 Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, Alhamdulillah ar-Rabbi l-Alamin, wa sallallahu wa sallim abarik ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala ala Ali, wa sahbihi, wa sallim ajma'in. Allahumma ftahlina fatuhu al-arifin wa fiqnathu fiqa salihin ya arham ar-Rahimin, wa sallallahu wa sallim abarik ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala Ali, wa sahbihi wa sallim. As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu, alhamdulillah, I hope everybody is doing well. So we are continuing on in this discussion about faith in trying times and specifically today we're going to be talking about how exactly does our faith as it grows in trying times or as we respond in trying times, how exactly do we start to use that and that energy that we have to prepare for the blessed month of Ramadan. Alhamdulillah we know that Ramadan is right around the corner so we're going to really weave that into the discussion inshallah and then we will end off in the next class about very specific preparation that we can do inshallah for Ramadan. So let's start with a quick review in terms of what we've been discussing so far, just a quick recap. So as we mentioned difficulty, tribulation, adversity, it's really a chance for us to see which direction we're going to go in. God says He's going to test us. He says in the Quran, I'm going to test you, it's a guarantee, it's going to happen. You can respond with patience, you can respond with the opposite of patience, you can respond with being ungrateful, you can respond with being grateful, you can respond in virtuous ways, you can respond in the opposite of virtue. But He says He's going to do it. So what are tests then? At a very basic level, part of one of the reasons that we get a test is to see exactly how we're going to respond to a test. A teacher gives you a test in class, they want to see are you going to get an A, are you going to get a B, are you going to get a C, D, or F. Similarly, Allah gives us tests and for one person a test could result in a lot of khayr and blessings and a lot of goodness, like basically they pass the test, they get a good grade. For another person, they could not do so well in the test and so that's one of the simple reasons why we are tested. One of the other wisdoms though behind tests and how it relates to our faith is that they're really sent to teach us. The Prophet ﷺ said that he was sent as a teacher. He emphasized the fact that he was sent as a teacher. So if he is sent as a teacher, one of the goals of our faith and we know we've discussed this in the Friday reminders and we've been discussing this in the Sunday classes as well, that one of the main reasons why we are even created is to learn. One of the reasons why we are created is to learn about God. وَاَوْمَا خَلَقْتُ جِنَّ وَالْإِنْسْ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُونَ This famous ayah in the Quran that we only created mankind and jinn to worship. To worship Allah. To worship me, Allah says. And the commentators say on that it actually means to worship Allah in an experiential way meaning to know Allah, that that is the reason why Allah created human beings. Now, as we extrapolated from that, right? One of the ways to first know Allah is to first get to know yourself. As the tradition says, the one who knows himself or herself knows his Lord or her Lord, right? And so it's important for us then to begin this process of learning about ourselves so that we can begin to learn about Allah. It starts with self-knowledge. It goes into knowledge about other realities, other aspects of life and eventually through that process of Allah gives us tofeeq, we reach the knowledge of God. One of the ways though which he teaches us about him is he teaches us about him in different circumstances, right? Like you learn about human beings. We've been talking about this idea. You learn about human beings based on the situations that they're facing in life. When everything is good and dandy, a human, you're only going to learn a certain part about somebody, right? About a coworker, you're only going to learn a certain side of them. But when things get tough, you learn a different side of them. Similarly, in relation to life, you and I learn a different part about ourselves when we go through tough times. And most importantly though, we learn about different attributes of Allah. We know that Allah has many attributes. 99 is one of the ones that's mentioned in the traditions, right? Allah has 99 names or 99 attributes. So we might love learning about the names of Rahman and Rahim, the most merciful, the most compassionate, or Al-Latif, right? The most gentle, learning about them in a sense we like experiencing them. Who doesn't like experiencing mercy and ease and gentleness? Everybody likes that. But Allah will also teach us about his names, right? Dhul-Jalali wal-Iqram, right? The majestic names that the most majestic and the honorable, right? The names that are a little bit more heavy, that are very, very heavy, right? But these are all his names, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Glory be to Allah, who is so exalted that he has so many different attributes and that we're privileged as human beings to even be able to learn a portion of these and understand him. But we understand them intellectually, okay, that's cool. It's not hard to learn things intellectually. You just have to like, you pick up a book, you read the book. Okay, you can get the concept intellectually. It's but learning about something and experientially, that's hard. That's the goal. Our goal of our faith is experiential knowledge and experiential reality. It's not just about memorizing a bunch of facts. That's good. But it's about putting that into practice and then experiencing a feeling inside which drives us into a state of further nearness with our Lord. So when we go through these tests and difficulties and when we discuss this idea of faith in trying times, our faith is actually further increased and hopefully further perfected in trying times because we're getting to know parts of God and through our experience in life through this lived reality that we didn't get to know before. And that's that's that's that's something for us to be grateful for, right? And we're also of course also getting to learn things about ourself. And so we mentioned a few other points last time. One of them is that as we go through this idea of understanding the point of difficulty and then examining where we're at and then examining the different lessons that God is trying to show us, one of the results of that should be an internal desire to actually want to work on ourselves and want to change. Why? Because we get to see that things are tough. Things are real. Things are intense. That this is in this life is not only about ease. It's also difficulty. And when God is showing us through let's say the current situation going on with the coronavirus, how intense and real and real things can be. He's also many of us are in states of fear and states of anxiety. Now we take a look, step back. This is a small test in the reality of the grand scheme of tests that are possible in the next life. We're talking a day, sorry, a few months of difficulty, a few months of restriction, a few months of challenges. But then what about in the next life when God can give somebody because of our actions or lack of actions in this life, he can give somebody prolonged. We're talking thousands of years, if not tens of thousands of years, if not millions of years of punishment, millions of years of intense, of a state of intense punishment, God forbid, because of our actions or lack of actions. So what should this drive us to do? This should drive us to really, really want to work on ourselves because we start to realize, hold up, I didn't even realize that things can be so intense. I didn't even realize Allah had these majestic attributes. I read about them, I learned about them maybe on Sunday school when I was a kid, but did I really actualize them? Now I'm starting to see that Allah is the most proud, He is the all compelling, He is the great one, He is the one who has everything in His control. He is the one who can do anything, He is the one who can bring humanity to its knees with something completely in the unseen. That's what He can do. If He can do that in this life, what about the day of judgment? What about the day that's supposed to last 50,000 years for some people? What about the difficulty of waiting on that day just for it to start? What about life in the grave which could go for, again, thousands and thousands and thousands of years of difficulty of being constrained? Okay, so what does that do now? That starts to wake the human being up. It starts to be like, oh snap, this is real. Life is real, this situation is real. Let me wake up, let me change, let me work on myself. And then what do we do when we start to work on ourselves, we have this realization that God actually wants us to work on ourselves and He's going to help us and He's on our side. And that's really the main point we were discussing last time, that God is on our side. He does want us to do well. He does want us to work on ourselves. He's rooting for us in very, very much in a figurative way, that God is rooting for the human being to do well. And He honored the human being because He said in the Quran, وَلَكَدْ كَرَمْنَ بَنِيْ عَدَمْ And we ennobled the Bani Adam. We ennobled the Son of Adam, which is us, this humanity. He ennobled us. But He sees though, are you going to act in the way of being ennobled or are you going to fall to the lowest of the low and not act in the best way? He mentioned in the Quran, you could, you were created in the best of forms, but you could fall to the lowest of the low. When life comes our way, we have a response. And it's on us though, to think about how we respond and to think about the effort we are going to make to ideally, if we're here, to start responding at a level that's here and eventually respond at a level that's here and eventually respond at a level that God loves and that He appreciates and that He, His select people, His closest people, His elect people, the way that they respond. That should be one of the goals that we are trying to get to. So let's talk about a little bit about how this relates to Ramadan, right? Ramadan is right around the corner and it is a very, very amazing month, excuse me. It is known as the month of change. It's one of the main aspects of Ramadan is it's supposed to be a month where we are going to change, where we are going to work on ourselves, right? So that's one part of the month of Ramadan. Another part of the month of Ramadan is that it is the month where we're supposed to learn how to become closer to God with this very real idea, something known as Taqwa. What is Taqwa? Allah says in the Quran. Ya ayyuhal ladina amanu kutiba alaykum as-siyam kama kutiba alal ladina min qablikum la'allakum tattaqun that oh you who believe fasting is prescribed for you. As it was prescribed for those who came before you in order that you may attain this state of Taqwa, la'allakum tattaqun, in order that you may become mutsaqi, that you may have this state where you are readily aware of Allah, that you have achieved this experiential state of being conscious of Allah in every single thing that you do. But again, that's the definition. What does that mean though? And how does it relate to the time that we're in? How does it relate to the situation that we're in right now? How does it relate to our faith overall? I want us to think about this in terms of spectrums and kind of like levels, okay? So let's start with the idea of heedlessness. So heedlessness is at the bottom of the spectrum or being heedless, not caring at all about anything, not caring about God's rules, seeing everything as optional or as not something I have to take seriously, not taking the conditions of the religion seriously, just generally being in a state of being heedless, which we all have portions of our life where we're heedless, we've all had times in our life and we all still have times of our life where we're heedless. Heedlessness is here and then being fully aware of Allah or you could say the state of taqwa is here, okay? So one of the main goals of life and especially one of the goals of Ramadan, Ramadan is like a boot camp. It's supposed to teach us how to live the rest of our life. It's to go from this state of heedlessness to this state of taqwa, okay? Shoo, like go like this, like right, ascend the levels, ascend the ranks, okay? On the other spectrum, you have a state of anxiety and then trying to achieve the state of tranquility, okay? One of the main goals of most human beings, throughout humanity, you ask people what they're trying to do and they just want to be in a state of calmness. And then the other one is a state of happiness, right? We talked about this in the Friday reminder. Let's talk about this in more detail. What does it mean? Allah says in the Quran al-Khuliq al-insana halu'a that he created the human being in a state of anxiety. Then he describes in another surah one of the levels of faith known as one of the highest levels of faith, one of the highest levels of what's called this entity called the nafs, which is the ego, the soul inside the human being, the ego, the lower self. There's different names for the nafs, but essentially the nafs can really, really, really, really, really be damaging or it can reach a state where it's actually in a state of tranquility and it may even be in a righteous state. So you go from a state of anxiety to a state of tranquility. We said state of heedlessness to a state of taqwa, anxiety to tranquility, okay? So here we're talking about base levels and then we're talking about the higher levels. And then you have the state of sadness, depression, and worry to a state of overall happiness and expansiveness. These are the three spectrums we want to discuss today. Okay, these three spectrums. In life, the more one moves at the first one goes from the state of heedlessness to being less heedless to being more mindful, right? There's a lot of conversation these days about mindfulness. Mindfulness is like one of the main themes of the Quran. God is like, yo, humanity, wake up and be mindful of who, of me, be mindful of Allah, to wake up and to realize God is there, to realize he's serious. That's very much a big part of we don't, it's a good practice and everything. We don't need outside elements to teach us about mindfulness. It's a huge part of our religion, right? To be mindful. But it is going from a state of heedless, being heedless to being in a state of taqwa and to achieve a state of mindfulness of Allah. And we'll talk about what that means. The more one does that. Now, the cool thing is, the rest of the spectrum start to move. The more one does this and starts to be more aware of God, the more the anxiety decreases and the tranquility starts to come. How does it work? We'll talk about it in a second. And then the more you start to decrease in the state of constant worry and sadness and you could even say depression, right? We're talking here about it from a spiritual point of view. We can, the mental health aspect is always going to be there, but let's talk about it from a spiritual point of view. You then also start to see this improving, right? It starts to go to a state then of happiness in a state of tranquility. How? Because Allah says in the Quran, one of the ideas behind this. Allah says in the Quran, to the Prophet of Ta'a, ma anzalna alaika al-Quran litashqa. He's calling the Prophet of the Sunnah and according to some of the commentators, we did not send this Quran for you to be in a state of to be miserable. And so the commentators, what they say and the scholars, they say, it means he sent the Quran to for you to be happy, that he wants us to be happy. Happiness is a big part of the religion. The Prophet of the Sunnah was always smiling. One of those big Sunnahs, he's always smiling. He's so happy. These days you have a bunch of Muslims who are so upset about the whole religion and so intense. I mean, yes, it has a serious part to it, but that's supposed to be on the inside. On the outside, we're supposed to be happy, right? Allah says in the Quran, he commands us to be happy, to be in a state of expansiveness. Okay, so what did we just mention? To go from the state of depression to the state of happiness, one of the goals. Meta goals, these are like the meta goals of life. And of course the goals of faith because faith is teaching us how to live a good life to go to the state of happiness. It'll start to improve the more we apply our faith, the better things we'll get. Then you go from the state of anxiety to the state of tranquility. The more we apply our faith, the more we get. And then this other major one, which governs these two, is the state of heedlessness to the state of taqwa, okay? Being in a state of, I don't really care, none of this matters, whatever, be lazy about everything, prayer time comes, forget it. You know, I'm not really like that into it. All these types of ideas that we might start to have, and it's okay if we have them, we just work on it, right? We have to just, the whole goal of life is to work and work hard. It's not to think that one has quote unquote arrived because these spectrums I'm talking about, they don't stop here and they keep going and going. And then there's people who go beyond what one even thought was possible. Some people have access to really, really, really high levels. Everybody has access to really, really high levels, but some people will put in the himma. Allah mentioned in the Quran different groups of people. And I don't wanna kind of go away from this topic, so we'll talk about that later. So, the more we attain the state of taqwa, the more naturally we're gonna stay to attain tranquility, the more we're going to attain a state of overall happiness. And Allah describes this in the Quran then in a beautiful way. He says, then, the people who are close to him, they're ones at the highest level, the awliya, inna al awliya, Allah la khufun alayhum, malahum yachsunoon, that they're not in a state of fear or anxiety or worry or grief or depression or in this state of constant trepidation and worry. What are they then? They've attained the state of the nafs al muhtmah inna. They've attained the state of the tranquil and peaceful soul. So hopefully that concept makes sense. So then let's talk exactly about what taqwa is. If you, this is very simple, if you and I attain more taqwa properly, we then, right, if we attain more taqwa, we will then attain more tranquility, insha'Allah, and we'll attain more happiness. And this could be eternal happiness, but our happiness in this life will eventually, insha'Allah, be influenced by that eternal happiness that Allah insha'Allah will grant us, right? We may, of course, we're still gonna have moments of difficulty and sadness and it's gonna be tough, but hopefully we'll see the bigger picture. All of this, these are the main goals, the main goals. There are others, but these are the central goals that most human beings are trying to achieve. Alhamdulillah, we already have it all there in our religion and we have a month to give us a shortcut to help us, right? We've said in the Quran, the reason why you fast is in order to attain taqwa. What is fasting? What does staying away from food have anything to do with being calm, being happy, and being mindful of God? Like, how does that make any sense? Well, it goes back to what is taqwa in the first place. So let's examine what taqwa is. Taqwa is this idea to guard yourself, guard myself, to guard ourselves completely against anything that could damage us. That's what taqwa is. And what better time than this time that we're in right now? Right, Alhamdulillah. This is the time that Allah has chosen for us, the time that we're in right now, where everybody is guarding themselves against everything. We're just staying six feet away from people. We are putting on masks when we go out, right? Or at least we're supposed to if we can. We are putting on hand sanitizer. We're washing our hands every, you know, often. We are limiting where we go. We are confining ourselves to our homes. Our homes are supposed to be symbolically. Let's talk about symbolically what each of these means. In our religion, the home is supposed to be the dara salam, the abode of peace, right? It's supposed to be a calm, tranquil place. One of the main reasons why many of us have so many issues is when the home environment is wrong and it's not a place of peace, we're naturally gonna start to have more issues. So the first thing that any of us can do for ourselves, our siblings, our children, especially for those who are parents, is to make sure the home environment is good. Because when the home environment is solid and stress-free, these things that I'm mentioning start to become a lot easier, right? Then how does it relate to everything else going on? Well, let's think about it. Just like you socially distance yourself, it's like social distancing. Let's say I'm walking on the street. Like I was just going for a walk earlier. I saw somebody coming by the street. I like moved a good, you know, 10 feet away, right? At six feet at minimum, right? I moved a good 10 feet away and then they kept walking and we were walking over there. Now, how does that relate to takwa? Because what takwa is, is it's this idea of when I see sin coming my way or a temptation coming my way or Satan coming my way in some way or another, I move, I get out of the way. I put it or I put a guard between myself and that sin. This is such a good example in the times that we're in right now. It's a good reminder for us to understand what takwa is. That's what it is, right? It's that, okay, I'm gonna put a face mask on to prevent the physical potential of a physical virus. Statistically speaking, the chance is so small for somebody to get it. But yet it's, I mean, statistically speaking of 330 million people that say in the States, the chance is small, but we still should take the precautions. In sin, the chance for us to do the sin is we're more likely to do the sin than not do the sin because it's so tempting. And yet we don't even take the precautions. So just like we put the face mask on, takwa is this idea of putting layers between us and the sin. And we'll talk exactly about what that means. Just like we wash our hands now. Now I went outside, there could have been exposure. I wash my hands. What is the whole point of our religion? It's as soon as we make a mistake or even if we think we made a mistake, it's to wash ourselves, to spiritually, right? We start with the wudu and then we do the prayer. And the Prophet ﷺ, he said that prayer, it takes care of the minor sins in between the prayers. Jumma to jumma, the minor sins are forgiven. Ramadan to Ramadan, right? These are chances for us to have these opportunities for the sins to be forgiven. There are us, it's spiritually washing and preparing, and preparing ourselves for whatever we have coming next, right? So all of these examples that you and I are facing. Think about how takwa applies to them. Takwa is what? Takwa is the idea of guarding yourself immensely. It is the idea then, secondarily, of feeling that Allah is near to you, that he is very close to us. And then having a desire then to want to be close to him. And then what does that lead to? It is then to make sure we are careful with our inward acts, our outward acts and our intentions and anything then that comes or that's even deeper than the intention. How do we do that? Well, there's so many, for example, let's talk about the outward acts, okay? Well, if I'm gonna put a layer between myself and outward acts, let's say that I'm used to, you know, let's say I'm in college or something and I'm like used to going to parties with my friends. I'm gonna put a layer between myself and the outward acts. If I wanna have takwa, I'm going to tell them, nope, I can't. Or I'm gonna tell them, don't call me anymore when you're trying to go out on Friday night because I'm trying to work on myself, right? I'm gonna put one layer there or I'm just gonna, or I'm gonna put a layer, I'm not gonna pick up the call. But that's takwa is putting the force field there. Put the social distancing, the sin distancing. Put a distance between yourself and the sin, right? Okay, how does it relate then to other things? Let's say I'm used to, let's say every time I talk to somebody, like I have a certain friend or someone in my family or something, every time we start talking about a certain person, we start talking bad about them. Like this usually happens. Like usually there'll be like one person in the family, like a distant relative or something. They're like, everybody kind of sort of doesn't like. And so then as soon as you bring them up, everybody's like, oh God, let me tell you what they did to me. And then everybody's like, let me tell you what they did to me, right? Then they'll start to get into that, that risky, risky, very risky and sinful gossip about that person. So what is takwa? Takwa is to go five extra steps, just like we would go so many extra steps to put the face mask on, et cetera, is to not even make sure that that person is not brought up in conversation. As soon as you send somebody even bringing up their family in conversation and you might say, oh, how are they doing? You might, let me change the topic very gracefully. That's takwa, practically applied, right? Takwa is as soon as let's say you look at, you're usually looking through your Instagram feed or something like that. And you see pictures of inappropriate address men or women and you know it's tempting for you. What's takwa? Takwa is to put a few layers between yourself. It's to unfriend people who post that. It's to delete the app in and of itself. There's higher grades of takwa. You could wear a serious mask. You could wear no mask. You could go out into the state where COVID-19 is spreading everywhere. You could go into the epicenter of the disease. Whatever you want, right? But when we enter ourselves into sin openly, we're just going into the center of the disease. When we put layers between us, we're acting with takwa. That's the simple concept of what takwa is. Same thing with our feet, okay? Like if I know every time I leave the house, the first thing I do is I go to a place which, let's say I go to the bars or something that's, I don't know, let's say I go to a place where I'm eating something I shouldn't be eating. Whatever it is, okay? Well, the first, I need to then put obstacles between myself and that situation. That is, or if there's certain people who every time I hang out with them, they're like, oh, let's go to the happy hour. Let's go here, let's go there. And you know that they're going to try to lure you into something that it's tempting. Of course it's tempting. We're human beings. We have desires, it's tempting. But you know that they're gonna try to do that. You put a few layers between yourself. That's takwa. So the goal of Ramadan is to go from a state of being heedless to being mindful. And what is mindfulness? It's takwa. And so then you achieve, when Allah says, Allah al-Lakum tat takoon in this famous ayah about the month of Ramadan and about fasting, that that's what fasting is going to do. But again, still, how does it relate? Food, like how does, what does food have anything to do? Staying away from food have anything to do with takwa. How does it work? Well, think about it. Food and water, again, water. This is water. I'm gonna take another sip of water. It's permissible right now for me to take a sip of water. I'm not in a state of fasting, right? It's totally allowed. Even when I am in a normal state of life, water is totally fine for the human being to drink. Food is totally fine for me to eat. It's not alcohol. It's not pork. It's not, you know, unhalal meat. It's none of that. I can eat food. I can drink water. So if I'm gonna put a whole layer between myself and imagine this is me, this is the halal and this is the haram. If I'm gonna not even allow the halal to get in my body. Like I can't even drink water during the day. I can't eat anything in the day. I can't eat the delicious cookies or the french fries or all the things I enjoy eating. I can't eat that. Then when I go and I'm about to do something haram or I'm about to eat something haram, whatever it is I'm about to do something I shouldn't do, it's gonna be easier for me to stop myself because I've put a layer there, right? I put the social dist, I put the Ramadan distancing between myself and the sin. That is one of the wisdoms of the month of Ramadan and how food relates. And we'll talk specifically about how food relates to the nuffs and to the appetite in just a little bit. But in parallel when you do this, the beauty of it is that everybody wants to get rid of our anxiety and our sadness. Like nobody wants to be like, oh yeah, like what's your goal in life? Oh, I don't just wanna be like tripping out and always anxious and a state of depressed and just, you know, like that. Nobody wants to do that. Everybody wants to be upbeat. They wanna be happy. They wanna be in a state of calmness. They don't want the heart to be constantly be in a state of trepidation. Well, the secret is the more you and I move from being heedless to being in a state of taqwa, the more hour we will start to move from being in the opposite of, from being in a state of anxiety to being in a state of tranquility and from being in a state of depression, grief and worry to being in a state of happiness. Those are the indicators that will start to help us move. And then there are other things we do outside of this as well. But it's very, very important to look at the root of most of our issues. There are spiritual roots, most of the issues that we go through. And so then what is the opposite of it? Again, the more heedless we are, that means the more we sin. The more the human being sins, the more the heart gets worried. The more the heart gets worried, the more the heart gets anxious. The more the heart gets anxious, the more that heart creates short-term and mid-term and long-term problems and sadness and depression type feelings inside of the human being. It's a very, very clear path to these types of problems that we have. Now, we are living in a society which is filled with these problems, but we're living in a society that's filled with sin. The more we remove ourselves from sin, the more we remove ourselves from, even sometimes we don't even think about things that we're doing that are sinful. We don't even think they're sins anymore. That's how much of a, how light we take things. But the more we remove ourselves from these things we shouldn't be doing, the more the better we're going to feel. It's at one level, it's very difficult and it's very complicated because there's so many factors into it, right? We have to put the work in. But another level, it's very simple because at least the understanding of it is simple. The framework for it should hopefully be very simple. So then what does Ramadan do? Well, Ramadan is this idea of working on our, trying to achieve this state then of taqwa. So we're going to talk about this at the outward level and we're going to talk about this at the inward level. Bismillah. So at the outward level, let's examine what we have to do in order to achieve this state of taqwa. And it starts with the limbs. So we can examine then for each limb what types of sins could we do. And then what types of things that are not exactly sins but they're still not good to do. And then what types of things then are good to do, right? So there's like, think about like level one, level two, level three for each specific limb that you and I have. Let's start with the tongue. Okay, so at the tongue you have, and the state of taqwa is the state where not only are you not sinning, but you're doing virtuous things also with what you are with that specific limb. Start with the tongue. Let's start with sins of the tongue. Okay, so at one level you have sins of the tongue that you and I want to stay away from. What are the sins of the tongue? They're lying, they're cheating. It's backbiting, backbiting and gossiping. It's telling like what's called tail-bearing formally. It means like, did you hear what happened here? Like rumor spreading, gossiping, right? Just like, oh my God, like just, you know, it's bad idea, it's slandering. Slandering is, backbiting means for me to talk about somebody in a way that they wouldn't like it if they heard it. And it's true, that's backbiting is when it's true and it's a really serious sin in our religion. Slandering is when I'm talking smack about somebody and it's not even true, I'm making it up. It's literally I'm lying about them, right? They're both obviously very, very terrible diseases of the heart and they manifest on the tongue. So when I stop, if I'm doing all of those, I'm in a state of complete heedlessness. Every time I do one of those things, I contribute to the trepidation of my heart and I contribute to my potential to become more anxious and more worried and I contribute to the potential of myself to not reach the state of happiness. I contribute to my state of depression and worry and grief and not really understanding the point of life and just kind of feeling lost all the time. To be heedless is to be lost, it's just, I don't know what's up, what am I supposed to do? What's the point of all this, right? And to have taqwa is to find your purpose, is to know what I'm supposed to do. What am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to help people, I'm supposed to worship Allah, I'm supposed to be a good human being, I'm supposed to have good character. That relates to these meta goals because when you've realized taqwa, it means you've realized the state of why the human being was created. And we mentioned again at the beginning, the human being was created in a very real way to worship God, to know God, and that means to spend time learning and worshiping in order to experientially realize the idea of knowing Allah. Allahumma salli ala sayyidina Muhammad. Allah bless our blessed prophets, Allah sallam. So we're comparing then this to the tongue. Okay, so now if I'm talking smack about people, I'm lying all the time, cheating all the time, gossiping all the time, all this stuff, that means I'm not in a state of taqwa, right? I'm in a state of heedlessness. Now let's say I put a layer between myself and talking bad about people. I stop that. Okay, I start to move up the spectrum. Then I stop lying, can't move up the spectrum. Then I stop spreading rumors about people, I move up in the spectrum. I stop all these and move up in the spectrum, okay? Now the next level is what's called putting a layer between yourself and things which are disliked. We have this idea of what's makru in our religion, right? So for example, things that are just impolite to discuss, let's say when it's named makru, like if you're constantly telling inappropriate jokes, you don't necessarily, the joke might not be so inappropriate that it's sinful, but it's definitely not virtuous. And so you put a layer between yourself and that inappropriate joke. That is moving up one level. If you're always telling, people tell racist jokes and whatnot, that definitely could be considered haram as well, but depending on the level of it, it's mocking people, ridiculing people, that type of thing. You are moving up. When you stop doing that, you're moving up in ranks, right? You may kind of sort of have a little fun with somebody, but it hurts their feelings. It's not something good to do. It might not be completely in a state of haram and sin like backbiting, but it's not good to do. It's bad character. The more you stop doing that, the more you move up in the ranks. Okay, now you're getting closer to taqwa. We're talking just about one limb here. There's so many things that we do, but we just start with one, okay? Now, we go even now to the level of, a higher degree of taqwa would be that, let's say somebody is talking about using the restroom. And instead of saying in such a vulgar way, like, yeah, I'm gonna go do this, this and this. They say something like, I'm just gonna go freshen up and the rest. They're very careful about their words and they use words that indicate they imply what they're going to do, but they're not even trying to reference things which are not necessarily seen. Nobody likes to hear about that. Nobody wants to hear about your bathroom time, dude. You know what I mean? Or you're always making bathroom jokes or like, excuse my language, but somebody's always making poop jokes, let's say. Okay, taqwa would be, of the tongue would be too, lessen that type of humor and to not, to put a guard between us. Doesn't mean it's haram. It's just, you're getting one layer closer. Then you go even one level higher where any speech that one has, one checks that speech against Allah and what Allah says and what His Messenger, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, has said. So are we spending our time just in like frivolous speech? Like we're just gonna taq, taq, taq, taq, taq, taq, just complete nonsense for no reason at all. Again, these are not, we're now talking about high degrees of taqwa. So you're now reaching the state of taqwa, right? There's talking about high degrees of taqwa. So let's not, I don't want anybody to get confused to think this is like, what's this dude saying? This stuff is haram. But let's say just sitting around, let me just sit around for an hour and talk about Trump and everything Trump's up to. So wasting my words, it's wasting my time. I'm not gonna do anything with this situation. So just like sitting around for long periods of time and discussing politics is a perfect example of this. If I should just stop doing that, I will save my words for something more useful. You know what I mean? And especially if I have no situation, no benefit in the situation. Me sitting around and discussing sports players for two hours, similarly, right? If I can put a layer between myself, I'm starting to get close and close to taqwa now. Mama Ghazali, he defines these and Mama Ghazali's one of the greatest scholars and spiritual masters in our religion. He defines this in his book on the tongue and what we need to work on with regards to the tongue. So he's talking then about frivolous speech and he says in the state of taqwa is that most of your speech is in a state of goodness. It's bringing happiness to people's hearts. It's bringing joy to people's hearts. You're never hurting anybody's feelings. It's bringing guidance to people. It's helping people go in the right direction. So an example here would be, let's say somebody asks you for advice. If you point them in the wrong direction, that's the opposite of taqwa and if they end up doing sin, that would be, you would be taken to account if you helped influence them. But if they ask you for advice and you point them in the right direction and you help them and you help them see the right point of view and then you guide them in the right direction, you get credit and not only were you acting in the state of taqwa, but you then get credit for the good that could result from that. And so what's the best answer? If somebody asks us for like very specific advice, don't let your own, our own insecurities and our own problems and our own life issues manifest when we're giving somebody else advice. Either say, I don't know, maybe you should ask somebody else, right? Or say, you know, I don't really know if what I'm gonna say is really gonna be that helpful because I myself am struggling with a ton of things, but definitely don't be in the opposite category. And these days we all feel like we need to share our opinion. So it's important, don't be in the opposite category where you guide somebody like in the wrong direction. Where they're like, yo, I'm trying to like forgive somebody and you're like, no, do you don't forgive them? They totally like did this, this and this to you. It's like, come on man, go in the side of virtue. Okay, you wanna forgive them? I think it's gonna help you a lot. That would be that using the tongue in a state of taqwa in joining good and forbidding evil, as Allah has told us, that's one of the virtuous traits of the ummah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and it makes them such a good ummah and it is then guiding that person towards goodness. And then if they did end up forgiving somebody, you would have a portion in that, right? But don't point them in the opposite direction. Obviously, right? No, no, no, no, hold the grudge against somebody, right? That would be a bad idea. That would just say, I don't really know, maybe you should go talk to somebody else about this. That would be a neutral point of view, right? But taqwa then is to make sure that for ourselves first and foremost and then how we speak to others that we're controlling. We're going now from a state of heedlessness to a state of taqwa with regards to each limb. So then examine this for each limb you have, okay? So let's start with the, we start with the tongue, okay? Then let's look at the hands. The hands will have certain sins that they're gonna be able to do and certain things that they're gonna stay away from, right? So you can map it out in the same way. Same thing with the eyes. What is taqwa with the eyes? Being heedless is to everything, you know? Like let's say that you're everything haram that you see on the internet or you see outside, you just look at it, you don't lower your gaze, right? That would be a form of obvious transgression of the eyes, right? Regularly watching violence, playing violent video games, very, very problematic for the eyes. Immediately in a state of heedlessness. What happens? As we mentioned, every time you and I act in a state where it's damaging to the heart and we are being more heedless, we increase our potential anxiety, we increase our potential for unhappiness and depression. The state of the majority of youth in our time right now is because there's so much sin out there that's just being presented in front of us visually and so the eyes are constantly being bombarded. The eyes and the ears are the fastest doors to the heart. When they're bombarded constantly, the heart goes in the state of constant worry. And so we have to take like major steps to put layers between us and all of the things that we consume, right? The violence that we regularly see when we live in a country that profits off of war. So it's trying to train at a young age people, a whole generation of youth to think that it's so fun and so cool to press a few buttons and shoot somebody and see a bunch of blood come out and then to increase your points and your levels in a game is because of that. And you actually start to then have people who get enjoyment from that. It's completely against what's called the fitra, the primordial disposition of the human being. It makes no sense when it comes to the primordial disposition of the fitra of the human being. That's not how we're supposed to act. But when you and I act that way with our hands, let's say, or with our eyes, we are going away from the state of higher states of taqwa and we are hanging out in the states of heedlessness, right? Example again with the eyes, look at the hara. What's an example then of something that the eyes should do if it's as it's getting virtuous? It's to lower its gaze to looking at, let's say the opposite gender, but then even higher than that is to lower its gaze from looking at the faults of people. It's okay, you stopped looking at the opposite gender. Now when you see somebody and you see them doing something that's wrong, cover the spiritual blemish that could come in your heart from thinking you're better than them, right? Lower your gaze to their fault. Okay, did they make mistakes? I can talk to them about it if I feel like I could help them with that situation, but not in a judgmental kind of like, what are you doing? You know what I mean? And that's so many, so many of us have been hurt when we're on our journey to religion by somebody giving us that judgmental eye and that judgmental look. That would be a state of getting closer to taqwa, right? And then the higher states of taqwa is that the eye doesn't look at anything that distracts it from Allah. It doesn't, meaning it's not like you just walk around and close eyes all day, but as soon as you see something that's gonna distract you from Allah, right? That's going to be makru or haram or waste your time, right? It could be completely permissible, let's say to watch. Let's say it's just permissible to like watch the news. Nothing wrong with it as long as like you're not walking or anybody dressed inappropriately, et cetera. But you don't want your eyes to just get constantly consumption, constant consumption, and then when you're trying to think about God and thicker, the eye is constantly getting, whatever you observed, it's constantly repeating in the heart. That would be a higher state of taqwa, to lower the eye, not waste so much time on Netflix and all these different platform Hulu and Facebook and Snapchat and Instagram. Among the higher states of taqwa is to guard our eyes from all the nonsensical content that's out there that's being pushed in front of us. It doesn't mean it's bad content, but it's surely not good content. It's just kind of like, you know, random stuff that not gonna benefit us and usually leaning on the side of negative, not usually on the side of positive. So that would be a higher state. So again, examine, right? And then there's, and the scholars, they mentioned in a very interesting way, they mentioned for each of the limbs, they mentioned the major sins and they mentioned the minor sins. And it's actually interesting that the scholars mentioned that for the whole body, there's one sin that's considered very significant for the whole body and that sin, and this is something we should take note of, that sin is the sin of disobeying and disrespecting one's parents. That it's such a significant sin that it takes the whole body into account because what, who gave birth to the body? The mother. So the body is like, yes, inna lilahi wa inna lihirajun, we belong to Allah and to Him we return. The means of which we came into life into this world was through our mothers and of course our fathers assisted in that, right? And so our parents are the reason we're even here. And so when somebody disobeys them, it's literally getting a sin for every limb of the body that on the day of judgment, Allah says that the hands will speak, the tongue will not, you won't be able to actually speak. The eyes will speak, the hands will speak, the feet will speak, the body will speak to Allah. Allah is gonna say, what did you do wrong? What did you do right? And the body will say, let me tell you everything about this dude. He did this, this, this, this, this, right? The hand will literally start talking, right? People will say like this idea when we were young, like talk to the hand, you know? And so literally now the hand's gonna talk. Okay, so the whole body will speak to the person who, when the parents were trying to advise them, like you don't know anything, let me do, it's my life. This is the downfall of one of the major downfalls of the Western society that we live in, that this idea that I'm independent, it's my life, it's, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's God's life and our parents are the ones who raised us and they are the ones who are the first line of advice that one goes to. And they're the ones we should consider most seriously when we take their advice. It doesn't mean we have to listen to every single thing as we get into our adult years of what they say, but it's considered among major disobedience, among the things that angers a lot significantly. For one, two, just completely disrespect and disobey one's parents. They tell you, don't do this. No, I'm gonna do what I want, right? Or like, who are you to tell me this? Ooh, big, big, big deal. The whole, because they are the ones who when we were young, before we were even born, they were preparing for our life. When we were in the womb, our mother was suffering a lot of difficulty to give birth to us. Then she gave birth to us. Then they're nurturing time for both parents that they took all of this effort. And we haven't done anything, most of us, to repay them for this effort. And then of course, raising us, dropping us off to school, making our lunches, taking care of us, making sure our homework was done, all the things. And then, you know, what happens in this society? They throw away all of that and they get upset. Oh, why are they telling me what to do? Why are they telling me to do this? Why are they telling me how I should approach this situation? That is the sign of, one of the major signs of, shaitan completely dominating the paradigm of this society. And we see again, in the times that we live in, that most of the responses are godless, most of the time. They don't have this idea of putting Allah at the center. Our religion puts Allah at the center. And it's a very hard concept to understand because again, the society treats it as a joke. To put Allah as the center is to put our loved ones, our elders, and especially our parents at the center. And the reason I mentioned this is because as I was thinking about the different sins of limbs, one of the books they mentioned, the whole body, the sin of the whole body, it was like the sins of the hands are this, the sins of the eyes are this, the sins of the stomach are this, the sins of the feet are this, the sin of the whole body is disobedience and disrespect to one's parents. And so it was a very good reminder for myself first and foremost, to keep that in mind. That among the ways to attain Allah's pleasure in taqwa is to obey Him with all of our limbs, but then to do virtue. And then that includes obedience to our parents as a very, very significant pillar of this. So the goal then of Ramad, so that's the outward level. Then taqwa has an outward reality and it has an inward reality. Inwardly, this is at the heart and at the level of the intellect. So the heart can also be in a state, the heart is actually the most important aspect, the spiritual heart for it to be in a state of taqwa. When the heart is in a state of taqwa, what happens? The heart is aware of the thoughts that enter it. And it just pushes some thoughts out and accepts some thoughts, right? So there are different types of thoughts that can enter the human being. The human being listens to the bad ones, the more the bad diseases in the heart start to flourish and the more we go away from taqwa. The more we listen to the good thoughts, the more the good diseases, not the good diseases, sorry, the good traits in the heart start to manifest and the more we go closer to a state of taqwa. Very simple. I'm not gonna get into too much detail, but just the four types of thoughts that can happen, according to the ulama, you have what's called satanic thoughts, you have what's called thoughts from the nafs, you have what's called thoughts from the angels, you have what's called thoughts from, good directly from God, right? Shaytani, nafsani, malakani, rabbani. Satanic thoughts are going to be thoughts that waswasa, the whispers from the devil. Now the good part about Ramadan, most of the time, it's satanic thoughts are flooding us and nafsani thoughts, the nafs is always assisting satan in giving bad thoughts to us. The satanic thoughts are locked up, but Satan, he's trained the nafs, he's like taking the nafs, the nafs is his little padwan, his little apprentice, and he's trained the nafs into his bad ways. So then the nafs is most of the time in Ramadan, we're like, where does shaitan go? We're still doing all this bad. It's because the shaitan is gone, but he already trained the nafs. But for one who is implementing Ramadan correctly, now you start to fight the nafs and get the nafs under your control and it's your chance because defense is down. The nafs has no fortress anymore. It's you versus the nafs in Ramadan and the hunger and the tarawi at your house, in this case, hopefully, right? The Quran, the dikkur, the working on ourselves, the stopping the sin, the stopping the consumption of all this nonsense that we listen to and look at and et cetera every single day, that takes the nafs down. So at the end of Ramadan one emerges and the nafs is now in a much more pure state than it was when it entered. So now when shaitan comes back when our individual shaitan comes back and he's trying to put in the thoughts, the nafs is not able to bear the thoughts as much, right? It's a very, very beautiful experience when we've used this month correctly. Then you have the thoughts that come from the angels. Angels can give thoughts to the human being, usually good thoughts, I'm sorry, always good thoughts, but they will not be very, very strong. They'll be suggestions. And then you have thoughts that come directly from Allah which will compel the human being to do something. They will compel us. Like Allah will inspire us and compel us to have to do this thing, right? That will be generally one of the signs. Of course Allah knows best, these are not matters that are very easy to understand. I personally definitely don't fully understand. These just have a basic like cursory understanding of how this works, but it's obviously difficult concepts for us to understand. But those four are the types of thoughts that come. Now inward taqwa, what is it? It is to work on the diseases of the heart. The diseases of the heart include, I'm gonna list off a few of them. Anger, which if not controlled leads to hating people, which if not controlled leads to being envious and jealous of people, or envy is its own separate disease, talking bad about people, all the diseases of the tongue that we listed. Loving money, loving power, loving fame, loving leadership. I wanna be the boss. I wanna call the shots. All these diseases of hearts. I wanna have the followers, right? All these are diseases of the heart. Being arrogant, thinking we're always right. Then there's diseases which seep into our religious acts, right, wanting people to watch our religious acts, wanting to tell people about our religious acts, right? Like sometimes somebody will be doing an optional religious act and they just can't help but tell somebody like, oh, I was, you know, like I'm fasting today. Like just somehow they slip it into a conversation, right? That's an example of what's called subtle riyah, subtle ostentation that it just wanted to tell somebody. Allah already knew what we were doing, but it just wanted to tell someone, right? Like, what do you think of my, you know, like, look at how religious I am, right? Like I'm doing this extra stuff, right? It's, that's, we start to work on that. Then there's another diseases called ujjab, which is being impressed with ourselves, but that doesn't require anybody else. It's just you, sorry, it's just me in a mirror and being impressed with myself. Look at me. I'm so this, I'm so good looking. I'm so, I'm so pious. I'm so smart. All these, these thoughts that come into the human being astaghfirullah, right? That we might think about ourselves. That just, it's what the idea of narcissism, that's what narcissism is. Somebody who has high amounts of ujjab. And so the selfie culture we're in, where we're always obsessed with how we look and we want the perfect lighting just so that people can see how we look and they can like it. That's part of ujjab. It's part of this disease of being impressed with our own self and then wanting other people's validation when we want that. It increases, it helps to increase that narcissism that we have inside of us. And then you have other diseases that continue to grow from there. So, taqwa is then also about guarding the diseases. Now the diseases cannot really easily be guarded against until the limbs are guarded. When the limbs are guarded, the hands, the feet, the eyes, the heart, or sorry, the hands that eat, the hands, the feet, the eyes and the ears, then you can start to move on to what's going on inside. And then of course the intellect, which is where the thoughts are going to start to manifest, right? Right, that's at the higher levels. The thought will start to manifest for the human being. So you have to control that thought. Taqwa then is about even at the heart level going from the state of heedlessness to always thinking. And one way to examine this is what do we always think about? If we're spending our time always thinking about how we can outdo this person and you know, mess up and talk bad about this person and why did this person do this to me and we're jealous of this person, we're angry with this person, we're upset at this person and we're thinking about how we can get back at this person. The major sign of the heart being completely heedless or very much in a state of heedless. If we're spending our time thinking about Allah, thinking about the unseen realm, thinking about the attributes of Allah, thinking about how we can please Allah, thinking about loving the Messenger of Allah, As-Salaam, trying to make the Messenger of Allah, As-Salaam happy and proud of us and being happy with his ummah and how can we please him and serve him, right? It is a sign then that the heart is trying to get closer and closer to this state of taqwa. And of course there are many spec, there's a whole spectrum in between. So inshaAllah we will just do a quick wrap a review and we will end here. So we were mentioning again, we started this discussion with what the point of difficulty is. Difficulty comes in our life to show and see how we're going to respond. In this time that we are in, we can respond by losing our faith, by complaining about Allah, by being angry with Allah, or by being patient or even better yet by being patient and working to learn in this time so we can change and get on a path towards changing our life, right? That would be a sign of us learning the right lessons in the time that we are in. And when this desire to change comes remember that God is with you and God is on your side and He's going to help you. He says in the Quran that He is with us and He's closer to us. He's closer to us than our jugular vein. He's literally in a very, very, very figurative spiritual way. Allah is with us, Allah is with us. And so He's going to help us and He wants us to do well. And He says the one who strives in my way surely I will guide them. I'm gonna give them assistance. So Allah gives that person assistance. What then do, what kind of assistance though is relevant then in the time that we're in. It's to realize the month of Ramadan is coming and we wanna attain the state of Taqwa. That Allah mentions that fasting has been prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those who came before you in order that you may attain Taqwa, in order that you might attain the state of Taqwa. So the first key takeaway from today is to spend this time that we are in to try to work on ourselves to try to attain the state of Taqwa as we prepare for Ramadan. The second takeaway is the spectrum we discussed. You have at the first the heedlessness to Taqwa. You wanna go from being more, less heedless to being more in a state of Taqwa. It's parallel then with a state of anxiety to tranquility. The more we attain Taqwa, the more we attain tranquility, the less we have it, the more we attain anxiety. It's also then coupled with this state of grief, depression and worry, and happiness and expansiveness. The more we attain Taqwa, the more we will start to feel the heart becoming expansive and happy. And the less we attain it and the more we sin and the more we contemplate wrong and do wrong, the more we will hover at the state of being heedless, of being anxious, of being worried, of being depressed and of having a difficult time with every situation that we are in. It's a very, very clear equation that Allah draws for us in the Quran. So that's the second concept that we wanna take away from today. The third concept then is how do we move in the ranks from being heedless to Taqwa, to being in the state of Taqwa. It's to map out all of, and it's to realize that Taqwa is this idea of guarding ourselves. That's the third concept actually, is the idea of guarding ourselves. Guarding ourselves just like we guard ourselves outside, we put in distance between us and a human being, put in distance between yourself and sin. Find the way you can put the distance. Just like we put a face mask on and we wash our hands, put on a spiritual mask between yourself and the sin or the dislike things that Allah does not like, right? Find those things. And if you're already there, put on a distance between yourself and things which are okay to do, but are wasted of time, right? Wasting time. Shaitan, one of the ways he tricks the human being is he tells, oh, you're fine, you're not doing sinning, but he just gets into waste all their time, right? And media, TV, Netflix, Hulu, Face, HBO, all these things, these are the main ways he's using in the times that we're in. To just get us to not doing anything wrong, just waste all your time. But you could also be using that time of virtue. And the goal is to attain a state of balance of what works best for the human being. So that's the third idea. Taqwa is to guard yourself. Guard yourself just like we're guarding ourselves in the time we're in. To guard ourselves more seriously when it comes to sin because spiritual disease and sin will impact us in the next life versus this disease that we're in will only impact the human being in this life. And it's a very serious and we ask Allah for protection from it, but sin and spiritual disease are more serious and more harmful for the human being. And then it's about, that's the third concept. Then the fourth one is taqwa is this idea of putting layers between each limb and the sins it could commit. So find, think about all the different sins one could commit with each limb and put a layer between yourself and the different sins that are possible with that limb. And then it's finally the inward taqwa, the fifth takeaway. His inward taqwa is putting layers between the heart and between the sins of the heart, the diseases of the heart. And then the more one cleans the diseases the one attains the state of taqwa if one starts to beautify the heart with virtue, right? It's to beautify the heart with virtue. It's to empty all the bad that was in there, right? If I have this right here, right? If I were to take, let's say this plant was filled with a bunch of weeds before this, right? Let's say it filled a bunch of dirty weeds. Okay, so first would be taqwa applied now. This is taqwa applied and purification applied. I would get the weeds out, get all the weeds out. Then I would figure out the right type of soil that's necessary, right? I would nurture the soil appropriately. I would put the soil of being aware of Allah and the soil of knowledge and the soil of dikhar in. Then I would plant the plant that I need to plant. I would start planting virtuous traits, trait of patience, the trait of having good character, of being humble, of being nice to people, of respecting one's parents, of not hurting people, all these different good traits. And then I would water that with spiritual exercise, fasting, dikhar, Quran, other types of exercise and then the light that comes, right? The light of knowledge will help this plant with alongside the water that we just mentioned will help different flowers of virtue start to emerge. But something that began as not so beautiful through the right application, through understanding taqwa and through understanding the beauties of this religion, it can blossom into the most beautiful of Allah's creation. And the human being is the most beautiful of Allah's creation. And the heart is the most special and the most select beautiful of Allah's creation if only we but knew the potential that we have inside. So know that you have immense potential. Know that it is very possible for us to work on ourselves and in this Ramadan, as we start to prepare more and more seriously, start to prepare in this Ramadan with a map towards taqwa and leaving behind the heedlessness that we're in, leaving behind the anxiety for a state of tranquility, leaving behind the sadness and depression for a state of expansiveness and happiness and all that is possible if we take our religion seriously, if we apply it seriously and when we start to apply it seriously with gaining knowledge, with putting that into practice, with making abundant dhikr of Allah and in this case with fasting which is the best disciplinary practice that we can do, the most beautiful of traits will start to sprout in the heart of the human being. And there will be traits inshallah that Allah and His Messenger sallallahu alayhi wa sallam are most pleased with, we ask that Allah accept this and accept this Ramadan from us, allow us to benefit in Ramadan, allow us to reach Ramadan and put barakah in what's remaining of this month of Sha'ban. May He protect you, protect all of you and your loved ones and your communities in these trying times that we are in. And we ask Ya Rabbil Alameen, Ya Allah that you pour your luth and your grace, Ya Rabbil Alameen, upon this ummah and upon this society and lift this calamity and this difficulty from us, Ya Rabbil Alameen and allow us to change in these times, Ya Rabbil Alameen, Ya Allah allow our hearts, Ya Allah find in the deepest part of our heart, Ya Allah that wants you, Ya Allah and bring that part out, Ya Rabbil Alameen and allow that part, Ya Rabbil Alameen to be a source of guidance for us and for our families and for our loved ones and for all of our communities and allow us to be messengers of the messengers, Ya Allah, and allow us to change in this Ramadan, a change by means of which we never turn back to our ways of heedlessness and we are always in a state of presence with you, Ya Allah, and allow us to attain the highest states of ma'rifah and knowledge of you, Ya Rabbil Alameen. We ask you for everything good, the Prophet's system asks for it and we ask you for protection for everything evil that he asks for, Wa sallallahu wa sallam abaarek ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala ali wa sahbihi sallam Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen al-Fatiha Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim Alhamdulillahi Alhamdulillahi Tuzakum Allah Khair Wa sallamu alaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh Wa sallam alaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh Wa nashadaw al-ilahi nastaqfir Wa nashadaw al-ilahi nastaqfir As-salamu alaikum