 Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has divided the humanity into two groups. All of human beings, if you divide them, we are into two groups. People of Sa'ada and people of Shaqawah. There are people of happiness and the people of misery and unhappiness. In this dunya, you can't tell who's who because it's a mixed abode. And hereafter, I'm tazul yawma ayyuha al-mujrimun. The Quran says in Yassin, all criminals, all people of misery, all people of unhappiness, separate yourself from everyone else. So that two groups splits. One is the people of paradise and the other are the people of the Hellfire. A while ago here, we talked about the five categories, the five signs of the people of Sa'ada, people of happiness. And today I want to talk about the five signs of the people of misery because we have a tradition, qabla tahalli wa tajalli, that you have to empty out before you actually take something in and beautify it. So if you have old furniture in the house, you have to get the old furniture out before you can bring the new furniture in. And this is a beautiful tradition and this is the reason why our ulema talk about these beautiful reminders, not as a downer, not as something to make us depressed, but something to make us look forward to the changes in our hearts, in our bodies, in our minds, in our lives. Shaqiq al-Balkhi, who died in year 810, one of the first great Gnostics, he said, there are five signs that if you find it in yourself, you have to change them because these are signs of the people of Shaqawa, of the people of misery. Number one, he said, those people that have hard hearts, their hearts are hard. Even in this culture, they say that this person is a hard hearted person. And the heart of the human being is the center. This is the center of the human existence. So if the heart is good, the hadith says, if the heart of the human being is good, all of the limbs are good. But if the heart is rotten and bad and evil, all of the limbs would be evil. This is in our tradition of our Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And the heart is, there's a battle for the heart, obviously the shaitan wants to get into the human heart. But Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reminds us that yawma la yanfa'umalum wa la banoon illa man'atallahu bi qalbin salim, on that day of resurrection when nothing will benefit you, your wealth and your children. And these are the two things that the Arabs used to take pride in, their wealth and their children. They said, nothing will benefit you, including your wealth and your children, except the one who stands in front of his Lord with a sound heart, with a soft heart, with a gentle heart, with a beautiful heart, with a pure heart. Because Allah scans the heart on that day. Allah scans the heart on that day. So the first sign of people of Shaqqa'ah is that they have hearts that are heart. And remember that our Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam reminded us, Inna Allah la yandru ila itsamikum wa la ila suwarikum wa lakin yandru ila quloobikum. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not look at your bodies, your form, your faces. No. Allah looks into your heart. It doesn't matter how tall, how short you are, how beautiful, handsome you are, or not. But rather, He looks into the heart of the human being and that's why a sound heart is the first sign of the people of happiness and a bad heart, a heart heart is a first sign of the people of hell or Shaqqa'ah. There was a companion amongst the Sahaba of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The Prophet was sitting in a masjid and he said, this man that's walking into the mosque, he's amongst the people of paradise. So everybody wanted to know, who is this man, this is an ordinary companion. So Abdullah bin Amr al-Ibn al-A'as said, I want to find out. So he went to the man and he said, can I stay with you? He made an excuse. He said, sure. He stayed with him for three days. This is one of the wisdoms of Sayyidina Ali ibn Abi Talib who said, they asked him, how do we know a man? How do we know a person? He said, if he opens his mouth, I know him instantly. But if he's silent, give me three days. In other words, you should be able to figure someone out if you live with them for three days. And unfortunately, there are people, married people, that they don't know their spouses and their children and their husband and their wives and they've been together for a lifetime. There are children who don't know their parents and there are parents who don't know their children. And this is a sign of lack of wisdom, lack of wisdom. So he said he went and he lived with him for three days. And he was pretty disappointed in this Sahaba. He said he was just an ordinary man. He didn't do anything extra. He prayed the five-day prayer, he slept in the night, and he got up a portion of the night. All of the Sahaba used to do that. That was an ordinary life. He said he didn't fast every day. He didn't do anything extra. He was just an ordinary, average Muslim. So finally, on the third day, after the third day, he went to him and he said, the reason why I'm here, because of this is what the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, said about you. That you are amongst the people of paradise. What is your secret? Because I didn't see anything. He said, I don't know. I really don't know. But I have one habit. Every night when I go to sleep, before I fall asleep, I forgive everyone who has done wrong to me in that day. I remove every ill feeling towards anyone before I fall asleep. That's the only habit I have. And that is the habit of people of paradise, because you don't want to keep anything in the heart to make your heart hard. The next one, he said, the signs of the people of Shekawa is that they have dry eyes, eyes that don't cry. And one of the reasons why eyes don't cry is because the heart is dead. Because the nature of the heart, it's like in the spring. In the eyes or the fountain, the tears gush through. But if you have a dead heart, people don't cry if they have a dead heart. Tears, there are two tears that are priceless. One is the tear of Nidama. The tear that when you sin and disobey Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala and then you fall into sajdah and you cry. And he said, ya Allah forgive me for this act of disobedience. That is a priceless tear. And the other is when you get up in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep and you have a moment of intimacy what they call muna jat with your Allah, with your Creator, with your Lord. And you're talking to him and you're shedding tears. Those are the tears that are priceless. Those are the tears that are priceless. One of the Persian poets said, bi afshan qatray ashkay ke man hastam kharidah rash bi avar qatray ikhlas wa daryakardanash baaman He said, Allah is telling His servant, why don't you shed a drop of tear and I'll buy it from you. You drop it, just shed a drop of tear and I will buy it from you. I swear to you, my servant, that if that drop of tear is sincere I will turn it into an ocean without shores. This is the generosity of Allah. This is the generosity of Allah. If people knew the value of tears in the midnight hours qatray ashkay saharra basurayya ma furush One of the great Persian poets said, he said, the biggest mistake you will make if somebody comes and offer you the heavens and the earth for a drop of tears that you shed in the midnight hours he said, you're a loser because that drop of tear is more expensive than the heavens and the earth. What Allah. But it comes from a living heart. It doesn't come from a dead heart. The third one he said, the sign of people of Sheqawa is that they have an attachment, excessive attachment to the dunya. The dunya is good if you use it for good. The dunya is good if you use it for good. The dunya is good if it's in your hand. The dunya becomes rotten, becomes evil when it enters your heart. Because the heart is a place that the light of God is there. The place that the light of God resides is in the heart of a human being. So you don't want to put the dunya in there. You don't want the things of this world in the heart. There's nothing wrong with being rich. Say, now, a man was the richest man. He was one of the richest man of his time. Abu Bakr was rich. We have so many sahabas. And if it wasn't for them, who armed? Every time that they went to a battle and they needed money to arm the army, who did it? Or the man? So many times, he armed the entire army because he had wealth, he could do it. So there's nothing wrong with it. But if it gets into your heart, it's a problem. Because the nature of this dunya is that it drowns you in the ocean of your own regret. That's the evil of this dunya, that you are using the money, the wealth, all of the stuff that Allah has given you for other than Allah SWT, for other than good. That doesn't mean you don't have nice clothes. Don't misunderstand me, brothers and sisters. That doesn't mean you don't have a nice car. When Allah has given you and blessed you, you should show some of the blessings of Allah SWT in your life. There's nothing wrong with that. But extravagance is evil. And this is not just in our culture. Aristotle identified this, that anything that goes to the extreme is evil. Akhlaq and ethics is that, which is in the middle, which is balance. But there's a trick of the dunya. There's a trick of the dunya. There's a story of a Sufi Sheikh who had a coat. He loved his coat very much. He was attached to it. So he was making wudu, his coat fell into the river. He jumped into the river to save his coat. And he got the coat. And the students, all the murids were like, Sheikh, give us your hand. There's a cliff, you're gonna drown. Give us your hand. Let go of the coat. Let go of the coat. And the Sheikh wouldn't let go of the coat. And at the point where the cliff was really close and the students were crying, Sheikh, please let go of the coat and give us your hand. And the Sheikh shouted, I let go of the coat, but the coat won't let me go. And that's the nature of the dunya. If you hold on to it too tight, even when you wanna let it go, it won't let you go. You have to be careful with the tricks of this dunya. The next one that he said is people who have long amal. These hopes of, as though we are here for a thousand years, life is short, brothers and sisters. And it comes abruptly, the end of it comes abruptly. The Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, one of the unique thing about him, when he was teaching, sometimes he would use what we would call instruments in order for people to learn and to understand concepts. So one day he was walking with the sahaba and he sat him down in the desert and he drew a line, a straight line in the sand. And then he drew a line on top of it and he drew a line in the middle of it, just above the middle. And he said, do you know what this is? They said, no. He said, this line is your life. That top line is your amal. This is what you wanna do in your life. That is your amal. He said, this line is your ajal, your death. It comes before you reach it. So you have to be careful about these long, that as though we are here for a thousand years. Live your life as though you're gonna die tomorrow for the things of this dunya, for the things of Akhira, because the nature of Akhira is you don't wanna delay things. But the dunya delayed, it's okay. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. The last one, and I think the most important one for our time is that he said, one of the thing about the people of Shaqawah is that they are shameless. They have no hayah. We're living in a culture that being a modest, being shameless is actually praised. A lot of our young people are following people on Instagram and on Snapchat and on all of these social media, shameless people. And they think that it is cool. They think that this is good. But they don't know that this is the greatest trick shaitan ever had under his sleeve. And he unraveled it. And he opened this master plan in our time. He's been trying to do that all his life. The Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam said, al hayah min al iman, that hayah is from iman. Modesty is from faith. In other words, if you have hayah, you have iman. If hayah goes in hadith, he said, your iman goes with it. They're intertwined, they're connected together. You can't separate modesty and faith. And the trick of shaitan is that he doesn't wanna take your dean away because he knows, you'll fight him. But if he takes your modesty away, he knows that the dean goes with it. Inna li kulli deenin khulq, the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam said, every religion, every dean had a characteristic. Every deen, every religion that came, every dean, every prophet has brought a message and it had a characteristics. Walikul, inna li kulli deenin khulq, wa kulli kulli islam al hayah, in that characteristic, that dominant characteristics of my religion, al Islam, is hayah. Modesty is the dominant characteristics of this religion. And if you have that, we have faith and our iman will be strong. And if you don't, our iman will go out with our hayah. I kulli qawli hadha, sallallahu alaihi min al hayah.