al-Qasim. So you can imagine how great of a scholar he is. Now, somebody might think, oh, he's a great scholar. What Allah is going to accept from him and put him into jannah for is his scholarship and preservation of hadith and Quran and giving tafsir and removing doubts in the minds of people from the deen and keeping the deen clear for the people. After he passed away, somebody saw him in a dream. And of course, if somebody sees in a dream this is not, we don't have to believe in it, but interesting to know that this has been mentioned, you can believe it or not. The point is that somebody saw him in a dream and asked him, What did Allah do for you? And just out of curiosity, has anybody ever, after somebody has passed away, seen them in a dream and seen good news? I've seen both. I've seen good news. I've seen bad news about people. One person I know, he said somebody he knew passed away and never made hajj. But then somebody else, a friend or a relative of his, paid for somebody else to do hajj on his behalf. And then he saw the deceased person wearing ihram, but it was green ihram. And so, you know, it's just a beautiful sign. Here's a person who didn't make hajj. Somebody made hajj on his behalf and now he sees him in ihram. So people do see these dreams. And there's another hadith that says at the end of times, people will actually see more clear and righteous dreams as glad tidings. You know, sometimes we think about, oh, this is Akhiru Zaman, the end of times. There's so much fa-sad. There's so much corruption. Things are going bad. Everything's going against us. But at the same time, there's actually more spiritual connections that Allah is giving the believers at the end of time. And one of them is through dreams. Back to ibn al-Qasim, somebody said, what happened to you after death? He said, all of that knowledge that we had studied and taught was put to the side. And Allah accepted for me a few rak'as that I used to pray at nighttime. A few rak'as that I used to pray at nighttime. Not this high, high, high, high level scholarship. That's what Allah had accepted from the person. So we never know which action Allah will accept us from us or which sin Allah will take us to account to. So when we say major sins or minor sins, it's not to distinguish that, oh, this is okay. It's all right. There's no big deal. It's just to say, how do we work consciously to remove those? Or without even having consciousness of the sin, they can be removed. There's another point I wanted to make. Oh, there's a hadith of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam about a man who killed, he murdered 99 people. We're all familiar with this hadith, right? He murdered 99 people. Did Allah forgive that person? Yes. In fact, he killed another and made it 100. Without going into the story, he forgave that man. At the same time, we also know a story of a woman who starved a cat to death. Right? We know that story. Did he forgive her? No, not for that sin. The hadith says she will burn and hell because of torturing that animal to death. Now, what we can assume is she did not make toba before she left. This other man who killed the 100 people as heinous and as wrong as murder is. If he made toba and Allah accepted it before he died, he's forgiven for it. And here's this woman for a cat. So we don't know what Allah will punish us for or reward us for. We also know that there's a story of a woman who had an improper trade, a business. She sold herself. But she came to a well and there was a dog who needed water. And so she put her sock, her khuf into the well, brought water out for the dog. And Allah forgave her sins because of feeding the dog. So all of these hadith, when we look at them, the scholar said, Never overlook three things. There's three things that you should never overlook. Any sin. Don't ever overlook it. And don't ever, actually the hadith or not the hadith is saying, Don't consider it small. Any sin. Big or small sin. Don't consider anything small because we don't know what Allah will take us to account for. Where the sakhat of Allah is, where the anger of Allah is. For that, we may be punished. The second thing that we should never overlook or consider small is any good action. Because we don't know where the reward of Allah SWT that he intends to give us will come through. So we might give out millions of dollars in sadaqah and build hundreds of masajids. But then one day we smiled in our brother's face and said, Asalaamu Alaikum and that's what gets us into Jannah. We don't know. So never overlook any good action. And the third thing, never overlook. Never, it's not even overlook. A better word would be, hmm? Yeah, underestimate is a better one. Never underestimate, never overlook, never consider small. Any human being. Any human being. Because you don't know where the wali of Allah, where that close protected friend of Allah is. Never underestimate them. There are people who now we might see them and they're in a state of disobedience of Allah SWT but 10, 20 years later or maybe on their deathbed, they make Toba and they become one of the most righteous people on the face of the earth. How many people do we know in our lives that we've seen and they're leaving a corrupt lifestyle, disobey Allah SWT. Then we don't see them for five years, 10 years, 20 years. Then we see them and we say, Subhanallah. Allah guides whoever he wants. So you might see somebody right now but don't judge the person by his current state. He or she may change. The other thing is you don't know what that person is going through and you don't know how sincere this person is with Allah SWT. And so we don't want to overlook any single person. So that's a short discussion on the Qaba'ir and the Saghair. The difference when we talk about auqouq al-waridayn, disrespect of parents, there's a auqouq that's a kabeera and there's a auqouq that's a saghira. The distinguishing factor between the two is Muhammad Moulou says that if the disrespect or the disobedience of the parent causes them to become angry, then it's a kabeera. If they don't become angry, you know, if it's something they request us to do and then we just, you know, for whatever reason, we don't do it and they're like, well, you know, and then they go on. They don't like it, but it doesn't cause the emotion of anger. That's considered a saghira. Again, it's not to belittle it, but it's just to show the level of what auqouq we need to avoid auqouq in any style, but especially the auqouq that causes our parents to become angry. On the flip side, for any of us who are parents, it makes it that much more important not to tell our children if they do something that makes us angry, we shouldn't say, hey, now you're doing a kabeera. You know, auqouq is wrong, but it should make us have more control of our emotions. Yerhamu kAllah. More control of our emotions so that if our children do something that we don't like, we really need to work on our emotions so that we're not getting angry at them because then we're putting them in a difficult state. Yes, we have the right as a human being to get angry for something as long as we don't transgress the bounds of sharia, we can get angry, we can be bothered. But now with our children, if they do something and we get angry, now we've put them in a state of auqouq. So at the end of the text, Muhammad Mouloud is actually going to mention, he said to the parents and to anybody who has a right, a haqq over somebody else, help that person, help them fulfill their bir, their righteousness towards you and avoid their auqouq with you by lessening what you require. Like that threshold of what they need to do to make you happy should go down and the threshold and the bare minimum of what they do to make you angry should go up. We should build our tolerance. At the same time, they should also be building their respect and say, okay, I don't want to bother my mom or my father, but we don't want to become tyrants and we don't want to turn the relationship toxic by using our right of the parents. And he says, watch out because this is from the Muharramat, the sins that your entire body could do. So there's certain things like, for example, ghiba, backbiting. How do you do backbiting? With your tongue, right? But there's another type of ghiba as well because ghiba is defined as mentioning anything about your fellow in their absence that if they were to hear, they would not like. And this is if it's true. People say, what if it's true? He said, that's ghiba. If it's not true, then it's a lie against the person. But if we say something about our fellow in their absence and they don't like it if they were to hear it, that's ghiba. Whether it's spoken or if it's typed because people can do it in text messages or writing. And there's even a form where if somebody like winks, you know, winks at a person, hey, check him out, right? Say somebody is walking and he's got something that we could make fun of him for, whatever it might be. And instead of saying something, hey, look at that person, he's doing whatever, ha, ha, ha. We just nudge the person, nudge them, and point to that. Who's seen that before? Especially in school, right? Growing up, kids like, or winking, you know? So pointing and winking and nudging, does anybody know where that's addressed in the Qur'an? It's in a surah that we recite all the time. Hmm? Yes, thank you, brother. Surah Al-Humaza. We read this all the time. But this is why it's so important to understand what we're reading so we're not just going through the motions. Ibn Abbas, R.A., said at the end of time people would leave the book. All of those Ahadith that talk about leaving their book, leaving their book, he said it's not that the Muslims not going to read their book. It's they're going to read their book and not know what it's saying. So we have to read the book and see what it's saying, and it'll have that much more impact on us. Even if we don't know what it's saying, it still has impact. But if we know what it's saying, it has more impact. It's the same thing like when we go outside and we look at the stars. Even if you don't know astronomy and you look at, especially when it's a clear sky, you look at the stars, you see everything, what is a Muslim going to say? Subhanallah. Right? Allahu Akbar. You don't even know, have to know what's going on, but you can imagine, you say Subhanallah. Allahu Akbar, you know. Innafi khalqas samawati wal ardu. You start thinking about the ayahs in the Quran where Allah talks about it. But if you know astronomy, you'll have that much more appreciation for what's going on. For the physicians in here, any physicians? I think one. When you study the human body, you have more appreciation for what's going on here, right? For engineers. They have much more appreciation for physics. And wow, Subhanallah, look at that concrete and it can hold that, you know, or that electrical, or whatever it might be. The more you understand something, the more appreciation you have for it. So if we want to have more appreciation for the Book of Allah, we have to have more understanding. So here Allah is telling us in Surah that we're reciting all the time, wa ilun li kulli humaza. What is wa il? What is wa il? Wa il means wow, like watch out for, beware, danger. But there's another meaning to it as well, which means there's a place in the valley, in Jahannam, actually, wa il is a place in the Hellfire, a specific place that the rest of Hellfire is afraid of. And so this is where wa ilun li muthaffifin, wa ilun li kulli humaza, you know that, everybody that does this, the muthaffifin, the hymns and the lambs, they get wa il. So what is the hymns and the lambs? The scholars differ. Some say hymns and lambs is pointing out the faults of, both of them are pointing out the faults of others, winking or pointing. So with the eye and with the finger, humaza, loomaza. Hems and lambs. One is with the eye, one is with the finger. In the Arabic, you could use one for the, like, hymns is for the eye and lambs is for the finger or the opposite. So they're interchangeable. But the point is, pointing out the faults of, basically, ghiba, but not saying anything, just with a nudge or a pointing or with your eyes. And so that's what Allah is saying. Those people who did it, and who do you think amongst, in Medina, who was doing a lot of that? Hmm? The munafiqin. The munafiqin were doing a lot of that because they didn't have sincerity. They would see a poor man walk into the masjid and they're sitting up there because they'd usually be, you know, at the back of the masjid they could see everything that's going on. And they're like, you know, look at that person. Or if somebody came to give sadaqah, you have some people like Ar-Uthman ibn-U'afan, or Abdul-Rahman ibn-U'auf, when they gave sadaqah, how was their sadaqah? How was their charity? Ar-Uthman ibn-U'afan, one time outfitted an entire army in Sabeel Allah. How much wealth are we talking about? And there's other people who they only had the foot of a goat to give. Or they only have a half of a date to give. So for the sincere believer if you see that, and this is why it's important for us in the masjid and organizations when the donations come in, whether it's a million-dollar check or a one-dollar bill, we need to respect both donations because which one has more barakah? We don't know. We don't know. The hadith says, sometimes one dirham can beat out a thousand dirhams. So we don't know where the barakah is. You know, when they do those donations and the little kids sometimes donate their coin jars, that might be, if that money comes into the masjid, maybe the barakah, the blessing of that small donation prevents some financial disaster for the masjid or the organization. Whereas that million-dollar donation comes in, and haram money, and then now all problems start happening in a family or in a masjid. How many times, you know, people hit the jackpot, the gambling jackpot. How many of those people who hit the gambling jackpot actually end up happy? It's all haram money. And now, and they end up usually in debt and they've lost all their friends and their spouse and divorce. It just ruins them. So haram money can really ruin a person. Okay, so there's different types of haram. Ghiba is with the tongue, but it can also be done with the fingers and pointing and the eye. But aralquk specifically can be done with any part of the body. And this is what Muhammad Mouloud says. He says, if it's with your hands, did we talk about this at the last halafah? We did, right? Okay, so now, I thought I was having deja vu. I was like, no, this is not deja vu. Okay, we're going to skip ahead. So watch out. Did we stop on the story of jurayj? There was the three stories. That's where we stopped in, right? Okay. So just as a recap, though, he says basically, you know, if somebody throws up their hands at their parents, rolls their eyes, you know, says something, listens to people talking bad about their parents, stomping their feet, walking away, slamming a door, basically any part of your body that you use to disrespect your parents, we're using, you know, we're doing aralquk with that part of the body. So then he uses three stories. So he says these stories should, oh, we talked about these, right? We talked about the young boy who couldn't say the shahada at the, okay, now remember, all right. So then he mentions another hadith. Or before that he says, beware of uqquq. We should beware of being in a state where we're disrespecting or disobeying our parents because it will destroy your deen and your dunya. It will destroy our deen and our dunya. He also mentions a hadith that nobody will be, there are three people that will not enter jannah. Three people who will not enter jannah. The first one he mentions, sallallahu alayhi wasallam, is the person who disrespects his parents, al-aq. The second one is the mannan, the person who does good favors to people and then reminds them of their things. And I think we've all probably experienced this in our life. Somebody does us a favor, a few days, a few weeks, a few, you know, remember when I hooked you up? Remember when I did that for you? That's called men. And even if that original giving of that help or that favor was done sincerely for the sake of Allah and he got reward, men will wipe it out. This is why Allah says in the Quran, la tabtulu sadaqatikum, don't invalidate your sadaqah with what? Bil manni wal adha, through men and adha, and bothering people. So there's men which is reminding people of their favors. So if we give something to somebody, just as an example, it could be anything, but we give somebody $20. A couple weeks later, that poor person comes around and says, please, you know, can I help? Remember, I gave you $20 last, you know, three weeks ago, leave me alone. So now we're reminding them of what we gave to them. So that's why one of the edab and actually the obligations of sadaqah is when we give it, if we're really giving it for the sake of Allah, that's it, fi sabilillah. We gave it, it's gone. Now if that person comes back later and then we expect something from them because of that, some level of respect, some recognition, whatever. And we demand it, that's considered men, and it wipes out the reward of the sin. The benefit of toba though is that if we make toba from it, we get the reward back. So it doesn't invalidate it and we get rid of it. So the hadith says, the person who does men, the person who disrespects his parents and the person who is addicted to alcohol, those three people will not interjannah. Now one very important thing to mention about any of these ahadith, this one specifically, any of the ahadith that say this person will not interjannah, that person will not interjannah. The scholar said we have to understand this within the holistic understanding, within the context. We know that through other ahadith that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says, anybody who says la ilaha illallah will get interjannah, eventually. Some people will have to be purified in the hellfire, we seek refuge in Allah s.w.t from being among those people. But ultimately, if a person leaves this world with la ilaha illallah, we ask Allah to make us from those people and to make our last words and belief la ilaha illallah Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. If we die on that, we're guaranteed jannah. We are guaranteed. Now we're not guaranteed to die on that, but we are guaranteed jannah if we die on that. Some people will have to be purified in the hellfire, but ultimately everybody will go in. So somebody might say well these two ahadith are contradicting each other. This ahadith says everybody will get into jannah. This one says there are certain people that will not. They said what it means is if you look through the use of speech, the bala'ra of the Arabs and just any language as well. There's usages of language that we study through bala'ra and understanding metaphors and figures of speech and so forth. It means that these will be some of the last people to enter jannah. And because when the person is left behind, so to speak, we all may have experienced the feeling of being left behind by our classmates at a trip, by our family. It's a very, very sinking feeling. And even if you show up late, anybody ever been the last person to show up to a party, got left, you know. You get in there, but it was a sinking feeling. It's like I didn't even get here. So that's what that ahadith means. The point of being mentioned in there that the aq does not enter should be a warning to us to avoid disrespect of our parents. In another hadith, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, if we cut off the connections with the friends of our father, that Allah will extinguish the light of the nur of iman from our, they will extinguish the nur of our iman. So what is this talking about? Earlier in the text, he mentioned one of the ways to show respect to our parents is to keep contact with their friends. Keep connection with their friends. And even after they pass away. So in the hadith it's saying if you don't do that, if you don't keep the connections with your families, that's one of the things that can lessen the nur of your iman. So imagine, if cutting off the connection with the friend of our father can lessen the nur of our iman, then what about cutting off the connection with our father or our mother? Then he goes into a discussion, it's a bit long, it's needed because he says do not belittle your parents because of the fact of what some people say that, oh, all your parents did was bring you into this world. That's it. They're just the cause of your physical existence. That's it. Well, the reality is that's a big thing because first of all, Allah chose that for us to bring us into existence, to give us a soul, to create us, and the pathway that he chose was through our parents. So to respect the creator, Al-Khalaq, Allah SWT, and the path that he chose for us of how to come into this dunya, we have to respect our parents. Why does this come up as a discussion? Because there are some people who preach a false message that your teacher or your sheikh has more right over you than your parents because your teacher or your sheikh gave you spiritual life and your parents just gave you physical life. So now we may or may not have heard that. Has anybody ever heard that? No? Oh, one person? Okay, so one. So it does exist. It's not a I won't spend too much time, but it does exist. And so he goes into refuting this. He says this goes against everything we know. If we just look at the Quran, Allah says thank me and thank your parents. And we went through this. He didn't say thank me and thank your parents if they're Muslim. He just said thank your parents. When the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam asked the young man who came to make hijrah to Medina or either of your parents alive, go back and do their khidmah. Go back and serve them. He didn't ask whether or not they're Muslim or not. So it's the respect that we give our parents and the honor that we give our parents has nothing to do with what they may or may not have given us spiritually, quote unquote. It's something that Allah has put in and we do it out of our our duty and our belief in the Quran. So he said it should be enough for us to respect our parents. The fact that Allah swt in the Quran specifically told us to have shukr, thanks and gratitude to our parents. The only person that Allah told us to have shukr to was him and our parents. That's huge, right? Anashkurli wal iwalidek Thank me and thank your parents. He said it should be enough for us the fact that they're of their mention in the Quran. How many times does Allah tell us wa bil walidekni ihsana and take care and respect your parents and have ihsan in your parents. It's mentioned in a number of ayahs. The mere fact that they have this mention in the Quran multiple times should be enough. So he's telling us we don't even really if we really understood that we don't even need to study this whole book on how to respect the parents. The fact that they're mentioned in the Quran should be enough. And people who realize this who realize the importance of being mentioned in the Quran they even honor the things that Allah mentions in the Quran. So for example the nahal, the B is it haram to kill a B? It's a bug. If it's coming to sting us we can protect ourselves. There's nothing specifically against although in general we should not kill things just for the sake of killing. But the scholars mentioned specifically the B like if you have to kill insects watch out for the Bs. Why? Because Allah mentioned in the Quran. If you're going to kill a bird say somebody wants to hunt a bird say Bismillah and cook it. That's permissible. Don't kill the hood hood. There's a bird called the hood hood. Why not? Because Allah mentioned in the Quran and the hood hood of Sulaiman. How many of us have seen a spider? And this I actually want to see a raise of hand. How many of us have seen a spider? And we think of the spider at ghar hira the spider, right? We think about that. So we see a spider with it because Allah honored your kind by making a spider and a hamam and a dove protect the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and confuse the Quraish to say there's nobody in there. There's a web that's been woven and a bird that's on its nest. Because of that, we respect the spider. Also Surat Al-Ankabut there's a spider mentioned in the Quran. So anything that's mentioned in the Quran we feel like wow, this is important. Usually in the Arabic language when the word kelb is mentioned dog is that a good connotation or a word or a negative one? Negative, right? But where is it mentioned in the Quran? Surat Al-Kahf وكلبهم باسقهم ذراعيه بالوصيد right? Their dog has its two arms out sitting like he got for lack of a better term he got a cameo in the Quran. He got a mention in the Quran. We even know the name of that dog. I think his name was Qitmir. We know the name of that dog and they mention as a side they say look this is the importance of maintaining good companionship having good friends because when the dog started following the young men who eventually slept in the cave for over 300 years by being with them Allah mentioned them in the Quran. At the time of Wahi when revelation was coming down the Sahaba were so they wanted to be mentioned in the Quran so much that they actually tried to look for that but at the same time they didn't want to be mentioned in the Quran because they knew if they did something what would happen? An aya might be revealed so there was one story of a man who went to propose to somebody the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam actually told him to go propose to such and such family he came to the door knocked on the door when they said who is it he spoke they were really impressed with his language but when they opened he said I came here to propose to your daughter the messenger of Allah sent me so on and so forth they opened the door they looked down he was short not really handsome sorry not for our daughter the daughter heard the conversation she said who was that they told her what it was she said no go back and get him aren't you afraid that by refusing the order of the Prophet that Allah will send an aya about you because it could have happened at the time right so this is how conscious the Sahaba were about being mentioned in the Quran wanting to be mentioned in a praiseworthy way so it should be enough the fact that Allah has mentioned the parents so many times in a good in a good manner he mentioned some other rulings I will just go through them the book is available online and I have actually the course as well if you're interested in going through the whole thing so now he says about Bidr and about stories in the there's a number of stories in the seerah literature that we can find about Bidr I think we'll actually stop there we'll finish it up next week I'll finish it up next week and that way I'll remember where I stopped off there's three stories that he mentions they're very powerful stories yeah so I don't want to rush through them we only have seven minutes before 9 o'clock so rather than rush through those three stories because they're very powerful stories one of the things that's a great teaching method is stories so if you're trying to convey this lesson and the lessons of respecting the parents to your children or yourself to remember these stories are very good for us to remember it's one of the reasons why we find so much mentioned as stories in the Quran so in the last five minutes here if there's any questions about what I presented specifically here today please ask yes oh very good question so the question was if what if a person does something haram does sins, does something prohibited makes toba goes back to that thing and some people just keep going back well if we look at toba the process of toba there's four things that have to happen for a toba to be actually considered toba so it's not enough for us just to do something the same that's not toba toba is not even something that's done with the tongue so you know sometimes people will say or toba toba toba anything just merely saying that is not toba now it's good to keep saying it so that we're just always still remembering it but toba is a process it's an internal process it's a commitment to change and now they have a modern term in psychology and in behavior change it's called behavior modification it's a very interesting concept look it up online there's a process there's actually five stages for us to change behavior whatever it is to change into a good behavior or to change a bad behavior so they've studied it, they looked at it there's research, it's evidence based it's interesting, when I looked at it I said this is our toba process we've had this before modern research establishes this but basically toba is the first step in it or no in another message but it's online and the person who posted the video he made it into an acronym R-I-S-R those are the four steps for something to actually be considered a toba remorse intention stop return so those four things remorse is the fact that a person is doing it because they actually feel sad about it it's very useful the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that toba is nedam that's the number one most important thing to have about this so if say for example somebody's like does something, ah sallallahu alayhi wa sallallahu alayhi are you really sorry about that for those of us are parents our kids get in a fight you tell one of them to tell the other person sorry and he or she says sorry what do you tell them is that a real sorry the angels might be saying is that a real sallallahu alayhi wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam the same thing we're telling the kids the angels are like ah come on is that a real toba is that a real sallallahu alayhi wa sallallahu alayhi wa sallam not only say it like you mean it you have to say it and you mean it so it has to be remorse that means a person has a conscious realization this is wrong I feel bad about it it's not good I need to stop it for the sake of Allah so that's the first thing they have to have remorse if a person doesn't have remorse or stops something for other than the sake of Allah he goes to the doctor the doctor says you know what you need to stop drinking alcohol because it's ruining your liver it's ruining your heart it's doing this it's doing that you need to stop this because it's doing that and so he or she stops that action for a health reason for the sake of health that in and of itself might be a process to get to that stage that's just the first of the four stages of toba the second remorse and then an intention here's an answer to your question we have to have an intention never to go back to that thing that means we're done if we feel we might be remorseful about something and we say astaghfirullah but we know tomorrow morning or tomorrow evening we're going to do that very same thing again that's what happened toba has not happened so we have to have an intention a firm intention a commitment to never do this thing again this third one is stop we actually have to stop there's people who might be and this is an example but it could be anything gambling drinking alcohol riba somebody's doing riba about somebody and they know in their heart this is wrong I shouldn't do it astaghfirullah this is really bad but I gotta say this about the person and I know tomorrow there's resolution whatever it might be I'm never going to do this again but I need to finish this riba because it's too good to let go so the person if they have to stop right there if they don't every delay is now another sin so when the person finally is ready to make toba it might have been one sin but all of those the delaying of it is actually more and more sin so it makes it bigger if that sin involves somebody else we have to return the right to that person if we've slandered somebody and ruined their marriage or their friendship or their business we have to make those things right if we've taken somebody's money we have to return those things so that's the process of toba if we do all of those four things that's a complete toba does that sound like a simple astaghfirullah or is that a process in depth process so when we see Allah tells us in the Quran tobu ilallahi toba nasuha so Allah didn't say just do toba he says toba tannasuha the definition of nasuha like a sincere toba is these things that means once we go through that process that's it we've changed now later on if we fall, if we trip we slip back into our old habits we can repeat the toba and it doesn't negate that previous toba but it's a process like if a person say they keep going back to your question brother very good question if they keep going back to that sin we have to ask the question us or that person were they making a firm commitment to never go back to it I'm never going to do this again astaghfirullah and then two weeks later they fall back into it were they sincere in their first toba were they weak at this moment restart the process so restart the process and what I mentioned about the behavior modification or the stages of change they say the change is not a linear process and it's not even an invent it's more of like a spiral process you keep working on it and working on it and the points between those slips should be spaced out that's a sign of improvement whatever it is that we want to work in in our life I know the question I kind of answered a little bit longer but I think this point about toba is very important there's some other advice that they give they say these aren't conditions of toba but these are certain advice you know what we mentioned these in his commentary in the hadith he says one of the things that you can do is that if you sinned if we disobeyed Allah in a specific place go back to that place and do an act of worship and try to make it an act of worship that's similar to the sin that we did so if we were in a marketplace and we stole something go back to that very place and give sadaqah to somebody if we spoke badly about somebody go back to that same place and do dhikr of Allah so that's one thing the second thing is also to give sadaqah to try to work almost like a self-imposed fine there's other things as well sadaqah doing an act of worship in that same place there was one more I was going to mention I can't remember but there's a lot in the discussion of toba and we'll finish it we'll continue this next week insha'Allah SubhanakAllah We pray for you