 Bismillah-reheem. All praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds. P Ottoman text All praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds. So, we are going to continue in this series that we've been discussing. We just did one conversation so far. going to be talking about repenting in this blessed month of Ramadan. So Ramadan is a very, very special month. It is a month full of forgiveness. It is a month full of a chance to get Allah SWT's mercy. And so we're going to be diving today into the different types of sins. And so we're going to specifically be talking about how to seek forgiveness for our major sins and our minor sins. And as you have questions, just feel free to post them in the comments and inshallah we will get to them. So as we as we know Ramadan, is this month that is full of Allah's mercy. And we are actually in the second 10 days of the month of Ramadan. So there's a Hadith or the process on indicated that the first 10 days of the month of Ramadan are days of mercy. The second 10 days are days of forgiveness. And the third 10 days are days of freedom from the Hellfire. So the second 10 days, which is the days we're in right now today, I believe is the 13th day of the blessed month of Ramadan. The second 10 days are days where we should be seeking abundant forgiveness. And inshallah, where we should be hopefully getting abundant forgiveness. So that's something that we just want to start off with. There are ample ways to seek forgiveness, a lot of different shortcuts to seek forgiveness, right? So we have, for example, Prophet Salaam said that the one who says Subhanallah will become the Subhanallah Al-Abeem 100 times, their sins will be forgiven, even if they are as vast as that amount of foam on the sea or on the ocean, right? So the ocean has a lot of foam. Somebody who says this dhikr, Subhanallah will become the Subhanallah Al-Abeem 100 times, inshallah, their sins will be forgiven. But what types of sins is this talking about? So like, if somebody like, you know, killed somebody, God forbid, or if somebody committed adultery, right? Does that count in this type of sin? So we'll be getting into that, inshallah, in just a little bit. But generally speaking, when these types of suggestions come, when these types of beneficial reminders from the Prophet Salaam come, most of the scholars have said they are referring to minor sins. And then there are major sins, which we actually have to go out and seek forgiveness for. So we have to actually seek forgiveness for our major sins. And we're going to be talking about what those major sins are and how we go about doing that, inshallah. But these are the days, though, of forgiveness. Another shortcut just for us, you know, just to start off for us to get forgiven by Allah is that we forgive other people. So in these 10 days, not only should we be seeking forgiveness from Allah for our sins, for the sins that we've committed in private, the sins that we've committed in public, the sins that we've committed between us and other people, but a shortcut to get our sins forgiven is for us to actually forgive other people. We have a lot of people in our life who maybe we have a grudge against. Maybe we're upset at them. Maybe we're holding an ill feeling against them in our hearts. Well, when you forgive somebody, when you and I forgive someone, Allah forgives us. The Prophet Salaam told us that Allah is merciful to the one who is merciful to others. And Allah's forgiveness comes for the one who forgives others. So if you and I want Allah's forgiveness, again, here's a shortcut for us to get that type of forgiveness. So that's something else that we should be doing in these middle 10 days that we are in. So now let's dive into the categories of sins. You have two main categories that the scholars broke out when it comes to sins. You have what are called major sins or mortal sins, and then you have minor sins. So these mortal sins are sins that we actively need to repent from. You actually have to very specifically ask Allah for forgiveness for those sins, and we'll get into what those major and those kind of mortal sins are, right? And you have to feel a specific deep type of remorse, ideally accompanied with a weeping and a begging Allah for mercy and a begging Allah for forgiveness. All right. So those are in the mortal or the major sins. And then there are the minor sins. The minor sins are things that happen on the day to day basis. So these are ones like, okay, maybe you looked at, you didn't lower your gaze, or maybe you listened to something wrong. Maybe you said, you know, you lied a little bit, or you cursed at somebody, or you yelled at somebody, right? These start to accumulate minor sins throughout the day, right? And we all do. We all do all types of sins, but we definitely all get caught up in various amounts of minor sins. And the minor sins, there's actually a lot of ways to get these forgiven. So there's various hadith which indicate that from prayer to prayer, right, Wudu, for example, washes away sins. The Prophet ﷺ told us that praying between each prayer sins are forgiven. Jumma to Jumma sins are forgiven. Of course, in the blessed month of Ramadan, sins are forgiven just by the act of fasting, just by you and I sitting here right now. The fact that we are fasting, we have sins being, inshallah, forgiven for us. Most of the time, these are referring again to these minor sins. So, Alhamdulillah, that we have a religion where we don't have necessarily seek repentance for every single thing just by us doing certain acts of worship. Allah takes it easy on us and he forgives these minor sins. And many of the, again, the hadith that talk about, you know, you do this, and your sins will be forgiven, many of the scholars say that those are generally referring to minor sins. And then there are the major ones. So let's get into the major ones because these are, you know, these obviously major and these are ones that we want to try to work on throughout our life. So the major sins are sins like, the major sins are, I'm going to break these out into four segments. So these are, I'm taking these from Imam Ghazali's book on repentance. So he's basically segmented out the major sins for us. There are many categories of major sins. The scholars will break them up depending on, you know, which scholar you look at. Sometimes it lists 10, 20, 30, 100. But for this list, I think it's like about 20 or so. So hopefully manageable for us to remember. So then he breaks it out into the different parts of the body. Right. So we're going to start with the sins of the soul or the sins of the heart. He says the first major sin that you have to repent from for the sin of the soul is unbelief, disbelieving in Allah. Right. So that's actually a major sin. We know that, of course, which is it's cover. So inshallah, none of us have been in that category. But if we ever have been in that category where we have fallen into disbelief or we stopped believing in Allah, we stopped believing in the Messenger of Allah, we have to really sincerely repent from that. And then, of course, if we converted into the religion, we already had a conversion process by which those sins, inshallah, were forgiven. And we know now we are on a different path where we are believing in Allah. The second one that he lists as the second category of major sins of the soul is you are, you despair, you despair in the mercy of Allah. And think about this. The fact that you despair, what does despair mean? Despair means you think Allah will never forgive you. And this is a point I really want to drive home today. Just by you thinking that Allah won't forgive you, it's a major sin. Like you can't, because what are you and I doing then? We are limiting Allah. Don't ever limit God. You just by that you might not even done a major sin. Like you might have done something pretty bad, but it might not be like the craziest thing in the world, but you thinking God will never forgive me is a really, really dangerous thing, because that actually limits the potential for forgiveness. You and I cannot think that Allah won't forgive us. No, that's Shaytan's trick. Shaytan wants you to think God won't forgive you. It doesn't matter what you've done. It does not matter what you've done. It doesn't matter how many sins somebody has done. We have in the Hadith, the Hadith, I believe we shared this last week, that there was a mass murderer, a mass murderer who was was forgiven according to the Hadith. There's Hadith that indicate prostitutes were forgiven. There's Hadith that indicates people of all types of backgrounds, all types of backgrounds were forgiven. There's a story of one of the great one of the great Olia that he mentions. It's mentioned in the books that this man used to be a robber. He used to be like a highway robber. What is a highway robber? So back then, in the days of caravans and whatnot, they would basically travel in camels with all their goods and they would be going through very, very, very vast deserts and whatnot. What happened in this case is that this man would be the leader of a clan. Imagine a gang in this modern day and age. He would be the head of a gang and they would jump caravans. So they would jump like, so you imagine you have 20 different camels with a bunch of goods and people and whatnot traveling. They would come out and of course, they have their weapons and whatnot and they would jump different caravans. They'd take their stealer stuff. So this man was known as the head of the highway robbers. So now what happens? This man at some point is sitting and he's sitting with his crew and somebody comes, someone whose goods that they had stolen. I need to get my goods back. So he's traversing his way to this place, basically this head of this gang. And he asks him, he says, where is the head of this gang? And he says, oh, he's over there, but he's praying right now. And he's like, he's praying. It's not even prayer time. Like, okay, it's not even, it wasn't like, though her time wasn't us. There was no, no, none of this. He's like, oh, no, no, he's praying extra prayers. He's like, he's praying extra prayers. Okay. And he later found out that this man would also keep extra, he would do extra fasts. So outside of the month of Ramadan, he would be doing these extra fasts. Now we're all thinking like, all right, dude, you're, you're like the head of a gang. Why would you be doing all this stuff? It doesn't really add up. So this man approaches him and he's like, you know, you stole my stuff and you're doing all these extra, this doesn't really add up. Like, why are you stealing and then doing these deeds? It doesn't really work. And he basically tells him, he's like, look, I always keep a door open between me and God. It doesn't matter how much bad I've gotten into. I'm going to keep one, a door or two open between me and God. And now this man eventually repents. So later on, like not too long after this incident, he gets an indication like he needs to change his life. And he goes and sincerely repents to God, sincerely repents for all the wrong that he has done. He finds from what I've, from what I've read, he finds the different people of the things he'd stolen and he returns them. So he does it, what he can to rectify the wrongs that he had done. And he goes on to become one of the greatest saints of our religion. This man's name was al-Fudail ibn al-ayyad and it's mentioned in many of the books. This man's story, he goes on to become a scholar, a very righteous man, a very pious man. What his, his beginning wasn't good, but look at what, where he ended up. Look at the story of Sayyidina Omar bin al-Khattab Ali Al-Hu'an, that he would do, I mean, the Muslims were, before Sayyidina Omar converted to Islam, they were very, very, very scared of Sayyidina Omar. There's a lot of different intensity that he would approach things with. And he had buried, I mean, he had, you know, the Jahl-i Arabs would do crazy things. They would bury their girls alive, their daughters alive. So he had done that. But look at what, look at what he turned into, that he became the, not only the second caliph of this, the amazing religion, he became one of the closest companions to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, that after Sayyidina Abu Bakr Siddique Ali Al-Hu'an, the next rank goes to Sayyidina Omar bin al-Khattab Ali Al-Hu'an, that what he started from and what he turned into, that's what Islam can do for you. That's what Islam can do. Islam can change you from being somebody who you don't, there is no, you might not think there's any path for you to change. You might have done the worst of the worst. I mean, does it really get worse than burying baby girls alive? Like, how could somebody even do that? Right? But Islam can change you from that into somebody who is not only one of the most righteous people to ever walk the face of the earth, but one of the most just people to ever walk the face of the earth, one of the fiercest warriors of this religion, one of the people who bring so much respect and is that to this religion, Sayyidina Omar al-Hu'an? That's what Islam does. That's what repentance does. That's what getting on the path of change does. So that is what you and I need to be doing in this month of Ramadan. Then make it a goal. I don't care what sin I've done, and we were talking about this, I expanded a little bit upon it, but I will not despair in the mercy of Allah. Make sure you never despair in the mercy of Allah because Allah's mercy is vast. Don't limit him. Don't let shaitan limit him. And don't let other human beings limit him. Sometimes Muslims limit people. They're like, oh, you've done this, you've done that, you can never be forgiven. Forget all of that. Don't let your parents limit you. Don't let your siblings limit you. Don't let anybody in your family limit you. Don't let anybody say you've done this, you've done that, and guess you can't be forgiven. It does not matter what you have done. You can be forgiven. Allah's mercy is vast. So that is actually a major sin in this religion to think that you cannot be forgiven is considered a major sin. Okay. But the third thing that's a major sin is actually on the opposite side where you are like, Oh, I'm everything's good. I'm forgiven for all the stuff I've ever done. That's that's equally as bad. Right. It's called getting complacent and thinking it's all good. I'm forgiven. Right. So you want to avoid that as well. So we've talked about these three unbelief, despairing of Allah's mercy, literally being hopeless. Don't get hopeless. Don't let anybody make you hopeless. And number three, also getting complacent and thinking, Oh, I'm forgiven. I don't need to do anything. This does happen. Many times we get into a state where we're like, Oh, you know, I don't really have to pray anymore. I don't have to do anything. I'll be fine. You know, get into heaven. It'll be good. Like we kind of just get into this very relaxed mindset. This happens if we hang out with the wrong types of people. So we have to be careful. The fourth thing he says it's a major sin is actually doing a small sin regularly and basically belittling it and doing it regularly. Like, like it's no big deal. What does that mean? So if you start to do something and you basically think in your mind, like, Oh, this is not a big deal. I'm just going to keep doing it. And I continuously keep doing it. It can become a major sin. So like not lowering your gaze, just not lowering your gaze once is not considered a major sin. You can say I stopped for a long between the prayers and you doing will do and when you wash your eyes and whatnot, the sins are falling away. Right? So you can be forgiven in cello for that. But if you think it's no big deal, and every time somebody walks by, you look at them and you just don't think it's a big deal. It becomes a major sin. So persisting in small sins can can or minor sins can make it a major sin. Right? So that's that's something to keep in mind. Then we go into now we're going to go into the four major sins of the tongue of the tongue. So we talked about these are ones of the soul or of the heart. Now we're going to get into the sins of the tongue. If anybody has any questions about the first ones I just mentioned, please feel free to post them. Now we will do our best to address them, inshallah. And the four of the tongue, the one is that you bear false witness. What is false witness? That means you're in a court. Okay. Like let's say this, this trial that just happened with, you know, that really, really corrupt police officer, Derek Chauvin, right? And then they're the trial that he what he did that he murdered George Floyd, right? So in that trial, if somebody had bared false witness, so if someone had seen him do the murder, but had said, no, I didn't see him do the murder, you lie about that, right? You actually lie. Oh, I didn't see him do anything, right? Lying in those types of situations is not just like lying to your friend about what you had for lunch, right? Or lying to your mom that you didn't come home on time or where you were. No, lying in those types of situations is a very, very big deal because you're bearing false witness against somebody in a judicial system where there is major repercussions and crimes that are trying to be adjudicated and discussed. So that's one of the ones for the tongue. The second one for the tongue is swearing false oaths. So like false promises, committing to do things that we aren't going to do that type of thing. The third one is a black magic and like casting spells. So somebody who is in this field of, you know, for example, the magicians who were there at the time of Musa alaihi salam. I mean, they repented, right? They repented, but they were actually doing a type of black magic. And so they would do magic in order to make it seem like their sticks were moving, even though their sticks were not actually moving. And then of course, Musa alaihi salam had a real miracle. His staff turned into a snake and he ate up everything else. So that was, but those magicians in the Quran, we know that they, when they saw the miracle, they repented and they submitted to Allah. But if somebody does ever get into that field, obviously that's a really, really, really major sin. And then there's another one, which is defaming. So these are mentioned in the books. I won't get too into this one because I don't really know too much about it. Like in our time, like defaming married women is mentioned in the book. So somebody like accuses a married woman and ruins her reputation says she did this, she did that, you know, accusing them of adultery, defaming them, the type of things that in the Quran or the type of things that in the time of the Prophet's son, they did this to say that they accused her of doing something majorly wrong, even though, of course, that she's, you know, the station that she had, she would never do something like that. Right. So those are the four of the tongue. Then we're going to get into other parts of the body. So now we're talking about consumption. We're going to get into consumption. So the next one that's a major sin that we need to repent from is consuming any type of intoxicant drug or wine, right? Or alcohol. So like if somebody had a period of time where they drank, somebody had a period of time where you went to parties and, you know, you drank beer, you drank a hard alcohol, anything like that. If you had a period of time where you are doing drugs, so whether someone's smoking weed, if somebody's doing cocaine, if somebody is doing any other type of drug, these are major sins that require us to sincerely repent. And those sins have not only a very, very deep impact on the heart, but if someone takes them lightly, which in our time that does happen, it can become a problem. So the way to think about it like this is okay, maybe we got caught up, maybe someone is in, you know, in college or they were in a situation and they decided they did some drugs or they drank or something like that. And this might happen to your kids. It might happen to your family members. The most important thing here is to not close the door of repentance and to let them know, Hey, you just need to repent from this and your life can completely change. You don't need to worry about it after that. That's one big thing with regard to repentance. Once you repent and you do it sincerely, you need to trust that Allah inshallah will forgive you. You do not need to keep worrying and thinking that, Oh my God, you remember that I once did that as a way to keep yourself humble, but you don't go back to that thing and say, Oh, I was the guy who used to drink. So that means I can never be a good person again. No, that's again, Shaytan coming at you because we just talked about all these people who were murderers, who would bury their daughters alive and then their lives completely changed and it became some of the most righteous people ever. So there is always a path to change. But if we have consumed alcohol, if we've drank before, if we've partied, if we've done drugs, if we've smoked weed, if we've done any of these things, we got to repent from that and we have to remove that from our life. It's not just repenting. It's also removing it from our life. Now, the one thing I want to mention here is we got to be careful about making light of these things. In the time we live in, for example, I'm in California. In California, weed is legal. Marijuana, weed I'm referring to in marijuana. In this case, it's legal. Most of the United States is becoming legal. There's a lot of scientific research that talks about it. So as a result, many people, including many Muslims, think, oh, it's really not a big deal. Taking a couple puffs here and there, like, it's not a big deal. Oh, I've heard the argument that, oh, it's from the ground and because it's from the ground, it means that God created it, which means if God created it, it's probably okay for me to use. Very, very, very elaborate arguments. I mean, it's somebody clearly puts thought into that to try to justify something. Look, the big thing here is just don't justify it. It's still haram no matter what kind of justification we come up with. But the most important thing is that we actually seek the repentance. Try your best, whether it's you or somebody in your family, someone you know who does this, to not come up with justifications for doing any type of drug or drinking or anything like that. Because the justification, as we just mentioned, can make it a lot worse. Because you now, Shaitan, one of the biggest things that Shaitan says, one of the biggest thing that Shaitan tries to do is he tries to make it seem like something you were doing that is a big deal, is not a big deal. And he's done this in Western society with every little thing. A lot of stuff we do in Western society, I'll be the first to admit, is problematic. We do a lot of things that are problematic. But when we are doing those things, Shaitan makes it like when we might feel bad about it, but Shaitan comes at us and is like, oh, it's not a big deal. You don't need to worry about it. It's not even a sin. Oh, there's all this, you know, now these days, oh, come on, it's modern times. You don't really need to worry about this thing anymore. But that's one of the tricks of Shaitan. We do need to be very, very, very careful. At the same time, we do need to know the hierarchy of sin. So the hierarchy in this case would be that, okay, if somebody is doing a really, really, really, really bad drug and they are progressing, progressing, progressing from growing one thing and doing something less and less. And let's say they have a really strong addiction and they're like, okay, go to cigarettes and then they go from there to hookah and then go from there to a pen, then they eventually stop. There is that progression that you go from major evil to less, to less, to less, not saying any of those are okay from an objective point of view, but you just have to know as a human being where you're at with the types of things you're struggling with. So that's one of the things that from the stomach with regard to drinking and smoking and doing drugs and any type of intoxicants. The next one here with consumption is, and they bucket this with consumption in the books, taking interest or giving interest. So this is another really major one in the Western society, that any type of loan that somebody takes, whether it be a student loan, whether it be a car loan, whether it be a personal loan, whether it be there are there are small differences of opinion in that there are some of the mortgages are allowed, but there are Islamic mortgages now. So that is just something we can go for. But the any type of interest is considered a major sin. And it's a very, very, very serious very serious sin for somebody to take interest and again, to take it lightly most of the time, most of us Muslims who we like live kind of living comfortably living in the suburbs, a type of thing, we think it's light, we always take this loan for the car, we take this loan for this, take this loan for that, and then problems start happening in our life. And we wonder why it's happening. And we don't examine the financial things we're doing that could be wrong. So we have to be very, very careful. It is among the major sins to take interest. And it's it's it's amongst the courageous aspect of a believer to confront themselves. Sometimes you just have to confront your own nuts and your own ego and be like, when am I going to stop doing things that I know displease Allah. Allah mentioned in the Quran with regards to interest that Allah and his messenger wage war on the one who takes interest. Right. So we have to be careful. We have to examine our transactions. Is there interest involved? Am I involved in a transaction with his interest? Am I involved in encouraging or helping people and facilitating them to take interest? And I do I absolutely positively have to take out this, this specific loan for this situation, right? We have to examine it whether we're student loans, car loans or anything else. So that's another one of the major sins. Just a quick unrelated question. Somebody asked, can we take the COVID vaccine while fasting? Yes, you can take COVID vaccine while fasting. You are you are you can do you can do that vaccines do not invalidate the fast. Just be aware there will be side effects most likely. And if you take the vaccine while fasting and there are side effects, you should of course do your best to keep fasting because, you know, you don't want to break the fast. But if you're unbearably sick, then you should seek the advice of a doctor in that case on whether or not it makes sense. But just the fasting itself is good. Okay, so we will keep going on inshallah. And we somebody said, please talk about qadr inshallah, we will talk about the qadr inshallah towards the end or in the future class. Okay, so that is another thing related to consumption is regards to interest. And we keep moving on. And we get to the the two sins with relation to the sexual sins. So here the major sins are that we need to repent from any type of adultery that one that one engages in, right? So Zina fornication, adult three. So specifically in this case, specifically in this case, if somebody engages in an illicit relationship, so illicit sexual actions, you got to make really sincere repentance, especially if somebody had illicit sexual intercourse. That means intercourse before marriage or intercourse while someone's married, and they had relations with another person. So they, you know, they cheated on their spouse. Those are among the major sins. They require significant repentance, not to be taken lightly. And in the traditional societies or back in the day, of course, there was a very, very serious punishment that was prescribed for this. So again, in Western society, we take this lightly. Most people before they're married, they're living with, you know, their girlfriend or boyfriend, they are obviously engaging in all types of activities with them. And it's a very, very major problem. So for us as Muslims in Ramadan, many Muslims, we like, you know, for somebody who's young and they're in a relationship, they're not married, of course, if they're a girlfriend, boyfriend, they might take a break from that relationship. Oh, I'm going to take a break in Ramadan. But then right after Ramadan, you get back into it. Look, in Ramadan, you just started, or in Ramadan, you just got all your sins cleaned, inshallah. So don't get back into that Haram relationship after the month of Ramadan is over. It's very important in the month of Ramadan to repent from these things. And then of course, anything related to, it's also listed here, anything related to homosexual actions is also considered among the major sins of the, of the private parts. So those are the two for the great relation to our sexual desires that we have to sincerely deeply repent from. Again, among the major sins we're talking about, that we need to repent from. Then there's two that are related to the hand. One is killing somebody, of course, murder. So if somebody killed somebody, they have to very, very sincerely repent, seek forgiveness ideally from that person's family. There's a very deep process of repentance which is going to be involved here because Allah says in the Quran that if you killed somebody, it's like you've killed all of humanity. And if you've saved the life, it's like you've saved the life of all of humanity. So it's important to take obviously that one very, very seriously. And then stealing something major would also be considered a major sin. So if somebody who steals, they steal people's property, they steal things from stores, they steal what doesn't belong to them, that would be considered a major sin that somebody needs to repent from and considered a specific repentance. Again, major sins require specific repentance for that sin. One of those, there's one of the scholars describe of the feet which is to run away from like a valid battle. We don't really fight those battles anymore. So that's not going to apply for us, but it's good for us to know if that did ever come. And then there's one of the whole body. Okay, so this is really interesting. This is very important. The thing about the scholars mentioned the ones of all the different parts of the body, then they say there's one major sin relation to the whole body, major sin, which is disobedience to one's mom and dad. Disobeying your parents and my parents, disobeying our parents is considered a major sin. So it's not to be taken lightly. Not to be taken lightly. And we'll get to that in just a second. Somebody asked, why do people think all our sins are forgiven in Ramadan? Is it the truth or not? So your sins are forgiven in Ramadan. There's various hadith, too many hadith to indicate that the sins are forgiven in Ramadan. So what it is, it's probably some said that the one who fasts all of Ramadan with iman and with hoping for reward, their sins are forgiven. And the one who stands in Ramadan and the night for prayer, referring here to my understanding, we're Taraweeh or Hajjah, the types of prayers, their sins are forgiven. And the one who stands for leilatul qadr, inshallah, their sins are forgiven. So there's a lot of, of course, ways to get our sins forgiven in Ramadan. But again, we mentioned this at the beginning of the conversation. Ramadan, the sins referred to in many of these hadith, hopefully they refer to all of our sins. But most of the time they are referring to the smaller slip ups that we have the major sins, they need to, you need to really deeply, sincerely ask Allah and what we're covering in this conversation of repent, you have to repent to Allah. You have to fulfill the three requirements of repentance, which are feeling bad about the sin, feeling remorse, committing to stop doing it, and really begging God to forgive you with, with ideally your weep, you the tears flow. It's a conversation between you and Allah and you say, Allah, I'm really sorry. I messed up. I really messed up. That's what we want to be doing this month of Ramadan. Every night we should be saying, I'm sorry, I messed up. Please forgive me. Forgive me for that thing I did. Forgive me for this. Forgive me for that. Right. So this one is, and I see this question about the, I'll answer in just a second, inshallah. This one that we just mentioned, the one that is the relation to the whole body disobedience to one's mother and father is serious because most of us in our life, we obviously have gotten to a point, especially those of us who live in the West, we've probably disobeyed our parents from time to time. So this one, when I read it, it really hit me because I was like, dang, I didn't realize it was that big of a deal. So Allah says in the Quran, like right after obeying him, he tells us to obey our parents. So in anything reasonable that our parents ask us to do and we disobey them or we outright disobey their instructions, we got to repent from that. Two ways, you have to actively ask Allah to forgive you. I'm sorry for disrespecting my parents and you have to of course go to your parents and say, can you please forgive me? If any of you or any of us are beefing, like having a grudge or a fight with your parents in Ramadan, please go and try to fix it. Do not let this month end except that you have patched things up with your parents. Even if you have problems with every other person in the world, you should never have a problem with your parents. Your parents are a door, they're a door to heaven. They are a door to Allah's pleasure. There's so many hadith and statements that indicate the rank of parents and do not let your whatever fight, it doesn't matter what it was over. It's not worth it because if they die tomorrow or if you die tomorrow, it won't be worth it. That argument that you had with them that with some of their attention or you're not really loving each other or talking to each other in the way you should, it's not going to be worth it anymore. It just won't be worth it because they're your parents and at the end of the day, we will remember all the things that they did for us when we were young, right? The parents they did, they really, really, really took a significant amount of care of us. So let's just try to do that, inshallah, in this month. So those are the lists. So that's the list. I'm going to walk through it one more time, inshallah, and then we will go ahead and end and do have some question and answer, inshallah, and some comments that people have mentioned. So the list of major sins we need to seek forgiveness from again, all of these everything you have done, everything we've done, requires that we have an open mind and we accept and hope that have a good opinion of Allah. Allah will forgive you, inshallah. One quick question somebody mentioned in relation to this. If what if your parents are the ones in the wrong? Many times our parents could be in the wrong, that's understandable, but there is like a level, it depends on how serious the wrong is. There's a level of respect which comes where even if they're in the wrong, because of the fact that they're our parents and we are their children, we should still go out and seek forgiveness from them. I'm sorry. It doesn't matter who did it because if they die or you die, are you going to care who is in the wrong? I know I wouldn't care who's in the wrong because five, 10 years down the line, I wouldn't remember what the fight was even about. I would remember that, dang, I was arguing with them and then they passed away. Try to have that mindset of if somebody were to pass away in your life that you are fighting with or that you have not forgiven, what would you feel? And it doesn't mean that you need to accept everything that that would disobey. Your parents doesn't mean that you have to accept everything that they say intellectually or they have to accept all their beliefs or something like that. It just means that you shouldn't disobey them. They tell you to do something, you should do it. They ask you for something, you should do it, that type of thing. So again, the list is for all the major sins. It's disbelieving in Allah. It's hope. It's believing that despairing in Allah's mercy, so it's a major sin to despair in Allah's mercy. On the opposite end, it's to think that you don't have any work to do and you're forgiven and you're totally an angel. That's also a big problem. It's persisting in small sins continuously. So if you and I keep doing small sins, keep doing small sins and just think they're not a big deal, that becomes a major sin. It is to bear false witness. It is to swear false oaths or false promises. It is to cast spells and do magic and stuff on people. It's to defame married women. It is to drink alcohol, to consume intoxicants, to smoke weed, to do any type of drug, cocaine or anything else. It is stealing the property of an orphan. I actually forgot to mention this one. This is considered among the major sins. It is to give interest or take interest, so any interest loan. It is to engage in illicit sexual relationships with somebody. It is to engage in homosexual relationships. It is to kill somebody. It is to steal someone and it is to run away from a valid battle and it is to disobey one's mother and father. Those are the major sins. The quick round will talk in detail about this. We will talk in detail about this next week and right around the same time, inshallah, about how do we go about seeking forgiveness. There's a lot of ways to do it, but just a very basic outline is you feel bad. Number two, you sincerely beg Allah for forgiveness. Number three, you stop the sin and you make a commitment to stop. Inshallah, if we do that, we will be on a good path. We will be on a path towards reforming our life. We will be on a path towards change and we will be on a path towards seeking and getting Allah's forgiveness, hopefully, for all of these sins. Inshallah. So now we will go ahead and end for the content part. If anybody has questions, I see a couple are posted. Please feel free to post them and we will go ahead and get to them. So somebody said, what is the best time to make du'a to get accepted? Four best times in Ramadan to make du'a. The time of Suhoor and right before Fajr comes in, the time basically of Suhoor slash the Hajj time. Amazing time when du'a is accepted. The hadith that says that Allah is asking at that time, is there anybody who may be forgiven or anybody who is seeking forgiveness that I may forgive them? Is anybody who has a need that I may fulfill that need? Or the hadith says something similar. I'm paraphrasing it. The second best time to make du'a is the time after Fajr until sunrise. Early mornings are a very good time for us to do worship and to make du'a. The third best time to make du'a in Ramadan is the time between Asr and Maghrib and especially the time right before Iftar for hadith of the Prophet ﷺ says that the du'a of the fasting person, when they break their fast, is accepted. And the fourth best time to make du'a is the time of any time in the night of Ramadan, the nights of Ramadan, especially with tarawih prayer after tarawih prayer, that type of thing. Okay, somebody said a little Qadr. Okay, cool. Let me talk about that in a second. What does somebody said, if we break fast because of being sick from the vaccine, do I give Fidya or make it up? If you broke your fast for a valid reason because of being sick for the vaccine, you have to make up the fast, not make Fidya. Fidya is for people who cannot fast. So it's like older people and whatnot. Fidya is not, if you have able body and you're able to fast, then it would be best to fast. Someone says if we do not forgive someone, are they punished in grave and cannot take their good deeds on the day of judgment? I believe if you do not forgive somebody, yes, they will be held to account for that because the day of judgment is the day where all the reckoning happens and you will be able to take their good deeds according to that deed. So yeah, the only thing though is if that person is a Muslim, the Prophet ﷺ wants all of you and me to forgive each other as Muslims because the Prophet ﷺ on the day of judgment is going to have a lot of things to do. He's going to be fighting for every single one of us to try to get into heaven and there will be people who will be prevented to get into heaven because of another Muslim holding a grudge against them or another Muslim not forgiving them. So even if you don't care about the person to please the Messenger of Allah ﷺ who hopefully we all do love and we all do care about, we should forgive them because that's what the Prophet ﷺ would want us to do. Ideally that is what we try to do if we are able to, inshallah. Okay, somebody said if we are always reminding, yeah, if we're someone said if we are always reminding that we might pass away or we might die, then we will try not to fight with our family members. Generally speaking, it's a good principle to keep in mind one of the last Sunnahs of the Prophet ﷺ is the Sunnah of remembering that death can come at any moment. Prophet ﷺ would always be aware of death. It was very, very, very much top of mind for the Prophet ﷺ and for the Sahaba that death can come at any time. So if we are aware of that, we will stop ourselves from doing a lot of Sunnah, we will, sorry, from doing a lot of sins and stuff like that and from following the Sunnah and we will stop ourselves from arguing and fighting over stuff and just creating things that aren't really that big of a deal. Sometimes we get in fights. It might seem like a big deal at a time, but like five, ten years later, the relationship is so damaged just because of a fight and you're like, was it even worth it? Most of the time it's not worth it. Of course, there are times when like there's valid, you've got to part ways. Of course, abuse, any type of abuse, unacceptable. You've got to find a way to fix that or to get out of that situation. But I'm talking about when you have disagreements with people. It's not worth losing that person over a disagreement. Okay, let's see. Somebody had said, what does the Qur'an and Islam say about how to deal with those who are sneaky? So I don't exactly understand the question. If someone could just clarify what you mean by somebody who's sneaky, that would be good. If you mean like someone who's kind of conniving and plotting and whatnot, it would be best to avoid those types of people and avoid any plots and whatnot that they might have. But if you could clarify what you mean. Okay, so we'll just wait for another like two minutes and we'll go ahead and wrap up. If anybody has any other questions in relation to repentance, in relation to Ramadan, in relation to what we talked about today or talked, spoke about last time, please feel free to post it in the comments and we will go ahead and or in the chat and we'll go ahead and do our best to answer it. How do I know I'm sincere in my repentance? This is a really good question. So I have something on this right here. We're going to talk about this next time, but just to help out. The first is that you have a serious supermorse and you really, feel bad. Like you feel bad that you messed up. That's the first sign of the sincerity and repentance. That was the question. The second is that you have a commitment to change your life and you already are on the path of changing your life. And the third is that you start to see your life change in the better direction. So if somebody really sincerely repents, they will start to see that what they were doing before, they're very, very different. Sorry. What they're doing now is very different and they have progressed significantly from what they were doing before. Those are a couple of signs of sincerity and repentance, but don't overthink it either because we should always hope that our repentance is accepted. We're kind of in this pendulum between hoping that it got accepted and not knowing if it got accepted, but don't overdo it in the sense that we think like, Oh my God, I'm never going to be forgiven because of something I did because what that does is it falls in that first category of you and I limiting Allah's mercy. And Allah's mercy is too vast for us to limit it since these are easy for Allah to forgive. And if you didn't want to forgive them, he didn't have to, but he can and inshallah he will if we beg and we ask him. The next class, inshallah, will be for somebody who asked and it will be Sunday exactly one week from now at 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, inshallah, which is 9 p.m. Eastern. Yeah. All right. If there is any other questions coming in, please just let me know. Okay. I don't see any other questions. Go ahead and add inshallah. Oh, somebody had asked a question about student loans. What about student loans that do not accrue interest six months after graduation? If you pay something before it accrues anything, you will be okay inshallah. You'll be good. If you pay something like before any interest accrues, but you got to be really careful about that because ideally you don't engage in that situation in the first place, but if someone were to take out something and no interest is accrued and they absolutely make sure no interest is accrued and then they pay it in child, they'll be good. And obviously if some interest accrues, but they pay it before it gets too bad, it's better than if they wait till later. So it's all about just reducing. Islam has a goal of reducing harm. You reduce the amount of sins, reduce the amount of sins. You can't do, can't get rid of all of them. You reduce them. It's not black and white, right? If we ask forgiveness, if we ask for forgiveness every day multiple times, are we forgiven? Inshallah. Yeah. So that's a good question. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would ask forgiveness in some hadith 70 times a day and some hadith 100 times a day. He would be saying all these different ways to ask Allah to forgive him. So think about it like this. If you are asking forgiveness multiple times a day, that's the least we could be doing. We got to be asked forgiveness because we're following the sunnah of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. However, if we don't specifically ask forgiveness for the major sins we've done, I don't know. Only Allah knows. I'm not really qualified to answer like if the major sin would be forgiven. So like for example, if I'm just saying astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, astaghfirullah, but I'm not really deeply repenting for that one, that time that, you know, I stole something or something or majorly haram I did that I just covered. I got to single that one out and try to really deeply ask forgiveness. But if, but because we do so many sins throughout the day, and remember there's ways to elevate. So, so why is the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam repenting if he didn't do anything wrong? He is teaching us number one and number two, he is constantly ascending in states. And so he's just, every time you ask forgiveness, your inshallah, your state is increasing and he is making toba from that previous state. So you and I should repent for our thoughts. We should repent for our like as we advance spiritually, we should just keep repenting for everything because we do so much wrong throughout the day. But we start with repenting from the major sense and then repenting from the minor sense and asking forgiveness. So inshallah, yeah, if you ask forgiveness every day, hopefully you and I will be forgiven inshallah. There's a lot of ways to get forgiven in this religion. It's a religion of mercy and forgiveness. It's not a religion of, yeah, it's a religion of mercy and forgiveness. That's why it says, Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, the most merciful and most compassionate. Okay, somebody asks, are credit cards permissible under the same construct if paid off with no carry over? Yeah, if credit cards do not have any, if somebody does not take, does not let the interest accrue on a credit card. Most of what I've learned, Allah knows best and is that the credit card would be permissible. When it comes to credit cards, the best thing to do is you pay off your balance in full every month and you just treat it like a way that you can transact in this kind of world. Otherwise, yeah, it should be okay inshallah. Okay, while fasting, can we use perfume or not? Yes, you can use perfume, you don't need to worry about perfume. Somebody asks, can you go for Umrah or Hajj if you have student loans? Okay, so I would not go for Umrah if you have student loans because you should prioritize paying off the student loans for sure. If you, for Hajj, that's a good question. I don't know the answer for that one. Yeah, I'm sorry, if you want to send me a direct message, I can look into that one for you. I don't know the answer though. Okay, anybody have any other questions? We'll end with a prayer with a dua. Someone asks, while fasting, can we use perfume or not? Or any other makeup? If you just don't use makeup that you're going to like, you know, put around here that you might get in your mouth, but otherwise you should be fine. Yeah, mortgages, someone asks about mortgages. So mortgage, the best thing to do is try to get an Islamic mortgage if you are in the Western world, like US or Canada, the places they have Islamic mortgages available, that would be what I would recommend. Toothpaste while fasting, there's a difference of opinion. Most of the teachers that I've heard from recommend not using toothpaste while fasting. So that's what I've learned, but I have also heard that it's okay from other scholars. So yeah, you just have to be really, really careful. I would just brush your teeth like a night time after iftar and then before you finish your sahur, I would just do that. Wouldn't brush them while you're after doing it, especially these days, most of us are like remote, we're not really seeing people, it should be fine. Our reward points okay to take if we pay the credit card statement off in its entirety each month. That's a really good question. I've always heard, I got to look into that one. Yeah, I've generally heard the reward points are fine, but I have heard some people say that we should be careful about them, but I've always taken them. So I need to look into that one. Yeah. Okay. The reward points from my understanding, many times they come as an incentive for you to use the card. And they're coming like credit card providers are getting transaction fees from Visa and from Mastercard that are unrelated to interest, their pure transaction fees. And so they're taking a portion many times of those profits from the transaction fees. And they are giving those in points and incentives and whatnot. So if it's not coming from that interest, generally speaking, what I've learned is fine, but you know, we should ask a proper scholar for that one. Okay. Alhamdulillah. Cool. So I'll go ahead and end with a prayer with the dua. And if anybody has any of the last questions, please feel free to post them. We'll do our best to get to them, inshallah. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillah. We ask that you pardon all of us. Yeah, that you forgive all of our sins, all of our inward sins and our outward sins, everything wrong that we've done, everything it is that we've done intentionally and unintentionally. Allah, we ask that you forgive us and that you pardon us and you accept our forgiveness in this month. Yeah, Allah, many of us want to change our lives in this month. Allah, many of us want to become different people. We want to become better people. We want to leave the bad that we were doing. We want to leave whatever harm it is that we were doing or that we were seeing or that we were engaging with. Yeah, Allah, we ask that you help us and help us all to become better people. Yeah, Allah, we sincerely turn towards you. Yeah, Allah. Yeah, Allah, we ask that you make this possible for us and for our family members and for our loved ones and for the Ummah of the Prophet ﷺ. Yeah, Allah, we ask that you allow us to leave all of the major sins in this month and that you allow us to leave all of our minor sins in this month and that you allow us to immerse in this month completely pure and completely people who not only are pure but who help others become pure. Yeah, I mean this is very easy for you. Yeah, Allah, we are your slaves. Yeah, Allah, you are our Lord. Yeah, Allah, we are broken before you. You are the only one who can assist us. You're the only one who can forgive us. You are the only one who can help us. Yeah, we turn to you and we seek your your assistance and we ask Allah that you pardon us. Allah, you are the one who pardons and you love pardoning. Please erase all of our sins and please pardon us for all the wrongs that we've done for anything it is that you have not liked about what we have done. Please forgive us, my Lord. Please forgive us and please make our lives transformed after this month and please help all the people who have listened. Please help all of us implement this knowledge into practice and please pardon us for anything we have said that was found displeasing to you and please allow us to make an effort after this month and during this month and after this month to get on a path of knowledge and to get on a path of implementing knowledge into our lives. We ask you for everything good that the Prophet ﷺ asked for and we ask your protection for everything evil that he asked for protection from. He is some of the last question here. If we struggle with tajweed is my prayer Qur'an accepted. It's a good question. So there are different rules of tajweed. There's like a level of tajweed that we have to have tajweed is by the way it's like the science of how to recite the Qur'an. So like you see you have to say certain words in a certain way. You have to bounce certain letters that type of thing. So if you struggle with it and you're trying to learn it inshallah that's the first thing I would do. The second is as long as you're still saying the words inshallah your prayer will hopefully it will be accepted. There is a point at which not like everybody has to be a master of tajweed. Right. So there are many of the scholars who have said that if even if we are doing some form of you know we might be making small tajweed mistakes we should be okay. But if we're making major tajweed mistakes that change the meaning of the word that's a big problem. Right. So like let's say that somebody is instead of saying Alhamdulillah they're saying Alhamdulillah right instead of Haad they're saying Al-Qa'een or something like that. That would obviously be a problem. Right. And so you have to just see what level you're at with that tajweed and kind of work on it accordingly inshallah. And there's many resources available on YouTube and on online classes but not for tajweed. So I would check those out inshallah. Okay somebody asked okay this will ask two questions. Okay watching TV is okay especially some serials like Turkish dramas. You know I would stay away from all TV in Ramadan. It's not like it's not like a sin or something unless you know you're watching them in Haram. But just because Ramadan should be a time of focus it should be a time of prayer. It should be a time of learning. I would generally stay away from television if possible but you know if you can't then it's better to watch some Islamic type of content versus not yet. Someone says any recommendation how to really study Islam. A guide courses anything to help us study. That is a good question. So I would start with just three different books for how to just kind of begin studying this religion. I would get the book of assistance by Imam al-Haddad. I would get a and I would go on a website called seekersguidance.org. That's actually where I would go. If you are really trying to start the path to studying seekersguidance.org has actually a thing that's called seekershub.org. They have a bunch of courses for free guides for free and a bunch of other like free content that's available for us to start studying Islam with the three main areas that matter thick which is the law spirituality which is purifying this ourselves and the leaf akida what are we supposed to believe what are we not supposed to believe. So I would start there that will have all the resources again seekersguidance.org if you Google it you should be able to find that yeah. Alhamdulillah. Okay well jazakum Allah khair everybody inshallah we will see you next week. Wa sallallahu wa sallam wa barak ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa la alihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi wa sahbihi