 Alhamdulillah, Allah SWT has created inside of the human being the capacity to always become better and that a capacity to change. This is something that is very, very essential to the Islamic tradition. The idea that somebody can grow, the idea that someone can become different than they were yesterday or different than the way that they used to be five years ago or ten years ago. Allah SWT gives us signs all throughout the earth and all throughout the universe of this idea of change. He mentions in the Qur'an that the winds will help change direction or the winds will change direction. As a metaphor to understand that sometimes Allah will pull you in this direction, sometimes He will pull you in a different direction. He gives similar metaphors with the way the vegetation grows on the earth. And throughout the Islamic tradition, when you look at the Qur'an and you look at the statements of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, you see in them that Allah is rooting for the human being to win this game of life. You see that Allah actually wants to see you and me do well in life. But many times we kind of view things in the opposite perspective. We think that you know what, if somebody acts in a certain way, they're fixed. That's all they're going to be able to be. If somebody messes up, maybe our children, maybe a family member, maybe somebody in our community, we assume, you know what, this person, they're just bad. And I'm not going to give them any more due credit. I'm not going to look at the potential that they have inside. And maybe we ourselves write ourselves off. We might be struggling with a certain sin. We might be messing up in life. We might be caught up in something and we deep down inside know, hey, this probably isn't something I should be doing. It might have been two, three, four, five, 10 years and we're still doing the same thing. And so we just write ourselves off. You know, I'm never going to become pious or religious or be able to change. I'll just continue to live my life in this way. We have to remember that Allah's door is always open. His door is always open for the believers. His door is always open for someone who doesn't believe to enter into this religion and to begin believing. But our question that we have to ask ourselves is, are we people who also operate with the understanding that Allah wants us to have and the understanding that Allah himself has, which is that Allah sees the full potential in everybody? Or are we people who limit people? Are we people who limit others and limit their potential and limit the ability for them to become better? We have to be very, very careful to not limit the vastness and the mercy of Allah's religion. Or if Allah wanted to punish somebody, the minute that they acted in a certain way, Allah would not begin and regularly be encouraging us to read Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem. In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate. He would have chosen a different name. He has many names. He would have chosen the name, perhaps, the just and the avenger. If he wanted us to say, okay, as soon as somebody makes a mistake, just get them. Don't look at the potential that they have. No. Allah is al-halim. One of his names is al-halim. He's an overbearing one. He gives you time. He says, no, this person, they might be messing up right now. Let me give them time. Let me give them time to become better. Let me give them time to change. Let me give them time to work on themselves. But is that how we approach our children or our family members or our loved ones? Or as soon as they make a mistake, do we go down hard and say, don't you know that this is completely unacceptable and you're just a sinner and you're never going to get better? And I knew you had nothing inside of you and so on and so forth. How intensely are we reprimanding versus inspiring? The time that we live in is not a time where fear can be the only tactic. The Muslim, they need fear and hope for sure. But the time that we're living in right now with all of the different tests and tribulations that exist in Western society has to be a time that we focus on inspiring, that we focus on seeing the good inside of people. Because Allah Himself, He mentions in Hadith Khudsi, that O son of Adam, so as long as you call upon me and hope in me, I shall forgive you for what you have done. And I shall not mind. And O son of Adam, where your sins to reach the clouds in the sky and where you to ask me forgiveness, I shall forgive you. And O son of Adam, where you to come to me with an earth full of sins. Imagine this whole area we're in, full of sins, the whole city full of sins, the whole Bay Area full of sins, all of California full of sins and you were to come to me and ask me to pardon you without having associated anything with me, without having committed any form of shirk or asking someone else, I can grant you and shall grant you an earth full of parting. Narrated in the collection of Imam Atiramuddin. So this is how Allah wants us to view things with vastness and with mercy. It doesn't mean we go and say, I'm just going to sin my whole life. And then, you know, one day Allah will forgive me and it'll all be good. We have to be careful, of course. But when people are making mistakes and when we ourselves are making mistakes, we've got to remember how vast this religion is. We have to remember how merciful Allah is. We have to remember that sometimes things will be messed up, rules will be broken. But that Allah can forgive. And if we see the potential in ourselves and see the potential in people, we will try to be empowering others rather than bringing others down. Because when you and I limit the religion of Allah or when we limit it for ourselves, we say, you know, I'm just, I'm beyond change. It's been 50 years. I only got 10, 20 years of my life left. What's the point? Right? I'm, this is, these, I'm just stuck in my ways. Don't limit yourself. Allah says that He created the human being in the best form. You have the ability to go from the highest of the high and to be in the highest station possible. He gave you that ability. He gave us that ability. He also says, And they can also fall to the lowest of the low. But it's your choice how much effort you put in. When somebody goes to Allah a little bit, Allah comes to them a lot. You go to them a hand span, Allah comes to you an arm span. You go to Allah walking, Allah comes to you running. But it's just that first step we have to get ourselves and each other to take. If your child or your family, somebody is struggling and they're sinning. Let's say I have interrelationship. These days, significant amount of people have a girlfriend or boyfriend, someone has caught up in drugs, someone is drinking. I mean, that's completely common now amongst our community. It's all over the place. And we would be ignorant to think that it's otherwise. And now you find out, oh, this person is in a relationship. Maybe your child is in a relationship. And you, that first response is to go down hard and to go strict and to start secretly monitoring everything and to just get really, really fierce and intense and angry and not dig a little deeper into like, okay, well, we're in Western society where this is just what's happening and to now try to inspire them out of it. And then as a result of the harshness and you bring religion into it and now you push them away from the religion. It might not be that minute they get pushed away. They stopped the deed that they were doing in that minute but five, 10 years, they're gradually shifting away from the religion because somebody, nobody showed them the vastness and the mercy of Allah versus saying, you know what? This is wrong, what you're doing but Allah can forgive you for this wrong. Let's talk a little bit about why this is happening. Let's talk a little bit about why this is wrong. Why Allah has wanted us to be chast people and to not get caught up in this type of sin and uncovering that slowly and then working on it. Or if you yourself are the one who's doing that, right? Don't, it's important to take yourself to account but don't ever think that you can't be forgiven or that you can't change. That there are people, drug dealers, people who have been in multiple, multiple types of haram that I have seen that have become and doing their best to live upright lives. And we have examples of those people in history but this becomes extremely, extremely dangerous if we get caught up in this type of approach. If we get caught up in this restrictive mentality for other people around us and for ourselves. And this can generally happen as someone starts to take a little bit of steps into the religion, you'll start to see them becoming all of a sudden they don't understand the vastness of the religion. You see this often in the community. Someone learns a little bit and now they go and police everybody else. You're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're doing this wrong, you're praying wrong, you're doing this wrong, even though the religion has many, many, many ways of doing things, right? And so that knowledge actually isn't used. It's not meant to be used to police other people until you become somebody who has a depth of knowledge and a vast amount of knowledge. Knowledge and wisdom both have to be there before someone is going and telling others not to do things. Otherwise focus on ourselves. Allah says in the Quran, start with yourself. Focus on yourself then work on your family. Not everybody's job to go and police everybody else. And so that's very, very, very important that especially if we get on the path or we will come from a family or we're in a position where maybe religion is very, very important. But then people in our family start to slip or we ourselves start to slip that we have to see there is room to grow. There is room to grow and there is room to change. And Allah rewards the people who change. It's amazing how this, that how much Allah rewards those who actually change their lives. He says in the Quran that those who have lived a life of evil, lived a life of haram, lived a life let's say they were drinking and they were smoking and they were dealing drugs and they were in illicit relationships. We're talking about the some of the more serious sins even if they God forbid had murdered somebody. But he says those who repent, they believe and they do righteous actions. For them, Allah will replace their evil deeds with good deeds. It's absolutely amazing that Allah will not only erase the wrong that someone has done but he will replace that wrong with good because they have gotten to the point in their life where they have become different. Where Allah has inspired a toba inside of them and inside of us that we have actually sincerely said yalla I wanna give up the wrong that I'm doing. I don't wanna be that person anymore. I wanna become better. And Allah says he sees that in that person and now he actually erases and he gives them good credit instead. It's absolutely phenomenal. Only a merciful Lord, only an amazing Lord, only a generous Lord would do that. How else would it make sense that somebody could have spent so much time transgressing? And so there is that moment though that comes in everybody's life where the thoughts start to come when am I gonna change? And I can guarantee you, I can tell you that the majority of people who are really caught up in doing bad like serious, serious, serious things they know deep down inside that it's wrong. You do not have to be the person to tell them, you know, don't you know what you're doing is completely haram and you're gonna, they might need to hear that but they know deep down inside it's wrong. What they need is someone to help pull them out of it. What they need is the gentleness to find the mercy. As one of the scholars, they said that we are all like, we're like cups, cup, like a cup of tea and the sugar is sitting at the bottom of the tea. And until you mix the sugar, it's not gonna be sweet. Everybody has that sugar sitting inside of the bottom. You need to be the person who goes inside of someone's life and you mix it. You mix it such that now you start to see the beautiful part come out inside of them. Don't go to them seeing the person they are today. Go to them seeing the people that they could be. That was the way of the Messenger, sallallahu alayhi sallam that he saw the people that the jahili Arabs could be. Otherwise these were some of the worst people on the face of the earth. They became through the Prophet sallallahu alayhi sallam the face of the earth. Look at the story of Sayyidina Umar Ibn al-Khatab, radiallahu an. He literally mentioned that it was a point when they got an idol, a God out of their date, out of a hajjur, out of a date. They had a little drawing on it and so on and so forth. And then they take it with them on their journey and they'd worship it. And then they would get hungry on their journey and they would eat it. So they would eat the idol of God that they had made. And they reflected on this when they'd become into Islam and like, what were we even doing? But this was the type of stuff that these people were doing. I mean, just absolutely, particularly the point where Sayyidina Umar, he literally, and of course completely regretted this later in his life, but he literally buried his own daughter alive. This was the custom of Arabs, that they used to, women and girl children that are born as a big, big, big sign of getting the pride that these had, that it was only good if you had a male son. And it wasn't good if you had a female. He literally would bury their daughters alive. Allah of course completely called that in the Quran. He gave the prophets, Allah, many, many daughters. Among them, Sayyidah Fatima, Zahra, radiAllahu anha. And he showed this is one of the perfected women of paradise of the many, many, many beautiful aspects of, and the lessons from the life of Sayyidah Fatima. But this was, he was at a point where he heard about the messenger of Allah, and he wasn't having it. He then went and he was on his way to kill the prophets. Literally on his way to kill him. He said, this man is corrupting our society. This man is telling us to not worship the gods that we should be. This man is creating problems. I'm gonna go handle it. And Omar is mighty. They reported he's seven feet tall. And it's like, tell it in this thing. Really tall, mighty. They have his sword in the top copy palace in Turkey. His sword literally goes from the ground up until here. Huge sword, mighty. These were intense people. So he's on his way to kill the prophets of Islam. On the way there, a man sees him. Now this man was a believer, but he didn't tell Sayyidina Omar that he was a believer because obviously he didn't wanna get killed himself. And so he says, what are you gonna do? He said, I'm gonna go kill this man who's spreading all this corruption. He said, oh, you are. He said, why don't you go take care of your own household first? He said, what do you mean? He said, go to your sister's house. His sister had secretly converted into Islam. And so he goes near his sister's house and he hears a humming. They were reciting the Quran in the house. He hears a humming and immediately as he's approaching and he's by the doorstep and knocking on the door, they know that it's Omar. They stop the recitation of the Quran. And he goes inside, he barges inside of the house. So what were you doing? What is that sound that I heard? And he finds out that it was the Quran. He literally gets into a physical confrontation with his brother-in-law, with his sister's husband, fighting him because of what he was doing because they had accepted Islam. And then he takes his hand and he strikes his sister and she falls to the floor. Blood starts to emerge from her. Immediately she says, what are you doing? You're doing this because we say there's one God? What is going on? And she was of course also, she's the sister of Omar. She's also mighty. And now a remorse overtakes him. And he's like, what did I just do? This is my sister. He sees the blood. He comes, a remorse completely overtakes him. He says, you know, maybe you could actually recite what it is that you were reciting. And I, you know, I could look into that. He says, and you're not even pure right now, go make Udu. And then he starts to recite the Quran. And now tears begin to flow down his eyes. He begins to read the book of Allah. And the words recited to him. And tears began to flow and immense change overcome in that moment. Allah completely changed it in the Omar from this vicious, intense, angry person with immense, immense, immense hatred towards the religion of Islam to now the impact had started. Know that this moment can come for every single person in humanity. It is not beyond Allah for this moment to come to everybody. It is certainly not beyond Allah for this moment to come for ourselves or for our family members or for our children or for our loved ones. So we can't box people in and just put them to the side. We have to see the potential in people. Now Sayyidina Omar, he goes and he starts to walk to the house of the messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. He enters into the majlis into the gathering of the Prophet's Islam and they all think that he's coming to kill him. Prophet says, Ibn al-Khattab, what can I do for you? And he goes up to him and he says, I bear witness that there is no God except Allah. And I bear witness that you are the messenger of Allah. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is in an extreme state of happiness with the conversion of Sayyidina Omar. He had made the offer this. But one of the two Omar's to enter Islam and Allah strengthened the religion then with Omar. Now the believers were able to do things that they weren't able to do before because this person came in and he gave them a certain type of protection. This was the example. Look at how bad of a life that he lived and then look at how he changed. And he goes on to become one of the greatest companions of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and they were all great. And one of the Khulefa Rashidi and one of the rightly guided caliphs of this religion who had immense contribution to this religion and to the development of this religion. Tashash to the point that he got to a point in his life where he told the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that there is nobody I love more than you, Ya Rasulullah. And there was a point where there was nobody he hated more than the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. This is the potential that people have deep down inside. Somebody just had to mix that sugar inside of him that was literally settled at the bottom. You see the same example with Sayyidina Khalid Ibn-Al-Walid, radiallahu anh that one of the generals of the Muslim Ummah he used to literally lead the Khufar, lead the disbelievers in the Quraish with their armies and fight the believers and use all of his military tactics against the believers and win many of the battles against the believers. But Allah inspired change in him such that he eventually enters Islam and goes on to lead the Muslim armies in immense, immense, immense victories against the attacks that they were having on them. You had somebody not too long ago in our own country that he used to deal drugs. He was a hustler on the streets. He used to have promiscuous relationships with many, many, many women. He used to be somebody who would engage with prostitutes. He would be somebody who would be caught up in gambling and in drinking and in drugs and you name it, he was caught up in it. At some point he got caught and he got thrown in jail for some of the crimes that he was doing. In jail, something overcame him as he was in prison. Something overcame him. And the change, the process of change began such that not too long after he entered the religion of Islam and Allah used him as a vehicle to propagate Islam all throughout this country. This man was Malcolm X and this man was a man who lived in a life full of sin and then the change happened and the potential that was inside of him was unlocked and that potential then began to be used in good rather than in evil. The skills that he was using to spread fitna and to spread problems began to be used to spread justice and to spread this religion. That potential is there inside of each and every single human being. We just have to see it. We have to work on it. We have to hope in Allah and we have to unlock it. Abkulu qawli hadha wa astaghfirullah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. And so when you are in that position if you are ever feeling limited by somebody someone in your life is limiting you. Someone in your life is saying there's no hope for you. Maybe you were in some type of bad relationship or something like that. Maybe someone was, you're wearing inappropriate clothing and you're like, you know what? And someone decides to say you're never gonna change. You have no hope. Whatever sin it might be and that you're caught up in don't ever let anybody turn you away from Allah's mercy. Because only shaitan turns people away from Allah's mercy. Shaitan is the one who makes people despair in Allah's mercy. That's not my job. That's not your job to ever make anybody despair in Allah's mercy. We have to see the good in people. And so don't be somebody who despairs and don't also ever be anybody who thinks that any sin is too big to be forgiven. I see many, many people, they struggle with this. They think, you know, I've struggled. I've done too much wrong in my life. How can Allah forgive me? Do you know who you're speaking about? This is Al Karim, the most generous, the most merciful. If you wronged your parents over and over again and we of course shouldn't do that. But many parents would have the capacity in them to forgive. Allah loves you far more than your parents love you. He loves you far more than anybody else. He literally created you. He wants to see you do well. He does not want to cast someone into the fire. Contrary to the way that some harsh Muslims may portray this religion. Allah wants to see us do well. So remember that you and I are going to mess up. Khulqa al-insanu da'ifa. The mankind was created weak. We are created with weakness inside of us. Allah knows that there's weakness inside of us. But Allah gives us the capacity to change. And so if you're in this situation and people are limiting you, distance yourself from those people for a period of time until you have the capacity to change. And if you keep struggling with the same sin over and over and over and over again, just know that there will be a moment where you sincerely turn to Allah. And I know people that this has happened, that they were struggling with an addiction. They were struggling with something. Five times, 10 times, 15 times they tried to give it up. They couldn't do it. There was a moment at which the tears began to flow. They turned to Allah and said, You are the only one who can help. I want to change my life. And then the change came and they never went back to that addiction again. They never went back to that sin again. That change can happen inside of everybody. Just do not give up hope. That's very, very important. And so you emerge then from this with categories of people. You have those people that are really, really struggling and caught up with something and deep down inside as mentioned, they know something is wrong. They know, you know what? I'm doing something wrong. And they feel bad. As long as you and I are feeling bad about what we do, there's immense hope for us. Keep that in mind always. That no matter how, quote unquote, righteous somebody gets, it's important to have a humility before Allah to say, I'm screwing up in some way or another. It could be someone's sincerity. It could be someone's approach. It could be someone's focus, whatever it is. But as long as you and I know what we're doing is wrong or we believe that we're doing some wrong, there's a lot of hope. The one place we do have to be careful about on the other side of the spectrum is if Shaitan convinces us that a sin that we're doing is actually okay. And he actually makes it seem like we're not doing anything wrong. And we just have to be mindful of that. That that happens from time to time in the society that we live in. Because there's so much fitna and haram going on that whether it is the sins of morality, whether it is the sins of economic sins, Shaitan will convince us that, you know what? Everybody's doing it, so it's not a big deal. Everybody is dressing immodestly. What's the big deal to wear really, really tight revealing clothing? As long as someone knows that this is wrong, I'm struggling, I'm not there yet, but I'm gonna work on it. Alhamdulillah, at least there's potential. But it's the minute someone is like, oh, it doesn't matter what clothing I wear, it doesn't matter if I'm dressed in an immodest way, that starts to become a problem. Don't let Shaitan, I don't mean that in any bad or judgmental way. Only in the way to be careful, we have to be careful about Shaitan using this tactic against us. Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said at the end of times people will be clothed yet naked. What does it mean? In the time that we live in, you can literally have someone who's so wearing such form-fitting clothing that they're literally clothed and yet naked. And that is not the way that we wanna trend down in the situation that we wanna be in. Right, if somebody is caught up, let's say in interest loans and so on and so forth, as long as they know, hey, this is wrong and I gotta repent, at least I gotta work on it, there's potential. But the minute someone is like, you know, I found one random situation and this person who gave an opinion that this type of thing is okay, it starts to get really, really risky because you now write off a major sin that Allah has listed as a major sin in Quran and stop seeking repentance, but you just have to turn to Allah and seek repentance. This will happen often in our lives and often in the times that we live in because knowledge is limited, as the Prophet Sallam said, as you get closer to the end of times, ignorance becomes widespread and knowledge becomes limited. And so we have to be very, very careful about taking something that Allah and his messenger have said is wrong and making it into a right. As long as we're not doing that, there is immense hope then for us to change as long as we are regularly turning back to Allah. And so just to wrap up, the most important thing is that we operate our lives with the level of gentleness and with the level of mercy. That when we are approaching others, we approach them with kindness and gentleness. We see the potential inside of every human being, especially those who we love. We see the potential inside of them and we try to help them work on themselves. Everybody could use a helping hand in the time that we are living in. And we know that the mercy of Allah is vast. We don't on one hand take advantage of that mercy by making up our own rules. And on the other hand, we don't write off that mercy by getting way, way, way too limited with our view. And if we are caught up and if we are struggling and if we are sinning majorly, we just have to know that we have a Lord who forgives. We have to ask Him. The three components of Toba, you feel of repentance, you feel bad about the wrong you're doing. You ask Him for forgiveness and you make a commitment to try to never do that thing again. And you let the tears flow and you let the sincerity come and you ask the one who can change every heart. You ask the one by whom the humanity can be guided. You ask the one who sent prophets and messengers to humanity for the purpose of guidance because he wants humanity to be guided. You ask the one whose mercy is so vast and love is so vast that it's more than anybody of all the love of everybody combined if they were to love us, Allah's love would outstrip that. That's the one who you ask. That's the one who we turn to. That's the one whose mercy we seek. And if we do that, insha'Allah, and we exemplify the traits of the rahmatal al-alameen, of the Prophet ﷺ and his mercy with other people, we will start to now repair and rehabilitate and improve the dynamics that may be some of the damage that we have done. Inna Allah wa-malaikatu yusallun al-nabi Ya yuhal ad-dina aminu salu alayhi wa-salimu t-tuslima Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa-alihi wa-sahbihi wa-salim Allahumma gfili ma-muminina wa-muminat wa-al muslimina wa-muslimat Ya arhamur rahimin we ask Ya Allah that you forgive us and that you pardon us and that you inspire in us the ability and the capacity to change and the desire to change and the desire to want to improve in every day in every moment of our lives. Ya Allah, pardon us and forgive us for everything wrong that we have done. Wa-sallallahu was-salam wa-barak ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa-alihi wa-sahbihi wa-salim wa-alhamdulillahi al-nabun al-alameen. Wa-keem al-sala'in.