 Wa ala alaihi wa salli amri Wa ala aqtatim al-asani wa qawqawli Wa sallallahu wa sallim wa barik Alasibna Muhammadin wa ala alaihi wa sallim Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen Salamu alaykum So Allah, I hope everybody's well. Apologies for the really delayed start today. The Isha time actually got moved to 8, but inshallah starting next week, we'll start promptly at 8 because it'll be daylight saving, so we'll pray Isha at 9, inshallah. So for today's class, I think the volume is fine, yeah. Inshallah, we're gonna cover a really, really critical topic, which is kind of like a game changer as someone starts to progress on the path of spirituality. And it essentially boils down to making careful choices. So we talked last time a little bit about wise decisions and what are the components of making a wise decision. And this is a topic known as the science of wadah, the science of scrupulousness, like how to be really careful about the choices that someone is making so that you and I can try to attain this state of ultimate God consciousness, right? So we're getting very, very close to the blessed month of Ramadan. And for the next two or three weeks, inshallah, after this class, we'll be focusing almost exclusively on Ramadan and prepping for Ramadan. But this is kind of a good pre-preparation and Ramadan is all about attaining the state of taqwa, attaining the state of God consciousness. And God consciousness is this idea that if you think about, for example, during this pandemic, right, everybody has been really, really careful about, especially in the early days, right? Okay, I can't stand next to this person. This is, I have to be this careful about the amount of distance I'm maintaining, wearing a mask, making sure to clean their hands with hand sanitizer, making sure to wash their hands and so on. And just really being extremely careful about this physical disease that had been spreading. And the idea of God consciousness is to be even more careful about the spiritual diseases that are present. And so you can apply that same metaphor and try to be even more careful with sin and staying away from sin and with trying to get close to good and putting enough barriers between ourselves and sins so that we actually kind of apply this idea of scrupulousness, which will eventually allow us to attain the state, inshallah, of taqwa, of God consciousness. So the main focus or the main topic that's important to understand with scrupulousness is that it's about carefully avoiding things in order to attain higher ranks of spirituality. So you're not talking here anymore about the obligations. You're now talking about someone who's trying to go closer and closer. And we talked about this in the early class in the early discussions on this idea of trying to attain a state of yakin, attaining a state of certainty where someone doesn't just believe in God, but they actually realize the truth that God exists and that this is all real. And there are some people who that truth lives as a knowledge for other people. That truth lives as something they might see, they might begin to experience components of the unseen and so on. And there's for some people who it's literally a reality and they're fully swimming in it and they're experiencing it but for most people that reality doesn't become manifest till they die. And when they die, everything changes because everything you and I saw as the world around us what we thought was reality becomes fake essentially, right? And the real reality sets in and Allah warns about this in the Quran that what will you do when the reality comes, right? And referring in this case to the day of judgment and what will you do when the reality comes and how will you and I be when the reality actually sets in? So the people who practice a state of careful spirituality they begin to attain a nearness to this reality sooner than waiting for let's say someone to pass away waiting for this day of judgment. They actually begin to experience it in this life and that allows them to then continue on this journey. So the first thing to keep in mind is it starts with avoiding the prohibited. I think we already have talked about this, right? Everybody generally knows that in our religion in order to just fulfill the obligations, right? We want to avoid what's haram what's very clearly explicitly haram, right? So this case like alcohol, intoxication, someone eating meat that's impermissible very, very like obviously impermissible like pig and carcass and so on. And then it gets into different layers of impermissible. And that's like at the basic level. And then somebody says, okay, you know what? I got that down. Now I want to go a little bit closer. I want to do a little bit more. And then it starts by avoiding things that are prohibited or suspect, right? You're like not a hundred percent sure, right? Is this the right thing to eat with the right thing to not eat or is this the right job to take or should I not take this job because of the income and so on. So the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he mentions that specifically with regards to money that he says all flesh that has grown wrongfully acquired income or wrongfully acquired money, the fire has the first right to it. And so he says here he's giving us an indication that okay, you have to get to the level in your spirituality and your religion where you want to be careful about more than just the deeds that you do. You also want to be careful about the source of things. I think we talked about this maybe five or six sessions ago around like source of income and so on. And so the scrupulousness relates to three things very directly. It relates to income very directly relates to the food that we eat very directly and it relates to what we consume and other parts of our life very directly, right? So consume audio consumption, video consumption and so on. Those are probably the three biggest components of scrupulousness in the time that we live in. And it's also mentioned that the one who guards against suspect things, right? Against things that they're doubtful about, they will protect their religion. There's a protection that they give to their religion and their honor. And the one who starts to delve into suspect things will begin to eventually fall into the prohibited, right? Because it's like the suspect in this case you're not quite sure. But right after it, if you think of like layers right behind the suspect things are the prohibited things, the haram. Someone's like, eh, I could probably do this and they're not gonna hurt me. But the risk of that is very close to that choice is making a haram choice. And so with the sahaba, the companions of the prophets all the love is at them. Now, I'll be pleased with all of them. What they used to do is they used to put many, many, many layers of, many layers of deeds you could say or many layers of protection between themselves and the haram. So they wouldn't even go near some of the narration say 70 layers, right? So they would say, you know what? This thing is permissible to do, but if I do it it might get me involved in something that's a little risky to do. And then that might eventually get me involved in the haram. So I'm just gonna stay away from all of it. That's a very, very careful, careful, careful level. There's not required to do in the religion. None of what we're talking about right now the majority of what we're talking about right now I should say is not farth or mandatory. But it gets back to, we're talking now about like trying to attain states of divine nearness. It doesn't come easy, right? It's challenging. It takes effort. It's like when someone is trying to grow intellectually they have to really apply themselves, right? You know, most anyone who's gone to school or studied or gone to master's, PhD, medical degree whatever, there's a lot of effort required and it's strained. There's a strain that comes with it but then there's a payoff as well. Same thing with physical work and physical working out. It requires effort, pain comes, no pain, no gain, right? And then eventually the gain happens. Similarly with spirituality it does require effort and requires compromise and sacrifice and making choices that are never easy. They're never gonna be the easy choice, right? It's always going to be some choice, like you know what? I could probably do this thing which is gonna end up being better for me in the dunya but it's not gonna be always better for me in the Akhira so maybe I'm gonna make the tougher choice. But it's not like it's served on a platter to us and then we have all the really, really easy choices to go with. So that's the first point to mention here. And then it's also mentioned in the books that the one who eventually begins and I wanna just make sure that this is a hadith, right? So the Prophet Sassan mentioned the one who guards themselves to protect the religion and their honor and the one who doesn't they eventually will fall into the prohibitive. So it's like, okay, we all just have to know what layers of defense we wanna put between ourselves. Now the other thing that happens is the one who falls into doing something risky or doing something suspect or doing something prohibited they won't have the energy or the desire to do good deeds. And we've all had times where we felt this before where you started to do something, dabble in something, look at something, eat something, engage with somebody, engage in a bad conversation and so on and you falling into the haram doesn't make, you actually start to go away from wanting to do good which is why in Ramadan everybody gets this burst of energy because the whole day is spent in obedience. The entire day is spent in fasting. It's complete obedience to Allah. It's been one of the highest forms of obedience, right? And then if someone is making sure to do their prayers and then is trying to do extra prayers salat al-tarawee on top of that and then trying to do a little extra Quran. I mean, it's just all goodness and goodness begets goodness. Nurun al-anur is a concept in our religion. Light brings light. More light, the more good, the more light, the more good and so on. And Imam Ghazali, he talks about this. He says that the way the heart works is you have, you kind of have like different fields of energy going on around your spiritual heart and this is all like real stuff that's happening inside of you. And so the more good that you do, the more you draw light and then the more angels come and they surround you and they're surrounding you and then they're giving you good thoughts like, oh you did that and I'll also do this. And then you'll do another good deed. And they're like, oh you did this one and I'll also do this. The angels love people like this, right? And they're literally surround them. There's an angelic light that's constantly with them. And now then there's that, so that's like one category of people. That's juxtaposed against another category that are people who are falling into sin. And the minute the sin happens, the light leaves and the darkness comes. And now the shayatin and the demons, and you're not talking like one shaytan. There's millions and billions of shayatin, right? Just for every single human being, each human has their own devil attached to them. And then there's other devils who surround them based on the bad places someone enters and the bad things someone does. And so as somebody begins to do this, something that's prohibited, darkness enters. And then the shayatin surround them. And then they whisper to them, no do something else, go and do this now. And then darkness enters more. And then more shayatin are attracted because this person is a person of darkness. They're like, oh that's the person to kick it with. Go around, go near him or her. And then more haram happens. And until this person gets into a place where it's darkness upon darkness, darkness upon darkness, and that's not the place that you and I wanna be. And then there's the middle of that, which is somebody who is on one side going this way and the other side going this way. So like that kind of popular cartoon image of like an angel on one shoulder. That's actually a very real manifestation of how the conscience is working inside of us, right? That you kind of have this constant push and pull that there are people who they give so much to the good side that it just becomes all good. And it can become so good, like the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam who there was no devil assigned to him. That his devil converted to Islam because he was the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. His light was so powerful. He didn't even need angelic light. His light is the source of light as we know from different hadith. So that is possible. Someone's light can become so strong that then they meet somebody and they pull them towards the religion just by meeting them. Just by literally walking in the same room as them, you don't even know. And because that person was present in the room, their light was so powerful, your heart is completely converted and your life will change. And it might not happen in that minute, but the light will change. And there are people who have, you've ever met the great inheritors of prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam of which they still exist today, the great shiuch of our time. This is the way that they are. The shiuch be they men or women, that this is who they are. They have such strong light and they just pull people and they pull people. And even after they pass away, they're pulling people. They're coming in their dreams, guiding people, telling them what to do and not to do this. This is all part of the reality. So this is like one category of people. And then there's other category of people that they just pull people towards haram. They're the type of people you hang out with and it's like, no matter what, you're gonna get caught up in saying something you don't wanna say, you're doing something you don't wanna do, looking at something you don't wanna look at and they're pulling us towards something dark. And those are the type of people that we wanna avoid being around. And we wanna avoid, of course, being from amongst those people. And so it all begins with how careful someone is with their choices. Again, we talked about last time decisions and choices drive everything and Allah gave you and me free will. He gave us like a choice. He didn't make, he doesn't force you and compel you to do something. He says, this is your choice. Do it, take it or leave it. It's up to you what you're gonna do. And there are people who will make the choices that are in alignment with the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. And so first, one of the things that happens then when someone stops being careful, is that they don't wanna do good anymore. Another thing that happens is when they do good, their good is riddled with like spiritual diseases. What does that mean? It means they might do a good deed and instead of doing the good deed and just being content that Allah knows about it. Ooh, what does everybody think about my good deed? Like am I gonna get, someone's gonna say praise for me. Someone's gonna say, oh mashallah, look at you. You prayed so much and oh look at you. The Quran is, they're looking for praise. That's a disease, it's called rea, ostentation. You are doing things to show off and not for the sake of Allah. The source of that disease could very well be because someone wasn't careful about certain choices that they made. And so that disease won't just go away until someone gets very careful about food and very careful about income, right? And some of the root fundamental things. And even getting to that point is in our time is like considered refined. Like you even care enough about, you do enough good deeds to even care about the refined aspect of like oh, is someone looking at my good or my bad or the good choices that someone is making and trying to praise them for it, right? And so that's another kind of level of it. And then there's another aspect to this, which is the one who subsists their entire body, subsists on Haram, their deeds are rejected. Their deeds are rejected. And this is not like me saying it, this is not the author of the book, Imam Haddad saying it. This is based on the sunnah of the Prophet's Islam and this is based on the Quran. That if, and think about it like this, right? The acts that are performed by the body are only done by the energy the body has. It's the only way you can do an act. So if you just, we just prayed Isha, right? The only way to move and to recite and to bow and to get up and so on is to move about by the energy that the body has. Now where is the energy of that body coming from? Anybody have thoughts? Where's the energy from the body come from? Food, food would be the primary source of energy, right? And where does someone, how does someone get food? Does someone just like come usually and just give us, hand us a bunch of food? Maybe a brother Malik does when he cooks for us, but other than that, usually where do we get our food from? And from the income that someone has. And so those two choices that somebody makes, they're really, really drive a lot because now the food that you eat powers the deeds that you do. If the food is impermissible and is from a haram source or is haram in and of itself, the deed is not going to be pure. And Allah says that Allah is good and pure and he only accepts that which is pure. He only accepts that which is pure. Now we hope and we make dua that Ya Allah, we ask that you accept all of our deeds that we've done because it's very difficult to have everything pure, especially in our time. We just have to put our best foot forward. But the most important thing is that we don't arrogantly reject this. There are people in probably throughout time but especially in our time today, that doesn't matter what I eat, doesn't matter where my money's from, as long as I'm doing what I gotta do, that's all that matters. That's not actually the way that the Prophet's son taught us. Sahaba used to be more careful about their food and their income than they were about doing extra prayers at night and so on. They were really careful because they knew the source was everything and if the source was pure, it would be pure. And it comes in a hadith, that the prayers of a man will not be accepted as long as he is wearing one-tenth of a garment that is not pure. Like if one-tenth of someone's garment is clothing, jacket, whatever it is, isn't pure, meaning then the deed won't be accepted. Now this is one-tenth. Now imagine if it's the whole thing. It gets pretty serious. So we shouldn't be worried, what we wanna do is, okay, we take a step back and we say, how much haram is in my income and how much haram is in my food? And then we slowly start working on it. If we can't give it up entirely, we slowly start to work on this in order to help us get to this point where it starts to become more and more pure. And again, someone will see the benefits of this fairly immediately as they implement it. You're literally, the deeds will change, their view will change, their internal state will change, the stress and anxiety that someone might feel will change and the overall approach to life will change. And this is now we're just talking about the first two, right? We haven't even gotten to media consumption and some of the other things that enter our eyes. This is, there's multiple vessels to enter the body or ways to enter the body, of which the mouth is one of them. But then there's also the eyes and the ears and then the other senses that somebody has. And so it's basically this kind of this idea that if the energy that someone derives is not done, not proper, then it won't be done properly. And it comes from Sayyidina Abdullah bin Omar or the Allah-wan, as we know one of the famous Sahabi, the son of Sayyidina Omar, that he says, if you pray until your backs become bent and you fast until you become thin like strings, Allah will only accept this if it is done with a safeguarding carefulness, scrupulousness, being really careful by your choices. That it's not about the deeds in and of themselves, it's about the root of those deeds that then eventually manifests in the deeds themselves. And so then he gets into the categories of a prohibitive thing. So the first one, we already mentioned this, super obvious, alcohol, drugs, like animals that are dead and someone just eats them, carcasses and so on. That's never allowed, except in very dire circumstances, someone has absolutely no way to for food and is lost in the desert or something like that. And then things that are haram become okay, but that's very rare, especially in our times. Then the second category of this and where we wanna start being careful now is things that are okay to have, right? Water and food and these types of things, but they might not belong to us. And so us just taking them without permission would make them haram. Again, very few people do this, but if someone is just like going and like taking food from somebody and stealing and or like without asking someone's permission, it's just like taking food from their trees or whatever else it is or they're taking from their resources, then we wouldn't be allowed to do that. We have to ask permission in that instance, right? And so that would be like a very, very clear, obvious month. And then now you get into what's called the doubtful. What's called the doubtful. Before I get into this next section, does anybody have any questions? Yes. What book are you attending? We're reading the book of assistance by Imam al-Haddad, the book of assistance by Imam al-Haddad, yeah. Any other questions? See if anything came in online. Nothing, okay, cool, we'll go ahead and continue. So then we get into doubtful. So he says doubtful things are of many degrees, right? So like you already know that there's what's prohibited and then you get into what's doubtful. Doubtful is like, you're not sure. There's a little bit of doubt, right? And this is where most of us have to start to become more and more careful, inshallah. And we ask that Allah make this possible for us. If you think about it in Ramadan, right? In Ramadan, and I'm sure we've all heard this analogy before, but like food is not actually like haram to eat. In a normal day, nothing wrong with drinking water and eating food, no problem. But in Ramadan, in a certain time, what happens to that food? The consumption of it becomes haram, right? And it's halal in other times, but it comes haram in that time. And then ideally you're like, during the fast, most people are quite careful about not just eating food. I think that's kind of basic. Like nobody's like sneaking away and eating biscuits in the corner. Most people are fine with that, but people are careful about other things in Ramadan. Like, oh, you know what, I'm going to work on myself. I'm going to try not to get angry or I'm going to try not to curse or I'm going to try not to listen to music or I'm going to try not to watch TV or whatever extra someone wants to take on, right? Because they're like, oh, I'm fasting. I'm in some state, I'm fasting. And so I should try to do this. We want to think about doubtful matters with that same mindset, right? That it's about trying to attain a state of nearness and applying that same logic that someone applies in Ramadan. And so we'll go through some of these, these doubtful matters, right? So one is there's three categories. So the first category is you're pretty sure something is prohibited. There's a small chance it's not prohibited, but like you're pretty sure, right? In that case, you should avoid it. You should avoid it. So someone is like, example of this would be if someone offers you, you know, you're walking at, I don't know, you're in Lake Merritt or something and someone offers you like, oh, I just did a barbecue and this delicious, you know, tri-tip or ribs or whatever it is. And you're like, okay, like I'm pretty sure this is Haram. Like I can't eat this. You have a small chance. Like, okay, this guy could be Muslim. Maybe he got it from Halashtra, but you're like pretty sure you shouldn't eat it. I actually know how to pass, right? You're not like required to say, oh, just because I want to, you know, receive the food and feel, you know, feel good about it and make the other person feel good. Or you just kind of politely reject it and say, no, you're pretty sure that it's prohibited, right? Unless now if there's a very good chance that the person is Muslim, then you, you know, would be considered, it would be fine. Then there's, so then he gets in the next category. There's things that, that's your 50-50 about. You're like, eh, it could be okay to do, it could not be okay to do. Maybe it's fine. Like maybe someone is like thinking about, I don't know, a movie someone's gonna watch and they're like, eh, there's a lot of bad scenes, maybe not, I don't know. Like they're like a little bit wavering, right? In this case, he says the person who's gonna be careful will avoid it. They'll just be like, look, I'm not gonna take a risk. I don't want to mess my state up. I don't want to mess things up. I don't want to get closer and closer to doing something Haram. It might not be, but it may be. And so why risk it? That would be this state. And then there's things where you're very sure that they're fine, but you have a slight suspicion. And in that case, you don't want to overdo it either. You don't have to verify every single thing with every person and prove to me that what you're doing is, that's not, that wouldn't be recommended. But there's also examples. If you remember one of our teachers mentioned this once. He says, if you go over to someone's house and like they, you know, let's say you eat halal is abija and you know that they don't serve the abija meat, right? You, if you already know that and like you've established it as a fact, you don't need to probe or anything or make them feel off, but you just generally avoid the meat. You're for sure about it. If you're unsure about it, but you think there's a good chance that they don't, you can nicely ask if you can find a good way to do it without upsetting them, of course, in our time because it could be a question people don't like. You could find a way to nicely ask, right? But if you're like 95% sure they're practicing people and whatnot, you don't need to be like, yo, show me the source, like give me the certificate. Like that someone, that would be messed up. You don't want to do that, right? At a restaurant, you could do it if you want because they don't mind. But so it comes in the Hadith of the Prophet of Islam says that leave that, which is suspect, which you're suspicious about in favor of that, which is not. Just leave it because there's plenty of things to do, plenty of things to eat, plenty of things to, plenty of places to work, plenty of things to enjoy in life and so on that aren't suspicious. So just leave it as the advice of the Prophet of Islam. Now somebody who has a love for the Prophet of Islam in the month we're in Sha'ban, it's mentioned in various narrations. This is the month of the Prophet of Islam actually. He says that Rajab is the month of Allah, Sha'ban is my month, and Ramadan is the month of my umma. And so in Sha'ban is a month which we try to increase in love of the Prophet of Islam, in addition to months like Rabi al-Owal and others. And so if someone loves him, they're gonna wanna be like, oh, he said that? Let me try and figure out what he means there and I'm gonna try to implement that, right? Practically in the time that somebody is living in. And then he says, the Prophet of Islam told us that somebody, a servant, does not attain the rank of taqwa until they abstain from that which is harmless for fear of that which is harmful. So a person does not attain the rank of taqwa until they literally start staying away from things that are perceivably harmless for fear of that which is harmful. What does that mean, right? So we've been talking about taqwa which is this idea of being conscious of God. Someone is very conscious and aware of Allah and they're like, you know what? I don't even wanna risk it and I wanna try to stay away from anything that could eventually be haram so I'm gonna try to stay away from something that, you know, perceivably is harmless but it could put someone at risk, right? And again, this has to be done balanced in context. If you're choosing to do it, you cannot force it upon everybody around you. There's a lot of wisdom that has to come into this choice because you can't like start telling everybody you're trying to be like really careful about everything tell everybody like avoid every, never go to safe way again. Who knows if there's 1% of ingredients that could be like you have to be careful about that if someone themselves is like yo, I wanna make sure that like the food I get is from caught from my own hands or whatever it is and be really, really careful. You know, that's up to them but at a general level, the Prophecy Psalm is encouraging us to just be careful and it applies differently in different times. So at the time of the Prophecy Psalm in the Sahaba being careful might have meant something very different than in our time. At our time just investigating a little bit and just looking into things a little bit could help us get to the level of scrupulousness and get the reward of scrupulousness that they might have gotten even though they might have been extensively careful because we're living in a time where this is kind of lost. And so when something is lost and you revive it, there's a, it's called the reward of reviving a sunnah. There's a lot of extra reward associated with it. And then as we mentioned, the companions, they would leave 70 permissible things for fear of falling into that which was impermissible. They would just be like, you know, I'm just gonna be super careful about this. And so this generally happens because of, so there's three categories and this usually happens for three reasons he says. He says first it happens because people just stop think investigating and looking into things, right? And that would be the first reason. And so if you never investigate, you're never gonna know. There should be a little bit of like, okay, let me just look into what I'm doing, what I'm eating, where I'm earning my money from and so on, right? And a little bit of research, like there's ways to do it without offending anybody. You don't wanna be the Muslim who like offends everybody. That's not what we're talking about here. This all should be done with adab and with good character and so on. But the first way that he says, the reason why people have fallen off of this is because the investigation has stopped. And so he says there's three ways to look at this. First is that like you're with pious and righteous people, you don't question it. You just trust that they're fine, right? You eat the food, whatever it is. If you're with somebody, the second is if you're someone you don't really know, you gently try to investigate without offending them. You have no idea, like what is the person's choices? What are they doing in life and so on? You gently try to learn a little bit about them. And then there's somebody who you like, you know, okay, this person's entire income is like, their drug dealer or something or like their own weapon store or whatever it is. And like their income is haram, undoubtful about their food, obviously, because income you just generally, you can just, you know, you pay for the meal. Like, you don't let them pay for the meal. You want to make sure that you're not eating something that's derived from an income, which is not permissible. And now this is the type of thing which in our time is like people are like, wait, what? Why would I do that? Like that sounds way too overboard. And that's something to just keep in mind. It's not overboard, it's just being careful because we're talking about the basis for all of your deeds is your energy and the basis for all your energy is your food and the basis for all of that is income. And so it's like really, really, really critical to not make light of these things. And if someone's, again, not ready to do it, that's up to them, totally up to, none of this is like forcing it upon anybody. But we shouldn't make other people who are being careful made to feel like you're just crazy, right? Like we don't want to, we want to be people like, oh, we welcome whatever approach someone wants to take and we try to get to the place where I want to try to improve and try to do more and more, inshallah. And so those are the three ways of investigation, right? People who you completely trust, the righteous person, no investigation needed, someone you don't really know much about, you inquire gently, someone who you know this person isn't really up to something good, then you try to, you can inquire or you can just avoid, you know, it's up to you. The second thing he says that happens and the reason why this state of scrupulousness isn't present is because people don't, aren't careful in business transactions, aren't careful in business transactions, what he means here in the examples he gives is first, they'll engage in transactions without any contract in place. Just like in Islam, when you're dealing with somebody in any form of business other than some light exchange, contracts are critical in our religion. It's actually like a part of our deen to have contracts and you want to outline the terms and so on, you don't want to just engage with people because there could be problems later on if you don't do that, right? The second thing he says is people like, when they're selling or buying, let's say they sell things, they hide facts about those things that are facts. That's a major source of problems that can happen and that can mess up someone's deen. That like, oh, you know, you got a car, you know the car is like, you know, has a major engine problem, you go and you pretend like everything's okay, you let someone test drive the car, they say, oh, anything wrong? Nothing, it's a great car, it's one floor in the front, it's fine. You know, you try to be like a car salesman and then next thing you know, that person gets the car and they're dealt with the problems you got your money and you're gone, right? That's like a very obvious haram, but you'd be surprised how present it is throughout the Muslim world and just like cheating other people. And this causes, this makes the society lose baraka when everybody's just cheating each other and trying to hide defects and trying to make sure that, you know, whatever the reality of what they're selling is not present, that would be considered a problem. So the Muslim is sincere and truthful, they like don't hide things, they just say there's the reality of it, right? And as a good or service or something that someone is offering. So that is the second reason why this would happen, he says. The first is someone and nobody investigates, the second is that someone doesn't, you know, safeguard themselves against these transactions. And the third he says is that someone is just so caught up and just like in love with the dunya and with money and with the pleasures of life that they don't care about things. They're like, what does it matter, right? I just want what I want. And then like, okay, so I want to drive, you know, a Lamborghini or something like that. And I don't care where I get the money as long as I can get the money. If it's a 10% APR loan, it doesn't matter. I want to drive the best car. I just, I love the fast, the fast speed of the car. I love how luxurious it is. And I'm going to take whatever source of income I can get to get it. And there's no investigation into what that should be. Right, that's somebody like that person's at immense risk because they could have had an option just like drive a Civic or something and they said, no, no, no, I want the best of the best and I'm going to take whatever Haram source is I can. Not purposefully, but like without investigating, right? Without investigating. And this is also a common problem present in the community, in the Muslim community today where like interest has become like, we don't even care anymore. It's like, oh, we do, just because the Western world accepts it, we just accept it like, oh, big deal. 2%, 3% interest, 4% interest, car loans, student loans, business loans, personal loans. All of the things which need like any form of interest is severely warned against in the Quran and can mess up someone's source of income, right? But like, we just, because we live in a society, we stopped caring about it. And that requires a really significant spiritual reset. It doesn't just require changing deeds. Someone has to change their orientation. They have to be like, hold on a second, what am I doing, right? Like there might be people who are super careful about some aspect like from very apparent outward aspects, like culturally, people are very careful about clothing and these types of things and relationships that their kids get in, all very important that we should be careful about. But then it comes to interest and we just stop caring, right? But that's interest is warned severely against in the Quran. Allah says in the Quran that Allah and his messenger wage war on the one who engages in usury. And so he says that, oh, you who believe, give up usury, give it up completely, give it up. And there will be some form of it present at the end of times where everybody will touch it in some way. Prophet's son told us this, but give up what you can. If it's not something that's out of your control completely, give it up, right? And so this would be another source where somebody is just kind of caught up in the luxuries of the Western life, the luxuries of this world, thinking that we just have to do certain things the way everybody in this society does it and not innovating, not coming up with creative ideas and whatnot. And that can become a big problem. I remember I got into a long discussion with a friend of mine on this specific topic. Where it was like, how are people supposed to do anything if we don't engage in interest? And I was like, well, that's not really a way to think, right? Like we have brains, we can come up with innovative solutions, right? Allah says, so may I tell you that Allah will give them a way out. But the taqwa has to come first. The way out's not going to come. Allah's not going to be like, yo, here's the way out and now do the right thing. It's like, no, no, no, do the right thing and I'll give you the way out because that's where trust comes in, right? And that the one who trusts in Allah the verse continues, Allah will provide from them from where they never expected. And that provision will come. It'll just come. You won't know from where. It'll just happen though, right? And again, it goes into these things where somebody avoids the haram and guaranteed they will be taken care of. It will happen. You, the belief that the Muslim has to have and that's where Yaqeen comes in, the spiritual certainty, that it's not about this belief that everything is within our control and has to be logically rationalized. That stops becoming, that's important to a degree, but in the world of spirituality, that doesn't matter, right? Allah can do whatever he wants and he functions in a metaphysical with metaphysical laws as well, right? So for example, Allah says in the Quran that if you are grateful, surely I will increase you. And that doesn't make any logical sense. If you think, if you're grateful, I'll give you more. Like what? Like you should, if you're grateful, it's like be grateful because you, because I gave you in the first bell, if you're grateful, I'll give you more. It doesn't make sense, but like in that instance, we're all about it. Like, yeah, I'm gonna be grateful. I want more and more and more because the human being likes things and they want more. And so they're like, yeah, it's to our advantage to be grateful literally, right? But then there's another law that says, okay, the one who has taqwa, Allah will give them a way out. But taqwa is kind of hard. It's like pretty difficult to have taqwa. We just talked about how careful someone has to be, how much suspicion they have to avoid suspicious things and so on. But Allah says, I'll give you a way out of the problem, but first show it to me. First show me the taqwa and then the way out is gonna come. That's a harder metaphysical law to follow. It doesn't make any law, it doesn't really just make any logical sense, but it's how the metaphysical and spirituality works, right? And so that's where, again, this third category, if someone is too ingrained in the cravings of life and the cravings of the world, these things become difficult to implement. And the way to avoid that is to avoid hanging out with people who like, that's all they talk about. If somebody's company, the friends that they have, like the majority of the conversations are about money all the time and luxury and what kind of car does someone drive and what kind of bag does somebody have and what kind of shoes does someone wear and what designer clothes does somebody have and all this. Somebody, even if they never were into that stuff, will slowly get pulled into like, oh, it looks kind of nice. Like, oh, there's $5,000 on some shoes. Let me try that. Like, they'll just slowly go into it, right? But like, that's really getting into the now, maybe someone can afford it once, but at some point, someone's not gonna be able to afford it anymore. And then what? And then like, oh, I just need to take a loan just so I can buy whatever to fill the lifestyle that exists. There are people in the United States of America that make half a million dollars to a million dollars household income and they're completely in debt, completely in debt because they could have lived like very good lives, but they wanted to live like insanely rich yacht level lives and they got in debt. And now they're always in debt and just always taking out interest and loans and even some of the very quote unquote, rich business people in our time that that's the way that they fund their life. It's not really through any real money. It's all through borrowed money that they just have to keep paying interest on but they wanna live a lavish life. And so that's where it comes. So he says that the root of this is cut out that desire to just like be in love with Indonesia and that will begin to help, that will begin to help. And so the last point here is it really involves this idea of being careful, it involves everything. We've been stressing on income and food and these choices, but then also gets to a level of being really careful about consumption. And now this is important as we get into Ramadan to be like, we all should figure out, you know what? What are all the things that I'm consuming? Whether it's media that someone is seeing, a show someone is watching, audio someone is listening to, videos or images someone is seeing while scrolling. And what are things that someone's like, you know what? I feel like it's probably not the best thing to do, right? Whether it's at one level, it's like, okay it's obviously Haram, right? Someone is caught up in looking at Haram things online that's like, okay, someone's like, I need to cut that off. But then there's like, you know what? This probably isn't the best space to be in or it's really messing up my spiritual state. There's a lot of cursing in it. There's a lot of bad images in it and so on. And they're like, okay, I'm gonna try to stay away. And then there's another level of someone's like, you know what? I'm just wasting a lot of time. And if I do this, it's gonna affect me spiritually. So I'm gonna try to put a gap between myself and my media consumption and all forms of media like visual and auditory forms of media. And that now does again wonders for someone's spirituality because what it does is it clears up the mind to actually think. Instead of always thinking about, if you think about like the concept of a show or a movie or whatever, it's like you're listening to someone else's story, someone else's story and then it's coming into your mind. This is what their story is and you're thinking, oh, what did that happen in this episode? And then this is gonna happen and this is the story kind of follow along. But your mind is created for your story, not for someone else's story. So if it's always preoccupied with someone else's story, it's very difficult to figure out what am I doing here? In little bits of a little bit of it, it's not no harm, but constant that kind of constant consumption, which I know in the pandemic, it was like we kind of all got into it or it was there's not much else to do it. So everybody was like, oh, I picked up 10 new shows or whatever it is. If the mind is constantly caught up in something else and if there's any mix of haram in that, you'll notice very slowly, or people around you will notice that the haram deeds in someone's life will gradually start to increase because what someone sees in the media normalizes it in the heart. It's just the way that works. Imam Ghazali, he mentions every time you see something an image of that instills in the heart. An image of that instills in the heart. It's drawn on your heart spiritually. Every time you listen to something, so someone is listening to some super misogynistic song, their heart is getting just messed up spiritually, like really messed up. All of that, those lyrics are translating into spiritual realities. It's impacting the heart. And then they will manifest those things who knows when in life, but the inclination to manifest exists already. We ask that Allah doesn't allow that manifestation to happen. The inclination exists because it's embedded that the image has been drawn, but the silhouette of that image has essentially been drawn in someone's heart. And so the way to avoid that is to say, you know what, there's certain things I'm doing that probably just put some distance. And there's people who say, I'm gonna cut this much media. There's people who say, I'm gonna cut this much media. There's other people who say, I'm just gonna cut all of it because I don't want to impact myself. And that just depends on how careful someone wants to be. What we're saying here beyond staying away from the heart is not required. These are again ways to attain to states of spirituality. Minimum, I would recommend in Ramadan to try to go on some level of a media hiatus. Okay, we have this concept of itikaf in Ramadan, which is to stay in the Masjid in the last 10 nights. And you can apply a spiritual itikaf through the whole Ramadan to just stay away from certain sources of media. You know, I'm just gonna sign off Instagram for the whole month. But I'm gonna sign off from this the whole month. Whatever is kind of getting me caught up in things that I don't feel like are important, I'm gonna stay away from. That's gonna be my scrupulousness. And watch the effects are very, very strong. And they will have a significant effect on someone's spirit and a significant effect on our heart, insha'Allah. And so that's really, really it. The main thing, and the last thing is that we want to try to get to a state of illumination. That's the ultimate goal, right? And so food can illuminate somebody and deeds will further illuminate somebody. And then what someone inputs inside of themselves will further illuminate someone. And then the opposite happens with haram and with sin, as we mentioned, that the darkness comes. And so the ultimate goal is, as the brother was reading in Isha, that Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth. And that light, it's possible for people to have a portion of that light. It's possible, that nur. You can call on Allah by the name Ya Nur and ask Him, oh, light, give me light. Make me a person of light. This is a Dua, the Prophet SAW, that he would ask, Allahumma zidni nurah, wa atini nurah, that increase me a nur. Give me more nur, because light is so important. The root of light is the choices someone makes. And at the core of those choices are those three, the food, income, and overall consumption. And so our intention should be to find whatever level of practice we're able to implement. If someone is at a point where, we're not necessarily choosing to eat like halal food is a Bihar food, we should aspire to that. It's a game changer, completely game change. Because the other source of food is not sacrifice in the name of Allah. It's usually sacrificed by a disbelieving person who knows what their intention was when they were sacrificing the food, right? And we wanna try to move towards that, where the root of that food, okay, you know what, I'm gonna start to go three days a week where I eat halal and the Bihar food, and three days a week, I found not there yet. And then, or four days a week. And then you slowly increase it, but it has an illuminating effect on the heart. And it will impact somebody's deeds, right? And at least in Ramadan, we should try to make sure we do that. Minimum Ramadan, go 30 days and make sure that the Sahur and the Iftar are always from halal sources. Halal is the Bihar sources. And that would be one level, right? And then someone gets to an even higher level where they're like, now I'm gonna be even more careful about the type of food and how it's slaughtered and someone we're not gonna get into all of that right now, but that there are levels of this and degrees of this. And then you get someone gets to another level where they avoid too much meat consumption because meat, overdoing it on the meat isn't good for you and spiritually or in the heart. It's not good for somebody, right? The Prophet says, what is not eating meat? Like we eat meat, no way, not that much meat. The time of the Sahaba, very little meat. It was a form of, not that they couldn't do it, that they chose not to do it because they said, you know what, I'm gonna give up a little bit of this and I'll get more in the next life, inshallah. It's like a different mindset. It's a different frame of mind. So inshallah, we'll go ahead and end with that. We don't wanna go too late. If anybody has any questions or comments, yes, good. When did you talk about? Good question, the question was, so when it was discussed about the shayatin coming towards somebody and then drawing in other shayatin, other devils and demons, how do you remedy that? So there are three steps. The first step is to cut out the haram that could be drawing those near. You will know internally at some point what that haram is because the shayatin, they bring with it a state of just, anxiety, intense just constriction. They bring that, right? And you'll feel expansiveness and lightness and serenity and tranquility with the angelic presence. So that's the first thing is to rectify that haram and take account of your life to say, what am I doing that's like super obviously haram? That would be the first thing. The second thing is then to make sure that the core obligations are being fulfilled. The five pillars, it always starts with the basics. So that would be the prayer and then to really make sure that the zakat is also being paid, right? And if there was any task you amounts that that's also corrected and rectified. Third is to increase the dhikr. The increase dhikr, dhikr wards off shayatin, they run. You start with Awd bil-Lamin shaytan al-Rajim, already you're seeking refuge in Allah from the accursed devil that they run. And then there's other dhikr that somebody does. So the specific sunnah ad-khar that the Prophet's son would do at every step of the day are the most potent in warding off the shayatin. That would be, for example, when you wake up, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, al-liyahi'anah, ba'da ma'amatana wa-layhi nashoor, when you enter the restroom, Bismillah, Allahumma ni'awwad, ad-dikam al-khubti wa-khaba'it, sleep, the different ad-khar that the various ad-khar are going to sleep and putting on, taking off clothes. The shayatin, if the dhikr is not done when taking off clothes, can go and enter inside of someone's clothes. And then they put the clothes back on the shayatin and hang it out with them. Like it's very, very, very present. If someone in, they are present if you're not present. Think about it like that. If you're present with Allah, they won't be present. And being present with Allah comes by following the sunnah of the most present one, Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, right? And so there's a da'a when someone's putting on clothes, alhamdulillah, al-liyahi'anah, ba'da tawba, and so on. There's various da'a someone would do. So that would be the third step to do that dhikr and all of these da'a's are found in that link. I mentioned tinyurl.com slash awrad, A-W-R-A-A-D. And in that is a whole compilation of the sunnah da'a's that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would do throughout the whole day in various dhikr, in various actions before eating, after eating, after leaving, before the restroom, after the restroom, and so on. So that would be the third. And the fourth one to add is if you notice that it's like a problem and you're really feeling, like for example, there are some people, they might have attracted something towards them. They might have a lot of, what's called nazar on them and a'een and evil eye and asad and jealousy and envy and these type of things. And so the darkness is attracted towards them, not really because someone gave them, that's all haq, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said al-a'een al-haq, it's all real. Evil eye is real. In that case, it would be important to do a very specific protection, litanis, protection do'as. And there's compilations that are also in that same one, the link that we just mentioned, that someone does, a compilation by Imam al-Nowi, a compilation by Imam al-Haddad and others that are from the Quran and Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam that have a specific effect of warding off the shiaqeen. And then each of these essentially function as like force fields and the more and more someone has, the harder it will be for them to get through them and penetrate. Is that? Yeah, that's it. What was the term you wrote? Slash-orad, A-W-R, A-A-D, D is in dog. And we're then weird is like what we just talked about, weird is like a do'a, someone does every day or they can someone does every day. Yeah. Any questions? Yes. I guess like what does this man say about things like addiction, like gambling, drugs, and things that seem to spiral in a way that become kind of out of the person's control and they become more of like a health issue. And so like, I guess how would this man kind of speak to that? How is someone going through that? Yeah, good question. The question was so we talked about sin, attracting sin. How does this work with addictions? And with especially if it becomes something that's like out of somebody's control. That's the question. So I don't know the full answer. I'll say that in the beginning. This is my rough interpretation from what I've learned. And then I'll look into it, and I can get back to you. So in general, if somebody has consciousness and ability to make choices and they have full accountability of those choices, right? So someone is essentially mentally capable of all those choices. The accountability exists. And that is if they are making choices, which bring other bad choices into their life, they're held accountable for those choices, right? So like, for example, this commonly happens where let's say someone gets caught up in gambling. And in the gambling, they made the choice to gamble and to do something and then they start to do even more bad things. And then they like, now they're in Vegas and they're gambling and then they're drinking and the next thing you know, they're with people and so on and so on. And it just continues to spiral. If their consciousness ability to make that choice is still present, the accountability exists. If you get into a state where a mental illness is formed and someone loses the ability to make rational decisions. So there are diseases that exist like this. Amongst, there are certain mental illnesses which will literally, someone cannot make rational choices anymore, right? So like for example, I don't know like all the full science of this, but when I've recently seen somebody close to me who has experienced bipolar disorder and from everything I've learned and read and from my wife has read and told me about it and my family has read and told me about it and so on that if you have that disorder, you will lose your rationality at some point and that rationality won't exist. So the choices you make will not be choices that you would have made because you're now in a phase or a personality that's not even really you, right? Now in that case, it's very, very difficult to understand like what, how does accountability work? Who is accountable? What's, you know, from a religious standpoint and from the, from kind of what I've asked people if you don't have the ability to make choices, you cannot be, you're not generally held accountable for those choices, right? But it gets very, very nuanced into like, is it a mental illness? Is it an addiction that the first, all of those choices were choices that they made and they got themselves into the addiction, right? Or was it a disease that came and the disease is what causes the addiction and only Allah knows that at the end of the day because you could see somebody who like, you think, oh my God, what's up with this person there? But like, Allah knows, they could have a very significant mental problem and Allah is not holding them to account like the same way he's holding you and me to account. And then there could be somebody else who just like made choices and Allah holds us accountable for our choices. We are forgiven, inshallah. We pray for mercy, we pray for forgiveness, people around them or anybody who's making choices that we're worried about, we should always pray for that person and pray for mercy and whatnot. But it's not like just because someone made a bunch of bad choices that now they're not held accountable for their choices, but there's always room for kind of redemption. So it just really depends on if that rational ability exists and if that consciousness is fully present. Is that? Yeah, I guess with some addiction, cause we can just develop like, and so even if they are conscious, if they have an addiction, the chemical-dependent substance or whatever, so like, they're still conscious, but like, they're dealing with like, I mean, I think the Western medical world classifies that as like a health issue, like alcohol is a moment effort. So the choice though to get involved in that in the first place was because of a mental situation or just a personal choice. They were completely rational and normal and then they got involved in it. I just really like, even if it started out as like a choice, right? If the chemical dependency was formed later, then it turns into like a health condition. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. I'm not 100% sure from what I've understood and learned is that if you and me make certain choices, which then results in certain things that are going to happen to us. So like everybody, let's say someone makes a choice to do something that's going to be harmful for their health. And they continue, let's say smoking, even just like smoking cigarettes, right? Which at the most permissible level is considered Makru Tahrima like, and that at the more common level is considered Haram. Cause, so someone does that and now someone develops an addiction to nicotine and then someone also develops lung cancer and lung disease. If somebody made that choice from my understanding and from what I've learned, that's they're accountable for that entire choice because the nicotine could have changed the way their brain was operating, but they also knew that they were doing something, right? If they were never taught, there was no way for them to understand this is harmful to them. And there was no like kind of clear guidance given to them. That's a whole different category. But when we're talking about people who have informed choices, this is where accountability comes in, right? You and I, if we have information in mind, we make a certain choice. And so alcohol is similar, right? Someone slowly gets caught up in alcohol, continues to do so. That's a choice that they make. It goes to a point of fun, to more fun, to extreme, and then it gets into an addiction. Now the choices led that person to that addiction. So for sure there's accountability up to the point of that addiction. From my understanding, and again I could be wrong, this is not 100%, but the accountability is also there for that addiction because they caused it themselves. They didn't, they didn't like, it's not like they were helpless. They literally continue to do it, continue to abuse, it's called abuse, alcohol abuse. They continue to abuse it. They might have hurt other people around them. And then it's not just like, hey, you got an addiction, you're gonna free pass now. No, no, no, you caused the addiction. You shouldn't have gotten involved in that same thing with gambling and these other things. The only situation where it's like very obviously problematic or different is if they got into something because of a mental irrationality that was present from the beginning. But if it wasn't present from the beginning, the whole thing, and this is part of like, darkness begets darkness. Like addiction, severe addiction because of major haram choices somebody makes is a really severe form of darkness if that was because of choices somebody made. So that's, that's an Allah al-alim, that's the understanding though, that I have anybody else has a different understanding or has perspective, yeah, please. I imagine like with standard evictions. I imagine at least like if it's like alcohol and there's like withdrawal, for example, that may be a little bit of a different story, but that's like a standard addiction of like maybe cannabis or other drugs of choice. It might be a little bit easier to sort of, I wouldn't say it's easier to manage, but it's kind of goes along with the same ones. It's not like by holders gets a friend where there's like great disability concerns where you're not able to think rationally, you're not taking care of yourself in terms of hygiene or eating, for example. You think like, you know, eating is food is gonna cause you, you know, to suffer in some type of way. That's why it could be a little bit of a concern. But some of the other ones I imagine that's a little bit easier to sort of have that cognition to sort of make appropriate choices. Maybe the only exception I get, like I said, if there's like a withdrawal component, whether it was like opioids or alcohol and alcohol, or you know, taking my alcohol all the time, hopefully it's nearly gone, we need to take it out of my stomach. Right. Some gray area there. Yep. Oh, does that go okay? I don't know. Yeah. And I think also like the point that you said that I just want to like highlight is that no cues beyond redemptive. So we all probably have somebody in our life who struggles with addiction and spaces in our Muslim community to talk about it or to help Muslims who are in that situation. So yes, maybe they're in a darker place, but also if that we have a person in our life like that, we can try to help them with our boundaries, make better choices, like get the help that they need to get better. Yeah, exactly, okay. Yes. I love that. I want to also put it a little bit though to say that I feel like a lot of people who end up being addicted don't start out being like, I can't wait to like live on the street and just shoot meth all day. You know what I mean? Like it's not a foreseeable, it's not something that they're thinking about as a consequence of their addiction. Like I feel, I'm personally addicted to go for me. You know what I mean? But I didn't start Instagram and then be like, oh, I can't wait to be on Instagram all day. So like a lot of addiction, I think like they passed the point of active choice. And then especially when you're interested in full dependency element, like I know I think there's like this framework where we blame addicts for being stuck in addiction. And I guess like that's the thing I want to just add too is that I don't, I do, like I know what you're saying, like we have agencies who make choices that put us in the situations that we're in, but sometimes it stops like being agency I guess, or like it's not something that we're making the choice every day to do. And so at that point it is important to like intervene in the health condition that someone doesn't have control over. Like you said, like with boundaries, but see it not as something like, oh, you're just choosing to like keep smoking XYZ, right? And it's like, no, maybe it seems that way, but like actually, I'm stuck in this loop and I need help to get out of it. Definitely. No, there's not that here. The standard mindset should be one of mercy always. It should never be like, we were asking from a legal perspective, I think the question was a bit more like, what's the legal ruling on that? But the standard mindset should always be one of mercy, should be one of hope, should be one that we hope that everybody is, we approach them with mercy, we approach them with a state of forgiveness and expansiveness and pardon. And we hope that Allah does the same with them and with us. Nobody should be like hoping that somebody is eternally, you know, damned because of some choice. That should never be the mindset. And then that's always just balanced with like, okay, we understand what the legal rulings are and then we hope for Allah's mercy, if that makes sense. But when we deal with people at this level, remember the prophecy someone was sent as the mercy to all of creation. He was, there could have been many other ways to describe him, but it was as the mercy. And so he always was trying to find the best in people and to bring that out. And even in the person, there was a man who, you could say he was semi-addicted to alcohol, right? He was drinking alcohol and he was at the time of the Sahaba and then he would, the prophecy salam at the time that there was punishment for drinking alcohol. So the had punishment is being implemented and many of the Sahaba are cursing this man and they're cursing him and they're cursing him. And the prophecy salam says, why are you cursing him? And the Sahaba, they say, well, he's drinking and you told him to stop and he's still drinking. And he said, stop cursing him. I don't know anything of him, except that he loves Allah and he loves Allah's messenger. This is what the prophecy salams view. This was his opinion of him. The prophets, the greatest person to ever walk the face of the earth, the greater than all the scholars and all the shoe and everybody come put together. And the man heard that he got, you know, the punishment finish, he heard that. And he said, you know what? Because the prophets also had that opinion of me, he completely gave it up. Like that opinion of him was so strong and so affirming it completely shifted his psychology and was like, I don't need this anymore because look at what the messenger of Allah thinks of me. Even though he thought of himself and everybody else in society thought of himself as this like super bad man, right? And so that's where like mercy should always, especially in the time we live in, encompass everything and the entire approach. So thank you for making that point. Yes. Yeah, really good question. Okay, so the question for anybody who didn't hear was that if you have this idea that, okay, sin could bring other sin and yet there might be people who they are doing things, you know, let's say drinking recreationally or something else and they, whatever sin someone is caught up in, we're all caught up in some type of sin or another, right? How do you work with that while also then trying to kind of rectify the situation and do and improve and do good? Is that the center of the question? Okay, I'm done. So yeah, that's the human condition, right? That's like the, that is the human condition. There's nobody who is, the Prophet's son told us that every single son of Adam, sins, and the best of those who sin are those who make toba. The best of those who sin are those who repent. So what we mean here, and I should, I should very much have copy out of this. This is, this is darkness that there's no repentance for. Someone doesn't feel bad about it. If you and me sin, which we all sin in some way or another and some, some of our sins are, you know, bigger, some of our sins are smaller, but the sin is present. If somebody feels remorse for that and feels bad about it and is like, you know what, I shouldn't be doing this. And they feel a little guilt. That's already a step closer to light because repentance and being from what's called the towabin. Allah loves, he says in the Quran, Allah yuhib atawabin wa yuhib al-mutatahirin, that Allah loves the people who are always turning back to him and the people who are trying to purify themselves. And so the first step in that is, as long as we feel some sense of, you know, I shouldn't be doing this. Maybe I'm not ready to give it up yet, but I shouldn't be doing it. And then we couple that with every now and then trying to make a sincere towabah. We're like, you know, Allah, I want to give this up. I'm caught up in this thing. I know many of people are very caught up in smoking weed, right? And like, they're like, I'm not ready to give it up yet, but like they would feel bad about it and then they would oscillate back and forth. And then at some point it was like, you know, I need to stop. And then the sincere do'a would come and the sincere will come. And then next thing you know, they've given it up. And it didn't happen over for many of them, right? And we shouldn't feel like, oh, there's no hope. The big thing is when someone, the darkness begins darkness is when someone arrogantly defies God's rules. Like someone is like, I don't care at all, right? Completely just doesn't care about what the rules are and just continues to do it. And in an arrogant way, like Shaytan was, right? Shaytan literally. And there are people around in our time today who like, it's just this arrogant, usually they're not Muslim, it's just this kind of arrogant defiance of things. That is where it becomes really, really, really risky. But in other cases, the first step would be repentance and feeling bad. And then the second is to try to do any form of good that someone can do. And that starts to, the light starts to pull out. Because remember, all it takes, if this whole room was dark and like one bulb was on, it would be lit up. It's difficult to get rid of darkness. It's not difficult. It is very difficult to get rid of light though. It's very hard, right? You have to go and turn every single one off to get rid of complete darkness. And even then, a little bit of light might still come in from the outside. All it takes is a little bit of light. And so the main advice I would have and that I've learned is that somebody just gets on the path to say, I wanna increase in some form of good, right? Whatever form of good that it is. I know somebody went, after they would make a big mistake, they would just walk around and clean up all the trash that they saw on the road. And like as a means of, you know what? Because Prophet Muhammad said that if you sin, but then you do a good deed, that good deed will replace the sin. And so you're just like, okay, I'm just gonna do the good because I made a mistake. So that's the kind of mindset to have as long as there's not like an arrogant defiance, inshallah will be okay. And just feeling a little bit of like, guilt before Allah, I shouldn't be doing this. And that begins that process and begins that step. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, no problem. Okay, just for the sake, yes. I was just gonna say one of the small people that have that arrogant defiance after a while, the Mos'a does something to them like, they live their life. Yeah, yeah, this mentioned in the Quran that people who arrogantly defied Allah, like Korra, one of the people at the time of Musa, alay salam, he was just like arrogant walking with his treasures and his wealth and money and just like a rejected and Allah literally was like, yeah, you're arrogant and he swallowed earth open, he swallowed him in the earth closed. And now this man just completely got or Pharaoh, look at Pharaoh, that's our own. I mean, so arrogant, all the signs were presented and literally miracles are presented to him, arrogant defiance, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, didn't care, didn't care, didn't care. And then what, boom, completely, I mean, you drown in the sea, right? And the sea is parted and then you completely drown. And then you're left as an example for everybody and you are pun, and Allah says that Pharaoh and the whole family of Pharaoh who is with him who didn't believe is punished because of all the sins that they did. So that's the type of arrogant defiance we're talking about which is like just complete utter darkness. Somebody who's a Muslim who's like trying and is praying and is caught up in some things, that's not like utter darkness. There's a lot of light in that person, right? They're not federal, insha'Allah, yeah. Okay, insha'Allah. Anything, anything online? Okay. Okay, we'll go ahead and end with a dua. Bismillah, hamsa'Allah, alhamdulillah. رب العلمين الله وسلم و بارك خلسين محمد و العالي وسه وسلم ربنا عدنا في الدنيا حسنة و في الحقرت الحسنة و في النقر أداب النر لا إله إلا أنت سبحانك إنني كنت من عبالمين يا الله يا رحمان يا رحم يا غفار يا تواب يا الله يا الله we ask it you pour your rahmah upon us Ya Rahman Ya Allah we ask Allah that you pour your forgiveness upon us Ya Ghaffari Ya Allah we ask Ya Tawab Ya Allah that you allow us to turn to you and for complete, complete repentance whatever mistakes that we have made Ya Rabbil Alamin Ya Rabb we ask Ya Allah that you pardon those mistakes Ya Allah that you guide us towards you and that you guide us near to you and that you guide us close to the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ and that you allow us to be people Ya Allah in love with you and in love with the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ and in love with him ﷺ Ya Allah Ya Allah allow us to be people who have the knowledge that we have learned and forgive us for anything it is that we have said or that we have learned that was incorrect Ya Rabbil Alamin Ya Allah Ya Allah guide us towards goodness, guide our family towards goodness, guide our communities towards goodness Ya Allah please remove the suffering and the difficulty of all of the people who are going through difficulty and all of the wars that are going on throughout the world in Yemen and in Palestine and Myanmar and in all the other places and in Kashmir and in Afghanistan and in Iraq and in Libya and all the other places and in Ukraine and all the other places that people are struggling Ya Allah, please remove their difficulties Ya Rabb Ya Rabb Ya Rabb Ya Allah ask you Ya Allah that Barakah in this month of Sha'ban allow us to reach the month of Ramadan please put Barakah in this month and allow us to see the lailtiness for Sha'ban in the middle night of Sha'ban please Barakah in that night for all of us and that night to be a means of cleanliness and nearness towards you Ya Rabbil Alamin and any intention or worry or problem that we have Ya Allah we ask that you remove those worries and problems that you fulfill our intention that you fulfill our need Ya Rabbil Alamin Ya Allah you are the one who knows all of our problems and all of our difficulties we ask that you help us with them Ya Allah we ask you for everything good that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam asked for and we ask you for protection for everything evil that he has protection from us all Allah was Sallallahu ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi sallam alhamdulillahi Alhamdulillahi Alamin, Alhamdulillahi, Alhamdulillahi, I think Alhamdulillahi the brother has prepared some food