 Al Ghazali's The Book of Knowledge for Children. Can you see the cover? Yes. Can anyone read what it says underneath, under the little girl who's holding the heart? Yes, Faiza. Yes. Imam Al Ghazali, The Book of Knowledge is Polishing the Heart. Polishing the Heart. Oh my goodness. Isn't that wonderful. And here's the workbook. Now, let's just go to the first part. All right. Now, children, did any of you know that there's two kinds of learning? Did any of you know there are two kinds? One kind is learning what you do every day. You're learning the good things to eat, what not to eat. You're learning two and two is four. You're learning to read. But did you know there's a special knowledge, a really magical, very, very special knowledge? Do you know what that knowledge is? It's how to, it's how to polish your heart. Do you see the two hearts here? The heart on one side on the left side is the heart that beats inside and that pumps blood around. What happens if you cut your finger? Blood comes out, right? And then the other heart, the shining heart, that's your real, real heart, right? And what do you do for your physical heart? What do you feed it to make it strong? What do you all feed to make your body strong and good? Can anyone say? Say, what do you feed to the heart? I feed all my fruits. Very good. Excellent idea. That's wonderful. And then what do you, what do you think you would feed your heart to make it a good heart, the beautiful heart that does good things? What kinds of things could you do to make that heart better? You can feed it knowledge. You can feed it knowledge, exactly. And did you know that there are two worlds? You know, we, there are two worlds. We're in this world right now, children. And then after a while, when we get old, we go to the next world, which is beautiful and has everything we need. And how do we get there? We have a shining heart. We have to polish our beautiful hearts. You see? Yeah, we polish our hearts. All right. So children, so we're going, we're going on a journey to the next beautiful world. And do you know how we get there? We need to polish our hearts, right? So we, how do we, how do you think our hearts get dirty? Maybe if we're mean to somebody, right? Maybe if we're not kind. Yes, you would like to answer? Yes. If you do bad things, right? You wouldn't want to. Yes, bad deeds. That gets dirt on your heart, right? But we want to polish our hearts, right? It's very important to polish our hearts. Wait, I'm going the wrong way, right? And then, you know what happens? If we do good things, do you see the here that the whale in the ocean and the ants, those, those whales in the ocean and the ants, they pray for the people who does the, who do the right things. Do you know when you do the right thing, people copy you. And so you become a teacher. And so if you're a teacher by doing the right thing and your brothers and sisters copy you and your friends, the ants, the ants will pray for you and the whales in the sea. Here's a drawing some children made. Do you see the ants and do you see the whales? They're, they're, the Quran says that they pray for you if you do the right thing. And if you polish your heart and look here, here's some children's drawings. You see the whale and you see the ants, they're, they're busily praying for the people who are good teachers because they show others how to do the right thing. And did you know that we have three needs in this world? What's the first thing you need more than anything? The first thing you need, wouldn't it be food? Yes. Yes. And then don't you need clothing after that? Yeah. And then you need a house to protect you, right? But what happens if you, instead of just eating what you need, you just eat all kinds of stuff or with clothing you just get. We need water too. Yeah. See the little boy here? Does he have enough toys or too many toys? Too many toys. Too many toys. And what if you just have a house and you keep filling it with things and decorating it? You know what Imam al-Ghazali says? If you do that, you forget what you're really supposed to be doing. You forget to polish your heart. If you're so busy eating millions of things, many that, if you're just too many toys, you know, so you need to be, have time to polish the heart. Now also, there's a story. If you imagine in your head, you have a good wolf that tells you good things to do and you have a naughty wolf that tells you naughty things to do, right? So like, here's a little girl, there's a naughty wolf giving her naughty ideas and a good wolf giving her good ideas. Now if she does what the good wolf wants, she's feeding him and making him strong. If the naughty wolf says, don't share toys, don't play with that little girl. If, if she listened, if she won't listen to that wolf, he gets very hungry and he dies. So you want to be very careful to listen to just your best thoughts. Isn't that true? If you get a bad thought, what are you going to say to it? Oh, no bad thought, go away, right? Yeah. And, and also, and then also, have you noticed the things that are invisible are really important to you, right? Yeah. Yeah, for example, what's nice about this bird? Here's a bird, but the bird is a friend of the man. Isn't friendship something you love? Yeah. It's invisible. You can't see it. Somebody who's kind to you. You can't see kindness. So the things that you can't see are very, very important to you. Here's friendship. You see these little girls have a wonderful friendship. It's something you can't see, but it's very, very important. So you have to think about the things in your life, not things you can hold or play with or touch, but you have to think about the things that, that you can't see that like love and kindness and goodness. Now I'm going to tell you the story about the ants. Do any of you ever get disappointed if something happens that you didn't want to happen? So I'm going to tell you, tell you the story about the baby ants. All right. Once, Gizali says, we're like little ants, we're on a piece of paper. And we see things being written like things in our life. And sometimes we fall apart. Oh, I didn't want that to happen. Oh, I'm so upset about this because we can't see what a law wants for us. We just see what we think is happening. So I'm going to tell you a story. Once upon a time, there were some baby ants. And the mother and father ant said, we're going to the zoo. And the little ants said, oh, we're so excited. And then the next morning, they got a message that the relatives were coming to spend the night. And they said, the parents said, we're not going to the zoo. What do you suppose the baby ants did? Did they say, oh, no, you promised? Oh, no, you promised. We're disappointed. And the little baby ants weren't a bad mood. And all day long, the relatives stayed. And at the end of the day, the relatives were leaving. And they heard on ant radio that a lion got loose in the zoo and chased all the ants. And it was terrifying. And you know what the mother and father ant said to the baby children ant, children, God sent us the relatives to protect us from going to the zoo. So next time something happens, and you think, oh, no, I'm disappointed. It could be there's something for a real reason. For example, my grandson Belal, one day we live on a river. I live in Kentucky. We're in the state of Kentucky. And one day, we were going out on a little boat out into the river, my husband's boat. And then the day we were going to go, everyone was excited. Belal got sick and couldn't go. And the next day, I went to see him and he was in bed. And I say, you won't believe what happened. Had we gone yesterday, something terrible would have happened. There was big waves and washing down the river were trees and many and even a dead cow. And it was terrible. So Alhamdulillah, that Allah made you sick and we didn't have to go that day. And of course, another day we did go. So when something happens and you're worried about it, you might think, no, Alhamdulillah, I'm not going to be disappointed because Allah has something better in mind. Now there's the story of the little boy in the horse. See the little boy here? One day he took his family's horse out into the mountains and he lost the horse and he came back. And everyone ran to the grandfather and they said, oh, we're so sorry for you. You were very poor family. All you had was your horse and now it's gone. And the grandfather said, maybe, maybe good, maybe bad. And the next day, the little boy, he went out into the, into the countryside and he looked, he looked and he found a whole herd of horses and he brought all of the horses back and he put them in a corral and the people ran to the grandfather and said, oh, you're so blessed. You're so lucky. You now have a herd of horses. You're rich. And the grandfather said, maybe good, maybe bad. Now the next day, the boy went into the corral with all the horses. He wanted to train or pick one out. And you know what happened? Oh my goodness. The horses got scared and they stepped on him and they crushed his leg and his leg was no good anymore. And everyone ran to the grandfather and they said, this is so sad. Your only grandson, he has a squashed leg. And the grandfather said, maybe good, maybe bad. And the next day, the army came in and they took all the young men away that had, were able bodied and could walk. So the little boy was safe and he didn't have to go. So you see, when the grandfather, when something happens, maybe good, maybe bad, because maybe you think it's not good. But remember, you can trust the law because he plans things out and he makes sure you have everything that you need when you need. So isn't that a wonderful story? Already you know several things. You know your real self is a golden heart, right? You've all got a golden heart, right? What are you going to do? Yes? I liked that story. You like that story? Yeah, me too. I like the story too, because it teaches us a truth, you know, because we've all been told by our parents and we're told in the Quran, you have to trust God because he sends for you what you need. And then something happens, you say, oh no, I'm disappointed. I didn't want it to be that way. But remember three things. One, your real self is a golden heart. Two, God sends you difficulties. Like this little boy hurt his leg or we didn't get to go on the boat or the ants didn't get to go to the zoo. These happen every day, but you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be depressed or sad. You should wait and see and you should just trust the law. Can you all trust the law? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I had a baby chick that died, but then I came disappointed, but my dad dig the grave. Oh, that's beautiful. And sometimes I go around and look at it. That's wonderful. You know, we had some fish in my fish pond and they all died, but where do you think the fish went? We're going to the next world, aren't we? Well, so are the fish. You don't have to worry about your chicken. Hallelujah. The chicken is now at peace. You know? Yes. Yes. Yes. And my mom said it is maybe good is maybe bad. You see, but we're, yes, somebody else is that phase. Yes. I never knew that animals went to heaven. Everything returns to God. God brings everything into the world and everything goes back to him. And here's the boy's little horse right here. Now I want all of you see the girl drawing her golden heart. I want everyone to draw a golden heart on a piece of paper tomorrow. And whenever you see that something is happening that you don't like about yourself, you put a dot. Maybe you were not telling the truth and you could write that. Maybe you were lazy. Maybe you didn't help mom. Maybe you didn't share. So you can put the dots on your golden heart and then you can wipe them away. You can quit doing whatever it was. Now look at some of the things you're walking on your, your journey through life. And here's some of the things that try to get you. Okay. Can you see right there? There you, there's the heart walking down the street. Can everyone see the heart? Yes. Just lower than the heart. It says backbiting. Does anyone know what backbiting is? Yes. I know. What is it? It's something that you say something mean about someone and when they're not looking. That's right. And it's, it can also be called gossiping when people sit and talk about somebody who's not there. Just what you said. So that's backbiting. Do you know in Islam, it's one of the most horrible things you can do. Well, all of you promise me you're never going to talk about somebody behind their back. It's the worst. Do you know that if you're fasting in Ramadan, Imam al-Ghazali is a hadith of the prophet peace and blessings be upon him. And there was a lady, there was a lady and, and she asked the prophet, can I break my fast because, because I'm weak and old and tired. He said, you already broke your fast because you were talking badly about someone. So you see, it's not just fasting from food, you fast from backbiting and other things. Look at the other things that are happening here. The heart is walking down the path of life and above backbiting. What word do you see up there? What do you see? Pride. Do you know what pride is to be proud? Do people who show off and they're very proud? Have you ever met someone like that? Yes. Not very nice, is it? And then up above, bragging. Do you know people who brag? No. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Someone says, I have a better bike than you have. That's bragging and showing off. Do you like people who do that? No. No. You don't like people who do that, right? And then you have also that, up in the upper corner, it's called hypocrisy. That's, if you tell people to do something and you don't do it yourself, you tell somebody, stop lying, stop lying. Don't do that. And yet in your, you lie. So you, you, that is telling people to do what you don't do, pretending to be good when in, in your heart, you're doing something wrong. You're sneaking. And then down below, it says arguing. Do any of you argue? Yes. Do you like, when you hear people arguing, do you like that? No. Horrible. I don't. It's horrible. But sometimes you always don't. I'm going to lie. Yes. So if you don't like it, you wouldn't want to do it. If you don't like to listen to it, you wouldn't want to do it, would you? Yes. Don't do it. You know, pretty much every day. Oh yeah. Well, I tried to get out of them, but we continue doing it. Well, Imam al-Ghazali tells a story. That if you're arguing with somebody, let's say you're arguing with your brother or your sister or your friend and you think, oh my goodness, I'm doing the wrong thing. I'm getting dust. It gets dust on your golden heart, doesn't it? If you're bragging, if you're lying, if you're angry, if you backbite, that puts dust on your golden heart. But here's what you're going to do. If you're arguing, you can just suddenly stop. Just stop. You stop arguing and guess what happens. Allah builds you a special place in paradise for stopping arguing. And if you're right, if you're really right about what you're arguing about and you quit arguing, many special things happen for you. So next time you're arguing, think, what am I doing? I'm getting dust on my heart. I've got to stop and polish your heart. Just polish your heart. But how does Allah will give us a new place so we could live if we start arguing? Explain, say that one more time. I couldn't hear. How does Allah give us a new place to live if we start arguing? It's magical. We don't know. But this is what we hear from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. But how do we don't know? Because it's invisible. Yeah, it's off now. So sorry about that. Very good. All right. So now, now what do you think these little girls are doing right now here? Sharing. Back fighting. Back fighting. Look at this. There's a little girl sitting on the bench. What are the girls doing behind her? They're whispering. Are they saying something bad about her? I think something bad. Now, those girls are getting lots of dirt on their heart. Your heart is like a mirror. If you get lots of dirt on it, it won't reflect light anymore, will it? Right? If it's covered with dirt. If you got a mirror and threw mud all over it, would the mirror be beautiful and reflect light? It wouldn't, would it? Yeah, it wouldn't unless you washed it. Well, that's the whole point. You all have golden hearts and you're going to be washing it off. If you do, let's say you do something wrong. You could go and say you're sorry, right? What if you were mean and didn't share, didn't share? Could you go to the person and say, I'm sorry? I'd like to share. Could you do that? And when you do that, it polishes the heart. Did you realize that? It'll polish it away. Then it's gone. Now, here's another idea from Imam al-Ghazali. See the heart there? Yeah. Your heart is like a house. All right. Let's picture. Everybody touch their hearts right now. Touch your hearts. Okay. Your heart is like a kind of house. And in it are lots of angels living in it. What happens if you have bad thoughts? They're like barking dogs. What's happening here? The barking dogs are scaring the angels away if you have bad thoughts. So if you have a bad thought, shouldn't you try to change it and have a good thought? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to tell you something about thoughts. This is important to understand. Do you know Imam al-Ghazali says, if you have a good thought, do it right away. Because if you don't do it right away, all these little whispering ideas come. Let's say you're watching TV and you have a good thought. Go and help mommy. What are some of the thoughts that will creep in? Don't help mommy. Just watch TV. What you have to do is, if you have the bad thoughts, push them away and just stand up. Whatever your first good thought was, do it right away. Let's say I'm driving down the street and I pass a nursing home where there's some old people and I have a thought, oh, I should go and visit them, right? And then I think, oh no, I'll just do it another day. What should I have done when I had the thought? Go and visit them. The first good thoughts in your life. That's right. And once I had a friend, he was old and he lived in another country. He lived in England and every day I had a thought. Telephone him and the next, and I thought, oh, I can't do it today. Next day, telephone him and the next day. And I kept finding reasons to not do it right away. And the third day when I telephoned, what happened? He had died the day before. So I had a thought. Where was that thought coming? It was coming from a law telling me it comes from the best part of your heart saying, do the right thing. So when you all have a good thought, right? Do it right away. And you can play a game. Here's a game you can all do. You can get with your brother or sister or friends. And one of you say, I have a good thought and say what it is. And the other ones can pretend to be the bad thoughts. Oh, don't do it. Don't help mommy. Don't help that person. And you all can play games. You can say, you can each play a game tomorrow. Give a good thought and then give some of the thoughts that you get that make you not do it. And if you start doing this, you know what will happen? You'll always notice. Say, I'm sitting, I'm having thoughts. Thoughts just come in like clouds. And now if a thought like help mother comes, it's like ringed and bright yellow. Oh, yes, it's a real good thought. I better do it now. Will you all promise to do that when the good thoughts come? Absolutely. Yeah. Now, now also, if any of you were out in the forest and a big lion came and it was killing everybody and somebody saved you, would you thank that person? Yeah. If they saved your life. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Here's a question. If you have teachers and mothers and fathers who are telling you some good things to do in your life, some real learning that you should be kind and you should help and you should say your prayers, the people that are reminding you to do that are saving your real, real, real life, your spiritual, your heart. Wouldn't you thank them too? Yes. If your mother reminds you to do something good, thank her for reminding you, right? Yeah. If your teacher reminds you, oh, share, say thank you for reminding me because they're reminding you of the real, real learning. So you're really lucky to have their help. Now, did you know you have three selves? Okay. Let's look at them. Look at the picture here, all right? Over on the left, you have a low self and it thinks of me, me, me. I'm hurt. I don't like her. I'm unhappy. I'm not going to help. That's the lower self, right? And then you have here your real self, the real, the golden heart and then you have another part that scolds. It's called the nafs alawama. Let's say you're thinking I'm going to get up and go in the kitchen and help mummy. That's the real self. And then the lower self says, no, I'm not going to do that. But then your scolding self says, you ought to do it, just get up and go in there. So you have a conversation going on all the time. For example, pretend you're this little girl lying in bed. Do you see her lying in bed? The mummy is coming in and she's saying, get up, wake up for school. Does that ever happen to you? Does your mother come to wake you up? Yeah. I don't like it because I like it. No, you don't like it. So look at this. On the left side, it says the lower self. The low, you're lying in bed and you say, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear. I'm going to pretend I'm asleep. That's the low self. Okay. And then the scolding self says, oh, I should really get up. Get up and please, mother. And then your real self is watching. Your real self is watching. Yes. Yes. Get up. So children, when you sketch yourself thinking you want to do the pretend or not help, just watch that lower self. But who is your real self? The golden heart or the low self? Golden heart. That's your real. That's the real self. And if it gets dirt on it, like if you pretend or anything, so you don't want to get any dirt, you want to keep your heart polished and golden, right? Yeah. So, so let me see. Oh, here's a mother. Also, see this grandmother here and she's teaching. She's a teacher. All right. Now, grandmother is teaching. And this is a little girl and she's a good kind of teacher too. Do you know, do you ever copy people the way they do things? Have you ever copied anybody? No. Like I sometimes, a girl does her hair like, so I copy that, right? Or you see your friend has this kind of toy. You want to have that too, right? Maybe they have Legos. You want to copy that, right? So, yeah, we all are copying each other, children. We're all copying each other. So if we're copying each other, all right, every time you do something, think, do I want, is this something I want somebody to copy? Right? You don't want, just imagine anything you're doing and thinking, oh my goodness, what if somebody copied me right now, right? And I'm talking about two kinds of trees. You see the straight tree and then you see the bent tree, right? Yeah. A straight tree. If the sun is shining on it, what kind of a shadow comes behind a straight tree? A straight shadow, right? And if you have a bent tree that's all like this, what's a shadow look like? If you're doing things correctly, you're like a straight tree, right? And people, your shadow, people will copy your straight shadow. But if you do things all crumpled up and bent, people will copy something bent. You don't want to do that, do you? No, no, no. No, no, no. Never, never. So now what I'd like to do is just me finish this. Oh, see, look at this. This is a tree in my front yard. I can look out in the morning and see that. Isn't that beautiful? And look at the shadow. That's a beautiful tree. And I've loved it my whole life. I'm living in my father's house where I lived as a little girl and the tree has gotten very, very big. So do we want to be like straight, beautiful trees? Yes, yes, yes. Tell me each one of you, tell me one way you can be a straight, beautiful tree that you want people to copy. Something you do that you want people to copy. Okay, everybody say something. Go ahead. One way. I'm a Girl Scout. Okay, a Girl Scout. One way you can listen to your mom. Exactly. One way to be a straight, beautiful tree is to follow your golden heart. You do the good deed, more people will follow your good deed. So do you sell a lot of fond of profit today? That's all of that. And then that's what you'd like people to copy. Can you make an example of helping people? Yes, that's a great idea, helping people. And sharing. Be kind. Be kind, yes. Be kind. Yes, listen to your mom. Listen to your family. Is it helping? You sell a lot of fond of profit last time. Exactly. Also, if people want to buy like the trees, money for him or even give money for him. Another way to be a straight, beautiful tree is by showing people who are young how to be generous and care about people who are sad. So you're giving them empathy. That's giving them empathy. Oh, you all know a lot. Your parents and your family have been teaching you so many things, having faith. And doing good deeds, giving people respect. And also doing good deeds are also and the bad thoughts are coming from Shaitan. Yeah, that's the, yeah. So you don't want to, you want to be in your real heart, you know, your real heart is perfect. My family goes to this community fridge where anyone can take the stuff for free. Oh, how nice. We take the food that we don't like, that we don't need, and we don't like want to have it. It's in the fridge for the good things that we need. So we just give it to the community fridge for poor people. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Well, it sounds interesting. It sounds to me like you all have golden hearts. You know, it really does. So I would like to be thankful. It would be thankful. That's really true, isn't it? You can get pets from the cell. You can get pets that need rescuing. I have a question. Yes, please ask the question. Yes. When is our class going to end? In five minutes. Is that good for you? Okay. Are you tired? You've had a long day? Yeah. I think you have. You've been to school, you've come home, you've had dinner, you've had a long day. So here's what I'm going to ask. Don't interrupt. What? Don't interrupt. Yes. Could everybody, before we go, would everyone tell one thing that they want to polish off their heart? Just one thing that they're going to polish away. Now we'll start. One person speaks at a time. Okay. I see somebody is yawning because the children are tired. Okay. Give me one thing you want. You plan to polish off your heart. I would think you should start to quit arguing. Very good. Quit arguing. That's a good one. One. Okay. Good. Somebody else. I hope your mother in the kitchen. Yeah. It's hard to do that sometimes, isn't it? You'd rather stay in your room and play. You can rescue a dog. Rescue a dog. Yes. Rescue a bunny. Listen to your parents. Very nice. Yes. Lovely. Helping people. Can we say they can? Helping people and doing other kind things. That's wonderful. Helping with my sister. You see, that's a very good point. You could put that on your heart. Helping your mother with laundry. Oh, helping your mother with laundry. How wonderful. Does anyone ever help set the table? Me? I set the table. You set the table. My goodness. I help my mom set the table. I am just making it a good thing. So I just, at night, I'm kind of crazy because at one o'clock, one at the night, I'm like, it's amazing. You know, you all, meeting, yes, you have your hand up. You can try to rescue animals. Yes. That's great. And that is, wait, I have to put my glasses on. That is, Maria. And Robbie. Helping with my sister. Very nice. And you have a hand, somebody has their hand up. Marisa. Say, Dick. Yes. Could you speak? The one who raised her hand? I raised my hand. Yes. What would you like to say? What are you planning to polish your heart? To polish my heart, I'm going to, like, I have a, my friend's cat has been, like, almost injured. I helped that cat. Oh, that's so nice. That's so nice. That's so nice. So I think what we'll do is we'll review. We'll just do a little review. I'll ask you. We started by saying, right, that there are two kinds of learning. One is normal learning and what is the real, real learning? What's that about? Question. Yes. What's the question? Um, uh, my question, um, was that actually I have a comment. A comment. I'd love a comment. Yes. I like people to do equal stuff and people to not do bad equal stuff. Oh, how nice. And I think I should be kind. Yes. You see, you already are. We already are golden hearts. We don't have to become golden hearts. Everybody is a golden heart. We just have, but dust gets on the heart. We just have to keep it polished. So a bad thought comes or you make a mistake. You can always say you're sorry and that polishes it off, doesn't it? You know? Yes. Yeah. And so another question. If a disappointment comes, if you thought you were going to be doing something and then it doesn't work out or maybe you were expecting something and it doesn't happen, are you going to be upset and mad? Or are you going to trust a law? A law has it all figured out. He's taking care of, you know? And so you just have to wait and see. Oh, it's so important for me to go to the zoo today. But how do you know that there's not some reason you shouldn't go to the zoo? Sometimes. Do you get disappointed sometimes? Yes. I was disappointed. I was disappointed when my baby chick died. Oh, I know. I know. I know. That's very sad. I have a question. Yes. So whenever I think of bad thought, I can't ever get the good start to win before the bad start gets too strong. How do I stop this from happening? Well, when you notice you have a bad thought, just say, go away. Go away, bad thought. Right? That's all you do. Just go away. It's not really you. It's just this little waswi soup coming in, you know? It's not you. It's just, it's a chance for you to polish your heart. Just say I'm going to polish it away. All right? Can I share how I would polish my heart? I would love that. Okay. So I thought of reading Quran. And that's my thought, number one. That's great. That's great. My name is Zoya, but that's my mom's name. That's on. I see. Okay. Nice to meet you, Zoya. I have a question. Yes. Reek and share. This is sad. Can you disable the chat? Because people are using it and doing faces that is distracting me. Oh dear. Oh, oh dear. Yeah. So let's talk about next week. We're going to talk about the very special, magical way to make wudu and to pray. Do any of you do wudu and pray? Uh, sometimes. I do. Yes, I do. I do. I do it all the time. Good. Well, we want to be thinking about it for next week. Next Wednesday evening, we're going to talk about it and we're going to do it every time. You do it. Okay. That's very good. We're going to learn all about a magical story that goes with it. And somebody had a question. Was it Zaynib? Who is it who had the question? I did. Yes. What is your question? I have something to say. We saw a picture of a lost cat. And we think we can try to find it. Oh, I hope you do. I hope you do. And sitting with all of you, are any of your mothers or fathers there? Could I say hello to some of the mothers and fathers? Yeah, my mom is right there. My mom is his. Hi, how are you? Selamu alaikum. Selam. I'm so happy to meet you. This is so nice. We're together. We are so glad. Mashallah. Jazakallah here for putting so much effort in project. Oh, loving it. You know, I wrote this for my grandchildren. And I thought I was writing it for my grandchildren, but I was really writing it for myself because, you know, Islam is very, very deep. And sometimes we don't understand why we're doing certain things. And we need to understand deeply so that we can love what we do. And I simply want the children to take charge of their own hearts, dear children, your golden hearts. It's your life and your hearts. Nobody's going to police you. You can pretend to be doing anything, but it's your heart and you want it to be beautiful and golden. And so everybody's going to take care of their hearts and keep a golden heart, draw it, and everybody put dots, you know, that you notice and then you can polish them away. All right. Can you put black dots? You could. Black dots are like, or even gray. I don't know what to put because gray and black are basically the same colors that make your heart dirty or anything else. They can be because you were angry, because you were arguing, because you were not kind, because you didn't share. And we just want you to keep your golden hearts pure at all times, right? And, you know, you get so many opportunities, children. Every day there's a chance something happens. You can be upset. You can be kind. You're giving a chance every five minutes to polish your heart. And that's what we're doing with our lives. We're trying to make our hearts completely shining. So by the end of our lives, our hearts are just all of light. So I think, I think everybody, yes, Walaikum Salaam, where are you? My name is Amir and this is Ali. Oh, nice to meet you. Yeah, thank you so much for doing this. It's been very beneficial so far. The next two sessions, we actually don't have the book. Do you recommend getting the book and following along? Or do you think this is enough? The books would be very good. My son realized that we should package together the whole, all the children's books together. And a new book just came out on the hodge. I since the COVID starting, I've been working on this. I made two hodges in my life and about 200 umras. And until I did the hodge book for children using Imam al-Ghazali's book, I had no idea what I was doing. It was like overwhelmingly beautiful because it's not just a pilgrimage to the next world, you know, in the pilgrimage. It's the way we should be living in this life. It's really so profound. And so right now we've put together a package of all the children's books without the adult books. And if you want to have them for life, I advise you to get them because, you know, they will run out. You know, the book of knowledge, we published 8,000. And they're nearly all gone. And they're very expensive to print. And if you were wise, as a family, you would get the step to have them. Yeah. I'm just saying this because it's been so helpful to me, you know, to be able to have my, to be able to understand what I'm doing in my religious life. Yeah. Where can we be able to buy the books? Oh, we'll send you a parents a link so they can get some special deal on it, you know. But it's useful for you to have because it's useful for parents too, you know. And thank you so much for the wonderful lectures and teaching our kids. And inshallah, we as parents are learning as well. And inshallah, we look forward to polishing our hearts as well. Well, it's, it's, we're all together doing this. Absolutely. We're all together doing it. And I learned so much from these books because I became a Muslim of about 50 years ago, more than 50, more like 60, right. And then in New York City and then my husband and I, we traveled over to Morocco and drove in a car all the way across the desert to Cairo and to study at Azhar University. And then we had a little baby. She was born in Libya. Libya had a king then. So, so she was born. We named her Hajar. And then we reached Cairo and we studied there at Azhar Fik and Tajweed and Ahadith. And after 10 years of that, we moved to England and opened up something called the Islamic Tech Society because we wanted to publish books that were beautiful, you know, on Islam. And we started publishing my sister, Al Ghazali in 1981 that they had 40 years ago with Abdul Hakim Winter. I've been publishing scholarly works and I tried to read them. They were too hard for me. So that's how the children's project came about. Hamza Yusuf said we really need something that children can enjoy and gives them everything they need, right? That's deep. But the same books work for parents because it's just an adult book made in simpler form. But I mean, I can, I can read adult scholarly books, but I don't know how to bring them into my life and see my life through them. But these books for children have made it, I mean, we talk in our minds the language of children. We don't talk. And so these books have actually given me everything I needed. It's a complete mercy and blessing from Allah. Mashallah. I have ordered one the first book, but inshallah, I plan to get all the books. And just read them straight through. Just read them straight through. Yes. I just wanted to say I want to become a vet. You want to become what? A vet. Oh, a vet. I bet that's the best thing in the world to take care of animals. That's a wonderful, wonderful thing to do. Bless your heart. That's great. I have one more question. Yes. I mentioned the adult books along with the children's book. What are the adult books about? Is the situation the same for adults? What it is. Al-Ghazali wrote 40 books. And it's called the Ahia Al-Lumideen, The Revival of Religious Science. And in which Hamza Yusuf said it's like the Quran in a usable form, starting with what is learning, which we began today, and ending with death, 40 books going through the entire faith. He wrote these in Arabic and they're in Persian too. And over the past 30 or 40 years, we've been trying to bring out the best translations possible and the highest and best English through the best scholars. And in 2011, I'm sure this is very boring for the children, but they can be bored for a minute. Hamza Yusuf, a new edition came out in Jeddah from the Dar al-Munhaj press, the latest critical edition in Arabic. So we've taken that edition and we give a scholar, let's say the book of knowledge you just looked at. We take that Arabic and we give it to a top scholar who knows the inwards and they put it into English. And then while that's being perfected, that's the adult book, I took the manuscript and circled all the key points. Those are what you were getting tonight. And then said them in a language that a children or even I can understand. You can a lot of parents read the children's book first and then they read the book from which it was taken. So I mean, you can order all of those books. There's a special where the adult books come with them too. Have you translated all the 40 books for adults or just part of those? We're getting there. We started in 1980 and here it is 2020. We've got about eight or nine to go. For the children I'm going to do after I'm going to do the book 20, which is the prophetic values. I'm going to do the marvels of the heart. I'm going to do, inshallah, one on Tawheed and Tawakal and then the last one on death. Hamza Yusuf said to do this for children so that they will have everything. But you can read the adult books for yourselves. They're very deep and very profound. Thank you. Thank you so much. Alhamdulillah. Well, I think the children are, I'm seeing people yawning and tired. So why don't we say a mini salams to each other and we'll get together next Wednesday evening and yes. Can I introduce my dad? Yes. As-salamu alaikum. Wa alaikum salam. Where is dad? I don't see you but maybe you're there somewhere. Are you with me? Where are you? Come here. As-salamu alaikum. How are you? Yes, now? Probably not. But anyway, my video is not working but thank you for kind effort and may Allah give you a reward for this. I really, really appreciate it and be both learning. Your lecture is really awesome. Great job. Thank you. Thank you. You know, it's so simple, isn't it? That we all have the fitra and we're given opportunities with our difficulties every day to keep it shining and to prepare it and we don't have to the children. Nobody has to worry about death. There's only the next world and that we're all supposed to be good teachers and watch our thoughts. You know, it's not really that hard, is it, the ideas? You know? So that's why we're on a journey together. The children and you and I and all of us parents were all together. So I'll let you all go now and I'll see you in a week. Salamu alaikum.