 Bismillah, Bismillah wa l-hamdu lillahi. As-salatu wa s-salam ala Rasulillah wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa manwala. You know, it's interesting Mufti Abla Wahab, he said, when you get up there, you should talk for 25-30 minutes. I'm looking at the row in front of us. His brothers got their hands in their face. They tried not to fall asleep. I think it's very ironic that in a conference, it's based on love. Mufti Sahib has no love for the people in this room. He wants them to stay up till the middle of the night. He missed both, masha'Allah. Allah. I'm going to go through a few things pretty quick. I know the time is getting late. And alhamdulillah. I just want to first thank you all for being willing in the midst of so much of what the world is going through to come to a gathering like this. I want to be able to understand this as a basis to the conversation that we're going to have. It's very easy to bring bodies together in a physical sense. And the way a lot of our society functions, there's so many motivations and catalysts that bring us together in terms of externals. So you could fill entire corporate buildings, companies, people are bringing you together based off of salaries and wealth. You could go to so many different arenas that bring people together based off of elements of things that are materialistic. When we talk about love for the sake of Allah, it's a key ingredient in being able to now bring together individuals not on something that is rooted in an external, but it's a key ingredient in being able to bring people together in terms of something internal. How do you bring hearts together? You want to root this conversation in our most primordial state of existence. And in a damic narrative of creation, we are taught of so many things that are interjected for the first time that are deeply problematic in terms of things that are real, though a real sin, may Allah protect us from it. Iblis, he is without fail, identified as being arrogant, told to prostrate to Adam, and everything does save Iblis, flawed logic and absence of knowledge, deep arrogance, the first racist. And you see this now start to trickle down as the narrative continues. Adam, he is now in this earthly realm of existence. And you see progeny start to be established in literally from the same womb. Two brothers are born in our tradition. Tabil and Habib, Cain and Abel, and they interject a deep sin for the first time, which quite often is identified simply as murder, but it's deeper than that. And you have to think about it in the prism of loving for the sake of Allah, because we are all children of Adam. And being Banu Adam, it means that we have a shared heritage that transcends grace and ethnicity, clash and culture. And when you think now in the immediate of these two individuals being born, it's not simply murder that's taking place, but it's an act of fratricide, a brother killing a brother. How many people do you think were alive in the world at the time that Habib takes the life of Habib? Just picture in your head. It's not a lot of people. And if the world at that time where you can count the number of people in existence on your hands is still too small for individuals who came out of the same womb to be able to tolerate each other in such a way where desire, lust, envy does not now take precedent over things like compassion, mercy and love. What are we going to do when there's billions of us, but it shouldn't be lost in a discussion on love and love for the sake of Allah. That the first act of atrocity committed in this earthly realm of existence is an act of fratricide, a brother killing a brother. And it's the same thing that happens every day again and again and again, echoing through centuries of existence until today. When you have this construct, this phrase of love for the sake of Allah, there's two terms rooted in it that a lot of us don't have familiarity with. One is the word love. What does it mean to you? I want you to think within yourself. How did you learn what it means to love somebody? Who taught you that? And as you think about how it is that you learned because a lot of you never learned how to do it, the way somebody taught you two plus two equals four, the way somebody broke down certain types of curricula to you. Nobody ever sat down and said, this is what love looks like. This is how you love in a healthy way. I want you to think in a second reflection point beyond today going into many tomorrows. When was the first time you actually felt loved in your life? Real love without condition without qualification. May Allah never make us from amongst those who feel unloved. And may Allah had never let us be those who let the people around us feel unloved. Yes, think about it on a real level, a practical level. The very onset it believes can interject now a sin that kills a brother from another brother. And you can see within a room that diversity is not something that's meant to be a checkbox. It's not a congratulation that you can pat yourself on the back that says that, Hey, there's one black person that comes to my masjid, but then I have a friend that comes from a different walk of life, but you allow for yourself to think deeply. What does it mean to both love and then to deepen that love within a prism that says it is for the sake of the divine? The verse that went along with this session in its description from Surat Al-Ali Amran that many of us know that all of you hold fast to the rope of Allah. It's a verse that speaks to us about brotherhood, diversity, etc, etc. The things that get in the way that got in the way of Gabriel's heart are the same things that get into your heart, which is the thing that's function is to love. So if you have a desire or lust, you have something that catalysts and motivates you to be able to explain why you are distant from other people, the rest of creation. Why the basis of your bond is not rooted in something like compassion and mercy. Real Mahabba is going to come back to you in some capacity. I want to give you a few different reasons as to why sometimes there's obstacles. One, the heart, it just loves. And it's going to love what you tell it. It's supposed to love and what it is that you put in its presence. So if you talk to yourself in a way that says my sense of self is rooted based off of whether I have a ring on my finger or not, or whether my child has a ring on their finger, whether they have a big home or this many cars or this many children. My sense of self is rooted not just in who I invite to my home, but who I would never let come to my home who would never break fast with me. How can you have a deep love for just humanity on a whole when a society that is rooted in materialistic existence necessitates you having to be away from others so you could care less what somebody else has to not have in order for you to have as much as you have. So I don't want to think about everybody else who has to exist without means so that I can wear what I wear. I can drive what I drive. I can eat what I eat. I don't want to think about what it means that I'm able to live in certain parts of cities with certain amounts of funding going to certain schools and the roads are paved in certain ways and their security in certain ways, but the other part of the town that I never go to. I don't want to think about that. I don't want to think about what it means that for me to live in the house that I live in gentrification necessitates pushing out generations of families that have lived in these neighborhoods for a long time. You can love and it has nothing to do with God or you can love with the presence of the divine. Both inwardly and then manifesting outwardly that recognizes a shared humanity and says that I'm Muslim. I'm supposed to do it different from everybody else. It's not going to happen if you think more about what people will say based off of who you invite into your homes or not. If you have ever told someone in your family that they shouldn't be friends with someone from a certain race or ethnicity. If you tolerate not allowing people to marry someone from a different culture. These are not indications of love for the sake of God. If you are in a place where you can hear people get on the stage and ask you to donate to support orphans who have nothing. They have nobody to look after them. And in your head all it is that you're thinking is let this person get off the stage. You are witness to yourself as to what your heart is inclined towards. And you have to reflect introspectively not with self deprecation because to get to a destination necessitates being real on where do I actually stand in relation to it. The obstacle of the dunya is real. May Allah protect us from this. A second obstacle that's critical to understand. It's really hard to love somebody else when you don't love yourself. I can't fully completely have a love for you. When I really dislike me. The hadith that says that you love for your brother what you love for yourself is rooted in an idea of being able to have recognition of a common good and wanting for others certain things. But it also ends with an idea that you love things for yourself. Do you like the person that you are? Is the way that you treat people help them to also find a sense of love for themselves. Your rhetoric, your talk, the conversations that you have hours was a prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam who took people in a community that nobody wanted anything to do with. Help them to recognize what was inherently good within them and empower them based off of it. The kind of people that we would never think could have a love based relationship with God. The companion comes to take the HUD punishment for drinking. When people spoke poorly of him. What does our messenger say? Don't say those things. He loves Allah and his messenger. He's helping that person to not give in to the nonsensical thoughts of those that are around and to understand that there's something good within you. It's going to be hard to see beauty in others if you can't see your own light. If you cannot embrace your own luminosity. And it's one of the biggest variables that come into our lives that keeps us from really loving all those that are around us. I don't really like things about me and I don't know what to do with it. If you are an elder in this room, you have to be beyond smart as to how you talk to young people and not just young who are children, but young who are younger than you. So even if you are 80 and the youngster is now 60, they still have impact from your words. So don't point out people's flaws only. Don't let them only hear as to why you think they make mistakes. If you have never told a young person in your life that you love them, remember who your teacher is, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. You can take the abstract and theoretical that comes from the microphone over to you and just go in one ear and out the other or think about how it's transformative of me. And a lot of what we pass on to others is only what we possess in the first place. So if nobody told you they were proud of you, it might be harder for you to sell somebody that you're proud of them. If people constantly pushed you down and critiqued you and hurt you, I'm sorry they should not have talked to you like that, but you got to disrupt the cycle and you got to follow in those prophetic footsteps. One of the hardest things to overcome but is necessary is to be able with confidence in appreciation of everything Allah has given to us is to actually start to chip away at the parts of myself that I don't like. And once I can learn to love me and everything my strengths and non-strengths, it's going to be a lot easier for me to go out and love a world that is very different from me. But if I'm more prone to wrestle and struggle with my own insecurities and not know how to overcome my mistakes, it's going to build up and I'm just going to see what's wrong with everybody else constantly. I'm going to put barriers where there's not supposed to be barriers. They're going to come in the way. How do you start to overcome it on a practical level? How do you start to look at it deeply within yourself? It can be hard to do on your own, so surround yourself with good people. Allow for yourself to be in a place where you can recognize the need for positive voices in your life, spaces where you can self-express, to be in gatherings that are gatherings that are rooted in shared internals. I love coming to Miftah events because I love hanging out with the Wahid brothers. They're just nice people, man. Masha'Allah. And I've been in numerous spaces with different people all over the world. And I can tell you when you find people who help uplift your inside, you're going to want to fly across the country to just spend moments with them. And then you take that invigorated spirit and you go back to your own spaces. Because this is Quran. A jaza al-ahsani ila al-ahsan that is a reward for beauty, anything other than beauty. It perpetuates itself. And you go and you go and you become that catalyst of light. You become that catalyst of real goodness and beauty. And you start to bring in a much-needed love that is categorized as being rooted in something that is for the sake of the Divine. And our God is a God that loves us not just because of who we are, but he loves us because of who he is as a Zohan. And you seek to embody that within yourself. And you just got to love people because they're people. You love humanity because you share humanity with them. And it goes back to what I was saying to you in the beginning. How did you learn how to love in the beginning? How did you learn how to implement it for yourself? Who taught it to you? Where did it come from? If we went one by one by one, most of us stopped learning how to treat others by the time we were in kindergarten. After that, the curricula was just rooted in something that was about the pursuit of something rooted in the dunya, wealth. The conversations around ethics and values, they stopped. Why does so much of the Quran talk about how we're supposed to treat people? Why are there so many hadiths about character, ethics, values? So you got to break out of the classes that are just on tahara. You know how to make wudu now. You got to be empowered at the fact that your teachers have taught you the thick that you need for where you are in your life and where you are at this juncture. You got to start tapping into the rest of yourself and just start thinking deeply. Do I treat people well? The elders, the youngsters, people who are my neighbors is love the basis of what's coming for me. If you don't even know what the word means, how are you going to be able to answer that question? When you go home from this place tonight, I want you to take out a notebook and just write at the top of it, what does love mean to me? What does it look like? And then just write for yourself and answer. And I want you to think about who are the people that I love in my life? And be real, be honest. Not the ones you're supposed to say, but the ones that you actually love. Who are they? It might be a hard reflection question, but I want you to think about who is it that makes me feel loved? Where are the spaces that I go where I feel loved? Do the people that I love actually know that I love them? Because you know the Hadith as well as I do, our messenger tells his companions, you love that person, go tell them you love them. When was the last time you did that? You've ever been for Hajj? It's amazing experience. May Allah enable us to be invited back to his house and the house and the illuminated city of his messenger, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. May Allah end all of the oppression and injustice that comes out of those countries. I've gone to Medina and Mecca and there are millions of people that are there purely for the sake of Allah. Now the other end of the construct. And I've sat down in gatherings of people that I don't know and never will meet again likely from all corners of the world. I've sat down and had conversations with people who don't speak my language and I don't speak their language, but we still were able to communicate because we were there for the sake of Allah and being there for the sake of Allah is what informed the love that we had for each other. I can still see the faces of people that I sat with in certain parts of the haram, in certain prayers. You want to start to identify for yourself and that other end of this as you start to reflect on what does love mean for the sake of Allah? Who is Allah to me? Because you can dress man the way somebody else dresses and eat what somebody else eats. You can even go through the motions of prayer the way somebody else prays. It's not hard to prostrate with your body but if you want to start prostrating with your heart you want to start prostrating with the rest of you. You have to think for yourself who is the God that I worship? Who do I know Allah to be? You can't believe something just because somebody else believes it. Faith can be reasonable. It's not always just religious and spiritual. You came into this place and you believe that there would be lights in it. There's chairs to sit in. There's certain things that we have conviction in. And the same yakin that you have in these day to day occurrences water is going to come out my faucet. You got to believe in God, not just like that but also believe in God's love like that. He tells you he is al-wadood. So when anybody says how do you know Allah loves you? Say because he says he is the source of love. And then you reflect and you deepen. I am the dhani abdibi. I am as my servant thinks I am. If I asked you who is Allah to you what would you say? And then the two unfamiliars going together I don't know what love means. I don't know if I actually even love anybody. I don't even know if anybody really loves me. I love you. I know these brothers who put this conference on they love you. I know they're going to get to places early tomorrow and they're not even going to think twice about it. Sheikh Abdullah was on this stage and he was speaking while his flight is an hour to departure so that he can transit to another city and catch a early morning flight back to his city so he's just teaching more people there. He loves you if you don't know and then you also don't know who Allah is to you other things are going to then start governing your decision making your choices and it's not going to be for the sake of God but it's still going to be in motivation of something and whatever that other thing is it's not going to give you the solace the balance, the contentment that doing something out of love will give to you and that's why you have to do it for the sake of your own heart. I'm going to tell you one more thing I know Baytullah said this and this is really going to be the last thing I'm going to tell you we're Muslim and you can be like obviously yes we are but we're meant to be a little bit different from everybody else we're not meant to just go into our houses of worship and be with ourselves but it's meant to be transformative and then we go out and leave the world a little bit better I want you to think just about how amazing this is that you are seated where you are seated right now my grandfathers, both of my grandfathers six foot four tall, Kashmiri, Punjabi men my grandmothers were both five foot tall you can tell what end of the gene pool I landed on after partition my father's family moved to Lahore they lived in Guamundi if any of you have ever been there and the house they lived in was probably the length of this stage doubled two rooms my grandfather, my father's father he would ride a bike to a bank where he was a teller and then come home and have my dad and my uncle sit outside under a street lamp because they had no electricity in their house where they studied to become doctors because when you live under colonization there's not a lot of things that you can do where you don't have to answer to somebody who tells you that your way of life is backwards and for many people becoming a doctor was a way to not have to answer to that kind of nonsense and I think about my grandfather and in our collective history that incorporates the realities of colonization of slavery, of imperialism supremacy impacting so many of our lives I want you to think about your ancestors and people that you are connected to going back generations as much as you can you think any of them would think that you'd be sitting right now in California in a gathering like this Qabab ibn Arat radiallahu an Umar ibn al-Khattab saw him with his back covered one uncovered blisters and scars and this is a man who asked the Prophet why don't you make da'a for us ask Allah to give us victory and when he is seen bareback to give you context Umar radiallahu an says how did this happen and he says in the early years of persecution they used to make me lay on a bed of flaming coals and I was forced to stay there until the blood from my back extinguished the flames and he's now asking the Prophet why don't you make da'a for us why don't you ask Allah to give us victory and our Prophet ibn al-Khattab tells him to not say such things but this is not contrary to his being his being a source of mercy because what else is he going to say that you're right we don't have what it takes we're not going to be able to overcome these struggles he's going to say no Ya Qabab today is hard but tomorrow will be better what do you think people like Qabab ibn Arat were thinking when the Prophet delivers a farewell sermon to 120,000 plus companions when they can walk into the city of Mecca and with real love not even have to cause pain or hurt to any of their persecutors everybody's forgiven what do you think now I want you to think about people who are in your heritage that struggled that went across entire plains of this worldly existence so that you can get to where you are right now my grandfather likely could never imagine that I'd be standing where I am at this moment and I know what he had to go through and the people before him had to go through my family's from Kashmir may Allah end the occupation there and end the occupation in Palestine and make us the people who in our generation see a free Kashmir and a free Palestine and I can tell you what keeps me going every day is real love I love the people of my community I love the people of my city and I'm gonna get up and do whatever I can to keep going and it's not because I don't get tired but the positivity can give an energy unlike anything that negativity brings to you so you might not be getting done only what you uniquely can because what's missing is that love and so you take everything that our teachers taught us on this stage today and you bring it back to you because your heart is yours nobody else will choose your choices and you think how does this love factor in my life how do I start to build it and spread it and motivate through it and in the midst of so much darkness where people are every day forgotten I'm gonna share as much light as I can as much love as I can as much of myself as I can I'm not gonna do it in expectation of anything in return because that's what somebody who's motivated by love really does you just do it because your heart's telling you to do it and every part of your body wants to just do it and the secret is that that's what the reward is at the end of it to get to that place Sheikh Muhammad Yaqubi, may Allah preserve him he once said that the entire point of all of this is for us to just recognize Allah's love for us and that you spend your entire existence in just realization of that love the prohibitions, the obligations, the boundaries, whatever else it's all because of God's love and don't let the ritual be the goal but make it a means to something and let yourself then deepen in it grow in it it can be scary and intimidating but once you embrace it it'll give you an unbounded courage the ability to be bold in your audacity then you follow in the footsteps of the best of creation Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam what better footsteps to follow in if I can never be helpful to any of you if there's anything you have going on please don't hesitate in reaching out insha'Allah Ta'ala would be my honor to be able to assist in whatever it is that I can but if this is the only time that we are meant to be together then I pray insha'Allah Ta'ala Allah Azza wa Jalla gathers us all together again in the best of places in the world beyond this one please keep me in your da'a's you and your loved ones will be in mind always may Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala guide us and protect us may He bless us with knowledge that benefits us may He bless us with a Tawfiq to understand and implement that knowledge into our daily lives may He guide and bless us all Allah Ta'ala Aalim wa Billahi Tawfiq Wassalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Ta'ala Wa Barakatuh Mufti Sahib asked me to make da'a it's a dangerous thing to give you a perspective I was making da'a the other day and my nine-year-old daughter was sitting in my lap and the poor girl fell asleep because of the length of the da'a if you want to put your heads down go for it I want you to recenter yourself just as we make da'a really believe in a God that is listening I know we've been sitting for a while but center yourself to the space allow for yourself to not just be physically present but present in every sense of who it is that you are insha'Allah Ta'ala Allah Azza wa Jalla will accept for us our da'a and grant us even better than what it is that we are asking of Him We begin this supplication in your name Ya Allah and beseech you to send your choice of salutation upon your most beloved Sala Allahu Ta'ala We ask that you shower your infinite mercy upon this gathering granting each and every one who is present herein in our loved ones only the best in this world and the best in the next We ask Ya Allah that if all of us are meant to be together only at this time at this place whether we are young or old, male or female regardless of our race, our ethnicity, our social class our country of origin, our cultural heritage whether we are Muslim or come from a different walk of life Ya Rabbi if our individual hearts are meant to be in the presence of all of their hearts that are gathered here only at this time at this place then gather us all together again in the best of places in the world beyond this one We turn to you Ya Allah you who are the source of life, of truth, of sustenance and love We turn to you at the end of this auspicious gathering in pursuit of true knowledge and understanding make us from the wise Ya Rabbi who implement everything that it is that we have learned and those who seek out only wisdom grant us contentment that only wisdom can a contentment that escapes so many thank you for all those you have placed into our lives who have spoken words of truth, love and wisdom to us even when we didn't want to hear them grant us the wisdom to know when you are using someone to speak instruction into our hearts and the strength and courage to follow through with that guidance even when it's difficult grant us wisdom that does not lead us simply to wealth in the world but leads us to real love and understanding and our pursuit of knowledge make us those who find that which our hearts are in need of and guide us always as we travel this world with an ever increasing thirst for real truth it is usually the ignorant who believe they always know the unaware who think they understand make us those who are always in pursuit of growth and never satisfied with where we currently stand make us those who increase in our wisdom through sound reflection and contemplation and keep us from becoming those who only gain understanding through experience grant us a deep control over our emotions and never let us become those whose anger overpowers our intelligence to know others is intelligence but to know ourselves is Hikma, real wisdom to exert control over others is a sign of strength but to be able to control ourselves is real power make us from the strongest of the believers and let us never be those who gain the world at the expense of losing our souls as we leave from this conference grant us strength of all kinds put Baraka and Taufiq into each of our endeavors put into our beings a desire for nothing less than true excellence and to push ourselves to try our very best let each of us excel at all that it is that we do and with each success in this world grant us more success in regards to the world beyond this one for all those who have come here ya Rabbi bless us always make us those who act only with knowledge and to never leave any knowledge that we have been given unacted upon show us how to use it with wisdom to use it to bring benefit to this world and all those who are in it and to be a means of benefit for us in the world beyond this one help us to use what it is that we have learned in our time here everything that we have acquired as well as the relationships that we have built to make this world a little bit better in ways that only we uniquely can as my brothers and sisters who have gathered here look forward from this place help them to look with foresight and let their foresight be rooted in courage, never fear let each one who is assembled here meet the future with hope and make them the hope that we need for our futures to be filled with love, life and light send them only those who will be their helpers and supporters and protect them always from any harm or tribulation any affliction, anxiety or anguish make them those who are never afraid to dream give them inspiration to work towards achieving each of their heart's aspirations to find strength through service of your creation success in each failure increase each one of them in knowledge that is beneficial and protect them from that knowledge that does not benefit them or any of those that are around them help them yalla to deepen their beneficial knowing to know their strengths and to live by them to know their character and how to increase it to know their never let them feel any pain but if they do then help them to know how to heal from it to know their value and how to share it to know their blessings and how to be grateful for them to know their wants and to see where they conflict with their needs to know their shortcomings and how to confront and defeat them to know how to really forgive all those that wronged them and actually forgive them to know how to seek forgiveness from those that they have wronged and to actually forgive them to know what charity is by being generous with their wealth and their time to know what integrity is by being honest and truthful and to know what goodness is by extending their hands without qualification to all those who are in need help each and everyone who is coming to this space to know who it is that they are and not let the people they are today be afraid to ever meet the people they can be tomorrow help them to truly know themselves better today they are in this world and through that understanding, ya Allah help them to better themselves and their knowing of you and your mercy to know you and your love perfect them inwardly and to always be in control of their hearts make them from amongst those who live with true contentment every day of their lives and grant them an abode in the place of ultimate contentment in the world beyond this one allow for their beings to always be filled with self-love so they may go out and share that love with others rather than a love of themselves that keeps them from doing all that they are able to do when their hearts are heavy and they are filled with darkness bring people to them who illuminate them through kindness, compassion, and love make them always the reason that people have hope in this world never the reason that people might dread it help them to see this world always through hearts that are drawn towards goodness to see the goodness in all those who are around them and within themselves and to never be those who elevate themselves by denigrating others to see the benefit in any challenge that comes their way and to not pass on a gift that can only be acquired through patience and perseverance help all of us, ya Allah to silence fear and abolish anxiety to overpower indifference and break away from greed to eliminate arrogance and defeat racism to be bold enough to ask of you to make us those who only do that which is good make us those who find real peace and real love and not just the semblance of it those who give real peace and real love and not just the facade of it make our motivation always selflessness, not selfishness sincerity and never self-centeredness because those who always follow goodness help us to be patient and forgiving and to always visit the sick to respect our elders and to give of our wealth to be just in all of our dealings and to be honest and trustworthy to be gentle and loving and to take care of those who are in need to always love for others what we love for ourselves help us to speak good and only good and to otherwise be silent to respect and honor all human beings irrespective of their religion, color, race, gender, language, status property, birth, profession or class make us those who remember always the sacrifices that others made so that we could be where we are today make not the pursuit of this world our goal but let our goals be for the best in the next world help us to sustain everything that we have learned in these hours that we have spent together and to share what it is that we take from this place to all those that we will meet give us confidence that helps us to see our strengths as well as our weaknesses and protect us from arrogance which lets us only see weakness in the world around us give us the courage to reach our potential and protect us from the fear that keeps us from doing so let our goal be gradual and consistent and help us to strive every day even if it is very little enrich our lives with the richness of our souls grant us companionship that helps us to reach our best and keep us from companions that hold us back grant us friends who encourage us towards all that is good and keep us from friends who take us towards that which is not arrange our hearts with those hearts that are gentle and tender and make us amongst those whose presence brings benefit and relief make the Quran our guide and grant us a deep understanding of it make the sunnah our goal both inward and outward aspects of it make our prayer our anchor granting us the true sweetness that only salah and dua can make the best of our deeds the last of our deeds let us not leave this world other than an estate that is most pleasing to you Ya Allah accept our dua Ya Allah accept our dua Ya Allah accept our dua Ya Allah by the barakah of this gathering accept our dua Ya Allah by the presence of the righteous that are here accept our dua Ya Allah by the sincerity of the most sincere that are here accept our dua a special dua Ya Rabb for our brothers and sisters at the Miftah Institute for all of our teachers who came and shared the stage for every volunteer who has given up their time as well as all those people who we might not ever think about Ya Rabb really know that they exist the people who put the chairs out that we're sitting in the ones who put out the tables in the cloth and served us the meals that we had those who cooked it with their hands all those who played a role in facilitating any part of this gathering Ya Rabb give to them only the best in this world and the best in the next and help us to truly understand Ya Allah that you put entire armies of people in motion just so we can be where we're seated at this moment how can we not recognize the love you have for us bless all of them Ya Rabbi protect us always from hearts that are not humble tongues that are not wise and eyes that have forgotten how to cry forgive us for our shortcomings and guide and bless us all Rabbana takabbal minna inna ka anta sem yul alim butub alayna ya maulana inna ka anta tawab al raheem wa sallallahu ta'ala ala khairi khalkihi mohammadin wa alihi wa sahbihi ajma'een bi rahmatika ya ar-Rahman raheemin jazakum Allah khair wassalaamu alaikum warahmatullahi ta'ala wa barakatum