 When I was asked to give this talk today, I was asked to speak about marriage. And I'm always just a little suspicious when I ask the woman's speakers to speak about marriage. And I think to myself, ask the Melshi. Rasad, Abed, Al-Avyn, Zabarak, Al-Afiq, you redeemed the brothers tonight. Inshallah. Inshallah. Inshallah, what I decided to speak about actually was when I thought about the concept of love in the Quran. Someone dear to be asked to me and said, what story of love in the Quran speaks to you most? And the first thing that came up for me was a beautiful love story, but a different kind of love story than we have been talking about tonight. And it's not one of marriage. I want you to transport yourself back into early Islam. I want you to imagine that you are the closest friend and companion to our beloved, the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And I want you to imagine what it means when you realize that there is such fear and such potential, that beautiful potential of Islam could be completely taken away if his life is taken away. And that you are meant to be his companion and to help him migrate from Mecca to Medina. Who am I talking about? Sayyidina Abu Bakr Siddique. And I want you to imagine that the prize for finding the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is 100 camels. You do the math and tell me what that means in today's money. And I want you to imagine that as you're taking this trek, you need to stop. It gets dangerous. And you stop at Ghad Thor. And you stop there at this cave. And the first thing you do is try to clean out the cave so that the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam can go in safely. And so you plug up every hole there is with cloth pieces of cloth to plug up the hole so that the snakes don't come out to bite them. But one hole was missed. And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam finally goes to sleep and puts his blessed head in your lap. You see the snake. And so you take your foot and put it in the hole. And the snake bites you. But out of your love for the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, you don't even want to move in order to not disturb his blessed sleep. So you're just so such in pain that all you can do is start to tear up silently, silently in excruciating pain. And the tears fall from your cheek onto the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and it wakes him up. And when he wakes up and asks you what happened, you explain. Do you feel the love? Can you feel the pulse of this kind of love? The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam took his blessed saliva and put it on Sayyidina Abu Bakr's wound and it healed completely. Such is the blessing of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And when Sayyidina Abu Bakr tells this story, he says at one point, we heard the footsteps of the people who were coming and all they had, they got all the way to the cave where we were and all they had to do was just look down and they would have seen us. But they didn't. You remember why? There was the spinning of the spider web and the pigeon with her eggs. And they thought nobody went into this cave and they went off. But the Sayyidina Abu Bakr was worried because any harm coming to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam meant the potential for Islam to be gone right in its infancy. And can you imagine that this kind of love is mentioned in the Quran in Surat At-Tawbah? Twice. You're referenced. Imagine you being the one referenced in the Quran. Sayyidina Abu Bakr is referenced because Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam says, The people who disbelieved took the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam out of his home in Mecca. And Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam refers to Abu Bakr by saying that he is one of Thaniith name. He's one of the two. Imagine you being referenced in the Quran as the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and you're the second. Right? Thaniith name. And as they are in that cave, this is when Sayyidina Abu Bakr says to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that he's worried, he's fearful. And what does the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam say back to him? What is repeated is mentioned in the Quran. Imagine that your conversation with the Prophet is reported in the Quran. Love. This kind of love, it's a special kind of love. And the ayah continues. Don't be fearful. Don't despair. Don't be scared. Allah is with us. Allah is with us. And not only that. It continues because it says He send down a tranquility, a calm that took that fear and that sadness and that despair, that sadness away. And Allah gave them forces like angels that you can't even see. Allah is providing the entire time. What do you do with a kind of love that is so strong that when you are the first to go public with your Islam, you get up on the mountain top and you start talking about Islam. The disbelievers take you down and beat you up so badly that you completely lose consciousness. And when you come to, when you wake back up, the first thing out of your mouth is, is the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam okay? Not just what happened to me, am I missing a nose as my tooth gone? Is the Prophet okay? This kind of love is so strong that when you see how the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam reciprocates and responds, you'll understand. Because one of the other Sahaba of the many, there's actually several narrations similar to this. But this particular narration that's in Sahih Bukhari and Muslim is on Amr ibn Abnaas. And he said to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he was just appointed. So he was very proud of himself. And when the shema alit says, whenever the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would speak to you, he would speak to you so directly. You would think that only you were in the room and he would think that you were the most beloved person to him at all. And so several of the companions would say, Ya Rasulallah, who is most beloved to you? Hoping that he'd say them, right? And so here's Amr ibn Abnaas, who's been appointed. And he asks this question and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam says, Aisha. He says, okay, okay, from the men, from the men. Who's the most beloved to you? He says her father, inshaAllah. And then he goes on. He says, and then who? Sayyidina Umar. And in a different narration with a different Sahabi, it says there, he said, I wish I had never even asked. Imagine that you are the person that is so beloved to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. That you have given up your comfort. You've given up your safety. You've given up your land. You've given up your wealth. Yes, wealth, because Sayyidina Abu Bakr, one of the most important things that we know about him, is how much he gave his wealth, particularly freeing of slaves. He freed Sayyidina Bilal. And he freed Amr ibn Yasir. And so on the list goes. And imagine you are the person that once you have this Islam, you want everyone else to have it too. Imagine you're the one who brings to Islam, Orthman ibn Affan. Imagine that you're the one who brings to Islam, And Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas. Imagine the scales for scales. Now, why do I mention all of this love? It says that Abu Bakr, radiallahu anhu, likely had met the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam when he was like 10. They were out on the same caravan when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam had also gone out when he was about 13. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was about two to three years older than Abu Bakr. And who knows how exactly the friendship exactly came to be, but when you think about who these two people are, when you think that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is Al-Amin, the trustworthy. And Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, right? When you think about how these souls, we say, When they meet each other, their kindred spirits, they know each other as soon as they meet each other, they just mesh. And they became good friends. And when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam married, they became neighbors. And when the message of Islam came, so this is what? They were neighbors since he was about 25, right? And when the message of Islam came at the age of 40 years later, Sayyidina Abu Bakr heard this and said, he went straight to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam took a shahada. This kind of love starts young. This kind of love that Sayyidina Abu Bakr had for the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is a mirror. It's a mirror because it reflects the love he has for Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, and his commitment to Islam. It is the kind of love that we need to have for our own Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And the kind of love we need to instill in our children. Now, let me tell you something. In the last several weeks, one of our dearest teachers, one of my dearest teachers, Ansa Sosa and Aimadi had done an amazing, amazing series on parenting at the Rahma Foundation. And I want, if you've missed it, you've got to go back and listen to these recordings. It is phenomenal. She takes the milestones, the physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual milestones of children at every single age. And she tells us how as parents, we do a pretty good job with the physical on a decent job with the cognitive, the emotional milestones. And the spiritual milestones of our children, we just fall right off. The reason that that series is so extraordinary, every time I listen to it, you can't help but learn something amazing and new. When she gets to teens, I told you, the friendship between Abu Bakr and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam started young. When she gets to teens, this is where everybody's ears perks up and go, huh? You just told me we need to instill the love of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in our youth. What do we do with these kids of ours who all they have all day long as a stone in their face? I remind us the phone that we gave them, that we pay for, that we give the subscription to. Just saying. And so, what does she say about these teens? I'm going to say something. Maybe pushing the envelope, pushing the envelope just a little bit here. She says, take these about 10 years or so. Let's start at the age of 14 and let's say, let's go in our field. We say transitional aged youth are until about 24. So 14 to 24. At this stage of life. Now listen closely. This stage of life is called the stage of spiritual and sexual awakening. Now, when you think about this, let it just sit for a minute and you think about what this means. You'll realize that most of our youth and actually by extension, you see the ramifications of this and most of our adults too. That if they did not grow that spiritual awakening in the years in which you can hit its peak and prime, which are actually your teen years. And for anyone listening to this going what your teen years. Absolutely. This age is an age in which you don't have the many responsibilities that are to come. But it's also the age of decision making because you've learned so much all this time. And now you're finally making your choices for yourself. Whether your parents like it or not. And the people you're listening to more often in this stage are not your parents anymore by and large. They are the others. Who are the others? Who have you put in their path that they're turning to? Where is the Suhba Salihah, that strong companionship and friendship like we saw with Sayyidina Abu Bakr on the Prophet to turn them back to the spiritual awakening? You see one can grow and completely stunt the other. And in this society, the emphasis is I don't have to tell you it's not on the spiritual awakening. Where is the emphasis? You know where it's being pushed and pushed and pushed. So how do you combat this? You combat it with a spiritual awakening. This is the stage where a youth can get up and actually pray in the middle of the night and feel and taste Iman, Allah. This is the period of life where they can get up and actually feel a kind of faith and kind of love for their Lord and kind of love for Islam. But they don't actually feel in other stages. It's a very special stage. So let me tell you something. Don't stunt our kids spiritual growth and progress. Even when we see kids kind of like go a little bit, you know, sometimes it's really, really far out. If they've experienced this, they eventually come back. It's a taste that once you've experienced it, you can't forget it again. So give them this. And Wallahi, if you feel that reserve from this age, they always draw from that light and that new for the rest of their lives. Subhanallah. And so in closing, in closing. I'm going to share with you a story of something that happened in the Rahmah Foundation. For those of you who don't know, it's a nonprofit that we have here in the Bay Area now for almost 20 years. Mashallah, we're getting there. And Alhamdulillah, feeling Wallahi the honor of having worked with so many of your daughters actually over the many years of our summer camps and our youth camps and our Friday night halakas and our youth halakas and so on and so forth for women and girls. And one time I was at the masjid where we hold these events. And because we have a parallel women's halakah with hundreds of women in it. At the same time that the girls are in their halakas, hundreds of girls, mashallah, of all the age groups for all the way to high school. And every so often I get to break away because we have a guest speaker. And I think, you know, as I go through the masjid and kind of want to just look in and peer and listen into what's happening in the different girls groups. I feel like Sayyidna Omar. I was like, I'll make us like Sayyidna Omar, who would he would go and walk through the village at night to hear. Because, you know, it's the same thing. A lot of these rooms are like cubicles. So you can hear even if you can't see what the girls are saying inside. And I would walk through and kind of see how things are going. And one day, one day, Subhanallah, one day I heard these group of girls, they range from like age 12 to maybe 16 ish. And they're behind the cubicle so I can hear them, but they can't see me and I can't see them. And I'm walking through and one of them said, we have to figure out how to get, how to go. And I said, where are these girls? They're going to go. And they said, we've got to convince our parents to travel. This is pre-COVID. And so I stopped. I was kind of interested to see where is this conversation going. And they said, we have to figure out where to go study. And I just stopped. Wallahi in my tracks, you know, when you kind of have that moment where you just like everything freezes in time. The kind of good companionship and the kind of role modeling for those of you who know me, know that I've studied in Syria. When I was a young girl, I was about 14 when I first went overseas to study Sharia. Since we mentioned Syria, please make dua, please for Syria and all of the ummah, Ya Rabb, Allahumma Ameen. And the story is often shared with the rahmah girls that their teacher went to go study and inshallah you should too. So these girls are making plotting and planning. And I thought, what are they going to say? And they said, we're going to go to Turkey. I thought, wow, Turkey's the new Syria. And the funniest conversation, the most comical conversation happened after that. One of them said, hey, you know how to make pasta, right? So we'll be okay. And the other one said, no, no, no, she didn't forget pasta. She knows how to cook. Another one said, you're turning 16 soon. You're going to be able to drive. So you'll drive us around Turkey. And they're having this whole conversation of how they're going to study in Turkey. And they finally get to the point where they say, but who are we going to study with? The Quran and Islam. And I thought to myself, Subhanallah, Wallahi. Right then I literally melted into the ground of the mustard floor. And you have to pick me back up because I thought Subhanallah. We have three rules that Rahma, three rules. You come here on Friday nights to learn about, to grow in your sisterhood together. And here was a group of sisters. They were all in different schools, but on Friday nights, they found their Muslim sisters, right? That you grow, number two, that you grow in your love for Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. And that you grow in your love for Islam. And that's it. If you gain more out of it, Alhamdulillah. But if you got those three, you got love. And you got the kind of love that's going to help you in the spiritual awakening and keeping you through. And so sha Allah, my dear sisters and my brothers, please, and sha Allah, if there's everything you have been hearing here at this program tonight, all types of different love that you've heard, if you feel that it is lacking in your life, either in your marriage or in your parenting or with your kids or with yourselves. On the spiritual side, please reach out to the programs that are like Miftah, like the Rahmah Foundation, like the others. And of course, the Miftah brothers, may Allah bless them and increase them, have allowed me to give this service announcement and I'm very blessed to give it. If it is more than that and you feel that you need extra help, you know that I'm not going to leave the stage before telling you that if you need the extra help, reach out for help. Some of the issues that are happening are definitely spiritual. And some of them are on the needs of mental health. And please know that the two are connected. I'm very happy in order to tell you that after a bit of a gap, Alhamdulillah, we now have Maristan and Alhamdulillah in the Bay Area. I'm really, really blessed. Alhamdulillah. It's a real, real blessing to have, insha Allah, an organization that's going to be focused on kind of the Muslim mental health and the Islamic psychology. And I want to tell you, and that's here to stay and it's from the Bay Area and it's not going anywhere, insha Allah, insha Allah. And I also want to tell you, my dear sisters and my brother is the table is outside. And take it, please take your bookmark before you leave, insha Allah, and reach out. If it's not for you, then it's for somebody else in your family or friends. Wallahi, the kind of love we've been talking about here is possible. But sometimes we do need that extra help. So may Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, Allah for all of us to have the kind of spiritual awakening and to go forward with it. Wa Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa Sallallahu Alaa Sayyidina Muhammad Wa Alaa Ali Wa Sallam. Wa Sallam Alaa Alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakat.