 Inshallah we're going to be focusing today, continuing this discussion on the spirituality of wealth, of charity, of zakat, and of charity. So we're just going to dive right in here, and before we go ahead and get into the details, we'll just do a quick review of what we chatted about last time, right? So we were talking about the importance of, the importance of number one, just being a virtuous person, and from there, how does that relate to zakat, and how does that relate to charity? So, as we know, in the Deen of Islam, we have various pillars of our Deen, of which is zakat, which is the obligatory charity that everybody pays once a year, is a core part, it is one of the five pillars of the religion. And then there is the optional aspect to zakat, the optional aspect to charity, rather, which is sadaqat, right? So each of the five pillars has an optional deed, or an optional act, set of deeds associated with it, right? So the farth sadaqat, right? Sadaqat is a pillar of the religion, prayer is a pillar of the religion, it has the optional, the Nawafil sadaqat associated with it, the sunnah and the Nawafil sadaqat associated with it. The farth zakat, zakat, which is obligatory on the Muslim, has the optional sadaqat, the optional extra charity associated with it. The Muslim is somebody who is virtuous, who has the virtue, rather, of being generous, and if they don't have that virtue, they try to aspire towards that virtue. So Allah is one of the names of Allah's Al-Kharim, the most generous. Allah is very, very, very generous. We know that the Prophet, alayhi salatu was-salaam, exemplified this virtue of generosity, and that he would give away every single thing that he had every day, that's how much he would give. He would feed as many people as he could, 50, 70, hundreds of people a day sometimes that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam would feed without having that much physical material means to do so, but would be so generous that he would prefer others over himself. And so generosity is a core aspect of this religion. Generosity usually comes when someone obviously has something to be generous with, which is where this conversation of wealth, income, and charity are very much linked in our religion. So that's what we had mainly covered on last time, getting into the inner dimensions of zakat, right? So there's the fit of zakat, that's not the focus of our conversation. That's a bit more on the inner dimensions, the inner spirituality of zakat. Why does somebody do it, right? Number one, we talked about how as somebody starts to traverse the spiritual path, you have every part of you has to give something, right? So your body has worship that's due on it, right? And you were asked about your body, you were asked about your health, you were asked about your life and how you spent it and so on. And so the body has to pray. The body literally endures the act of fasting, right? That's relation to the body. The soul and the spirit, right? They have belief that they must believe in, right? And you have to purify the soul over a period of time, right? And so the idea of the belief in Allah, the belief in the messengers of Allah upon all of them be peace, the belief in the angels and so on. These are requirements of the soul, right? And then the soul can also get corrupted and so purifying the soul and keeping it pure is something that you and I are required to do as part of our religion. So those are two aspects of the human being. But another aspect of human life on earth is that we will engage with monetary, we will engage in monetary transactions, right? Trade, business, earning, income and so on. And that also then has Allah, Allah gives a religious, gives religious guidance for every aspect of our life, right? Every aspect of our life Allah gives religious guidance for. So that's where Zakat, charity and so on fall in. What are the inner dimensions then of Zakat? The first is that somebody should be hastening to want to give it, right? It should not be something that someone's like, man, now I gotta pay this whole 2.5% of my, you know, of the money that I had made or that I have accumulated over the last year. You know, somebody should just like ideally someone when they hear the adhan, they hasten to prayer with regards to Zakat. It is a form of, it will be a vehicle for spiritual progress. If somebody hastens to give it. And ideally then they'll also hasten to give other charity. So as soon as somebody sees someone struggling on the street, as soon as someone sees somebody who doesn't have much food, ideally we ask Allah make us people like this. We hasten to say, no, let me find a way to help them out. Let me find a way to give food. Because what it does is it removes the selfish nature of the human being, right? So one of the inner reasons why we give Zakat and charity is we are trying to move from being selfish to being selfless. And so the self, literally if you were to translate the word self in Islam in Arabic rather, you would get the word nafs, the nafs. The nafs is the commanding self, the ego inside of everybody. This self goes through progression as you go through life. And so there's levels of the nafs that Allah talks about in the Quran. At the most basic level of this self is the most selfish ego, the most selfless nafs that exist, right? And the most selfish nafs that exist. It only cares about itself. It only cares about its desires. It doesn't care at all about what God wants. It doesn't care at all about what people around it wants, cares about sexual desires and appetites, lust desires, food desires, wealth, money, fame, power, so on and so forth. It's all it cares about. In order for it to graduate to the next level and for someone to actually begin, begin the journey of spiritual progress, somebody has to put in effort. Someone has to actually put in work and has to put in effort. That self then begins, graduates as what's called the nafs al-Lawama, the self, the blaming soul. This nafs is actually now holding itself to account and saying, hold on, you know, I should have prayed today but I didn't. I should have read the Quran but I didn't. I should have given charity but I didn't. It's holding itself to account. Many people go throughout their entire life, they could be 70, 80, 90 years old and they still remain at the first level of the nafs, the basic, most selfish self. You see this in the Western world today, many of the politicians that exist, you know, without even naming them, it's very, very obvious that I go, this person, spiritually is still a child. Maybe in age they are not but spiritually they're children, right? Because of just the way in which they behave. When you see just lewd behavior, rude behavior, bad character, constant arguing over every little point, eat quick to anger, uncontrolled desire for power, uncontrolled desire for sex, uncontrolled desire for all of the other fame that comes as somebody gets into those type positions, you know, that person is very, very, very immature spiritually because the spiritually mature human being, right, the saint, those things don't trouble them and when they do come up with desire, they just contain them, right? They work on them, they've worked on themselves and that is the desire, that is the guide for progress. So all of this, we've been talking about this in this whole class, right? But the whole reason why we are here is part of our goal is to go through this journey in this life to purify ourselves in this life. Otherwise Allah forcibly purifies that person in the next life and that purification comes through the fire and we ask that Allah save us Allahumma ajinnum inna nara that Allah save us from the fire. We don't want to go through that purification in the fire. That purification can happen in this life that the more someone focuses on, ah, I have this bad trait about myself, I got to work on it. Ah, I'm stingy, I got to work on it. Not generous, I got to work on it. I'm this, I got to work on it. I'm arrogant, I got to work on it, right? And that's the reason why Islam was one of the main reasons why we have this religion, right, as we mentioned before, the verse qadaf lahman zakkaha wa qadaqaaba man dasaha that successful is the one who purifies themselves and destroyed is the one who isn't. That's our goal as Muslims. So one of the best ways to gauge our progress as we go through our life is how are we doing with our virtues? How virtuous are we as human beings? How many good traits do we have? How are we this year with our good traits compared to where we were last year, right? And have we added at least one more good trait on and removed one bad trait, right? A bad trait, arrogance being a bad trait, a good trait being patience, let's say, right? Well, gratefulness or so on, or gratitude or so on, right? And if somebody is applying the religion properly, these good traits will start to manifest. And eventually these good traits, they're like they take root and then they turn into trees and they have branches and then they have fruits, right? And they literally inside of the correct, inside of the spiritually aware heart, it starts to bear fruit such that other people around you benefit from that fruit because they're like, oh, wow, look at this person. They're just so kind all the time. They're so generous all the time and they start to benefit from it. So Zakat is one of the vehicles, literally it has the same root as Zakat is purity, right? That it is one of the vehicles of us achieving this. It's one of the vehicles of us achieving this. And so show your, the first thing to keep in mind with regards to charity and Zakat is to show your eagerness and desire to give it. And if you don't want to give it, fight against yourself, resist and say, no, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it because the nuffs will come up with all sorts of reasons like, why are you gonna give charity? Why? It's your money. You earned it. You did this, that, that, that, that, that. You don't have to give it. Just put it off till next year and it'll come up with all of these reasons for it. But that's that we have to be very, very mindful of that. So I'm just gonna get through a few points and then we'll go through the question each other. The next then is to make sure that somebody obviously gives it at a due time, right? I think we were all generally aware of that. Is it God falls due at a certain time? You calculate time. For many people, they give it in Ramadan. For others, they'll give it in Bajab or whatever other month it is. But to make sure that we give it in its time. The third trait inwardly that we should keep in mind is to give it privately if we can and to not make a show of it, right? And what does that mean that when it comes to charity, it's easy to be like, look at how much I'm giving. Look at how wealthy I am, right? And so somebody actually starts to have another reason why they're doing something other than pleasing Allah. The only reason why you and I should do anything is for it because Allah is watching. We don't pray because we want someone to say, Masha'Allah, look at that person. They're praying extra. We don't fast extra so that we say, someone's like, oh, look at that person who is, it's Thursday and that person was fasting today and that's a disease of the heart. It's called the rea ostentation. The desire to wanna show people, look at my worship. And that when someone praises you for that worship, we like, oh, yeah, yeah, you saw that? Yeah, great, right? Like, I know I'm so great, right? That inner, but you might not say, no, no, it's nothing. It's nothing, but inside someone is feeling like, oh, look at me, right? But Allah already knew. So why doesn't that person's comment even matter? It shouldn't matter. It's a sign of a weakness in our sincerity. And so zakat and charity also then applies to this, right, where the general principle is that we should try to give privately, but if giving publicly would encourage others to give it, right, let's say someone knows that there's a bunch of people who would give, but they're just not doing it until someone steps up to the plate first. Then someone tries to make sure they have the best intention and they say, no, I'm gonna give, now you guys gotta give too, right? We all gotta contribute to this kath. We all gotta build this mess shit. That's not usually a scenario of zakat, but we all gotta help these people. We all gotta help this family or for Sathukah. We all have to build this foundation or institution or whatever it is. And that then someone leads by, someone leads by example, somebody leads by example. And so you just wanna make sure that you also though have times, everybody should have times where you do things secretly regardless. So we might do things publicly. We might pray and so on. That's very, very important. We already talked about that in the last few classes, but then we should also have a time where we just pray extra prayers at home just secretly with Allah seeing us, right? Just do deeds that only Allah knows you do. Nobody else has any idea that you're doing those deeds to improve our sincerity with Allah. And obviously your family and we're not gonna, you don't have to like hide from them, but I'm talking about the general public whose praise most people really care about, right? And so same thing with charity, right? Make sure we have a portion of charity we just give secretly, right? In order to help purify ourselves. In order to help purify ourselves. And then the other, the fourth component where our charity is to not be like rude while giving it, to be kind while giving it. You don't wanna have bad character with someone who you're giving charity to and bad character in this instance is like it can manifest in a few ways. One is it manifests in someone just being, speaking harshly to them, right? So being like, yeah, take it. Ah, you're asking so much, just take it, right? Number two, it can manifest in somebody saying, remember that time when I did this for you, right? And you help somebody with monetarily now you throw it in their face a little bit. That would be bad character with regards to this, right? If you help somebody, let's say someone in your family really needs charity, you help them, right? And you don't bring that back up because you weren't doing it for them, you're doing it for Allah. And it's a very, very different intention that you don't, it's actually a trade, I believe it's called this disease called mannat when someone does this where you remind people of the favors you've done them. You don't wanna remind people of the favors you've done. If you help someone out and you give them a ride somewhere, then you need their help. If they say no, they say no for their help. But you don't be like, well, I did this for you and I did that for you and I did this for you. And they're like, they may not do it. You didn't really do it. Ideally we were sincere and we did it for the sake of Allah. Allah accepted that deed and whether that person repays the favor, Allah is gonna repay that in the next life, right? Don't accept all of your pain. Don't, we don't wanna expect all of our payments and repayments in this life. So among the inner diseases, this gets more subtle is expecting someone who's given to, to be more kind to you, to treat you nicely, to put you, to put us on some pedestal to be like, oh, this is the person who's helping me. This is the person who's funding me and so on, right? That's also among the hidden diseases that can come when someone gives and gives to others, right? You don't expect any, they're doing in our religion, the way we understand it, the way the Messenger of Allah to Islam told us that they're doing us a favor by accepting our charity and they're doing us a favor by allowing their vehicles for us to earn reward in the next life. It's completely different than the way people see it in this, in these days where they're like, look at me, I'm a, if like people are giving philanthropy, they make a huge deal out of it. I'm a philanthropist and I'm this and I give this much money and great to just earn everything you can have, you can earn it in this life, sure. But like, if you're doing it for Allah, give some, give something without making a big cause about it, without doing a press conference about it, without making it into this huge deal. And you can do that as well for the sake of obviously spreading goodness and encouraging others and whatnot. But like, it's not for status. It's not for show. That's not the goal of the Muslims. That's not the goal of the Muslims to be boastful about their giving. That would be considered very, very, it's an act of worship, just like we don't go around being boastful. Oh, I prayed 20 rakah today in Tarawee, like, look, I did this, I did that. Nobody, nobody, I mean, maybe people do that, but I don't think so. Most people don't like go around bragging about that. So we don't, we shouldn't go around being boastful about charity. And then we shouldn't go around being expecting a certain type of behavior from somebody who we've helped out. And this applies now in all forms of generosity. We're specifically talking about money, but also being generous with your time and so on, right? We don't want to be expect that people are going to necessarily do things. And that also helps then when, if someone doesn't necessarily live up to quote unquote, our expectations, right? And so we just in general, we want to make sure to not speak, speak roughly. And so those were the fourth and fifth ones, right? The fourth one was to make sure we have good character and the fifth one was we don't impose some obligation and expectation on someone. Rather, the way we give charity is we actually, the Muslim should give charity from an etiquette point of view where we give it underneath. If these days everybody gives it online, but if you still give it physically, right? We literally put our hand underneath and we let the person take from us, right? We don't have the, we don't put our hand over them, right? Just out of a manner where it's like, hey, you know, we're literally also humbling ourselves, right? Don't expect them to humble themselves to us, right? And so these are frameworks that are very different than the Western capitalist framework we live in, very different and we have to be aware of that. We have to combat it. We have to combat what's negative about the places that we've learned and we have to make sure we kind of have an Islamic understanding and Islamic mindset to things, right? And all of this will help someone's spiritual progress. That charity extinguishes sin. Charity is one way of distinguishing sin. It's one way of distinguishing sin, right? You literally give people when you make a mistake, something that someone should do immediately is try to find a way to give some charity. I slipped up, give charity, right? I did this wrong, give charity. I just try to find a way to extinguish that sin. And this is what we're talking now about. Again, we're mixing up the optional and the obligatory, but just this overall general bucket of charity. And that the Prophet Salaam indicated that the best zakat is that which is given in a state of joy, in a state of joy, not in a state of joy, in a state of joy. Now, this takes time for someone to get to. Every single spiritual trait, there's a spectrum. Imagine in this case that on one end of the spectrum is stinginess, and on the other end of the spectrum is generosity, right? Sorry, one end of the spectrum is stinginess. The middle path is generosity, right? And then there's another end of like where someone's just literally not mindful at all. They literally give everything away without it all being concerned about their family and so on. That's not virtuous either for most of us to do. If someone has the iman of saying, Abu Bakr Sabiq, that's different, but that he's in an all different category, right? Most people don't have that iman. So for most people, this is the spectrum. So now if someone's on the side of stingy, they like never wanna give, they're always the person who's like hoping that someone else will pay, not because they can't afford it, but literally because they don't wanna give any of their money. They really, really, really hesitate to be generous. For that person, the cure to this disease when it comes to charity is someone gives a lot, like kind of overgives. So the way that Imam al-Razalihi defines it is someone wants to get to the middle of being generous. You're all the way on one side of the spectrum. You wanna go to the other side to help yourself balance out. So for a period of time where you say, no, I'm gonna try to pay for like a lot of meals when I'm out with my friends. I'm gonna try to give a lot every time I see it. I'm not to the degree of being irresponsible with our wealth, but like until that disease of being super stingy is uprooted, right? And then we get to the middle part and the nuffs is being trained here. So now when you get the nuffs to the middle part and the nuffs and you're like, okay, no, sometimes I'll give, sometimes I'll conserve it. Sometimes I'll pay, sometimes I won't, right? Then the nuffs will be like, oh, okay, well, it's better than what you were doing before to me, right? The cure for the nuffs in most diseases, the cure for the nuffs in most diseases is to go if you're on one end of the spectrum to go to the other end until it balances out, right? Until it balances out. So somebody overeats a lot. Ideally that person should fast often, fast often, fast often until the nuffs is disciplined to say, you know what, no, overeating is not virtuous. Over-eating is bad. Over-eating can lead to sin and that somebody balances out, right? And they would, you would do the same with regards to the other diseases that exist. I'm gonna run. And so you really, the Dean is beautiful in that there's cures for all the problems that we face in society. It's amazing. Every problem we face as human beings, Allah has given a cure for it. The challenge is that we don't really look for the cure, but it's there in the Quran. The Quran has all these cures in it, that it takes study, reading and recitation. It takes reflection, ta-da, and ta-fakkur, and really, really pondering what does this mean and then reading the commentaries, reading the books of the religion, reading books like the book of assistance that we're talking about right now to then get to this point where, oh, that those traits become manifest inside of ourselves and all of these vehicles that we've been talking about, this, the financial vehicle being one, they will help us become people of good traits. That's really one of the main goals at the end of the day, that the one who comes on the day Yomah, la'yan fa'umalu wa la'banoon, illa man a'ta'allaha, kalbin salim. I get that right. What part do you wanna say? Illa man a'ta'allaha, a'ta'allaha, a'ta'allaha, I get that right? Atal-lah. Atal-lah, atal-lah, a'ta'allaha, a'ta'allaha, kalbin salim. But on the day where nobody, where neither wealth nor children will benefit someone, right? Doesn't really matter how much money someone has earned, doesn't matter how many awards they've won, it doesn't matter how large their bank account is and how many cars they have, how many houses they have and even investment properties they have, how many vacations, none of that stuff's gonna matter. Except the one who comes to Allah with a kalb salim, a sound heart. And that's the day of judgment, that that's what Allah is gonna care about in the day of judgment. So now the sound heart is a heart of virtue and a heart of traits. So the Muslim, ideally we spend our life acquiring those virtues and traits, they are like the treasures. And so somebody who, you acquire the trait of patience, you acquire the trait of generosity, that's worth more to us than a million dollars or 10 million dollars. It's hard to have that mindset, but it's worth more to us because that's gonna benefit us in the next life. It's gonna benefit us on the day of judgment. It's gonna benefit us in eternal life, right? Versus this temporary life, the 10 million, 100 million, whatever money someone has, whatever somebody has, it's gonna go, right? Nobody's gonna bring their Tesla and they're everything, nobody's gonna bring it to the grave. Try putting it in the grave with you, with all the functionality and the fancy technology. Good luck, right? It's not gonna be there. Even if it did itself driving would activate and it would go away somewhere and it wouldn't stay for very long, right? Nothing is gonna be with us in the grave, but the deeds of the believer will be there. And how much virtuous traits somebody had inside of them will help them and assist them in the grave and how much dark traits and dark character traits someone had inside of them, they will be a source of punishment for them in the grave. And so we wanna be people who are people of goodness and people of traits. And so goodness and traits then manifest, goodness and traits then will manifest if we follow these teachings, right? If we follow these teachings. So we'll pause there before we get to this next section. Any questions anybody has? Yes. Thank you. You said with the experience you've seen when the spectrum is ending, yes. I mean, the one with the spectrum is generally lost and the other side of the spectrum is gone, right? Oh, no, not joy. No, no, the other side of the spectrum is like excessive spending. Like it's, the other side would be, yeah, reckless spending, exactly, yeah. So stinginess is on one side, reckless spending is on the other side and generosity is the middle trait. And the Muslim is on the middle path and so the middle trait is what we always aspire to, yeah. And the joy is when we're giving charity, ideally we try to be, if we have that trait of generosity, we will be joyous when we give it because the generosity will be firmly rooted and stinginess usually has like a, what's the right word, kind of like a, kind of upset when you're doing it. You're like, oh, I gotta guess I gotta pay now, right? Like stinginess has that not so positive feeling associated with it most of the time. Yeah, a little bit of a regret and a little bit of like, oh, this is my money and now I gotta give it up, right? Versus the generous person that that doesn't exist, right? In general, does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. The word is, instead of being personal and being like spend with, instead of being, no, it's essentially careful, it's just like, the side of the video, the side of the video. Right, right. Yeah, no, no worries, handle that. So we're gonna go to the next section? Yeah, next section. Anybody else? I'm gonna keep a picture on my computer now. Yeah, handle that, sounds good. I don't believe that. Handle that, handle that. Does anybody have any other questions or comments? I was gonna mention charity never, the profit piece was done, that charity never decreases our wealth. Yes. Right, yep, yep. I believe we touched on it briefly last time and the idea that charity also is a means of, most of the time we look at it as kind of a, if I give, if I have 100 and I give 10, I have 90. And I'll have 90 next week as well. And so I give more and I'll have 80 and whatever it is. That's not actually the way it works though. Because we're operating with metaphysical principles here where Allah gives more to somebody who gives in his cause. But it doesn't come back always in the exact time period you and I expecting, but it does come back. And it comes back in multiple folds. So the more generous somebody is, in this life they will see more, inshallah. Most certainly in the next life they'll see more. Most certainly in the next life they'll see more. And so we don't wanna be stingy out of a fear of, oh, I'm not gonna have enough. It's one of the main things that Shaitan tries to get us all with. Actually called the fear of poverty that, where he tries to tell the believer, oh, if this happens you'll be poor, don't, you're not gonna have enough. You're not gonna have enough, right? If you have, to get to the point where there's, there's some people who like they'll have a child and they'll be like, I can't afford it, right? And they think that they're somehow responsible for providing for the child and then they abandon the child, right? Or they abort the child, and it would kill the child, right? And that's not, in our religion, we don't have the understanding. Allah brings everybody integration with their risk. If the bird has the risk already and the turtle and the fish in the sea and all of the other animals that Allah has created, of course the human being is gonna have their risk. Their sustenance, it's gonna be there. It might not be apparent. It's not always in the form of some income or something, but it's there, it's there. And every child comes with their risk and every person has their sustenance allotted to them. So charity does not decrease that. It doesn't decrease wealth, right? And that's something too, to keep in mind. Any other questions on the sister side? Any questions? Okay, okay, cool. So on this, the next section that we, there's nine benefits that are mentioned, some of the benefits of charity. I think I mentioned some of them last time about it, I wasn't very comprehensive. I thought I'd go over it again. So the first benefit of charity, as we mentioned, it is actually it attracts wealth. More charity somebody gives, the more that that deed attracts wealth, right? The second benefit of charity is it actually increases provision and these two, these are kind of linked, but it will, in the long term, inshallah increase our provision. It will increase the amount that we have, right? The third that's mentioned is it protects somebody from a bad death, from a Sue Al-Khatima. We should all praise for Hussna Al-Khatima. Hussna Al-Khatima is a good seal, a good ending. That's what we should be praying for. Charity prevents somebody from an evil death, right? And we should all obviously pray that Allah doesn't give us a bad death, right? But a bad death, there's a lot of ways where God forbid that could happen. So the more generous somebody is and the more charity somebody gives, it can protect somebody from that. The fourth is it is a means of providing or giving bodily health, right? So many times, we mentioned this last time, somebody is sick, one of the first things we should do is give charity, give satanah, give charity, right? And that would be, in whatever form possible, we should try to give charity as a means of removing that sickness, as a means of the blessed through the blessing of the charity in removing the sickness, right? The fifth is that it puts blessing into the wealth that we have already. So zakat is a way to purify the wealth as we earn money throughout our life and throughout the year, it gets impurities in it. Zakat is a way of purifying that wealth. Charity is also a way of purifying and putting barakah in the wealth, right? So then if somebody has $100 and they give 10 in charity, the 90 that they have, inshallah, will have more blessing in it and will go farther than the person who has a hundred and does nothing generous with it. Like I'm not giving anything, right? I'm not giving anything. So the blessing for the Muslim, we have all these shortcuts in our religion of how to find barakah in our life, blessing. There's ways to get barakah in our time. There's certain do'as someone can do. There's certain surah someone reads to get blessing, to get more blessing in their time, right? Amongst which, if somebody does the sunnah do'as of the Prophet alaihi salatu wa sallam in the morning, which we covered maybe 10, 15 classes ago, those are, that's a way of getting barakah and blessing in your day, the barakah in our time. Barakah in our overall life, there's a way of doing that. Barakah in our homes, making our homes places of blessing and tranquility and sakina and overall, the opposite of argumentation and kind of a difficult home environment. There's ways to get that as well. The more thicker someone does, the more caught on, someone recites, the more loved someone shows their family, that you bring blessing into the home that way. Just like all of those areas, there's a way to bring blessing into the wealth and that wealth will go farther. And this is some of these concepts, they take a little time to sink in. Like even when I read this, I like think, okay, how exactly would this work? And what would be the exact format? And sometimes you just have to let, like I'm usually a fairly, I try to reason through things with logic and sometimes you have to put a little bit of logic aside. Because it's hard to really think about how it works. How exactly does one hour for somebody, it's more productive than two, three hours for someone else? Well, I don't know, that person is just more productive. There's something there. And for the person who has blessing, it's there. How does someone's wealth go farther than someone else's? I don't know, but it does, right? It does, there is a blessing that comes in it. And there's not really always a physical or logical explanation for it. So we're just gonna get to three more of these and then we'll get to them. The sixth is that it extinguishes sins, like water extinguishes fire. A charity will extinguish sin. The soonest someone, as soon as we make a mistake, give some charity, give some charity, right? Go online, find someone to feed whatever it is, but give some charity as a means of extinguishing that sin. The seventh is it is a means of achieving the shade, on achieving shade on the day of judgment, the shade on the day of judgment. So in general, a lot of these ones are a relation to the next life. It facilitates things in the next life for us, right? And eight, it will protect us from punishment. It will protect us from punishment, right? So the good deeds that you and I do in this life, if we do them sincerely, inshallah, and we pray we do and Allah accepts them, even though we have a lot of flaws in the deeds, that they are a form of protecting us from punishment. So we know there's different, there's different deeds that protect from different punishments. Surah Mulk, for example, which spoke about a while ago, reciting Surah Mulk every day after Isha before someone goes to sleep is a means of protection from the punishment of the grave. When someone enters the grave, punishment could potentially descend upon that person, right? That there will be angels waiting there to punish that person if the life that was lived was not a virtuous life. And so we ask Allah that He make us people who have no punishment or graves and make the same for our families or our grandparents or loved ones, anybody who was passed away in our families, I was Muslim, that it is a means though of protection, in this case, where we just mentioned the Surah, Surah Mulk, in the grave, then there's ways of protection from other types of punishments, whether it's in the grave or in the hereafter, right? All the good deeds we do, obviously, they serve as these fortresses for us, right? They serve as these fortresses for us. So those are some of the benefits. I mean, again, the benefits are endless. You can't really put a number on the benefits of worshiping Allah, because at the end of the day, if Allah loves one thing you and I do, just one deed we do, because someone is so sincere and someone really is just yearning for Allah in that moment and really wants Allah to accept it and is turning to Allah and is begging Allah for help. And he accepts that, right? That could be a means of changing our whole life. And it might have been the $10 somebody gave, somebody just in a time really where they needed it, but someone else needed it more. We don't know what that deed is. And so the goal here for the Muslim and the goal that Imam Ahmadadad has been mentioning in this book is you want to have all the doors open for you. You don't want, you want to have as many doors of achieving Allah's nearness open to you, right? Because all of those doors of achieving nearness are also doors of inculcating virtue inside of us and our doors where it will ultimately, inshallah, attain, we will attain Allah's pleasure by, right? So we want to take as many shots as we can. Do our best. If that makes sense. Yes, question. If the part of it is not being attached to our web, it's like, you know, because we can have that great, great choice what you're talking about for all the things we ask people and we can have like, you and me for our own web, you know? Yeah. Because people get in a position where they're fighting for money and they're not considering that people's welfare, right? Right. All for people's welfare. Right, right. And so the, I'm talking about not being so attached to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Loving it so much, not being so beautiful. Right, having this overall state of zahud, of asceticism. Yeah, so the, well, I'm sorry, I said to Muhammad that the, the greed, as Sidi Fenton mentioned, is linked, it's linked to miserliness. It's linked to being stingy, that the two traits are often mentioned together in the book. So when someone is excessively greedy, it also usually leads them to be excessively stingy. Sometimes people with the most amount of money are the ones who never share it, right? They don't want to share it at all. They're just like, it's mine. It's mine. I gotta keep getting more and more and more and more. Right, and so greed is also part of being generous is to work on this trait of not being greedy, right? And there's various, various, various ways to do that. There's books that have been written on this. I'll try to see if I can find it in my notes and what some of the traits for this are. But being generous is one of the ways to get rid of this desire for greediness or the trait of greediness. And then somebody, ideally, the more someone reflects on the ephemerality of this world that like how temporary the world is, the more someone starts to slowly become less attached to their wealth, less attached to their dunya, right? Cause like, oh, this is all gonna go at some point. And you actually reflect on it, right? And that will usually result in inculcate more of a generous desire in that person. Cause you're like, I'm not gonna be here for that long. I'm already this, you know, I'm, you know, someone's like, let's say someone's 45 years old. Like I'm already 45 realistically, even if I got 25, 30 more years max left in my life and I've used this much time, you know, accumulating, accumulating, not really working for my Dean. Like how much more am I gonna do and how much, how much, how much more am I going, more time am I gonna waste, right? Someone really reflects on it. And then they're like, oh, wait a second. I literally can't be spending my entire life just earning money and just chasing after money. That can't be my whole focus, right? So, yes. And having the quality of the one that's, you know, how are they being in this process, see everything until he, everything in one, and everything like God centric. So the more we move closer to proper knowledge, how he was like pulling for the whole, you know, looking out for everybody, the more we are like that, then the more we're gonna live like that. Right, yeah. So that means we love them so much that we want good for them, you know, and even give that preference to them for ourselves. So that's for spending our wealth for the whole, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. The more somebody goes towards a trait of, closer to the character of the Prophet, alaihi salatu wa salam, the more that somebody is going to desire to care more for other people, and the more someone is going to desire to be selfless rather than selfish. And that's where the path of purity comes in. We don't wanna, don't worry if we're not there yet, we're all struggling, right? But the goal is to aspire to it and to have the intention. And if someone has the intention, the action is by the intention as the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us and hadid, and a good intention opens many, many, many doors of assistance from Allah. Someone makes a sincere intention, Allah will open a door for them to achieve that intention, inshallah. And so we just have to intend Allah, don't have this right now, I don't have the ability to do this, I'm not there yet, but I really want to. Help me. Allah just wants to see you turn to Him, right? And all of this, and all of our aspects of our life, especially in aspects of our routine, to really, really turn to Him and to rely on Him from the Allah. Okay, we have a few questions here. The book, the book is The Book of Assistance by Imam Abdullah Al-Haddad, The Book of Assistance. You can get it on like Amazon, $12 or so. We've been going through it every week, every Wednesday at eight o'clock Pacific time, we have this class where we go through the book. Yes, the benefits of charity. Yeah, so we said that the fourth was giving, bringing health, bodily health to somebody. That's the fourth one, and a benefit of charity. And then the fifth is that it puts blessing into your wealth. Barakah is the word that's used, but Barakah like spiritual blessings into someone's livelihood and income and wealth. Oh no, I thought it said nine, there's only eight here. Yeah, my bad, it's counting. Other questions. What's considered what? A bad death. Yeah, I mean, someone dies intoxicated, bad death. Someone dies in a club, bad death. Someone dies at a concert, usually a bad death. So any place where someone dies in a state of sin, in a place of sin would be considered a bad death. Somebody, there's many, I don't wanna get too graphic, but hopefully that gives an indication, yeah. Yes. And also you die the way you live. So the way you live, the way you live in your life, and the way you live, and the way you think, that's how you are at that point. And so if you pass and you haven't reached it, you're still in your selfish and all these things that would be a bad death. Yeah, I think it was specifically when we talk about a su al-khatima, it's usually like that seal. It's like at that moment, right? So the goal for us is to have, at that moment, we ask Allah for a good ending, a good seal. And hopefully we get that good seal, and we've been living a good life throughout, right? Like even if we think about it on a normal day, I mean, there's many things we all do that we probably wouldn't wanna do on the day we're gonna die, right? We might not wanna literally die in that state, right? It's like, if you could map out the ideal day, today you know you're gonna die, there would be, someone would live a different day. But if some, but that's, Allah keeps death hidden and the time of death and everything for a reason, right? What we pray for is Allah give us a good ending and a good seal so that I'm doing my best to live my life in a certain way. I'm gonna make certain mistakes, but I pray that at the moment that I die, I have a good ending, right? And that is some, there's people, literally there's people who have passed in Sajda. There's people who have passed at the Ka'bah. There's people who have passed near the prophet, alay salatu as-salam, in Mashabnabui. There's people who have passed with their loved ones around them after all reciting Surah Yassin and doing zikr and being in a state of remembrance and having prayed all their prayers, that there's various types of death that somebody will have, right? And so, does that answer the question? Did you have a question? Yes, a question. So if you have that mindset that charity is gonna bring more to the region, and why not give charity? And can it be an offset or not give charity? Yeah, yeah, good question. So the question is, if you have the mindset that charity is going to give more provision, why not just like give everything, right? It's a really good question. Let me just pull up my notes on this. So there's a couple of reasons for it, right? First is that Allah doesn't command us to leave the middle, leave the balance, right? So at the end of the day, yes, Allah will provide for you from where you never expect, because he says that in the Quran, but this is where you and I have to know what level we are at. So Allah could provide for you, but you might be hungry for two days. Does that make sense? It doesn't mean that like someone is gonna give, and then immediately, so you give, you have $10,000 in bank account, give away $10,000, now there's no way to make rent. And it's like, what do I do? You know, you're just like, okay, rent's gonna, the rent, inshallah, will come, but you might go through some difficulty, depending on how strong the taqwa and the iman was. So what the people of the past would do is that they would go through spiritual exercises to literally, and this is again, this is not required. We're now talking at like, very, very high levels of spirituality. None of this is required. All of this is to attainly, like stations of wilayah and sainthood and so on, but they would go through high levels where they would literally like put everything away and just be like, I'm gonna rely on Allah and see what happens. And then maybe they'll go a whole day hungry, and then if somebody will give them a piece of bread and they'll sustain on that, and then someone will give them a little bit of clothing, you're talking, it's strenuous. So spiritual progress requires a lot of effort. So when you talk about Sayyidina Abu Bakr, Sadiq, radiya Allah, and many of the Sahaba Ikram who gave a lot away, they also, it's not like they had a ton that came to them immediately. They endured, right? You have stories of the Sahaba Ikram that they didn't have that many clothes, that much clothing. You're talking two or three garments of clothing that they might have had. Sometimes they could barely cover their own oda, their own nakedness, and they had to struggle and they had to put in effort. There were times in the life of the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam where he would give everything away every day. His taqwa was so strong, he gave away everything every day. Not a night went by that he had anything in his house that he, except for the minimum things, his family needed for his family because their level is different than his level. And he would give everything away. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would also not have fire in his home, meaning warm food cooked in his home, sometimes for three months at a time, that they would subsist on just dates and water, for months at a time, not even bread or anything, no barley, no nothing that he wouldn't even, throughout his life, he barely even ate much fine bread, it's mentioned. So it's not easy, right? So Allah says, okay, everybody's at varying degrees. Now, if somebody wants to aspire to that, they got to be ready for what comes after it, right? And it usually comes with a lot of struggle associated with it because now it's like, okay, because now it's like, okay, let's test, Allah says in the Quran, that is at the beginning of Surah Al-Ankabut, I believe that where he says, we will test you like we tested those who came before you in order to see who's the most truthful, in order to see who's the most truthful, right? And that Allah puts people to the test. So when someone says, okay, I'm trusting fully on Allah, when someone gives everything away, the claim is I'm trusting fully on Allah, Allah's like, okay, let's now you're gonna trust fully on me, right? It doesn't get easier. It gets hard if that makes sense. So that's where the balance is, no, no, no, keep what you need for your living, keep what you need for your sustenance, keep what you need middle path and to the point where you bring a little more difficulty on your own self in order to take care more of others. So, okay, somebody has this much expense that they need and this much income, I give $100 more, it might be a little tight this month, but at least I helped some people. Gradually then another 50, you know, slowly, now that money, it'll come back in channel. You'll watch it come back, right? But somebody has to be kind of at that point, if that makes sense. And it's the same way where it's like, well, praying is really virtuous, right? There's a lot of virtues to prayer and to night prayer and fasting. You could argue that why don't we just, why don't we pray all night every night or fast every day? Well, you, someone technically could do that, but that's not the way that prophetism taught us to do it. He said, pray at night and also sleep fast and also have days where you eat, right? It's just that balance path. Give charity and have money for your family so that you can get through this life in one piece for a kind of lack of a better word, yeah. Yes. Another thing is in the prophet's time, he's just found people that own their house, so if they have their house, they're not having to pay like $2,000 or $4,000 a month, but it's a little different, you know? And then some of the people like that follow shaves and are living, they might live in a lodge or something like that, but then when they go out and they just rely on Allah, like you say, it can be very hard, you know? And then, you know, at a point like that, they probably don't have a family to provide or just keep them. And then you have to undergo hunger and all those kind of things. Right. A lot of, probably a lot of, yeah. Right, exactly. And that's, there's different standards for what someone can do when it's just themselves versus when they have requirements of family. Right, so if you're like a soul person, just you, you can put yourself through whatever you want in order to say, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. But when someone has a responsibility for a family, it changes completely. Is that responsibility now? Like, you are required to be scrupulous, to plan out, to have some level of a budget, like to really make sure, can I support my family? Right, and a man is required to start for a man. Like you are getting virtuous deeds for providing for your family. Right, while you go to work, as long as it's a lot of income, it is a requirement for a man, can't just say I'm gonna sit on the couch and just chill, someone else figure it out. Not the way that Allah mandated for us, right? It's required if you have family, you have children, you have wife, gotta do it, I gotta provide. For a woman, if she does it, it's all, it's all charity. She gets a reward of charity for giving to her family. For a man, it's an obligation, but you get the reward of a father act for that obligation, if that makes sense. So that's where the requirements and the, you are balanced in this because spending on your family is virtuous. It's amazing, right? It's not like only spending on other people, the people you spend on your, when you spend money on your family, someone spends money on their spouse, on their wife or wife spends money on their husband or on children or so on, that's virtuous as well. So there's like various degrees that we didn't really like get into all of it because just for the sake of time, maybe I'm gonna think about it for the next class we cover this topic in a little more depth or we move on. But yeah, does that answer the question? Yeah. All right, a couple more. Any other questions? Anything, any questions online? Bismillah. Bismillah. I think we're basically good here. For just a quick question for everybody. So there is a section that I think might be helpful which is like how does somebody think about earning and how to make sure that they give, do you, I think there was a question last time just around like still prioritizing, saving and earning and so on and how to make sure you properly give due to taking care of your day to day responsibilities when it comes to earning money, when it comes to earning an income, when it comes to navigating the workplace, when it comes to all those aspects of our life. And still have takwa of Allah. So we could have the next class be focused on that. Imam al-Khazali goes through a fair amount of things to keep in mind for like, hey, work is important, you gotta work. Here are some of the intentions to make while working. Here are some of the ways to remember Allah while working. Here are some of the ways to be grounded in your deen while working. And at the same time, here's the balance between not being overly obsessed with it and just greedy. So we could do that. If people feel like that would be helpful or continue with the book, the book, the next chapter is, I think it's on fasting or hatch. Anybody have? Why don't you do that since you have that idea and then you can keep going with the book after? Yeah, I just want to see if it's useful. Useful as well. Okay, inshallah, we'll do the next class then inshallah. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad, alaihi wa sallam, someone asks, what are your views on? Ali says, The view, someone, the question is, they're asking about the view on Sayyidina Muhammad, alaihi wa sallam, and I'm guessing it's kind of, I'm trying to understand Shia Sunni differences. The view of Ahla Sunnah and Jama'a is that all of the Sahaba of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, we don't comment on them. We don't try to pick apart the difference of opinion that they had and we certainly don't negatively comment on them, that all of the Sahaba of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would have a high station. What happened between them and the other Sahaba? It's between Allah, it's not, we're not qualified nor are we at that level and we have frankly too many other things to be thinking about in our life that we get into those disputes. It's actually considered that Imam Abid Muhammad Maulud mentions in one of his poems and one of his books that it is considered a prohibition of the tongue to comment on the differences of the Sahaba, that you would not want to be doing that, right? I believe that's the source of where we got that from. So with regards to that question, he's a Sahaba, the best of view of Ahla Sunnah and Jama'a, you know, I'm not gonna get into kind of the different, the different views between the Shia and the Sunnis on this. It's really not something that affects you to this day. That's the biggest thing to think about. If someone thinks about what happened in this time, what happened in this time, does it affect you on the day to day? Like is it actually affecting your taqwa and your ability to get closer to Allah? Is it affecting how much time you and I are wasting? Is it affecting our worship on the day to day? Is it affecting our ability to progress towards Allah? And 99% of the time, I mean, almost always, the answer is gonna be no, it won't. So wouldn't really get into that. But that is the view of Ahla Sunnah and Jama'a, the view that I just articulated. And Allah knows best. Is Quran and Ahla Bayt a more authentic hadith than Quran and Sunnah? I don't know the answer to that. I have heard both narrations of the hadith that to follow the Quran and my family and to follow the Quran and the Sunnah. In reality, the Quran and the Sunnah are linked to the family of the Prophet, we have the same time that the Sunni tradition also has a high degree of respect and has a high degree of love, extremely high degree of love for the Ahlul Bayt of the Prophet's Allah. Sometimes people forget that and they think it's just a Shia thing to love the family of the Prophet's Allah. No, no, no, no, no. Amongst which, this is the book that we are reading from Imam Al-Haddad. He is a Sharif. He is from the descendants of the Prophet's every single person in his lineage was one of the grandsons of the Prophet's Allah and great grandson. Every single he has a full lineage back to the Prophet's Allah and his teachings are directly from that source and there was an immense amount of love for the Prophet's Allah. There was also an immense amount of love for the Sahaba Iqram as well. So it's best not to get too caught up in those things. Okay, any last questions before we end? No, I can't see any questions online. Nope, no other questions. Alhamdulillah. Okay. Alhamdulillah. God bless you. Ya Allah, ya Rahman, ya Rahim, ya Kareem. Ya Allah, we ask that you accept us and that you pardon us and that you forgive us. Ya Allah, may Allah bless you and may Allah bless you. Please put barakah in this month of Rajab and in the month of Sha'ban to come and allow us to reach Ramadan, ya Allah. Please turn our hearts towards you, ya Allah. Please remove the love of dunya and the love of money and the love of wealth and the love of fame and the love of power and all of the diseases of the heart that we have. Please remove them, ya Allah, from our heart. Fi khayr walut wal afya and orient our heart towards you, ya Allah. Ya Allah, you know best what we are struggling with. You know best what gives us anxiety. You know best what gives us worry. You know best what makes us sad and what makes us hurt and then some difficulties we all are going through that our families are going through that our loved ones are going up. We ask you, ya Allah, by your rahmah, ya Allah, by your mercy, ya Allah and by your love to your prophets. The other Prophet, Peace be upon him, that you remove these difficulties in our lives, ya Allah, that you remove these tribulations, ya Allah, And that you allow our lives to be filled with Khayr and full with Acya, ya Allah. May Allah be with you for Acya. We ask you for Acya. We ask that you have complete and total well-being, ya Allah. Spiritual well-being and physical well-being and financial well-being and all sorts of well-being, ya Allah. heart to be directed towards you and that you allow our focus to be you and that you don't allow the different things that go on in this world and our lives to ever distract us from you and allow us to focus on you Ya Rabbil Alameen. Ya Allah, you know what our intentions are. We ask you to allow us to achieve those intentions. We ask you to give us Taufiq and blessing in those intentions Ya Rahman Raheem. Ya Allah, we ask Ya Allah that you grant us complete forgiveness Ya Ghaffar and grant us complete, complete nearness to you Ya Rahman Ya Raheem and pour your Rahma into our hearts Ya Allah, we ask you for everything good that Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam asked for and we ask you protection from everything evil that he asked protection from. Wa Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, Mubarak ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala Alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Alhamdulillahi.