 بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم والصلاة والسلام على رسوله الكريم وعلى آله وأصحابه أجمعين إن الحمد لله نحمده ونستعينه ونستوثيره ونعود بالله من شهور أنفسنا ومن سيئات عمالنا من يهده الله فلا مضلناه ومن يضرل فلا هادية له وأشهد والما سيدنا ومولانا وحبيبنا محمد عبده ورسوله ورساله بالحق للشير أمانا ديهم بيني يديسها أما بعد فيا عيبان الله إتبوا الله إتبوا الله حقه تباهته ولا تبوته إلا وانت مسلمون وقار الله متبعرك وتعالى وتوبوا إلى الله توبة النصوحة نقوم برسال الله سبحانه وتعالى لنفتحنا حياة ونفتحنا حقيقة ونقوم برسال الله ورساله وإنقوم برساله سبحانه وتعالى أعزمكم و تعالوا معكم بالagniaded by Allah لدي تقوات mono from حلوة err رزية وصناه تسبيل من المتطلعسر of الله تسبيل المتمتع رغم정ت تسبيل يجب أن يتبقى المساعدة من الله سبحانه وتعالى ومساعدة ومساعدة المساعدة من الله سبحانه وتعالى لم يتبقى أي شيء ولكن أنه يدرسه إذا كان شيء لم يدرسه في القرآن كان يدرسه في حديثه و هذا الشخص الذي يدرسه هو لنا في all times of our lives as children, as teenagers, as adults as the elderly on our deathbeds this guide is there for us every second of our lives there's nothing else that we need nothing new that's going to come everything that needs to be addressed about human character and about the human state and about our society has already been addressed the only thing that we have to do is open that book, the Quran and open up the Seera and the Hadith and the Sunnah the Messenger of Allah SAW open it up and accept it and accept it full heartedly and submit to it and submit to it brothers and sisters we have to submit to it we have to submit our intellects we have to submit our experiences and put everything aside and make the guiding factor the judge, the Quran and the Sunnah, the Messenger of Allah SAW why is it that Allah SAW refers to the Messenger of Allah SAW in Surah Al-Isra as a slave سبحان الذي أصراب عبده ليلة Glory be to the one who took his slave and took him on the night journey the Abd is the one who is in complete submission to Allah SAW he put aside his own feelings and made the Quran his deciding factor and so he became truly a slave of Allah SAW we can never be like him our whole life is going to be an attempt to be like him and to come into this this servanthood and to become true slaves of Allah SAW how do we do that we have to work towards making the Quran and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah SAW the deciding factor in our lives at every point regardless of the situation we are watching horrendous things happen on the news to our dear brothers and sisters all around the world how do we deal with that we all feel confused we all feel confused and we all feel helpless and we all feel shame we are ashamed of ourselves in front of Allah SAW for our personal states and for what we have let our societies go to it's not a problem on the other side of the world brothers and sisters we are one Ummah we feel the pain of the other side of the Ummah and we also take responsibility for what's happening on the other side of the Ummah and we're confused we don't know what to do and we can only ask Allah SAW to guide us but the first stage that we can that we have to take in trying to address the issues of the Ummah is in addressing our own personal issues and we start with our hearts and we ask are our hearts in submission to Allah SAW and in submission to following the messenger of Allah SAW Allah SAW He's saying to Muhammad SAW to the blessed messenger of Allah SAW إن كنتم تحبون الله say telling the Prophet SAW tell the Sahaba tell the people do you love Allah say do you love Allah do you really love Allah and this is a question that many people ask themselves Muslims or non Muslims I believe in the Creator but do I love Him and many people will feel in their hearts yes I love Allah I love God I love God I love the Creator whatever it is that you want to call Him I love Him and Allah is giving them the test do you really love Him and Allah is giving them the test follow me follow the messenger of Allah Muhammad SAW who when we say his name SAW we are praising him even when the enemies of Islam say his name they are saying the praised one Muhammad the often praised one even when they try to criticize him if you translate it into your language into our language English they are saying oh and the praised one the often the one who is praised a lot did this and this and this so even in their criticisms of him even in their attacks of him they are forced to praise him and they are forced to recognize that he is the praised one this is Muhammad SAW we have to follow him and then Allah will love you so that is the deciding factor how do we know if we love Allah how much are we following the messenger of Allah SAW that is the deciding factor and what is this following of the messenger of Allah SAW is it merely an outward following is it doing things that he did just to be like photocopies of him outwardly if we look at the messenger of Allah SAW he had a beard there is many people there is many Muslims that had a beard he wore a turban SAW and he encouraged us to wear a turban but there is other people that wear a turban in fact they get in trouble sometimes because people misidentify them as being Muslims because of their turbans and he had a sunnah and a way of living and we can go on and on in many other examples is that what makes us a follower of the messenger of Allah SAW by following him outwardly it is very important for us that we look at our communities and we look at our societies or even when we look at our homes to look at Medina the blessed city of the messenger of Allah SAW who according to which according to Imam Malik is greater in its fadin than Mecca and I know that comes as a shock to many people many of the علماء Imam Ashafri and Abu Hanifa and many of the other scholars they said that Mecca was more virtuous and Imam Malik has many proofs showing that Medina is actually greater whichever one it is that is not a point of debate but it is to show you that Imam Malik considered Medina to be better because it was the Prophet SAW he who made it better Mecca and this is one of the hikmas of the hijab of the immigration because Allah wanted to show the people he is not special SAW because of the city that he is in and remember Mecca was at the seat of Arabia all of the Arabs recognized the Ka'bah even the Jews and the Christians recognized the blessedness of that city of that valley because of that house that was built by Ibrahim SAW so if he had stayed there SAW people would think oh he is special because of that city there was already a specialness about it so Allah SAW in his infinite wisdom took the messenger of Allah SAW and put him in Medina and showed people look it's not the city that makes him special he makes the city special look at Medina by taking him out and showing him Medina before that had a name that we shouldn't even mention that we shouldn't even name the Prophet SAW said don't mention the whole name now it's called the Medina the city and it has many other names and Habiba and Taiba and Ka'bah and that's why some people don't even like referring to other cities as the city we know in our culture people refer to San Francisco as the city I would encourage us to not use that because if you translate the city into Arabic what does it become? that's not the Medina the Medina is in the Hijaz it's the city because the Prophet SAW this is a special prophet that Allah sent to us and how do we follow him? we look at his city Medina we look at the society we find people in that society that were following him outwardly to a certain extent they're called the hypocrites they went to the Masjid his sunnah was to go to the Masjid they prayed they went to the Masjid they fasted he said they give zakat he said they prayed in the Masjid but the last of the Masjid they were last to get there they never caught the opening takbir they prayed like they were bored and sick of what they had to do but they did it they had a following so is that the deciding factor? follow me, follow the messenger is that considered following? because what's the difference? the difference between the منافق and the believer is that one we believe him to be the messenger of Allah so we have to believe we know he's the messenger of Allah and he was sent with the final message we don't have any doubt about it like the منافق and secondly we love him SAW we love him and we should love him more than we love our children and more than we love our parents and more than we love ourselves it's easy to say it's easy to say that but it's a life journey to try to achieve that and as an example عمار قطاب رضي الله عنه said one time to the messenger of Allah SAW yes I love you more than I love myself and the Prophet SAW said no عمار not yet عمار thought and he reflected he recalibrated inside and then he said now I do and the Prophet SAW now you do that was عمار it was natural for him to love the messenger of Allah SAW to that degree he had to work on it and similarly we have to work on it we have to learn to love the messenger of Allah SAW people fall in love and they fall out of love it's not a given love is not a given you can love your siblings as you grow up with them and we know in society sometimes some of the worst enemies are siblings you can love your people and then a civil war happens and then they become your worst enemies people fall in love with their countrymen and their family and so forth and then they fall out of love it's an emotion that goes up and down and so we have to train it we have to train ourselves to love the messenger of Allah SAW that's why the messenger of Allah SAW said in حديث أدبوا أولادكم على ثلاث إقصال حب نبيكم وحب أهلي بيته وقراءة القرآن he's guiding us كما قال the messenger of Allah SAW said train your children to have three qualities love of the messenger love of the ear prophet and love of his family and reciting the Quran now many of us put our children in schools or in Sunday schools to memorize the Quran to learn the Quran and we put them through a program and there's a curriculum for that and there's a teacher and there's training for that but that's number three in what was mentioned where do we have in our homes and in our schools and in our societies a way to teach our children to love the messenger of Allah SAW now love is not a science that you punch in an equation and you get an effect that's why you see in the Quran you go to a Quran teacher he says if you do this this and this you'll get this result sometimes the child is different you have to change a little bit but generally it's more of a science than love love is it's more of an art but we have to do something the prophet SAW said train them give them give them ever to love your prophet now when he said our children we shouldn't just think it's just our children it's also ourselves because until we fully matured spiritually we're like children even if you're 50, 60, 70 years old that's why some of the علماء when they write books they said I wrote this book for children and those like children what does that mean that means the people that are physically and chronologically children and then those people who chronologically and physically they're adults but inside developmentally spiritually, emotionally they're like children we have to raise up the child like nature in ourselves so we have to train ourselves train our child like selves to love the messenger of Allah SAW how do we do that that's there's a lot of methods for that time-tested methods sometimes it's just it's just a gift from Allah SAW when you see some children that they have an intense love for the messenger of Allah SAW and they'll cry as children when they hear poetry about him and they'll love to hear stories about him and that was just a gift that Allah gave that special children may Allah SAW give that gift to all of our children and to all of us but then other children need guidance and they need stories one of the methods is to bring the seerah to life we have to be telling the seerah to our children in our car rides as bedtime stories one of the greatest scholars in the muslim history his name is CD Ahmed Zarruq and if you're not familiar with his name it's very important to understand who he is in our tradition because he was one of the scholars that joined between the science of and the science of Tasawwuf the science of purification of the heart and the science of the outward legal rulings many people go to one extreme on one way or the other and he was able to master both sciences both subjects and be able to tell the poqaha the jurists what you're doing here here and here is wrong and be able to tell the Sufiya what you're doing here here and here is not in accordance with the Quran Sunnah because the true people of Tasawwuf according to Imam Junaid are the ones who follow the Quran Sunnah that's all it is whether you want to call it Tasawwuf or another name it's following the Quran Sunnah Imam Junaid who's the Imam of the science of purification of the heart said whatever is mentioned by the people of the Sufiya that's not in accordance with the Quran Sunnah then rejected it's not from this path CD Ahmed Zarruq was able to revive that and to bring people back to the Quran Sunnah and not all of the the innovations that were that were placed in CD Ahmed Zarruq was orphaned as a child and he was raised by his grandmother so the person who gave him Tarbiyah was his grandmother one of the things that she did is she trained him to have Tawequr على الله to depend on Allah سبحانه وتعالى how would she do that they were poor and they lived in Fass in one of the greatest cities of the Ummah in Morocco and she would hide food in the house and then she would say Ahmed let's make dua and they would make dua for food and they said now let's look for the food and they would go around in the house and look for the food and then he would finally say Allah answered our dua she was training him how to to depend on Allah سبحانه وتعالى another thing that she did that instead of telling her child I mean her grandchild CD Ahmed Zarruq stories, fairy tales and those type of things that other people tell to their children and at bedtime during the day she would tell stories of the prophets of the prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم his Seerah and of the prophets and of the Awliya and of the friends of Allah سبحانه وتعالى training him to have his love and look who he is in our history he was he renewed a lot for both in the science of fifth and in the science of Tasaww and it came from his grandmother teaching him how to love the message of Allah and those that came after him and those that came before him the prophets so we have to bring the Seerah to life we have to know who our messenger is صلى الله عليه وسلم the way he looked if you look at children or if you look at people who follow a singer or a musician or a sports player or a basketball they want to know what's his favorite food what was his hobby what does he like to do on this time when he's not in the season and all of those they want to know do we know the details of the messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم do we know the details of how he slept of how he looked of how he ate of how he dressed this is in the science of the Shama'il if you don't in your house have the book called the Shama'il of Imam in Termadi you have to get it you have to get it it's available in English it's available in Arabic it's available in Urdu there's many translations of it get it read it with with a scholar or with a teacher and bring it to life for your children so that they know more about him oh he like to eat this food this is how he drink this is how he walked this is how he slept and the more you know him the more you love him because how can we love something that we don't know just think about a situation say there was a a catastrophe on the other side of the earth if you just heard about it there's a catastrophe in this land there was a tsunami and a lot of people got hurt okay I feel sorry and I wish I could help them but once you start learning more about it and you see pictures and you hear detailed accounts and you hear people's personal experiences from that it becomes real and live for you and now you're emotionally attached the same thing with the messenger of Allah as long as his name is just in our homes as on a picture on the wall and we mention him every once in a while it's not real for our children and for ourselves we have to bring him to life in mentioning his qualities and his شمال that's another way and I'll also mention the شفاء of Qada Giyaw if you don't have that book it's very important to get that because it's a شفاء knowing the true حقوق what we owe to the messenger of Allah the reason why it's especially important in our day and age is the same reason that at certain points in the Seerah it was important is because we have people attacking his character صلى الله عليه وسلم in Mecca they called him all of those names we know them we read them in the Quran and Allah rejects them he said you're not Majnun you're not crazy you're not bewitched you're not a poet he rejects all of this propaganda that Quraish was putting out there and they would put it out with musicians they would put this criticism to music and put the musicians out on the pathways leading to his classes and they would try to distract people by giving all this false information about the messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم how different does that sound with what we're experiencing and in this day and age especially for our children and especially if they're in public schools and they're the minority as they're growing up they're the minority in their schools they're the minority amongst their frames they're the minority on their sports team what do you think they're going to be hearing they're going to be hearing a lot of the Quraishi insults just in a different form they're going to be hearing these things and then as they grow up then they start doubting him because as people pull them away from the messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم you don't have to give them all that respect he was a man in history just like other men in history no he wasn't we don't believe that but as they pull him down from his high مقان and make him more and more just a historical figure that could have made mistakes that was just a man then now they're they're opening those people up for doubting the messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم and I'll end this first quba to remind us of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq رضي الله عنه who on the day after إسلام و المعراج he was outside of the city so as Quraish we're putting up their new set of propaganda new set of propaganda oh he said this that's totally irrational it's irrational but we don't look at the rational we submit our intellect because we believe he's the messenger of Allah we define what's truth by him not by our intellects the people that have not submitted their intellects cannot understand they have not submitted their intellects cannot accept him as being the messenger of Allah but let's look at a person who submitted his intellect so much so that if you took half of the ummah his faith would be stronger than theirs the Quraish were putting out their propaganda in Mecca this is a false story how could he have gone to Jerusalem in one night how could he have gone to the heavens and come back all in one night and then some of the believers started being shaken and we have people today in our society in our communities maybe in this message that are being shaken by the propaganda out there by the news by the videos by the movies by the books by the songs by the raps by the stars same things against the messenger of Allah same practices they came to Abu Bakr he didn't even think twice he didn't even flinch what did he say in if he said it he's telling the truth that's all I need to know you don't need to give me any details you don't need to give me your commentary on what happened if he said it it's the truth that should be our motto if he said it it's the truth and we need to raise our children especially in this society to have that as their motto if he said it it's the truth because not every one of us are going to become scholars and the truth is that on the other side of the people that are attacking Islam they have scholars they have people they have people that know our religion better than many of us know our religion they know hadith they know Quran they know Tafseed they know Fiqh and they'll pull different things out and present it to the average Muslim and say see how can this be true how can this hadith be true can you really believe a man who said this think about your intellect you're an American you're a Britain you're a British you're an Australian you're modern can you believe this the first response we should say just train it in Qadahu فقد صدق train your children train yourselves in Qadahu فقد صدق I don't know what it means and I'll have to go back and ask my scholars but I'm just giving you the first if he said it it's true Abu Bakr al-Sadif says that stop them right in their path if he said it it's true but now let me explain it to you you're amazed that he can't make this trip in one night from Jerusalem to here to back to Mecca in one night and I believe that he gets revelation from above seven heavens in one instant I already believed that from before so how would it be hard for me to believe this so he had a rational response for them so we do have to have our rational responses to put out but we have to have the Abu Bakr al-Sadif methodology where it's in Qadahu فقد صدق if we truly love him we'll say whatever he said is true now let's try to figure it out and we ask Allah to give us to beat and to give us the steadfastness that he gave to Abu Bakr al-Sadif and to all of the صحابة رضي الله عنه أجمعين and to give us حب نبيه and to give us love of his prophet and love of his family عليه الصلاة والسلام بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم وصلاة والسلام وعلى رسوله الكريم وعلى آله وأصحابه أجمعين ما بعرف يا عباد الله اتفوا الله اتفوا الله فاقوا تقاته ولا تموتنا لله وانت مسلمون سبوا إلى الله تولة المصوحة I enjoy you and I enjoy myself after beginning in the name of Allah and sending praises and praising him الله سبحانه وتعالى and sending blessings and prayers upon his prophet محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم I enjoy you and I enjoy myself to have taqwa of Allah and to fear Allah outwardly and inwardly to fulfill all of his commands and to avoid all of his prohibitions The Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم told us taught us encouraged us ordered us to train our children to love him and then what's the second thing he mentioned about Hadid وحب أهلي بيته and to love his other bait to love his family now we could go on and speak about the love of his family and what that means and how our love for him will never be complete until we love the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم's family but I want us to take one lesson from the way people treated the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم's family and have it clear up some confusion for us because I know a lot of us and I'm saying this for me first and foremost feeling confused and helpless because of what's going on in the world and because what we see people doing to our brothers and sisters and because what we see them doing to the children we feel confused we feel helpless and we might even ask ourselves a very dangerous question that we all have to be careful about why why why did this happen why does this happen why do good things bad things happen to good people this question is a question that leads many people and I've talked with them I spoke with somebody last week who told me he left faith because he asked this question he said I can't believe in God anymore he was a Vietnam vet he said I saw what happened in Vietnam I don't need to explain to you what he has seen the horrors of war he said I've seen that I can't believe in God if there was a God why did he let that happen