 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 is 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 polish your heart. 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? Same. What do you feed to the heart? I feed all my fruits. Fruit. Very good. Excellent idea. That's wonderful. And then 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? 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? We polish our hearts. All right. So children, so 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 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. If you do bad things, right? You wouldn't want to... Bad deeds? 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 whale and the ocean and the ants? Those whales in the ocean and the ants, they pray for the people 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 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? The Koran 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 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? Yes. 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 a lot of food. Yeah. See the little boy here, does he have enough toys or too many toys? No 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 have time to polish your heart. Now also there's a story. 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 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 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 the story about the baby ants. All right. 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 ants 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 ants, 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 Bilal, 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. Bilal got sick and couldn't go. And the next day I went to see him and he was in bed and I said, 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 good, maybe bad. And the next day, the little boy, he went out into the countryside and 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. You're 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 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 do you think? 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 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, um, sometimes I go around and look at it. That's wonderful. You know, we had some fish and 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 with 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 bad. You see? But we're, yes, somebody else is that, um, Faisal. Yes. Um, 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 to 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 journey through life and hear some of the things that try to get you. Okay. Can you see right there? There's the heart walking down the street. Can everyone see the heart? Okay. 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 when they're not looking. That's right. And 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 she asked the Prophet, can I break my fast 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? What do you see? Pride. Do you know what pride is to be proud? To be beautiful people who show off and they're very proud? Have you ever met someone like that? Uh, uh, yes. Not very nice, is it? And then up above, bragging. Do you know people who brag? No. Yes. 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 open 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 your heart you're doing something wrong, you're sneaking. And then down below it says arguing. Do any of you argue? Uh, 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 hear lies. 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 to do it. Well, Imael 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 can 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. Now, how does Allah Allah give us a new place to live if we start stop 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. We can't hear. Is it the Adhan? 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 she's 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 off. Well, that's the whole point. You all have golden hearts and you're going to be washing it off. 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? Yes. 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 thought 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 mummy. 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'll happen? You'll always notice. Say you say, I'm sitting, I'm having thoughts. Thoughts just coming 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? Yes. 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. 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's skulls. It's called the Nassalawama. 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? Yes. 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? 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. 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 lowest 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 self. 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, 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? Like I sometimes, a girl does her hair like this. 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 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 because I'll speak of 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. A straight shadow, right? And if you have a bent tree that's all like this, what's the shadow look like? A bent? It looks like a... It looks like a bent shadow. A monster kind of. Yeah, exactly. So 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 finishing, 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? Yeah, yes, yes. Okay, 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 you can play. I'm a Girl Scout. Okay, a Girl Scout. One way you can play. Listen to your mom. Exactly. One way you can play. One way to be a straight, beautiful tree is to follow your golden heart. You're the good deed, more people will follow your good deed. So do you follow a lot of ponder profit? It's so many times a day. That's all of that. And then that's what you like people to copy. An example of helping people? Yes, that's a great idea. Helping people. And sharing. Be kind. Be kind. Yes. You sell a lot of ponder profits at times. Exactly. I have a question. Also, if people have money to buy like the deeds, do they give them some money for him or even give money for him? Another way you can 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. 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 and the bad thoughts are coming from shape on. Yeah, that's good. 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 through this community grid where anyone can take the stuff for free. And 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 enough of a grid for the good things that we don't need. So we just give it to the community grid for poor people. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Well, it sounds interesting. It sounds to me like you all all have golden hearts. You know, it really does. So I would like them to be thankful. 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna polish away. Now we'll start. One person speaks at a time. Okay. I see somebody's yawning because the children are tired. Okay. Give me one thing you plan to polish off your heart. I would think you should start to quit arguing. A 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. Good thing 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 set the table. I help my mom set the table. I am done making 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, uh, uh, Margie, Margie. 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 do to polish your heart? To polish my heart. I'm gonna, 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 was that actually I have a comment. A comment. I'd love a comment. Yes. I would 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, that, 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 the 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. 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. Yeah. 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. I have one. 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. Um, we can 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, um, next next 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. We 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 Zaynab? Who is it who had the question? I did. Yes. What is your question? Um, I have something to say. We saw, uh, a picture of a lost cat, uh, and we think we can try to find it. Oh, I hope you do. I hope you do. And, and sitting with the, all of you, are any of your mothers or fathers there? Could I say hello to some of mothers and fathers? Hi, how are you? Peace be upon you. And so happy to meet you. This is so nice. We're together. We are so glad, Masha'Allah. JazakAllah for putting so much effort in this 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, 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. Yeah. 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, you're 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 all the children's books together. And a new book just came out on the hodge. 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. 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. Where can we be able to buy the books? Oh, there's one. We'll send you a parent's 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. 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 Azar 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 Azar Fik and Tajweed and Ahadith. 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, in 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 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, 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 in shall I plan to get all the books? And just read them straight through. Just read them straight through. Yes. Um, 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. And in the adult books, along with the children's book, what are the adult books about? Is this the relation of the same for adults? Yes, what it is. Al-Dazali wrote 40 books. And it's called the Ahia Al-Lumadim, 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-Manhaj 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 Tawhid and Tawakal and then the last one on death. Hamza, you 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. Well, I think the children are, I'm seeing people yawning and tired. So why don't we say many salams to each other and we'll get together next Wednesday evening. Yes. Can I introduce my dad? Yes. Asalaamu 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? I'm here. Asalaamu alaikum. How are you? Yes. No, probably not. But anyway, my video is not working, but thank you for kind effort and may Allah give you a reward for this. Really, really appreciated and we 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 is 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. All right. So I'll let you all go now and I'll see you in a week. Welcome everybody to the second gathering of the Muslim Community Center from the Bay Area. And we are gathering together so many of you, even from Brunei, to work today on Ghazali's book of Purification. And the children may think, well, why? But I'm sure all of you who are eight years old, you're starting to pray and you need to know why is Wudu important. And we have a brother named Hamza Yusuf. Now I'm going to try to share screen. How do I do? Oh, I see it. All right. I'm learning. Munir is teaching me everything. So then let me get this. Aha. All right. Can everyone see that? Yes. All right. So children, this is the book of Ghazali we're going to be working with. And I'm sure you all know our wonderful brother Hamza Yusuf. And he wrote the introduction to this book. And he wanted you all to know, children, that we are 70% made out of water. And that water, as you all know, is the basis for life. Could there be any life on earth if there wasn't water? It's the most important thing. And if there weren't rain, we wouldn't have things to eat. And also we use water to clean dirt. If we get dirty, if our clothes get dirty, if our hands get dirty, we clean that dirt off. But by the way, what we're talking about today is not getting dirt on your hands. It's the dirt you get on your heart. And last week when we did the book of knowledge, we talked about all the kinds of things that can get dirt on your heart, like gossiping or being angry or arguing. You know all those kinds of things. And that really hurts your heart. And I bet all of you know one thing. If you've done something wrong, doesn't your heart feel bad? You can feel it, can't you? Right? And so it's interesting to know that the word wudu in Arabic happens to mean what makes you shine. Can you imagine even wudu, wudu means to make you shining. And so it's very important that we learn about wudu. And let me just change the picture here. Oh, I'm learning. I'm learning all this from Manir, right? And so we regularly wash our bodies. And we also regularly have to wash our hearts, right? And children, when you all go to pray, imagine if you were just watching television and running around and being silly and playing with Legos and dolls, and suddenly you immediately stood up to pray. How could you go from all that to standing before God? Wouldn't you need a transition? You need a transition, something that takes you from one world into the next. And that is what we are going to be doing with wudu. Now, as you know, we have wonderful Hajj Abdullah. And he is the one that teaches the children. In the story, the children are walking home from school one day, and they're talking to each other. And one of them said to the other, oh, you know, I don't know why we have to pray. And the other said, yeah, my mother gets really mad if I'm late for prayers. And they finally thought, we don't know. We don't know why we have to pray. Why do we have to make wudu? Why? And then they thought, oh my goodness, look at this magic door. There's a secret garden here. Let's go inside. And they thought, who are we going to get to answer our questions? And then they remember, oh, sitting in the park every day is wonderful Hajj Abdullah. He's a very old man. And oh, the birds love him and the squirrels, all the animals come to him, sit in his hands, stand on his shoulder. So they went to him and they said, Hajj Abdullah, would you come to our secret garden and answer our questions? And he said, yes, children, I will. And he said, but I'm not going to answer your questions through what I know. I'm going to answer your questions through what the great Imam al-Ghazali teaches us, because he gives us the inner meanings of what everything really means. And he said, you know, in the Quran, in the Quran, purity is key to prayer. It's the door to prayer. Right? And so I'm going to tell you a story, he said. Oops. All right, story. Okay, here's the story, children. Once upon a time, in an Islamic town, there was a scholar. Do you see him on the right with the hat and the long blue gown? And the scholar was standing in his doorway and an old man came by with his stick. And he said, I want to, what he said to the scholar, what is wudu? I want to know what is wudu? And the scholar said, Oh, old man out of here, how can somebody as old as you living in our Muslim town? How can you not know about wudu? Right? And the old man just kept saying, no, what is wudu? I want to learn wudu. And Hajj Abdullah continued the story. He said, he said, finally they, they kept saying to the old man, leave, leave, go out of here. Get out of here, old man. And then the scholar, the one you see here on the left, he was very worried children. He thought, my goodness, that old man, who could he be? So the scholar had a doorkeeper, a man who helped him. And he said, follow the old man, see what's going on. And of course, what happened is the doorkeeper came back to the scholar and said, oh, scholar, I'm sorry to tell you this. But that old man that you shoot away, he is the saintly knowledgeable sage. He's the Wali of our town. So the scholar, you know what the scholar did? He put on his good robe. He followed the old man. He went to where the old man was sitting and he kneeled down and he kneeled down and he said to the old man, please tell me what is wudu? And the old man said to him, oh, scholar, when you wash your hands in wudu, you know, children, we all wash your hands, right? When you wash your hands, you think, oh, you think, oh, Allah, forgive me for what I have been doing. Help me to do the right thing. And then when you rinse out your mouth, you say, ya Allah, you know, forgive me that I've said some bad things. Please remind me to say good things. And then when you, when you, when you, for example, wash your feet and you say, ya Allah, please let my feet take me to somewhere wonderful. Don't take me to places that are not good. And you wash your ears. Oh, don't let me hear horrible things. Don't let me listen to bragging and listen to gossip. Let me only listen to good things. And so, so that was, so that was the answer of what is wudu. Now look here at this picture. Here's some drawings. You see the scholar sitting on the left in his chair. You can pick words that best describe him. Is he patient, friendly, angry, or proud? Which would you say? Probably angry and proud, right? Right? And here you see how mad he is. He's being very mad at the old man because the old man is doing the wudu wrong. Because after the scholar taught him to do wudu, the old man did it backwards and wrong. And the scholar said, get out of here, right? And then let's turn the page. Oh no, there's no noise. What? No sound? Can you hear it now? We can hear you. Yes. Okay. So then, when the scholar went to visit the village elder, what did he learn? Circle the correct words. You see, now the scholar on the right is praying behind the old man. And what, what are the words that would describe him best? Would you say the anger, humility, pride, silence, peace, bragging, greed, spying, or praying during, praying during wudu? What would you, would some children like to say, what are the words that describe the old man? Go ahead and raise your hand if you'd like to, or unmute yourself please. Uh, silence and peace? Good silence and peace. Excellent. That's a very, that's very good. I think that's, I think she's given the best answer. So then, you know, when you all do your own wudu, you have to do this yourself. You can't just wash your hands and rinse out your mouth and your nose and wash your face. You have to be always thinking, what, what should I really be, what should I really be saying? Don't just come and quickly do it like this. This is a great opportunity to get very near to Allah and to be really doing the right thing. So Imam Al-Ghazali is going to teach you how to do that. You know, when you're, when you're washing your face, for example, you know, you could, you could be taking off the outer dirt, but is the outer dirt what you want to wash off? Or is it something on the inside you want to wash off? Would some child answer? Yes. What kinds of things on the inside do you want to wash off? Bad thoughts. Bad deeds. Bad deeds. The inside dirt. Maybe you're angry. Maybe you don't share or maybe you're greedy. Bad deeds. You're hating something in the anger. Exactly. Exactly. So what you're washing off when you're doing wudu, is it, is it a lot of outward dirt or you're washing off dirt that's got on your heart? On your heart. On your heart. Right. Very good. That got on your heart. Yeah. Very good. Okay. So, okay. Now I'm going to tell you a story and Munir is going to put on a little video. Can I tell you the story first? Ghazali said, okay, everybody listen to this carefully children. Ghazali said, if a king came to visit you at your house and you were expecting a king like a law, would you polish the front door and leave garbage on the inside of the house? In other words, would you make yourself look really beautiful and wear a very attractive clothes and inside you're full of hate and greed? Would you do that? Well, what we're going to do is Munir is now going to show you a film made by my two grandchildren when they were little and they made a play and a little film about this. So Munir, can you show this? Yes, I can. If you can hit stop share on your screen. Thank you. My sister and I made a cardboard castle out of a box we had. My brother and I made a cardboard castle and we both painted the windows gold and we both painted the outside gold and decorated it to make it pretty on the outside. Then we dumped garbage on the inside. This project was to remind us of a man Ghazali's stories. Of Madame Ghazali's stories. If you invited a king to come to your home to visit your house, would you just polish the outside and shine the door? Does he polish the door? What would the king think if he finds trash inside? Oh no, there's trash inside the golden castle. It would be like you only wash the outside of your body and leave the endings. Like not sharing and bad moods and not helping Mama. You can make a box castle too. You can make a box castle too. To remind you that being clean on the inside matters most to God. That's what mothers do the God most. Did you all enjoy that? Yeah. Yeah, that was fun. That was fun. My grandchildren made it to illustrate that you don't want to have something horrible on your heart and look good on the outside, right? I would love it if you all made films too. You learn things when you make the films too. Let's see what we're going to see next. Okay, can I go back to screen share? Here we go. All right, then I'm going to share and then I go to the next one. Just a minute. Okay. All right, children. There are different levels of purification, right? There's different levels. There's one level in which you purify your body and the next is you've got to purify your heart, right? Okay. And how do you do that? It's that you're very careful when you're doing your would do. You wash your hands and also you're thinking, Allah, don't let me do that anymore. You're washing your ears and you're saying, Oh, I've been listening to bad things. I'm sorry. I want to listen to only good things. So that's the next level, right? There are all these levels like in a treehouse, levels of how you can purify yourself, but the lowest is just washing dirt off your hands. The next up is really thinking about what you want to stop doing and why you're making would do asking Allah to keep take your feet in the right direction, right? And then the real thing you're trying to do is make your heart completely golden. Isn't that right? Don't you all want to have a golden heart where you already have a golden heart? All you've got to do is watch and stop doing some of the some of the little things that you don't want to do anyway, right? And you can pretend it's like that. You can pretend you're like a warrior, a hero or a heroine, and you've got different dragons you want to conquer. Now some of the dragons look down below what it says. Some of the dragons you want to wash away backfiting, bragging, hypocrisy, being angry, arguing, spying, not helping, not sharing, being selfish, being mean, being greedy. So if you have any of these dragons that you want to wash away, you can just stop doing them because you'll think about them when you're doing would do. So then this, then Hajj Abdullah said, I'm also going to tell you some other things you have to know about, right? You should know everybody, children, that Allah doesn't look at your bodies or if you're rich and poor, Allah looks at your heart. So that's the thing you want to, that's your goal to that's your goal to have a great heart. And also, he doesn't want you to like over, over stress out about every detail of your would do, am I getting it right? Did I do it just right? Does it look just right? Allah says be very careful. That's what Ghazali says. Don't overwhelm yourself getting every detail exactly perfect, better to get the inside of your heart perfect, better stop talking badly, better start being kind, right? And so then there are a few things before we do would do that we're going to talk about some of things about outward purity. You see the little boy has a dog. Now in Islam, dogs and pigs are considered to not be very clean if you have a wet, if you contact them with a wet hand. And there are things like rocks, things that aren't alive, they're pure except for wine, right? And then the two animals we talked about are pigs and dogs, but look down to the third thing, things that are dead are not clean, but a human being is clean even if a human is dead, a fish is clean even if it's dead, a bug is clean, but not a cat, a worm can be clean, a bird can be dirty. So there's some things that are clean and some things that are dirty. And so you don't want to touch things that will make you dirty. You have to be careful with that, right? Now let's say you're a little girl and you have some chicken soup and you're pouring it into this big pond of water. Could you make wudu in the big pond of water even if it has chicken soup? What does anyone think? Do anyone out there have an idea? I think we asked. No, what? Why do you think it would be okay to what? Even though she poured chicken soup in the pond, why do you think the water would still be pure enough for wudu? Because more water. Because I, because I, you're right. Because there's water. I think it's that chicken. Yeah. Because I remember my sister, my mom talking about it. Well, it's little because you see, if you look down here, Ghazali says it's in Islam. Water itself is clean and pure, but if there's something in it or touching it that changes its color or its taste or its smell, then you can't use it for wudu, right? Let's say there was a dead, you have a small pond of water and somebody threw a dead cat in it. Oh, soon the water would taste bad and smell bad, right? You couldn't use it. But if you just pour a small pot of chicken soup, it's lost in the water, but you wouldn't make wudu in chicken soup, would you? No. So you want water that is pure to make your wudu. You see, she's pouring something into that water, but not enough to change the water. Now, have any of you all ever seen the sawek, that little tooth stick that you clean your teeth with? Yeah. Have you seen it? I have it in my mouth. It's just like a toothbrush. It's like a toothbrush. And then this is something, the prophet, the messenger of God, peace and blessings, brief on him said, verily, truly, your mouths are pathways of the Quran. The Quran, you say Quran, so sweeten them with a tooth stick. So even when you pray, there's passages from the Quran, right? So wouldn't you clean your mouth before you pray if there's going to be passages of the Quran? You would. And also, we're told that a prayer that you pray and you just brush your teeth or use sawek, you can just brush your teeth normally before you pray. If you brush your teeth before you pray, that is better than 75 prayers that you could do without brushing your teeth. And there's this question in the workbook. Imam al-Ghazali, number four, mentions that the prophet didn't want to make things difficult for his followers. To this reason, he didn't ask everyone to do what before each prayer? Use the toothbrush. Really, it's so important for you to use the toothbrush, but the prophet didn't say you had to do it. You had to do it was like a law because he didn't want to make difficulties. There might be a day you might be somewhere and you couldn't brush your teeth and you wanted to pray. Wouldn't that be right? Yeah. Yes. Yes, exactly. That's true. So now, we don't want him, the prophet was, peace and blessings be upon him was so kind and he didn't want to make it difficult. Let's say you are out on a picnic and you want to do your prayers and you don't have any water to brush your teeth. Your prayers will still be wonderful. Isn't that good? Alhamdulillah. So now, I'm going to do something else. I've got a chart here. So now we're going to talk about, now I'm going to stop sharing and talk to you myself. All right. I'm going to try to do this. Okay. I'm back. All right. Now, children, this is getting very serious. You're about to make wudu, right? Maybe you've brushed your teeth, right? Because we're going to learn how to do it the right way. Imam al-Ghazali says, before you make your wudu, right? Say Bismillah, Rahman, Raheem. Everybody say it. Bismillah, Rahman, Raheem. Bismillah, Rahman, Raheem. So can you all remember before you do wudu to say Bismillah? You will, right? By the way, there's a hadith that Imam al-Ghazali mentions and it says, if you don't mention God before you pray, your wudu isn't complete because you want to have a law with you to protect you from any whisperings or bad suggestions. So it's very important that you mention the name of a law. So don't just run in and do your wudu. First, you're going to try to brush your teeth, right? Second, you're going to say Bismillah, Rahman, Raheem. Isn't that right? And the next thing we always do before you pray or anything, you do an intention, niyah. Do you know what a niyah is? Even when you're fasting, you say, I intend to fast tomorrow. Do you see what I mean? So before you start your wudu, you stand there and you say, I intend to do my wudu to remove any dirt, any impurities so that I am able to pray. And you know what Imam al-Ghazali said? If you can just keep that good intention with you. You're doing your hands and mouth and face. If you can hold that beautiful intention right up until you get to your face, this will like, this will take you to like a paradise. It's so important if you can do that, right? So now what we, we've all talked about, what I've done today, because I'm going to put this in my bathroom where I do, I made a chart for myself. Do you see my chart? And I put each thing, what to say when I do my hands and my mouth. So I'm going to tell you this is because now I'm going to do it the right way. So when I'm ready to do my hands, right? Of course, we're thinking, we're thinking something very nice. We're thinking as I'm washing my hands. Your hands are what you used to do things with. Oh Allah, I'm sorry I did what I did today. It was wrong. It helped me to do the right thing. And then you say this, you say a beautiful prayer, you know, asking Allah to, to guide you, you know, with your hands. And there's also something Imam al-Dazali says, as you wash your right hand, right? And you do it three times. You could ask Allah, when you, when you die, you know, in the end, Allah gives you your book of all the good you've done and all the bad you've done. And you say Allah, as you're washing your hand three times, could you, could you please give me my book back in my right hand? You know? And then the next, of course, is you've done your hands, you rinse out your mouth, right? Does everyone know that you rinse their mouth? And this is the prayer you say. And I've written it on my chart. Ya Allah, help me in the recitation of your book and to remember you abundantly, right? And also, as you're doing your mouth children is what I want you to think. From now on, I want to say beautiful things. I want to praise Allah. I want to praise people, right? I don't want to say bad things, right? And also, I'm going to think about things I take into my mouth. Should it just be candy or it should be some good food, right? And then, do I talk all the time screaming and making noise? Maybe with my mouth I should be quiet. Does that sound like a good idea, everybody? Sure. Do the things with your mouth. Okay, so now I'm going to go back to screen share. All right. Here's a little boy, right? He's rinsed his mouth and he's now reciting Quran, right? He said, and I will also be asking him to help me only say beautiful, helpful things every day and maybe to be a bit more quiet. All right. And here are these little boys, they're reading some Quran, right? And then, the next thing is, you know, after you rinsing your mouth, do you know you put some water up in your nose? Do you all remember that? And then you think, I can just imagine the garden of paradise where all the scented flowers breathing in drops of clean water seems to be a kind of way to connect to the fountain in the garden of paradise. So when you all are putting a little water in your nose, oh, imagine you're connecting back to paradise, right? See these children here, they said, what could the smell of these flowers in the garden remind us of paradise, right? So as you're rinsing your nose, you're connecting all the way back to the garden and the fountain in the center of paradise. And then your face is very important. It's what we first notice about one another. Imam Al-Ghazali said that an excellent prayer when you're cleansing the face is to say, oh God, brighten my face with your light on the day when the face of your friends are brightened and do not darken my face with your darkness on the day when some people's faces will be dark. You see, you want to have a, so when you're rinsing your face, you want your face to be completely shining. Isn't this little girl beautiful? Look at her. So also when you are rinsing your face, you start, excuse me? I'll just keep talking. Is it all right? I hear some questions. Never mind. All right, children, when you're doing your face, you start way up here at the top where the hair is, and you come all the way down, you know, over near the ears and everything like this, right? And then when you get the water over your eyelashes, you could put your index finger right here and get right here in the eyes. You want to get it all really good, right? Now, if you're rinsing around your eyes, what are some of the things you could ask your eyes to do, right? You could ask your eyes to do. You don't want to say, oh, don't do any spying, right? Don't look at horrible things. Don't look at horrible movies. Look at beautiful things, right? Look at beautiful qualities and others. Think how beautiful what I'm seeing is, right? Yes. What else? Some children, what would you all like to say? What are the kinds of things you want to see that you should be seeing with your eyes and the things you shouldn't look at? Tell me. You shouldn't look at bad things. You shouldn't look at... You shouldn't look at that, Shaydon. You shouldn't look at a lot. And what are some of the things that are good that you would love to look at? You could look at a lot of good things. You can think of all of the good things that are in life, life and things, and look at them in your mind. Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah. Are there any others? Other pretty stuff that I don't need. Yes. And you wouldn't spy on anybody, would you? No, no. And you would use your eyes to actually... And people, look how beautiful this little girl's eyes are. They're so bright. Do you think she's looking at something horrible or she's looking at something beautiful? Yeah, something beautiful. Yeah. Then let me just go to the next picture. All right. Now, what'd you say? Beautiful. Say it a little louder. Beautiful. Beautiful. Yes, beautiful. Now, this little boy, right? So, I have an idea. You could look at somebody doing good deeds. That's wonderful. That's great. That's beautiful. So, now I'm going to tell you after you finish, right? After you finish your face, you know, let me put my face back on so I can show them. Maybe I'll... Equal. Yeah. You see, you know, you do your arms, everybody, right? And you have to be careful. The prophet said, peace and blessings be upon him. You know, extend where you're washing very far, right? And if you're doing your feet, go up your ankles, because these are all places. These are all places where every place you do and will do will be light for you all over your body, right? And then, this is the shining forearms, yeah. Now, another thing. Let's talk about the top of the head, all right? He says you should put your fingertips together like this, right? And when you start right here at the top of your hair and go all the way over your head, all the way down to your back of your neck, and you know what you're supposed to say when you're doing that? Okay, I've written my prayer right here on my poster for the bathroom. As you do that, you say, oh, Allah, cover me with your mercy. Send down upon me your blessings and shade me in the shade of your throne on the day when there is no shade, except your shade. Don't we all want mercy? So when we're doing this, you can ask Allah for his mercy to be all over you. Isn't that beautiful? And then you know what you're supposed to do next? We forgot about the ears. You stick your wet fingers in your ear holes, and then they take your thumbs behind your ears, and you come around like the letter C, like that, right? And then when you do that, here's something you're supposed to pray. Here's the prayer. I'll read it. Oh Allah, make me among those who hear what is said and follow the best of it. God, let me hear the one who will call, let me hear the one who will call to heaven and for me to be righteous. So we want to listen to good words, but also we have to ask, what are some of the best sounds you can listen to? Do you think car traffic or nature? What do you all think? Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. I think it's nature. I think it's nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Nature. Flower. Now, also children, when you finish washing over your head and doing your ears, you then come from the back of your neck forward like that. So you come around with your neck. And the next thing you start to do, by the way, is your feet. Okay. I've got something amazing to tell you all, all right? You've got to be very, you've got to listen very carefully, all right? I'm going to, I put up a little sign. You see the feet that I've drawn here? Do you see these two feet here on my drawing? Can you see? All right. You start with the right foot, with your right foot, but you, you clean between your toes with your finger on your left hand, and you start on the little toe here and go up like a mountain, little toe up to the big toe, and then you come down the other side. You come up the right foot and down the left foot. Can you see that? Can you see that very carefully? You're going to have to draw your own, you know? And that's how you do it. And if, if you're going to cut your toenails, there's another way to do it. It's in the book, you know? But you start with the right foot first. And by the way, you, when you finished your feet, all right? Maybe, maybe, maybe you want to ask, what kind of prayer would you like to ask Allah about your feet? Taking you where? Okay. What would you all like to say, children? Take my feet to do something good or take my feet? What, what are the things you want your feet to take? To do good things. To do good things. That's it. That's wonderful. So we want our feet to take us. Now here's something everybody, children, that I never knew until I read Ghazali. And so I put it on my chart. After you finish your feet, right? After you finish your feet. Okay. We say the shahada. You know what the shahada is? Who knows what the shahada is? Ghazali says that if you remember to say the shahada when you finished your wudu before you pray, it opens eight gates to paradise. And you can pick any gate you want to go through. And he says, then he says that you say, you can say the shahada. And if you want, you can say this prayer too. That's very good. And here's the prayer. Oh God, I turn to you in repentance. So forgive me and accept my repentance. You truly are forgiving and compassionate. Oh God, make me among those who turn to you in repentance and make me among your righteous servants and make me your patient and grateful servant among those who are glorifying you early and late. And Ghazali said, if you can say this prayer and the shahada, after every wudu you do, it will rise up and at the end of your life, it will be waiting for you at the throne of God. But also Ghazali said, if this prayer is too long to say, all you have to do is say the shahada. So can everyone say the shahada when they finish their wudu? I think what parents and children need to do, everybody needs a nice start in the bathroom, right? Okay, make a chart like mine. Brush your teeth, say the Bismillah, right? Say the Bismillah. Make an intention and then what you do, the hands all the way through everything and then finally you end up and say La ilaha illallah, Muhammad over Surah. And then you're ready to pray. Can everybody do that? Would you work with your mothers and fathers and make a really simple chart and put it in the bathroom? And what I want to do is don't just go in there and do this and do this. What are you going to do? Each time you do something, you're going to do something good, aren't you? Yeah. Okay, now let me see what I have else for you to see. Oh wait, I've got to go back to share screen. I'm learning all of this. All right. Okay, open this. All right, so now let me see what else I have. Muneer is my great teacher. All right. So this lovely little girl here, right? This lovely little girl is gone. Her feet have taken her wear. Do you know what she's doing? Can you tell what she's doing? Washing the plates. Washing the dishes. Yes, exactly. Washing the dishes. That's right. So her mother, her mother, she went and helped her mother. She didn't just go and play in her room or watch TV. Her feet, her feet took her to do the right thing. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah. Yeah, I had a question that I'd like to ask. Go ahead. What's your question? So I wanted to ask if I sit up a little like scared using stuffed animals without hypocrisy. Yes. So I wanted to share that if we have time. For some reason, I'm not hearing you clearly. I think it's because you have a mask on. Can your mother or somebody tell me what do you think? Say very clearly. So I wanted to say that I have a lesson to teach about hypocrisy. Yes. And I wanted to say if we had time, if I could share it. Wonderful. We only have three more things to go through. So would you do it afterward? Yeah, yeah, I can do it afterwards. No, you go ahead and do it right now. Go ahead and do it right now. So I'm not sure if everyone can see me because you're on your screen. So when that happens, we see your share screen, but then a small little screen where I am. So I know once upon a time, a rabbit was walking and he saw a narwhal by the shore and they asked if they could play the next day. So they both went away and came back the next day, but the narwhal pushed him off the shore and then went away. Exactly. I know the question is really bad for my computer. But what happened in the end? In the end, the rabbit went to his dad and he asked him why the narwhal did that. His dad said that it's a matter of hypocrisy. It means that, well actually this wasn't really hypocrisy, sort of. So he meant that he was nice. He was telling you to be nice, but he wasn't nice himself. Now the rabbit knows how to deal with something like this. So he went away into his room and had a very good night's sleep. Oh, Zoya, that is a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it. I'm so glad because we talked about hypocrisy last time and that's a wonderful story you told. That's great. Okay, so I'm going to the next picture. See the little boy here? All right. Now, Ghazali says when you're making Wudu everybody, right? Don't do more than three times. Don't waste water. Don't splash it all over the place because we don't like to waste water, do we? Right? No, we don't want to waste water. No. And also, as he said before, Ghazali pointed out, don't get so exact with your Wudu, so focused you forget the inner Wudu that you're really trying to do better and speak better and listen better, right? And what happens if somebody comes and talks to you when you're doing your Wudu? You're not supposed to talk to other people while you're doing Wudu. But if someone comes and says As-salamu alaykum, you can say As-salamu alaykum, this kind of thing. And then he said, if you now this is something that you could do if you wanted, if you do a really good Wudu. I mean, it's so perfect and you did everything right. And then you went and prayed to Rakhaz, if you prayed those two Rakhaz and you didn't think of anything else, guess what Imam al-Ghazali said? You would be as pure as the day on which you were born. So maybe mothers and fathers who are here at this event tonight, maybe you can try that out. Do this good Wudu as you can. I can't say that. Then you can pause two bowings and have no other thought except your good heart. And when you do those two bowings, you will be as pure as the day you were born. Doesn't that sound like lovely? And children, there's another thing Imam al-Ghazali said. If you do Wudu when its conditions are really difficult, let's say you're out in the snow and you're camping and it's snowing or you can't find any water and you have to go to great difficulty to find water. Allah loves it when you go to, when many people say, oh we can't do Wudu, there's no water nearby. We can't do Wudu this or that. But in fact Allah loves it if you have a difficult time. It's too cold, it's hard to find. If you do it, it makes your Wudu even more pure and makes your whole body especially pure also. And then there's another thing you can do. Let's say you have your Wudu, you haven't broken it, right? You didn't use the toilet or anything. If you renew it anyway when the next prayer comes, even when it's not broken, Ghazali says it's like nur al-anur, light upon light, right? And you get 10 extra good deeds if you do that. And then another thing he says is that if you, if you, if you're doing Wudu and you keep thinking of Allah, right? He will purify your entire body. If you, instead of maybe you're doing Wudu and you're thinking about, oh I wonder if I'm going to go over to that person's for a sleepover. I wonder about my doll. I've lost my doll. If you're thinking like that while you're doing Wudu, that's not great. But if you completely think about Allah, right? Everything that's in you that's not good will flow out through your fingernails and through your feet. Everything will just flow out and you'll be shining, shining, shining inside. Now let me do one more thing here. And this is just a picture of the story. Remember the story we heard about the little boy that knew a king was coming and he just polished the outside of his house, right? He's just polishing the outside, right? And here comes the king. If you invited a king to visit your home, would you only polish the door and leave ugly rubbish inside? How is this like doing Wudu only with your outward movements and leaving your mind and heart thinking about anything else? You would polish the inside and the outside, not just the outside. That's correct. That's correct. Wouldn't Allah be happy to see you doing both? What would Allah be happy if you're just doing the outside? No, he wants to see the inside also. Now children, okay. It's now for me, it's in five minutes is my bedtime. Now, when you get ready for bed at night, right? These children have gotten ready for bed. Okay. The prophet said peace and blessings be upon him. There is no Muslim who goes to sleep in a state of purity, remembering God and then arises from the night and asks for the goodness in this world and the next, except that Allah gives it to him. What you should know, children, is if you make Wudu just before you go to bed, think how pure you'll feel when you get into bed. And just before you go to sleep, you could say this particular phrase, whatever gifts I must have from you, Allah. So thank you. And I give you praise, right? But you can say that before you go to bed. But the best thing you can do is to make Wudu just before you go to sleep. And the last thing you say is a stock for Allah. Allah forgive me if I did anything to disappoint you. So children, are you all going to try to do this? Do you want to go to sleep tonight with a golden heart? Yes. Yes. Doesn't that look lovely? Wouldn't you like to be like that? Yes. Yes. Very easy. Very easy. Now we're going to end this and talk about things that are beautiful. All right. One minute. All right. See these little children looking at the sunset? We're going to end the night by talking about beauty. Do you know there's something that says, God is beautiful and he loves beauty. Allah is beautiful. Allah is beautiful because beauty reminds us of paradise, doesn't it? Now when you go out, do you want to wear ugly, horrible clothes or do you want to look beautiful all the time? You want to look beautiful, don't you? You don't want to show off because then you'd be looking ugly. You want to look dignified and very beautiful because it's important to not just be beautiful looking, but you want to act beautifully and you want to be beautiful. You want to be dignified. Do you think if you say something and try to teach someone something and you look all ugly and sloppy, do you think anyone will want to learn from you? Would they believe you if you didn't look beautiful? No. No. No. No. Here's some boys sitting looking at the mountains. Now the Book of Purity, Book 3 of Kuzali's 40 book, it ends with a very interesting question. Children, children, have any of you wondered why do we have to do three of these and 10 of these and five of these? It's a good question. What are all these numbers about? Why? I have a question. Okay. What is the question? I mean, well, it's kind of like something that I like to talk about. Can't you make what you do with like a walk or something? Like if you're out on like a mountain side and you're lost, you can use a walk, right? Sure. Of course. Any bold. I once made wudu in a teacup. I was in Medina and it was winter and there was no water and I took a little teacup smaller than this and just dipped my fingers in it. You see? Now these little boys are sitting here and they're saying to each other, why do we have to do five prayers? Why do we wash our hands three times? What are all these numbers about in wudu, right? And Kuzali tells us it's impossible for us to understand, but what we're doing is remember the angel, Jibril. He's the one who taught the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him. How to do wudu. So we're learning to do wudu from the angel, Jibril. We're copying what the Prophet told us, but he was doing exactly what the angel did. So we are following a standard that's very special. And can you imagine when we do wudu in the way that we've been talking about tonight, we become very, very near to God. Wouldn't you like to be very, very near to God? Imagine feeling pure and doing exactly what the angel taught the Prophet to do and that we're copying, right? Now last thing I want to say to you, right? If you did your wudu very sloppy, falling, stopping in the middle, putting your chewing gum down, changing, sloppy, right? What would you think if you saw your grandmother doing wudu like that? Would you think that was all right or not? No, no, definitely not. No, definitely not. No, because what we want, we want people to be calm and dignified and present, you know, and humble and peaceful. And when we do the wudu, we should be like that, shouldn't we? Because we're doing something that the angel Gabriel was teaching. So it's very serious. It's not silly falling around and laughing and dropping a towel all over the place. So it's a time for you to be very present, very dignified, very peaceful, very humble, right? Here's a little cartoon that a friend of mine in Egypt made about Imam al-Ghazali, okay? Up here it says his glove and his hands were neat. His gaze was, I can't read it, something, sincere. His words were full of light. Sitting with him reminded me of heaven. So the little girl says, if you were sitting in silence with Imam al-Ghazali, what might he be teaching you by the way he was? What would you like to copy? His clothes, his hands were always neat. His gaze was so sincere. His words were full of light. So we want to be that way. We want people when they come to be with us to notice that we are neat and dignified and our words are full of wisdom and we're calm and peaceful and beautiful. Isn't that true? Yeah. And this children, see these children here, they did so many good wudus that the light was coming from their fingers and from their toes because they imagine they did such beautiful wudu and Allah promised that the light will come from all the places you did wudu carefully. A beautiful light will reach the places the ablution reached and that comes from a sahih hadith of Muslim. So now children, I think you all have a very good idea about wudu and about the state of being you wish to have while you're doing wudu and the kinds of things you want to do with your heart. Yes, you're raising your hand. Yes, Zoya. Yes. I just want to say that I know how the Prophet ﷺ bought the five prayers a day. Tell us. Go ahead and tell us. Okay. So one day the Prophet was praying, I think in the cave, if you know, he was praying in the cave. I don't remember the name, but he was praying to Allah. So he came to Allah and gave him 500 or 50, I think 500 prayers for the humans to do a day. Yeah. When he was coming down from Allah's throne, I think, he saw Prophet Musa, and he told him, why are you bringing 500 prayers? This is way too much. So he went back to Allah and he said that the Prophet Musa said that 500 was too much. So Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala took down five, took it 495. He came back down and saw Prophet Musa again. He said 495 is still too much. So he went up back to Allah and said what the Prophet ﷺ said back to him. So then Allah, so then every time the Prophet ﷺ came back down, Musa was saying to him, this is way too much, lower. He went, finally he went back to Allah and every day and every time he went back, Allah decreased it by five. Finally, he came to five and the Prophet Musa didn't bother to say anything when he came back down. That is how the five prayers a day came to life. Yes, this, I believe, when the Prophet ﷺ, he went on the Barak and he went to Jerusalem and he rose to the seven heavens. I think that was when he, very good story you're reminding. Even we're telling him that the Muslims will say the five or too many and he said, I can't go back. So that's a wonderful story. Thank you for including that. Except we're able to do five. Yes, we are able to do five. Well, so we've come to the end of our session. Would any of you like to say anything that you've learned that's useful to you, anything that has been good for you tonight that you learned? Yes. What? So you shouldn't like polish your outside, but do both inside and outside. So you can purify your inside and your outside. That's wonderful. That's just one. We're purifying just the inside. I want to say something. Everything you say out there is your beautiful heart if they case. Everything cares if you're beautiful. It's better, it's better, it's better like if a kingdom comes, it's better, it's better if the house is really messy on the outside. I think it's very neat in the inside. Yeah. And what about any mothers and fathers? Any mothers and fathers learn something they didn't know tonight? Everything you said helped my spiritual heart. I always, I always watch videos of the prophets. How sweet. That's such a sweet thing. I'm so glad you loved it. Here's a mother who just wants to thank you for taking the time to walk us through all of this. This is beautiful. It's hard to explain things to little kids, but thank you for doing this. I learned a lot about just making an intention and thinking about everything and blocking out everything else while I'm doing with you and not just making the routine, but thinking about my hands as I'm washing, thinking about my ears. So thank you so much. I've been meaning to make a chart to put in my bathroom to remind me. And today I made the chart because I was going to be talking to the children. So I want to thank the children for an opportunity for anti-Isha to finally sit down and make my chart. Because sometimes I'm afraid I might forget a prayer or an idea. Now we all know you know about the Basmala and about the shahada. Who knew? You know? But this is all wonderful. And we want to thank Ya'a, Imam al-Ghazali. Thank you Ya'a, Imam for these tools for helping us. And we want to thank Munir for engineering this incredible gathering from around the world. Thank you brother Munir. Thank you for the lesson. I'm so happy to be with you all. I just love tonight. So I'm going to go to bed now. All right? Because it's very dark and very late here. This is wonderful. This wonderful group we have here. And it's amazing. It's not only my California friends, but we have friends now joining us from Indonesia. In this morning we were talking to two of our Indonesian friends, Saffarendi and Amira. And they're putting these children's books into the Indonesian language. And I couldn't believe they had been present and seen the program on Wudu. And I just wanted to say something. We did send out to all of you a kind of a chart to put up at the place where you do Wudu. But I wanted to say to the parents that when I did the children's book, I didn't put all of the prayers that you could say at the various stages of Wudu because I thought it was too much for the young people. But if the parents would please go and read the adult book and do their own list, I mean, just a quick time, a quick, quick one minute review for everybody, some of you who might have missed it. I'm just going to tell you that one story about Wudu, which will help everybody, that once upon a time there was a scholar and he was very proud. And he knew everything and he had long robes. And then one day an old man came to knock on his door and said, what is Wudu? I want to know what is Wudu? And the scholar said, how can you old man be in this village your whole life? You're a Muslim and you don't know how to do Wudu. Go away. But the old man insisted. So the scholar said, come in. And he turned on the water and he did Wudu. And he said, now, old man, you do Wudu the exact way I did it. And you know what happened? The old man got it all wrong. He did everything backwards. And the scholar said, get out, out. So the old man left with his cane, walking away. And the scholar sent his, as you remember, the scholar sent his assistant, see what was going on. And the assistant came back and said, oh, scholar, I am so sorry to tell you this. But that old man, you chased away and that you were mean to, he's like the most revered and honored, wise elder in our town. Everyone goes to him for help with their heart. So the scholar thought, oh, no. So he put on his robe. And he walked down the street and he went to the old man who was sitting there. And the scholar got down on his knees and he put his hands and head low. And he said, oh, elder, please tell me what is Wudu? And the scholar said, what you all have been doing when you wash your hands, you don't just wash them thinking nothing. You think any Allah forgive me for things I've been doing, guide me to do the right thing. Washing them out. Oh, I've said some not very nice things. Please inspire me to say beautiful kind things. And then may what I smell remind me of heaven. May my face shine with your light. May you protect me. You know, and my ears, my ears, let me, let me only listen to good things. Don't let me listen to naughty things. And so then of course your feet, you know, they have to take you in the right direction. So it's a good idea to make your own chart, but the parents should make their own chart and put in some of the things that older people might like to have. So anyway, what I just thought I'd do that review with you and suggest. So today we're going to do, now we're going to do share screen, share screen. Today we are going to do the mysteries of prayer. And it's a lot. And I'm going to go quickly. And I can't cover everything, but just tonight is some highlights because I feel we're all praying every day and it's good to have some idea. You can go to your books, you can, the workbooks are wonderful that the activities are fun and you can get all this together. But I just want for parents and children to have a bit of some of the highlights for you to know about. It might be a little boring for the children, but for goodness sakes, you're some of your seven, you're starting, you at least see prayer all the time. So it's a very good idea to have some more information about it. So we put on my glasses. I've taken notes. So I didn't get this wrong. Right. But what Ghazali teaches us about prayer, everyone also applies to every moment of our life, because prayer has to be filled with like being, having reverence and good intentions and humility and understanding and hope, right. And shame and our hearts should be sincere. This is what these are some of the elements of prayer that are very important. And when you get your book of prayer, I want you to, I want you to read, oops, I want you to read carefully Hamza Yusuf's introduction on prayer for children. It's absolutely fabulous. I thought tonight what I would do is just read that to you. But then, then there was all the rest. So you can read that on your own, right. And so then I thought would, would start with just a minute, I keep messing up here. So I don't know whether you all know this. Do you all know who taught the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him to pray? And who knows? Angel Jibril. Absolutely. The Angel Jibril. And here right here, he's just kicked the stone and some beautiful water is coming out. So he taught him to pray and look at that beautiful water from the Zem Zem, which is still going today. And do you know what? Then the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him. He went and taught his wife Khadijah how to pray, right. But you remember also, he went on the Mirage up through the seven heavens. And it was there that he learned and you all will know the story. How instead of having to do 50 prayers a day, which Allah would have loved, we only have to do five. But then the third person to learn how to pray in the Islamic world was a 10 year old boy. And his name was Ali Ibn Abi Talib. He was a cousin, right. And so he was, he learned to pray. He was the third person. You're going to hear more about him later, right. Now, first story. All right, children, ask yourself, could you just be walking down the street and just open the door to the palace of the king or the president and go in and tell him what your needs are? Could you just go in and say, I want you to help me with my needs? Do you think they would let you do that? Do you think so? No. No, no, no. They wouldn't. But who can you go to directly with your needs that's waiting for you all the time to hear? Allah, you've got to exactly right. Allah, he's, he wants you to speak directly to him and he's always available. Exactly. And how do you, how do you speak to him? He's available to everything you need. He's never too busy. I love it that you just said that. That's so beautiful that you understand that exactly, you know. And so he's waiting for us and he wants to speak with us. And that's why we need to know how to pray, but this prayer is the door. Now also, another thing, this is, this, if you go out into the wilderness, out into the parks, out into, and you call the Adon, all the angels want to come and pray with you. Look at that. If you go out and the prayers are like, like there's a stream in front of your door and water, the river is going by five times a day that you can purify. And wudu is just the same thing, but it's washing your heart at the same time. You see? So you have to know that your prayers, everybody are like a key to heaven. And you have to be, you have to do them on time. And you have to be very careful with your wudu. And you don't want to hear a story about why you have to be careful with your prayers. Listen to this. All right. When you say do a perfect beautiful prayer and your wudu is good, that prayer rises up in white glowiness. And it says, may Allah protect me just as you have protected me. In other words, when you do your prayer correctly, you've protected it from being hurt. And so it rises up and it speaks to Allah. And so it's important to protect your prayers. And you know what happens if you don't do your prayers right? You know what's going to happen? The prayers are going to be sad. Imam al-Ghazali said they're sad and they come to you and they say, why did you neglect us? We're sad. Why did you steal parts of us away? So we were left not complete and not whole. How could you steal a part of your prayer away? Maybe you didn't do part of it. Maybe you rushed through part of it. So it got left out and it wasn't whole. And the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him said, the worst people, the worst people steal prayer and prayer is precious. You have to keep it safe so nothing can hurt it. Don't you all want to take good care of your prayers? You don't want them to be sad, do you? No. So Allah gives us very special, a very special and complete way to pray. And so if he's teaching us all of this, we wouldn't want to do a shabby, messy prayer, would we? No. So we're going to find out how to make our prayers completely complete. We don't want our prayers to be sad, right? Okay. Now, I don't know whether you know this. Do you all sometimes pray with your family or in a group? Yes, you do. Oh, I'm Sarah. I'm so glad you do that because listen to this. I do. If you pray in a group with more than just yourself, the prayer is 27 times better. And there's a way to hear this story. Once upon a time, at the time of the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him, a man missed the prayer in a group and he stayed home. He didn't make it to the mosque and everybody went to him and they said, we are so sad for you. We've come to tell you we're sad for your great loss because it was so terrible not to have prayed in a group. In the early days of Islam, if someone was late for a prayer for three days, everyone went and they comforted them and they said they were sad for them. And if they missed, and if for seven days they missed coming to pray in a group, everyone would go to their home and cry and be so sad for them. That's how important it is, you know? That's important to know that, isn't it? And you know, this is, you know, this position when you pray called Sajud, there's a hadith that Allah loves those who love to meet him. And there's no moment where we're closer to him than right like in this position that you're looking at in Sajud, right? And it's even said that when you sit back up from the Sajud, you're back on your heels and you can run your fingers up from your knees just up like this, you're like, I don't know why I did that, oops, you're like pulling your Sajud back into when you're standing and your verticality. It's very important, your Sajud. So as you all know, and this is my favorite verse in the entire Quran, Allah says, wasjud waqtariba, bow down, do this, make sajda and draw near. So what he's saying is the more down you are, the nearer you are. Did you know that your head is the most noble part of your body? And if you put it all the way down on the ground, all the way down on the ground, that is what you should do when you come before your creator. Now, do you think it's important to pay attention when you're praying or should you be thinking of lots of other different things? What do you think? You need to pay attention, right? Yeah. In fact, when you start to pray, it's good if you do two rakhats and ask Allah, and if you do that with no distractions, you're forgiven for your past sins. And every prayer you do, you can consider it to be a goodbye, a farewell prayer, like you're saying goodbye to how you used to be, and now you're going to travel to meet God fresh. You're saying goodbye to the old person. You know that little boy we talked about who was 10 years old, Ali bin Abi Talib? You won't believe this, children. But when he was about to pray, he started trembling like this and he turned pale and everyone said, what's happening to you? He said, oh, when you think of who you were about to stand before, isn't that something? If you think I'm about to stand before Allah, isn't that overwhelming? Wouldn't you be a bit scared too? Yeah. Sure, you would, right? So you see, yeah. So also, you know, when you go to pray, after you do your wudu, you know what's a very good idea? You don't want to quickly do your wudu and then run to pray and you're still a bit thinking about things and everything going on your head. So Imam al-Ghazali says, find a place and sit quietly till your body is calm and to your mind is calm. And what you can do is imagine, right, that you're sitting in front of the Kaaba. You see this little girl here sitting imagining she's sitting in front of the Kaaba. So what you can do is also you can pretend it's your last prayer and that'll make you concentrate in it. But while you're there imagining the Kaaba, but from between this point, right between your two eyebrows right here, you're imagining you're standing in front of the Kaaba. And so this can calm you down before you start your prayer. You don't want to just run into your prayer a little bit frazzled, right? And by the way, Imam al-Ghazali said, if you're in a mosque, do you ever go in a mosque and hear people chatting and talking? Have you ever had that happen? They met conversation. You can't in the mosque, you can only talk about spiritual things. But sometimes people are chatting and you know what the hadith is that people who chat in mosques, it's like eating up all their good deeds just the way cattle are eating grass, right? Now there's something very interesting. Here, Father Hamza has taken the children. They're having ice cream. They've just been to a museum about the human body and they saw hands and veins and hearts and many things. And so the Father Hamza is telling them here. He said, children, you know, if you have a body, there's certain parts of your body that you need to be alive. He's going to compare this to prayer, like your heart needs to be there, your lungs need to be there. But if you lost an eye in an accident or lost a hand or a foot, you would still be alive. If you've lost certain parts of prayer, it would still be prayer, right? But he said, if for example, you lost your eyebrows or your eyelashes, you wouldn't be very beautiful, would you? You might look a little ugly with no eyebrows. So you know, we're asked to do sunnah prayers, the extra prayers like the Prophet did, peace and blessings be upon him. Those are the things that make the prayer complete and beautiful, you know? So wouldn't you want to do your prayers as beautiful prayers and as complete as possible, right? You wouldn't want to reduce your prayers to a minimum, would you? So here is Father Hamza talking to them and the children say, no, no, no, we want to have beautiful prayers, right? And then he said, you know, besides learning to pray, here are two children, they're standing to pray in front of the kibla and they know that they have to lift their hands and bring them down to their here and down to their sides. And that you have to learn how to do that and look, they're facing the kibla when they pray. And Imam al-Ghazali recommends that when you're standing to pray, let your eyes, your gaze, not go beyond the edge of your prayer rug. Don't start looking around. If you're sitting down to prayer, would it be giving full attention to God if you started looking around or yawning or scratching or looking at other people? Would you do that if you were in front of your grandmother or in front of, no, exactly, you're right, you wouldn't do that. So why would you do that in front of God? That was terrible, right? And also, you have to make an intention, you say, aniyah that you're intending to pray. And you want to keep this, remember, we're trying to be present to God. We're not have, we don't want our minds to wander away when we say the takbir, Allah-u-Akhbar, and when we make the niyah, we try to keep ourselves in front of Allah without thinking of other things. And that's very, very hard to do, right? But you want, when you do your prayer, you say, I intend to pray, pray the Fajr prayer. You want that intention to come from your heart. Put your hand on your heart and feel your intention. I intend to do this, right? And then you know, when you do the takbir, you know, put your hands up like this, try to, try to stay completely present to Allah, right? And you do everything slowly. You're not trying to rush every, not trying to rush through, all right? So now, and you'd have, sometimes you've seen people, they do a supplication and then they do their hands over their face like that. Imam al-Ghazali says the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. He did that too. And so remember, you're not going to do any bad manners, no yawning, no looking around at other people. You want to be completely respecting Allah, just like you respect other people. Now, and this is the bowing, you all know about that. I'm not going to go through Ghazali telling you exactly how to bow and where to put your hands and what you do, because you know this from your parents, but we're going to talk today about the things you're supposed to be doing inside, like not the outer side of wudu, but the inner. So we're going to be working on that today. All right? So one day, the children decide they're going to go and try to find Hajj Abdullah in his little village. And they went all the way to this little village and they found a little poor house and they knocked on the door and his wife opened and she said, oh, you're the lovely children. I've been hearing about you. I just want to tell you that he's in the mosque praying, won't you come in and have some lemonade. And the children said, no, we'll go ahead. But they looked and they noticed the house was very empty. They were very poor, but it was full of light and humility and beauty. And then they went, they went to the mosque and they talked to, they went over to see Hajj Abdullah in the mosque. And he said, you know, it's important that you have to learn to be the inner parts of your practice of your prayer. You know, I mean, and then he said, you've been doing the wudu with thinking all of those great thoughts now, haven't you? Would you like to go back to wudu where you're just doing it without thinking or without thinking? That would just be doing the outer thing. You don't want to do that. So now you're going to learn about how to pray in an inward way. And you have to know that the other pillars we do, when you fast, it's difficult on your body. When you make the Hajj, it's difficult on your body. When you do zakat, maybe it's difficult on you. But if during those three things, you're thinking of other things and you're not concentrated on a law, there's still a lot of good that's going to come from zakat and from fasting. But do you think if you do a prayer and you're thinking about something else the whole time, going to the cinema, toys, any, do you think that your prayer will be that good? If you let all of that go, what do you think? No. No, thank you for saying no. Yeah. No. No. No, because Gazali said, what is it? No. Exactly. If you're just making motions and moving your lips and saying words, but you're not thinking about what you're saying. No. Understand it, right? So we need to, now if you were, if you were with one of your friends, your little schoolmates, would you fiddle around and look around in different directions and pay no attention to them? Wouldn't that be rude to them? So you want to try to be present when you're praying with Allah. You want to, because you're having an intimate conversation with Him, right? You're having a conversation with your Lord, right? So oops, I keep doing this a second. Now, the children go to visit Hajj Abdullah under the magic tree in the secret garden, all right? And he tells them, you know, children, we, it's, they're different, invisible, you know, they're invisible feelings that make a great difference. If you're calm, that's one thing. If you're upset, that's another feeling. That's not very nice, but you need, there's six states of being you need to have inside of you when you're praying. You need to have presence in your heart. You need to have understanding, veneration. You need to have hope. You have to have modesty, some shame, and you want to uncover these wonderful qualities that are already part of your own golden heart, right? So Hajj Abdullah said, he said, you have to notice sometimes you're thinking about worldly matters. You're supposed to be praying, but you're thinking about everything else and everybody does it and it's very hard to stop. So you have to like, if there are things that you're looking at in the room, you ought to remove them. For example, if you're trying to pray and you keep looking at all the patterns in the carpet that you're praying on, wouldn't it be better to pray on a plain blanket? If you're, if you're in a room with pictures all over it, and you're looking at the pictures and thinking of, you could get, you could move those. You could move your prayer rug. You could move to a different place with a plain wall, but those are things that you can change, but the real problem is inside of you, all the thoughts that come up. Now, there's another issue. Besides being present in your prayer, in your standing bowing, Sujood, you need to understand the meaning of what you're saying. I mean, is it worth just saying a lot of words and you don't know what they mean? No, because, and you can understand what you're saying no matter what age you are, at the different, different levels of age, there's a way to understand everything. And also we need to feel small. We need to feel awe and respect for Allah. We can't just be feeling nothing like we're standing in front of our Lord. And then just, just our minds are all over the place. No, we have to honor Allah. We have to be present. And we have to have that with understanding. And then awe, we have to feel awe. You know, sometimes you're with somebody very important or older and maybe a grandparent and you, you're a little anxious, you might disappoint them, you know, that you want to feel that with Allah, but you also want to have hope, you know? I mean, this isn't just like a king or a queen, you know, who can't really give you anything you need. Allah can give you anything you need. And you can have good hopes in what he can do with you. So we know that Allah loves us so much, right? We know that, right? And we, we feel really ashamed when we do things that are not kind or are wrong, like maybe you kids, maybe you don't share, maybe there's some little children you don't let join in. Maybe you have a younger sister or brother and you won't let him play with your group. Oh, that's a terrible thing to do. So you feel bad about it, don't you? You know? And so we have to feel bad sometime. It's important, you know? Yeah. Well, it happened to me on the road because we kind of get in a fight. It did? Yeah, sometimes I get in a fight because I believe he's trying something away from me. Yeah, exactly. But you feel bad about fighting, don't you? It doesn't feel good, does it? Yeah, it feels like curing. Yeah, it doesn't feel good. And Imam al-Ghazali says, if you want, let's say, to pray in a beautiful way, if something really matters to you, don't you find a way to make it happen? Let's say you want to get a toy and you beg your mother so long, she finally gives in and gets it. I mean, if you really want to get a beautiful prayer, and now you know how important prayer is, you're going to find a way to do it, right? Because I mean, do you think the law looks at what we do, or he looks at our hearts? Where do you think the law is looking? For pray? He's looking at our hearts. He cares how we are. At our hearts? In our hearts. That's right. In our hearts, right? And so- Everyone. Now, so here is what he wants you to do. All right, let me just do the next picture here. This is Hajj Abdullah talking to the kids in the garden. It's getting late. There's probably should go home to their parents, don't you think? But he's telling them it's important things. So now, okay, do you all know what Takbir is? You put your hands up and say Allahu Akbar before you pray. Do you all know that? Have you ever done that? Is that a Allahu Akbar like that, the Takbir? Okay. Now, what you have to do before you do this next time is the following. First, remind yourself. Think to yourself. I'm about to stand before God, right? Prayer will lead me to the next world, right? And as I'm saying Allahu Akbar, I'm going to try to empty my heart and think what the words Allahu Akbar mean. It's like, God is greater than anything. Isn't that right, kids? God is greater than anything, anything we can think about. So when we're doing that, when we're saying that, God is greater than anything, we can feel a little bit of fear, you know, that we might not do the right thing. We have reverence for Allah, right? And then, just a minute, and then just so you know, this is the grandfather and grandmother, they're up in the tree house with the children having tea and cakes. And the grandfather is asking them how they're doing with their inner prayers, right? And he says, you know, anyone can see outer movements. If I do this, if I do this, anyone can see that, right? But only God can see what's inside of my heart. Isn't that right? So it's important that we get the state of our hearts right for prayer. Prayer can't just be moving lips and up and down movements. It's who we are inside while we're praying, right? And so the grandfather says, I'm going to tell you ways you can be more present before you even start to pray, before you even start to pray. And it will help get you going in the right direction. Okay, before you pray, what can help you is, first you're making your wudu. Isn't that right? You do your wudu. And when you're doing that, you're going over things you wish you hadn't done and you hope to do, you're feeling humbled. You're asking for guidance. And then you dress properly, don't you? Because you have respect. You don't just go and pray and bathing suits or horrible clothes. That's respect, you see, because you're standing before Allah. And then you hear the adhan. And you know when the adhan is going, you're all supposed to repeat it. When he says Allah Huwaqbar, repeat along with the adhan and try to feel joy and happiness when you're listening to it, right? I can't see your screen. You can't hear me? And everyone else here? I can't see your screen. I hear you. I can see your screen. Well, I don't know. I can see your screen too. Yeah, I can. Yeah. So anyway, when you're, well, you can start getting ready for prayer and for going to meet God by your wudu and by the way you dress. And then, then when you go and stand in front of the kibla, right? You know what the kibla is? Who can say? Yes. Yes, the direction of the Kaaba, right? So imagine you're standing, listen to this carefully, everyone. You're standing in the direction of prayer, all right? Your face is in that right direction, right? Your heart should be also in the same direction facing it, right? If you start looking around, looking out the window, the heart moves with you, right? You don't, your mind and your heart will turn with you. So you have to, there's a hadith that says, Ghazali said, let the face of your heart be with the face of your body. So be straightforward. Okay, then you stand up straight everyone, okay? Everyone stand up straight, all right? And then you bow your head. Now, the reason you're bowing your head, it's, as I said, it's the highest part of your body, right? And if you lower it, it's like you're humbling yourself before Allah. You're not full of crap. You're bringing yourself down before God, right? You know, and you can imagine standing before Allah at the end of your life, right? Or in standing in front of your grandparents or a respected elder, you know, and you want to be at your very, very best. And then, you know, we want to calm our minds as we enter into prayer, right? And we have to look at our thoughts and see what kind of thoughts are tempting us to think about them. And we have to keep turning away and turning back and being present, right? And remember, feel your intention in your heart. And then your intention can be this, all right? This can be your intention. I want to be near to God and pray as correctly as I can. I am aware what a grace it is that He allows me to speak with Him, even with my misdoings and mistakes. You know, children imagine we can all learn to be present with God in this amazing, unimaginable, wondrous conversation we are able to have with Him. You know, and this is available in our prayers. And you know, if you try to do it, it'll work. So now, when you say you're tech beer, Allah Hu Akbar, right at that moment, be like you're standing in front of a king or and be present to that because your mind is going to wander very quickly. And you try to hold onto that, hold onto the tech and one day you'll hold it a second longer and a second longer till it goes through your whole prayer and it's with you all the time. But start out, if you can just hold being present without thinking about other things during the tech beer. Can you all try to do that? Just thinking about Allah, not letting your mind wander away because the mind is always wandering. And then when you bring down your hands, you're doing this, push everything away, push everything else behind you. Just try to do that. All right, now we have the Fatiha. All right, you see the Fatiha here? No, you skip two pages. I did. Yeah, y'all don't want your state stay still. Okay, when we're doing the Fatiha, all right, when we start the Fatiha, you know, you hear people say, I seek refuge from the accursed shaitan, I would be lying in a shaitan regime. You hear that being said, that's what you begin with, right? And then this is interesting. Ghazali tells the story. Once upon a time, there was a little boy and there was a beast that came, a huge beast with dragon's teeth. And the little boy said, I seek protection from the beast in a safe fortress. Will that save him standing there saying that? No, he better run, right? So what he needs to do is change places. So it's the same with you, nothing will save you from shaitan except to change places, to stop doing things that are no good anymore, you know? And the fortress that you can go into is la ilaha illallah, it's the shahada. And shaitan is always trying to make us think of other things and not be present while we're saying the Fatiha. But so when you say, don't just move your tongues. Don't just do that. I am getting away. I am not going to let him take away my good thoughts, all right? And then when you say, you all say, don't you? The name of Allah, the source of all being? And we say, Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim. Yeah, I always think of Bismillah anytime I eat. Oh, fantastic. Always when you begin anything, when you start a trip, when you walk out the door, it's very good to say Bismillah. But now listen to this. You know, when you say Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim, don't just say it. In your minds, go to a new place. While you're saying it, think. Think he's Allah's kind to you. He's merciful. He gives, this gives you hope. And then you say, Maliki Yom ad-Din, the king of the final day. Now, when you say that, you should be a little afraid, right? That you might do something wrong. So now you've gone from being thinking, oh, he's so merciful. Oh, he's so kind to, uh-oh, I better be good. He's the king of the final day, right? So that's veneration and fear. And then when we say, you alone do we worship? Iyaka Nabudu, right? You know, when you say that, you alone do we worship? Just notice that we are in trouble and we are weak. And we can only turn to him. Don't just say the words. Really feel, oh my goodness. Only you, only you can I turn to when I'm in trouble. Only you, right? And then when you say, Wa-iyaka Nastein, you alone we ask for help. Be humble. You know, you need his help. Where else are you going to get help? When you say that, really say it. I need your help, right? And then you say, guide us on the straight path. Beg him. Say, in your, don't just say, guide me on the straight path. Just say, oh, I want to come near you. I don't want a crooked path. The two paths is a crooked path and a straight path. If you had the two paths before you, which are you going to want to take, everybody? The straight path. Yeah, you don't want to. Yeah, I mean crooked one, right? Imagine that. And, you know, if you, Imam al-Ghazali says this to kids, if you say the Fatiha, like we've just talked about, not just say it fast, but slowly think about those things. Think about Allah. Think about what you're asking, begging. If you do, Imam al-Ghazali says, if you recite a Fatiha in this way, you will be one of the people Allah mentions among the servants who praise him. You'll get mentioned by Allah. He'll mention you. Can you imagine being mentioned by, and say it slowly, right? How else are you going to be present to Allah? You're rushing through, right? And think of what you say. Be in awe. I mean, you know, you, and you also, you also want to, you also want to be still. You don't, you want to be moving, don't want to be moving around. One of the essentials is you want to be humble, present in your heart. So you need to think about the positions you're in, all right? Okay, say you're standing straight. Let's think about our positions. We've now talked about the different things we say in the Fatiha, and we thought about how we have to be when there are different modes of being as we're saying things, right? So now we're standing straight, okay? Listen to this. The prophet peace and blessings be upon him said, God faces the one offering the prayer as long as he does not turn away. So face Allah, right? Keep your head and eyes from turning and keep your inner self from turning, right? Stay facing Allah. Because if you turn away, he's turned to, right? He's turned away from you, right? Pretend like you're, you're, would you be talking to a friend of yours, any of your friends and then turn away from them while you're talking to them? Would you do that? No, that would be rude. So, you know, you don't want to do it. No, no, hate to do that to my friends. So you want to just see these kids with birds on the head? You see the children here? Can you be so still that a bird could land on your head and you're just standing there? You're still and you're present to Allah and you're looking straight ahead, right? There's a story about a man that the birds didn't just land on his head, even when he was down in Sujood, they landed on him too. And then when you say Allah, now remember when you change positions, when you change prayer positions, each time you say Allah Huakbar or the Imam says Allah Huakbar. Now, when you say it, don't just say Allah Huakbar, Allah Huakbar, right? Think of his greatness, you know, and that you're asking him for mercy. He is the most great. Think that. Don't just say it. And then when you bow, you know, when you bow down, in your mind as you bow over, right? As you bow over, right? Feel low. Don't feel like this. Feel, you're humbling yourself. You're bowing. You're being reverent to God. And then, then, you know, when you say, say, God, here's the one who praises him, Sami ala hu li hamida. You know, that means if God hears the one who praises him, right? That means he answers the one who thanks him. You know, you have to know that when you're saying these things, Allah is present. You're standing in His presence, right? And then when you rise up from the bow, they're still standing with birds. All right. When you rise up from the bow, you say, my Lord, all praise is yours, right? And listen to this. All right. Just as you're rising up and you're saying this prayer, my Lord, all praise is yours. Don't just say that. Think. Praise fills all that is in the heavens and the earth. Imagine when you're saying that, imagine that you're in a place with light, with praise, filling all the heavens and the earth. Imagine you're in your room where you're praying and suddenly you're in a place where light goes out forever and ever, right? And then when you are in Sujood, when you go down and do Sujood, remember, feel the highest way you can be before God. That's your noblest part. Your face is in the lowest place, like it's in dust, you know? I'm sure that I've jumped ahead here. So I'm just going to continue saying what I was saying. All right. But when you put, by the way, do you know what Imam al-Ghazali said? If you could possibly pray in the real earth, not on a prayer rug, in a house, on a floor, of course we need to pray that way. But he said, if you went out and prayed outdoors and put your head in the dust, right? He said, this would remind us that we've come from the earth and we're going back to the earth. And we put our lower self in the lowest place because we can feel the dust. He said, it's like we're taking the root of the tree and putting it down, the branches of the ground, and putting them back into the earth. And so we want to feel that we are created and we're returning to Allah. And then, you know, we say, supana rabi al-ala, glorified my Lord on most times. We say that several times. And if you're saying that, you know, you should, you know, glorifying Allah, supana Allah, you should be in the state of being, not saying supana Allah, supana Allah, you should say, oh, imagine I'm sitting here glorifying Allah. So you have to feel these things inside of you. And you know what is going to happen when you feel humble and low and put your head on the forehead, on the ground, you will feel relief. And I bet some of you have noticed that, that you've, you've felt relief before. And Allah loves our weakness in our humility. And when we say we're sorry. And then you say, you can also say Allah wakbar. I think I've lost where I'm going with all of these pictures. But that doesn't matter. They're very beautiful. Oh no, I'm going back too soon. Okay. So also, when you say Allah wakbar, you don't forget you're in direct conversation with the law and you have to ask him for your special needs, you know, and you ask him for forgiveness before you do your seconds to Jude. And then when you're sitting up like this, you know, you've finished bowing, you're sitting up like this. And you think to yourself, everything belongs to God, including the prayers offered in even who I am. And then, right, remember, you have to give your greetings to the right and the left. So the, the, the prophets, you have to make the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him present in your own heart and greet him directly from yourself. This is not just saying, As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah, just saying it, you're actually in direct connection with him. He's there for you, right? And these greetings do reach him, you know, and remember that he returns our, the great, the, our greetings to him. So you're in connection with him when you're doing that. And then also when you're saying the Shahada, you know, imagine taking shelter in the fortress of God, right? And you can say, do after your parents and all of the faithful. And then you greet all of the angels and the others who are present. But when you're doing this, I want you to be in a state of real gratitude with your, with your heart, right? And thank Allah for this chance to complete this act of worship. And imagine you're saying goodbye to what might be your last prayer. You never know. And there's a hadith which says prayer is part of the hereafter. When you enter it, you leave this world. Can you imagine when you're praying, you're actually leaving this world, right? So what you're learning is that you have to be humble and present in your heart, right? In your prayers. Now, then there's such a thing as the Friday prayers. All right. Let me see if there, oh, that. Oops, I'm going back. All right. Have any of you ever been to the mosque for Friday, Friday prayer prayers? Have you? Have someone? Have you? Yes. Always. But not now. That's wonderful. You got to go. You know that, you know, they choose the Imam for the mosque. He's somebody who everyone likes, not somebody they don't like and who is the smartest one or the best person who recites. And if the Imam makes a mistake when he's leading you in prayer, it doesn't matter. Your prayers are still perfect. You know, the first Imam was the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. And then Abu Bakr and Omar and the Prophet said, peace and blessings be upon him. Your Imams are your messengers before God. And then the man who does the call to prayer, the Muazin. If he does it for seven years, he's promised heaven. And if he calls the prayer for 40 years, he enters paradise with actually no questions, no questioning. And the Imam is responsible for making everybody pray on time. Once the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him who was an Imam was late and somebody else became the Imam instead. You don't want to be late. And you want your, and the Imam makes sure the rows are straight. You see these children, they're sitting in straight rows and the gaps are closed. And then there's a second adhan. It's called the ikama or the the call for readiness. All right. And they call Friday the Lord of the days. The Lord of the days. Gabriel came to, Gabriel came to the Prophet with a white mirror in his hand and, and mentioning that these on Friday, these are the best hours that the day, the hours on Friday and the conditions, many things can take place. But when you have, when you have the Friday prayer, you need to have it at noon, of course, and 40 people have to come and there are two sermons. And the second sermon, the Friday sermon should be clear, but not long. But now you need to know there are 10 manners, 10 manners for, for, for going to the Friday prayer. Okay. This is what we want to do, children. On Thursday, you start preparing, right? It gives you special graces. You make your intention on Thursday and you ask a loss forgiveness, right? It's better than waking up on Friday morning and saying, Hey, what day is it? Thursday, you're already thinking tomorrow is Friday and I'm going to get to pray with the congregation. And then you take a bath on Friday morning and do your nails and teeth and everything clean and wear clothes that don't stand out. White is good. And you know why you set out early to the mosque? Because if you get there early, you can do a retreat. Here is Hajj Abdullah. He's gotten to the mosque early. He's doing a little private retreat. If you get there early, you can sit quietly before all the people come and ask God's forgiveness. And there's a hadith. When it's, when it's Friday, the angels sit by the door recording the first ones to come in. You see the angels wings here, they're interested to see who comes in first. It says, When it is Friday, the angels sit by the door of the mosques. And in their hands are pages of silver and pens of gold with which they record the first as the first in their order of entering the mosque. And Al-Bukhari and Muslim said, the angels say, Oh God, if poverty has delayed him, enrich him, if illness cure him, if some work relieve him, relieve him of it for the sake of your worship. And if it's some vain distraction, turn his heart back to your obedience. So angels are either side of the door, everybody, recording who's getting there and what time they come. And of course, when you go in, see the angels right here recording? When you go inside, you're not supposed to start climbing over people's backs to get up to the front row. And you don't walk in front of people who are praying. You don't ever do that, right? And another reason to arrive early is just try to get a seat in the front so that you can hear better. But listen to this. If you're so generous and you want other people to be on the front row, then you could go and sit in the back. You have to look at your intentions. And then you end, you say you're doing your own prayers, you're just doing some special prayers. And the mam comes in. The second he comes in, you stop your own prayers right in the middle. And if you're talking to someone, you stop talking. And if someone is talking down the row, just gesture to them. Just gesture. You don't say anything like no prayers, all right? Next, you do your prayer correctly. These are the 10 things you've got to do. And then 10, the last thing, listen to this. If you can, if you would like to stay in the mosque until Asr or even Maghrib on a special retreat, it is a wonderful thing to do on Fridays. But if you do it just to impress people so they think, oh, he's really great. He stayed after. You know, he's doing a retreat, then you better not do it. You should think about your own weaknesses. So remember, when you're in the mosque, you only do spiritual talking. And Friday is a very special day to do good deeds and special services. Of course, every day is a good day to do it. But it's especially good on Friday because there's something during the day of Friday called the noble hour. And this noble hour is hidden. But if you are thinking about a law and the noble hour comes, and you ask him something, oh, guide me, help me, he will answer you and give you what you're asking for or something better that he knows of. So that's what the noble hour is. So we end by saying that when you go to visit a mosque, the first thing you do when you go in is do two rakahs, right? You do two bowings, right? Does anyone know what happens if you're saying one of your prayers and you forget where you are? You don't know whether you stood up once or twice. This can happen, you know? You're praying and all of a sudden you think, oh my goodness, I just, I just forgot where I was. What you do at the end of your prayer, right, is the end of your prayer is just before you, you do your final greetings of the angels, you just go, you bow down twice. It's called sejudah sabwa. You just do that and then you... Yeah, I do that if I ever make a mistake in salah. That's right. And you know what happens. My brother just taught me how to do that. I am so glad that you know. I only learned about it when I was like 40 years old. And what happened was I was in Mecca at the Kaaba during Ramadan. Millions of people and the man was leading the prayer next to the Kaaba. And all of a sudden he started doing the sejudah sabwa. And I didn't know what he was doing. He was so humble that he forgot where he was and he wasn't embarrassed. He didn't hide it. He actually was there so close to Allah that he did the sejudah sabwa, meaning I forgot where I was during my prayer, right? Now we're going to end it here and answer some questions, but just to let you know that there are many kinds of prayers, not just the regular prayers. They're the nawaful, the sunnah, the recommended, the gift, voluntary, istahara, glorification, and the prayers of pressing needs. And other group prayers too. So these are all things you can learn about. But what Imam al-Ghazali says when he ends the book of prayer is, the thing he wants you to do, even if you do something, one little thing, just do it regularly. Say you decide that every time you do takbir, you're going to remember you're standing in front of Allah and you're going to try to be present and you're not going to lose your attention. If you just do that, every time you pray regularly, you're going to get somewhere. So that is a very quickly done, the book of prayer. And oh, we're not going to do the curriculum. They're just some nice, nice pictures of kids here. There's a couple that I really can we color while listening? Yes. While you're listening, I'd love it if you colored while we're listening. Yeah. Look at this lovely little boy from Indonesia. Isn't he beautiful? And this little girl is being present. Look at that. She is being very careful to not let her thoughts get carried away. And this one's giving gifts. Look at her, these little wonderful children. I have questions. How many pictures are these? How many what? Just pictures of kids. There are lots of pictures of kids. This is my favorite one. Isn't she lovely? She's doing duet, isn't she? So I'm going to end the screen here. Stop share. Stop share. I want to show you my drawing at me. I see your drawing. Hold it up. Let me see it. Where is it? I think it's one of the scratching thing that you do. Can I see it? Could you hold it up? Can someone help her? Hold up her drawing. Wow, that is beautiful. Where is it? Right here. There. I can't see. See because it's upside down. Let me see. Maybe I'll move across. It's still really beautiful. It looks like that. Is that Golden Gate Bridge? Right? Zahra. That is beautiful. Look at that. That's my name. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Well, I'm seeing a drawing that's being held up here. It looks really good. Wait, I didn't have a drawing. You don't? Well, then whose drawing is it? Let me look and see. Everybody's here. I think they're two Zahra's. I'm one of them. Well, why is it I'm not seeing the drawing? Okay. Oh, she stopped holding it. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, she stopped. Okay. Can you hold it up one more time? There's two Zahra's actions. Who's showing the drawing? Oh, I like them. Zahra or Ahmadullah. And she has the drawing. She's holding it up. Right here. Okay. There it is. I can see it. Okay. Oh, this is that beautiful. Is that the Golden Gate Bridge? Oh, isn't that beautiful? The London Bridge. It's the London Bridge. Oh, isn't that wonderful? I like your drawing. It's wonderful. Do you like to draw? Yeah. Yeah. You know, what I'd love for you all to do as your homework this week is think of anything we said today, any of the stories, any of the stories we told, and do a drawing of an idea that you like the best that meant something to you. Will everybody do a drawing and show it to me next week? Will you do that? Yes. You can draw about like a design on a carpet or something. Oh, that's a thing you can do. If you pray and your prayer rug is driving you crazy because you look at all the patterns, maybe you can get a paper bag and draw your own prayer rug, cut it out out of paper and make it simple and make it something that wouldn't distract you. Could you do that? Yes. Yes. But how are we going to do that in the moss? No, you just do it at home. Just get a paper bag and cut it up and make it into. Can I do the moss in the end? Or before prayer or in the middle? You can do whatever you want. I'm talking about after prayer or before prayer in the middle. Well, you're not going to be drawing in the middle of a prayer. It should be before or after, okay? But I think what I want you all, maybe here's what I want you all to do. I think what you probably should take away from today along with your parents is when you do your prayer, just like when you do your ridu, really think about what you're doing. Don't just say the words and move. Really imagine if you're saying dinasuratta. Show us the clear way. Really, in your heart, feel yani, oh Allah, guide me. Show me the correct way. If you're saying subhanallah, really feel awesome. And you know what you're going to discover in your place where you pray? It'll be slowed down. You'll be thinking about it. You'll be in a room full of light. You'll see light going on forever. So will everybody tell me next week, do one prayer and tell me how it went? Will everybody do that? I already did a prayer today. Oh, sorry. Bye. I know what I did. Well, I prayed from fast read to more than a minute. It's not a shat time yet. Oh, yeah. What time is it where you are? See, for me, it's five after 10, so I have to go to bed. I'm five minutes late for bed. What time do you go to bed? For me, it's seven. For me, it's seven or kind of eight or seven. For me, it's nine o'clock. For me, it's nine o'clock. Bed time is at nine o'clock. Okay, will you wish me a very good night and tell me to sleep well? Tell me. What city are you in? Yes, enjoy your day. What did you say? In the town called Louisville, Kentucky, it's where Muhammad Ali Clay lived and died and also where Kentucky Fried Chicken started. I even met Colonel Sanders sister. You know, he started Kentucky Fried Chicken. The time for me is the time for the time for Menda and I don't think I've ever seen it. Oh, blessed Muslim community center of the Bay Area and our friends in Indonesia and whoever else is here. This is a lot of fun and it's fun for me too to go back over and try to pull out the highlights of these various books for you. And I know it's hard for people to keep attention more than like 15 or 20 minutes, children and adults alike. And I'm sorry this is a whole hour, but there's a lot of good things in it. And I hope you will now go back and actually look at the books, do the workbook exercises, do the fun things and the activities and really get to know the details. I'm only giving you kind of a bit of an overview with a few things that I particularly loved, but obviously I can't tell you everything that's in the book. So one of the things I want you to know is I want you to know something. Even if you don't pay the cat and children don't pay the cat and even if, you know, you're not even fasting yet, I have to tell you that the qualities and the virtues and the things that you can learn from just learning about these things, these are things you need in your life right now. For example, being generous and being grateful and selfless and self-discipline and patience and being honest and having moderation and trust in God's loving wisdom. These seem to be abstract ideas, but what you'll understand and what we're about to learn is that these are not just abstract ideas, they're urgent and they relate to your own, they relate to your lives, all right? So, all right, we're going to start with a story, all right? Once upon a time, the children were on a merry-go-round out in the middle of the park and you see them on the merry-go-round and you notice there's some children looking longingly who don't have the money to go, they don't even have the small change to go on the merry-go-round and the children are looking at that, but the children are on their way from the merry-go-round to go and visit their elder, their teacher, Hajj Abdullah, right? So, on the way to the gate of the garden, they see this beggar and he's putting up his hands and he's saying, Lillah, Lillah, you know, he's begging for help and the children run into the garden and they say and they stand before Hajj Abdullah and they say, why are some people rich and some people poor? Have any of you ever had that thought? I mean, I've had that thought, yes, me too. And so, Hajj Abdullah said, well before, let me just tell you something, when the beggar is saying, Lillah, Lih means Lih for the sake of God, but Lih also means it belongs to God, like we say, Inna Lillah, surely we belong to God, right? So, he says to the children, go and take this change out to the beggar and then come back and I'm going to explain something to you. He said, I just have to tell you, dear children, all of you, did any of you, any of you out there, did you give yourself your mother and father? Did you give yourself your life? Did you give yourself who you are? You didn't give yourself anything, right? Allah gave you everything and so, he gave you everything, but it's on loan to you. It's just a loan what you've got. Who you are is just a loan. It's a trust you've been given and then Allah sends you all these ways that you can give it back. So anyway, Hajj Abdullah gives the children some money and they run and take it to the beggar. He said, when somebody reaches out to you, do you ignore them? Children, when someone reaches out for you for help, do you ignore them or do help them when they reach out? You know, even anyone is reaching out. Maybe there's someone sad at school and they're reaching out and they're lonely. So, of course, so then the children go and give the money to the beggar and then they come back and then Hajj Abdullah said, children, I'm going to tell you a story. Now, wait until you hear this story. There's how not to give and how you should give, all right? Once upon a time, there was a king and there were some people in the village that didn't have any food. So he went to this man, the man you see here with the red top and he was a land owner and he had tons of like animals and fruits and vegetables. And he said, go, go rich man, take some of the food and feed the people in the town. But this rich man, he forgot that his farm was only on loan. It was a loan from God. It was a trust. He thought this food is mine. So he goes into town and look what he does. He holds the food up on a plate. You see him doing it? And so the people, the poor people have to reach up. They feel low. They're like begging for food, right? And even they're thinking, oh my goodness, next time he comes into town, do you think we're beholden to him? Do you think we now maybe have to take care of his horse for the day? Is that the right way to give or the wrong way to give everyone? Wrong, right? Wouldn't it be exactly? Wouldn't it be terrible? You know, if you were giving something to someone and you made them feel low and begging, right? Now you're going to hear the right way to give. Once upon a time, there was the wonderful king and there was a poor widow. And the poor widow in town had no money to educate her children. So he sent this wonderful man, this man on the right in the beige coat. He was an orphan and he grew up. Some wealthy people taught him finance and money. And so the king went to him and said, see, there's a poor widow. She's in town. She needs money. So he took her gold. Look how he's gone. He's taken the gold. He holds the gold low. He doesn't hold it up high. He holds it low and he bends down a bit and he looks up into her face and he says, you can read it on the screen. Oh, blessed lady, what a favor and an honor it is for me that you accept this humble offering, which I am delivering to you on behalf of the king. The king is Allah, right? King is God, right? By accepting, you make it possible for me to fulfill my sacred duty. I am the one receiving the benefit. Each of us is given special skills when we come into this world, which are meant to be ways of serving others. But it is very difficult if we are born or become rich. So what he's saying is, I beg you to take this gold in order that I may fulfill my duty to God. And what is the duty to God? He's given us skills at a place in time and space and connections. And these are the ways we are supposed to help other people to return that favor. And I have to tell you, children, that when I read this particular story, it changed my life. And I'll tell you how. We're all told we should be humble, not proud, that we should learn to be utterly humble before people. And I was thinking, how do you feel humble? Well, now, as a result of this story, I know I'm nobody. I didn't give myself who I am. I mean, writing these Ghazali children's books, who gave me the ability, the skills, the knowledge of the scholars that I knew, who actually gave me the connections, like you all, Allah. So since I'm nobody, I can feel humble, not full of pride. So remember, this is a very, very important story. For me, it was like it really changed my life, to be quite honest. And then, let me just do this. Now, let me put my glasses on here. Zakat, Zakat giving charity cleanses your heart and purifies what you have, right? Because it all belongs to God, right? And Zakat is always good for you all. Now, you all aren't paying that kind of Zakat, but you can give things away too, because it's a test for you to practice your generosity. And you all are going to get to do this with your toys, all right? And it's not only a test, but you know, if we fail to be giving things away, we start hoarding things, keeping all of our toys, and it makes us greedy, right? We hang on to what we have, you know? But by the way, it's very dangerous not to be generous and pay your Zakat. One of the Prophet's companions, his name was Abu Dhar. He said, I came upon the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in the shade of the Kaaba. And he heard the Prophet saying, by the Lord of the Kaaba, they are the losers. And so this man said to the Prophet, who are the losers? Who are the losers, everybody? He said, people who have plenty of wealth and don't give. And then there are those who say, another type of person that says, here, here, they try to give everyone who is in front of them to the side of them, behind them, to the right or the left of them. And those are the, those are very few people indeed. Which type of person are you? Are you always giving to the people in front of you, to the right and the left and behind you? Are you holding on to stuff? Right. You, you want to be one of the few, the good ones that give, right? Right. All right. So the children, when they heard this story, you know what they did? They ran back to the merry-go-round and they felt in their pockets and they did have some change. So they ran to the children and they said, we don't want to be losers. We want to polish our hearts from greed, right? So this is, you know, every opportunity you have to give, it's a blessed chance, right? So then Hajj Abdullah, he just sits with the children. They've come back in the woods and they're sitting with him in the forest by his big tree, right? And he said, you know, kids, even though you're too young to pace a cat, you need to understand it and you need to practice the virtues that are underneath of it, right? But you need to also know there are different kinds of the cat. And also they are manners, different kinds of manners when you give and you receive. And then certain things qualify people for being able to receive a cat. And then there's something called saddaka. Have you all heard of saddaka? It's just voluntary charity, giving. Yeah. Have you heard of that? And did you know even a smile? Yeah. You know that. It's saddaka, right? It's charity. Okay. So then, you know, people pay this cut once a year before Ramadan. And they, if you're on a farm, maybe all your wealth is in farm animals. Maybe you have sheep and you give a certain amount of your sheep, your extra sheep. Maybe you grow corn and you give corn. Maybe you have camels, right? You give and you have extra camels, right? So you would be giving something like the things that you have. But in today's world, people don't have camels. They may have bank accounts. They may have jewelry. They may have extra land or wealth. And that's the kind of thing they give. So you're going to learn all these rules when you grow up, right? Now, you see these children here? They're in a village where they don't have much money, right? And there's something called zakat al-fitr. And that is you want to give it before the Eid. So everybody, you see, they've come to get food. So everyone has enough food for the Eid. Wouldn't it be sad to have Eid and no food? Wouldn't that be sad? But there's also regular zakat, which you can pay, you know. And it would be sad if we had Eid and no candy. Yeah. Exactly. Imagine no candy. Nothing, right? So anyway, did you know that there are five parts that are necessary to pay zakat, you know? And children, I mean, you can, let's pretend, let's pretend you're grown-ups. Will everybody pretend you're a grown-up right now? Okay. Yeah, sure. You're a grown-up. Okay. Now, these are the first thing I want you all to do, all right? Put your hands on your hearts right now. Feel your heart, all right? Before you give your zakat, you have to intend something from your heart. Pretend you're in God's presence right now. And you've decided to give back from all the things you have. So your first thing is from your heart. You say, I intend to give this Ramadan. I'm going to give, right? And also, I promise not to delay. I'm not going to just put it off and put it off, right? And now there are two reasons I'm doing it. Now, think of all of this. One, I'm doing it because I want to help other people. Do you want to help other people? Yes. And also, I'm also doing it because I'm obeying a lot. Didn't Allah ask us to do this? Yeah. But you know what? Maybe sometimes it's not easy. It's even easy. Say you have a lot of money. You've got to figure out how much extra you have. You have to set aside the correct amounts. And there are eight types of people you have to give to. It's not easy to do all this, right? So what about you all do this? You go in your bedrooms and you make a huge pile of all your toys. You have a lot of that, don't you? Yeah, I have a pile. I have like two of them along. Yeah, you have a pile, all right? So now you have to be very honest. You're going to give some away. You don't have money to give, but you have toys, all right? So another thing you need to do is it's important is in some... Oh, these are some children. They had basketballs and they wondered, my goodness, we bought the basketball. Do we have to pay as a cat on it? No, no, they don't, right? No, they don't. Now, you see, when you have your as a cat, you know what? If you give it to people in another town, another city, the people in your own town feel sorry, it says here, when the money and goods are collected in a town and your toys, right? It's usual for these to be given to the needy in the same town. The poor would have their hopes crushed if everything was set off to a different place. So that's the fourth important thing that you give it in your own town. And also, there are different categories of people that you give to. Do you know, there are people who are very poor. They don't even have a change of clothes. Then they're needy people, right? Who don't make enough to survive. Then there are people who have debt. They owe money. And then there are prisoners who are deserving. And then maybe there are people who are traveling for the sake of God, right? And so all of these are categories of people. Now look at this little girl here. We have been learning from Imam al-Ghazali that they're both inner and outer ways of doing everything, just like in wudu and prayer. Remember in wudu and prayer, you can do your wudu fast, or you can be remembered from last week. Two weeks ago, you can be doing your wudu and saying, may Allah forgive me for what I've done. Allah, please make me, as I'm rinsing my mouth, say the right thing. That's the inner thing to do. And with your prayer, remember, are you just moving your lips? Are you just doing postures? Are you just saying ayat and you don't think about it? No. There's an inner way to pray and an inner way to do wudu. Well, there's an inner way to give zakat as well, right? Giving to the needy is outward help. But inwardly, are we helping ourselves by just doing what God asks us to do? Yes, right? So, let me go on. Now, oh, sorry, it keeps doing this. Now, to start with, you know, you need to, there are inward manners of giving. Here's a little boy, he's sitting with his toys. Imam al-Ghazali makes a great suggestion for polishing greed of your golden heart children. Get used to giving things away all the time. Force it to do every day, give something every day. And you know what? If you do that every day, kids, it's going to become a habit. And this is for adults too. Every day, give something. Just keep doing it. Little, big, not so big, little, and it'll become a habit. And that will, then it won't be so hard once it becomes a habit. So, we want to, giving zakat is a test. It helps you reach the next world and it helps to polish greed off your hearts. But it's also a way of thanking God for all that you have. Like, maybe you're attached to your stuff and you really love your stuff. Maybe this little boy, what is he putting into the box here? Maybe it looks like a kind of yellow, I don't know what it is. Maybe it looks like a Trumpet. It looks like a Trumpet. You're right. I bet what maybe is really hard for him to part with that, right? So, there's three types of people who give, right? Now, you remember what the Prophet's life was like? Do you remember how he had very little someone would come and he'd give them all the food he had in the house? Well, one day he said to the companion Omar, right? Now, with zakat, what did you keep back for your family? And the companion Omar said, I gave half of everything and I kept half from my family. And then he went to Abu Bakr Sadiq and he said, and what did you keep back for your family? And he said, what I kept back from my family was a lot in his messenger. I gave everything. Now, these are incredible people that they can give everything. But then they're the kind of people, right? They give a lot, but they keep back for all of their needs and in case there's an emergency and they don't live in luxury. That's pretty hard to do still. And then the normal people who just give exactly what was asked no more, right? But don't you think it's good to be generous at all times, everybody? What do you think? Should you always be generous? Yeah. Okay, look at this little boy. Can you read what he says? I'm pretty greedy with my things. It's not easy sharing or letting my friends take turns with my bike or giving things away. I find that I want to keep it all. So my goodness, the Quran says whoever is saved from his own greed, those are the successful ones. It's very important to clean your heart from greed, because you know what the Prophet said, peace and blessings be upon him? He said, greed, holding on to everything, right? That can lead you to becoming completely lost. Can you imagine getting completely lost? So children, would you like, would you take the habit with all of you promised to give something, even something little every day? Do you all promise to do this? Mothers and fathers too? Because if you do it every day, you know what? The greed will go down, down, down and happiness will go up, up, up because you know what? It's fun to give people and it makes you happy and you'll love it. So now the third aim of Zakat, right? I have a question. Please ask it. What is it? So I don't get how I get lost if I'm greedy. Like I don't get how. All right, I'll tell you how because it makes a big dirt on your golden heart and you lose your way if you have a dirty heart, you know? Do you know? A clear heart is like, have you ever seen a pond and trees are reflected in it? Beautiful reflections, but if the pond is full of waves, right? You can't see anything. Everything is, it's not reflected correctly. The tree looks like just a bunch of spots, right? If your heart is covered with spots, how can it reflect Allah's light, right? You want to keep your heart totally golden. So that's a very good question. I'm glad you asked it, right? So I also have a question. I would like to hear it. What is your question? When you say like you do it, what if you can't find something to give your toys to and when you go up and you're like all of them, you have like a kid or like a nephew or something. Does it still count if you give it to the nephew? Yes, you can give to anybody. Even I'll tell you what, even if you have a handful of peanuts and you go and give a peanut to a cat or you give a cookie to your mother, all that is giving just little bits of giving. You all can find little, you know what giving is? You can run in the kitchen and say, mommy, I want to give you a surprise. I'm going to set the table. That's giving too, isn't it? Yeah. And also, and also I was wondering if you have a pet, pet, does it count if you give them food that's giving, right? Yes. And they will, they, they love to be given to, you know, everybody like, don't you like to receive gifts when someone gives you something? Do you like that? Yes. You love it? Yes. Well, there you go. Yes. Yes. And so also, you know why we're so lucky, you know, with, for our bodies, if we do fasting and prayer, oh, we're, in a way, we're showing thanks that our body. Nothing to give. Everybody has something to give. You know what you could do? You could just take a piece of paper and write a little card. I love you, mom, and take it and give it to her. Wouldn't that be giving something? Anything. Anything. Yeah. So helping, like helping around the house that's giving. Yeah. So now what I want you all to think about is this. Remember what the good person does. They're running it and they're saying, here, here, here to their person in front of them, to the person at the side. We want to be children and grownups that say, here, here, have this, you know, someone comes into your house to visit, here, have a cookie, you know. So let's be the group of the good group that says, here, all right. Now I move to another picture here. Now, uh-oh, is it some inner duties when you give, okay? And you can start these from right now when you're young, all right? You see this little girl? She's putting money in the donation box, but she's showing everybody. Is she trying to show off and impress everybody? It says, if you give the cat or any charity in order to impress or be seen by others, your good deed is worth nothing. What you should do should be done in secret. The prophet said, peace and blessings be upon him. God doesn't accept the good deeds from somebody who reminds everyone of the favors he has done for them. Say you go and do something nice for someone. You help your mother and then you run and tell everyone, daddy, I help mother, you go to your brothers, you go to your grandmother, I help mother. So you're trying, where are you taking your credit from Allah or from them? You're just trying to, you know, you're trying to remind everybody what a good person you are. So you don't want to do that, right? That would be the wrong thing to do. Showing off, all right? And so anyway, God records your deeds, you know, the angels record your deeds, your good deeds. He records what you do in secret, what you do in public, and what you do only to be seen by others, like people who are bragging, right? But sometimes, you know, it's hard to remember, you know, that we have golden hearts and you think people won't like you if you don't impress them and show off and tell them what you've done, you know? And you know, we all do this. I mean, sometimes I want people to know when I've done something good. Do you ever experience that? Have you ever experienced that? Did you want people to know if you've done something good? Yes. But you know, when we watch people bragging and telling everybody the good they did, doesn't it impress us most if we notice somebody is doing it silently and sort of in secretly? That's much more impressive, you know? So also, it says also, look at this, if someone asked you for money in public, you should always give it to him or her. You don't, you might risk your heart, you know, by showing off. But also, you also don't want to hurt somebody by turning them down. If somebody reaches out, you know, I keep dollar bills, $20 bills in the car. When I'm driving around, if I come to a stoplight and somebody is there playing music or they have a sign they need money, I unroll the money and immediately give it, right? Because they've reached out and because I don't want to turn them down. You don't want to disappoint someone who's reaching out to you. But also, there is the question. You want to do it in secret, right? You don't want to show off your giving money. So then there's this question that arises. What if you're at a fundraiser and everyone's saying, who's going to give, the auctioneer says, who's going to give more money? We're raising money for this, for this mosque. And if you raise your hand, maybe it's not to be, to be a showoff. Maybe it's by you raising your hand and saying, I will give $500. That maybe encourages other people at your table and they feel, I'll give $500. So your intention is to get other people to do it. It's not to show off. And also, there's another thing too. For example, here is a man, okay, Abdullah asks, but what if someone gives a lot of money to help build a mosque? People will know about this. Father Hamza replied, yes. But the upright giver wouldn't remind people. So I don't think you can give and people can know about it, but you don't want to remind people. By the way, everyone, I gave $500 to the new mosque. Yes. Yes. I gave. I gave. Would that be good or would that be showing off? Showing off. Yeah. Yeah. But by the way, say you give to a poor person and they receive what you give to them. Do you know what? They also get blessings because they are helping a rich person to fulfill their duty of giving, right? Do you know rich people? They have many trials because they face being greedy and full of pride. If you're poor, how can you be greedy or show off because you have nothing? So in any case, even a poor person is helping, is being generous to a rich person by receiving what they give. So you know, we need to see our Zakat or another thing. This is important. Let me see if it's the next picture. Look, here's a little girl. She has nothing. If you saw that little girl, wouldn't you give her something? Wouldn't you give her something, everybody? What would you give her? Yes. Yes. Toys. Toys? Money. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we don't, we, and we don't want to remind her that we're being generous, but I'm going to tell you something, kids. Being greedy is so bad for your heart that here are some ideas from my ma'am Al Ghazali to keep you from being so greedy. Listen to this, okay? Realize what you're giving is small. Okay, if you go in your room with your pile of toys and you only give some toy, you don't care about one little toy and there's the rest of the pile there, just realize, right? Right. I'm really giving very little, right? And, then you have to remember all those toys are just from Allah and they're on loan. They're for you to use and to help and serve with. So this, you should feel shame for not giving more, right? And then, for example, let's say, let's say, see these little boys? Oh, a boy at school asked me to watch out for his big collection of Lego pieces. When he came to collect them, I kept a few pieces back for myself, thinking it was a small amount and wouldn't be missed. I can't believe I did this because he was stealing them, right? I will be returning them to him. I'm ashamed and embarrassed. So if you do anything naughty or wrong, you can always give it back. You can always say you're sorry and you can always change your ways, right? Now, here's, grandfather was a beekeeper, right? And it was time for him to give his a cat. So he had lots of wonderful honey. And so the children were interested that, you know, they enjoyed the bees a lot. And then when he came to give his honey, you know, beekeepers, we were beekeepers. We had beehives in Egypt. And we would take the beehives, not just to clover, but when there was the orange blossoms, just for a short time on the orange trees, we put our hives in the orange trees and then took them out. And the honey is like little flecks of orange and tastes like orange. I bet you never taste that honey, everybody, because it's so rare. And beekeepers usually keep it for themselves. But you know what grandfather did? The children said, so why are you giving your very best honey away? Children, grandfather replied, whom do we prefer, Allah, Sophanahu Wa Ta'ala, or others? It is good to give your very best. Would you give your worst food to guests if they came to your home? You wouldn't do that, would you children? So when it comes to going to your pile of toys, try to give your best. I know it's going to be very hard, but that's the greatest thing that you can do, right? Now, also, I have another question. Okay, go ahead. If you say if you encourage somebody, but you did give, is that still giving? Because if you encourage somebody to give, it's kind of like you're giving. Yes, that's a way of giving to encourage other people to give. That is very, you all are really smart kids, I have to tell you, I mean that you even saw that is really brilliant, right? Now, there are eight kinds of people you can give to. Let's think about these kinds. Now, you see this old lady here, Hajja Siddika spends every moment in prayer. She's devoted to the next life. We send her food regularly by feeding and helping pious people. I understand we are sharing in the rewards of their practice. What if she didn't have enough to eat and she was too weak to be glorifying Allah and we did nothing about it? So you must do ever know people that are old and perhaps poor, but they're very devout people, right? So that's one kind. And another kind is there may be scholars who give their life to studying and teaching. That's another, they may need money. They may need help, right? And then there's another thing you can do. Say you want to give to somebody and you don't want to embarrass them. So you go to their home and when they're not looking, you put behind the couch, maybe some money, maybe some food, maybe some gifts, right? But it's really what's going on is you are doing it for the sake of Allah and Allah knows that these people need help. So Allah uses you kind of as like a bridge to bring that to them. So these, sometimes you don't want to be thanked, do you? You weren't doing it for the thanks. Were you? You were doing it because it's the correct thing to do. So sometimes if someone gives you something, you don't have to thank them. You could say, praise to God who didn't forget someone who needed help. That's another way to do it. And also there is another type of person to give to. You see, here's a dignified man. He's very poor and he hides his needs. He doesn't complain. He doesn't say I'm poor. He doesn't grumble and ask for his needs. That's a good type of person to give to, right? And then there's some people who are disabled or hurt or they've been ill, right? And they need support because they can't even help themselves. That's a good type of person to give to. And then also you may have relatives who need money, right? Or maybe you have people that are your spiritual companions. These are all good people to give to. So now, one day the children are going to, we're about to end the story of Zakat before we do fasting. One day the children are going on a hike. So they're going to have a picnic on top of a mountain and they're walking through this town and they see a great number of people who have very little. Some of them are reading Quran. Some of them are selling small items of food. And there's the difference. The people who are fucked here are people who really don't even have a change of clothes. But the people who are miskeying, they actually have jobs, but they can't make enough. They can't make enough to support themselves. So poor people who don't have enough, they are very aware that they depend on the law. But if you have an awful lot of stuff, you forget that you depend on a law. You don't even remember that you're depending on the law. So poor people have that advantage. They know they know they're aware that they depend on God. So also if people give us something, right, we should thank them. Maybe it's coming from a law, but we have to thank those who give us because the prophet said peace and blessings be upon us. He who does not thank people does not thank God. So it's also our duty to pray for people who give to us, right? And if people do a favor, we should return it. And if we're unable to return the favor, we can pray for them too. Now the children here are on a journey. Are we all on a spiritual journey together? You and me and all of us together. We are your mother, your dad, your teachers. We're on a journey and we're trying to reach our golden hearts. So here are the kids. They're going up a path, a path of their golden heart up the mountaintop. And oh, by the way, if this is another important thing, right? If someone gives you a gift, make a big deal out of it. Say somebody has made something and they hand it to you. What do you just say? I'll just, you just take it and say, oh, thanks. No. Wouldn't you say, thank you so much. You make a big deal about them giving you something. And like you want to see other people, they're getting praise and we should do it in front of everyone. You have to make a big deal. And even for example, like cooking. Look at this lady. It says, my mom cooks all day for the guests, but she politely plays it down. When the guests come, she just says, oh, please come for a tiny bit of refreshment. She doesn't say, I've been in the kitchen all day long, slaving, getting the food ready for you. Right. She makes light of it. You know, she doesn't want to attract a lot of praise. So these are some of the ways to give, right? You don't brag about it. All right. Now also, Imam al-Ghazali said avoid things that are doubtful. And that is a mark of somebody on the path to the next world. Right. You can feel it in your heart. If you're not sure whether you should do something or not, whether it's good or bad, ask your heart and your heart will grate a little bit. It'll tell you. So you should avoid, if you don't know whether a thing is good or bad, just avoid it. All right. So the children finally reached the top of the mountain, but the path was filled with many difficulties. And they remembered the story Imam al-Ghazali told in the book of knowledge that we're on a journey. Your children, we're all on a journey. Do you think the path is going to be easy? There are going to be no rocks in the path? No. There are going to be difficult patches, right? But these are our opportunities to polish our heart. So also, if you saw a little girl like this who is sad, what would you, what would any of you all do? What would you do? What would be your charity? Tell me. Cheer her up. Cheer her up. Right. That would be charity. That's saddaka, you know, even a kind word. And, you know, when you're little, like you all, and let's say like your mothers and fathers, you all are very young, right? And so, and so when you have to give something away, maybe it's tough on you because, you know, it's hard. You want to hang on to your toys. You want to hang on to your wealth. But if you do it when you're young or like your parents age, many rewards, because it's difficult to give, you get to be old a person like me. I don't mind giving things away because I want to get rid of things, right? I have all the, I don't even need what I've got. Do you think I get as many rewards for that? No, right now, while you're young, if you give, you get many, many special rewards for that, right? And also, another thing, everybody, you don't want to, you don't want to complain. If you're sick, don't complain about it. If you, if, if you've given charity, don't brag about it. Don't complain about your hardships. Oh, I'm having such a hard time. Do you like to listen to people talking like that? Oh, I'm having such a hard time. I've got so many problems. I've got a headache. Do you like that kind of, do you like to listen to that? No. So it's, you're being charitable. You're being, giving charity, if you don't do that to people, if you give people a break, right? So we'll end this with the story about the sweater. All right. You know how we talked earlier, how it's better to give things in secret and not show off. Look what's happened here. This little girl said, when I gave my pink jacket to the little girl in the park, I wanted you all to see instead of my trying to please God, I wanted everybody to think highly of me. And even worse, I did it openly. I could have hurt the little girl's self-respect. Besides humiliating her, I singled her out from the others. I disgraced myself too. So if you're going to give something to someone, right? You, particularly if they're in need, you don't, you want to protect them. You don't want them to be ashamed of being needy, do you? And also, you don't want, maybe the people who are looking, she's giving the pink jacket. Maybe they're envious. Maybe they wish I'm getting the pink jacket too. So there is, by giving in public, you might create, people might feel envious. And you know, you know what Imam al-Dazali said? You won't believe this, everybody, parents and children. He said, you know, imagine, you might be careful when you go out to a party or to a big occasion, if you wear a really fancy new pretty outfit, maybe people will envy you. Do you want to create envy? No, it's a terrible thing, envy. So even to the point of not showing off when you go out with your clothes, right? So children, you know, finally the end. I have a question. I'd like to hear your question. What is it? Um, my mom told me that the Prophet's Iceland, when you go outside, you should wear nice clothes, but you just said we shouldn't wear nice clothes. No, you should wear nice clothes, but not very show offy, very fancy, very expensive, not to show off with, not to make people envy you. No, we want to wear nice clothes. Of course we have to be, we have to dress with dignity and beauty. That's a very good thing you pointed out. Thank you. Can I tell my question now? Yes. Oh, I'd love to hear your question. What is it? What is envious mean? Envious is to want what somebody else has. Maybe you see they have a pretty dress or a better doll or a fancier car and you wish I wish I had what they had. That's to envy. Instead of the other way is to be content. I have what Allah gave me. Alhamdulillah. Right. Thank you. That's a good question. Okay, so now we're going to have the last question. So the children made it to the top of the mountain, of their journey. Here, high up among the heavenly clouds surrounding their mountain top, the children could see clearly with real sight, they could understand all of these invisible inner things that go on inside of us that make all the difference. So I think what we've just learned is that it's really, really important the way you give inside how you are. You know, I think we've all learned something from this. So now we're going to do very quickly. It's very short. The fasting chapter of Ghazali is just two or three pages, but I don't want you to miss it because it's got many amazing things you're going to have. Any of you ever tried to fast Ramadan even for a day or so? Have you tried? You have? Was it very? I tried that one I was three times. I was really hungry every Ramadan. You do? Even, oh that's wonderful. I fasted like most of Ramadan. And once I fasted too. Once I fasted too, but my stomach hurt. I fasted for two hours. Oh that's wonderful. Before I got starving. When you're older, you can do it. Now you're going to hear a little bit about 25 days. 25 days. That's brilliant. That's just great. All right. So I'm going to start out and tell you a little, a few highlights here. All right. Okay. Fast, we're going to hear some fasting. Okay. Look at this. See these kids in this fortress they made out of cardboard? Fasting is like a protective fortress. It protects you. Once you're inside, notice that when you're not full, but you feel a bit weak from fasting, you feel more spiritual. When you're slowed down and you don't feel all your everyday busy self, it's easier to be more aware of your spiritual heart. The fasting kind of weakens you, but it's actually, it's like a safe fortress. You can get inside and you're not just totally overwhelmed by all your whirling. It gives you a state of peace, right? And Hamza Yusuf said, it also lets you feel when you're calm, you feel gratitude, right? You can be grateful that you have eyelashes. Why aren't we happy to have eyelashes and eyelids? They're like windshield wipers for our eyes. We can say, we have eyelids. We can start to think about things we might overlook because we calm down when we're fasting, right? And also because if we didn't have eyelashes, we would look ugly. Oh, you remember that? Remember that we were doing that from, that's one, we were talking about the sunnah last time of prayer. And if your prayer didn't have all the sunnah, it would be ugly, like not having eyelashes. Good for you that you remembered that. You really learned a lot last time. I'm very proud of you. And also remember in Ramadan, also the doors of paradise are wide open and there's a special gate to Jannah and it's called the gate of Rahan. It's a Rahan for people who fast. Now, did you know that fasting, just like we do in prayer, has inner and outer parts, the outer parts of fasting are what? Giving up food and drink and water and all that all day long. Isn't that right? That's what you do. But did you know there's something you can do inside too? Like being patient. Patient is being patient is like invisible, right? Okay, let's look at this. Here are these children. They're being patient. Look at that. They're sitting with a big cake and they're fasting. Little Abed added. Yes, fasting can teach us a lot of different things. What if mother made a yummy cake and put it on the table? I would certainly want to run up and have a big bite right away. But when we are fasting, we have to be patient and we wait for later. We get a chance to practice and learn patience, which we know is very important. In fact, we're told that half of fasting is patience because it's that hard. There's a Hadith al-Qudsi. You know what a Hadith al-Qudsi is? This isn't something just that the Prophet himself peace and blessings be upon him said. It's something he heard from Allah, right? And it says, God, by the way, God is boasting to his angels about a young person. It could be one of you who is devoted to God's worship and service. And he says, Oh young person who have given up your desires and sacrifice this time of your health and your strength for my sake and me, you are like one of my angels. So in other words, children, you know, you're active and you want to be outdoors and you're running around and all this, you've got all this energy and all of a sudden you're fasting. You're giving up all that running around. Your grandmother, maybe she's just sitting at home anyway, and she's not giving up much, but it's tough. You've got to give up fun activities and running around and all your energetic stuff. So when you fast and you give up some of all that and you're calm down, you get to be like one of Allah's angels. Wouldn't you all like to be one of the angels? Sure. And also, it's also because you get a very special relationship with Allah when you fast. Fasting is done alone. Only for me is Allah saying it. So I give a special reward for it. Only God knows if you're fasting. People can see you praying, can't they? People can see you doing wudu. People can see you giving zakat. Can they see you fasting? No. How can they tell whether you're fasting? You could have secretly eaten a bite of candy, right? And so it's so. I have something to say. What? Yes. Go ahead, share. Sorry. I mean myself. Um, Dan, no, when you break your fast, I'm pretty, so if you stop thinking of Allah for one second, and I'm pretty sure that breaks your fast too, is that true? What was the question? Oh, I don't know what you're asking. It was kind of a question. I asked, when, um, I heard some, I heard some, where did if you stop thinking of Allah for a second when you're fasting in that it breaks your fast, is that true? Well, no, you can't possibly think of the law all the time, but you want to come back to thinking of the law. None of us can do it. It's too hard, but we are trying. That's you got it right. It's the aim. What you've talked about is what we aim to do. It's the ideal, but it doesn't break your fast. If you can't think of him at all times, we wish we could. But what's happening is our fasting is starting to like, um, oh, it's lowering our, our nafs, our lower self, we're getting weaker. And all, and also when you're fasting, it's like a shield that protects us, you know, and look at the Kaaba here. Imam al-Ghazali explains that just as the Kaaba and the sacred sanctuary that surrounds it are specially honored by Allah, even though the whole earth is sacred and belongs to him, fasting is special to Allah among all the Ibadah. You know, we, we have prayer and, and everything else. And those are all wonderful, but he says fasting is special the way the Kaaba and the sanctuary is special. So it's a, it's a very special thing we're getting to do. Now, all right, children. Now I know you all, all of you want to keep your pure golden noble hearts golden. Okay. So I'm going to tell you the outer and the inner ways to do it with fasting. Okay. To start with, there are six things you've got to do. Okay. And it's outer. First, the moon has to be seen. Did you all know that someone has to see the crescent moon for Ramadan to begin, right? Yes. You're that, right? Yes. Right. And then also, then also the night before, the night before, and I've forgotten this, every night before you're going to fast the next day, you have to intend that night. Tomorrow, Thursday, I intend to fast for a lot for Ramadan. You can't wake up in the morning and think, Oh, I'm going to fast. You're supposed to intend it the night before. So I want you all to remember that, right? And then of course, you all know that you can't take anything in medicine or nothing. And you can't go in the bathroom and gargle water, hoping some will give you some relief. You can't do that, right? So, and there are other things you can't do, but grownups will tell you about this and all these extra rules you'll find out. But also, you want to eat, you don't want to like eating it, have you so whore at midnight. You want to wait until it's close to the Fajr prayer as you can to have your, to have your, your last bit of food to eat. And then you want to hurry and when the fast is over, you want to hurry and break it with dates and water. You all know that. And by the way, afternoon, you don't want to brush your teeth or use the SWAC because that also gives you relief. And we're not trying to get relief, right? Now, what it is good is if, now listen to this children, it's good if Ramadan, you can recite and study Quran, maybe a 1 30th every day. And an evening, you ever go with your, your parents to the mosque to do the Taraweah prayers? Have you ever done that? Now I'm going to guess what, I'm going to tell you something. You're something very exciting. Okay. It was very exciting. Do you know the prophet peace and blessings be upon him? He would spend the last 10 days in the mosque making a retreat. It's called it to calf. Can you all say it to calf? Say it, it to calf, calf. All right, it to calf. And he, in fact, he took his family and the companions, everyone went and did that. And they stayed the last 10 days, because in the last 10 days, by the way, one of those days, there will be the night of power. And if you happen to be praying at that time, it's worth more than a thousand months. So it's, it's in the last 10 days. And the, as I said, the prophet did it with his family. Well, let me just tell you something children, listen to this. One of the children exclaimed, Omar, you don't have to wait until your next year. The mosque near my house has a special program during the last 10 days. We children take our sleeping bags during the day. We have special classes, a chance to read religious books. And of course we recite Quran by already going on retreat at our age. We can start the practice of an important sunnah of our blessed prophet. Alhamdulillah. Not only that, we can polish our hearts by practicing patience. So children, you might ask your local mosque, next Ramadan, if you all can come in, maybe just for a few hours and practice your retreat. Maybe you just do it a little bit and get used to it. Wouldn't that be fun to do? You get to do the very special retreat. I mean, it's amazing. Now, Hajj Abdullah. All right, Hajj Abdullah. I have a question. Okay, go ahead. Like, um, why did the kids say we have to bring our sleeping bags when they were not even gonna sleep? Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe you could sleep there with your parents, but maybe you could also just take a nap or rest. You know, you might, you know what, you all are really smart, you know, because somebody's saying hi. Hi. So you're really right about that. It could rest maybe your father or mother would be doing the whole spending the night, and maybe you could spend the night too, but you'd have to be very good. You'd have to be very quiet. Could you do that? Could you be quiet? You could give it a try. You could probably not. Probably not. Well, just like some of you are just fasting for a few hours right now, maybe you could just go and do retreat for an hour. All right, now we got to the end of our program. I think you all are real troopers, the fact that you all have stayed up this late and you've been this attentive. Whoever is calling out, they should be quiet so we can do the last bit. All right, here we go. All right. Oops. Oh, dear. I wanted to go back to here. Hajj Abdullah. All right. They went to Hajj Abdullah and he began. I am sure you came today because you wanted to learn about the inner secret conditions of the fast. What Imam al-Ghazali teaches us, you should first know there are three levels of fasting, everybody, three levels, one done by most people. And then there's the fasting of the elect, and then there's the special folk and the fasting of the elect of the elect, the really, really special people. The children wondered if they were special enough to be in the second group. Okay, I'm going to tell you the three groups. Normal group is people who give up eating and drinking and all of that during the day. You know what, just the normal fast. But then the special people, and you all can start to do this, you can become part of the special people. They also- I'm already the special people. Of course you are. You already got a golden heart. You just want to keep it that way. You know, so then the next thing is, you know, in Wudu, how we, when we rinse our mouth, we're not just spitting the water out. We're actually thinking, Ya Allah, keep me from saying bad things. Washington years, don't let me listen to bad things. You can do it when you're fasting. So all the body parts, the ears, the mouth, the nose, the feet, the hands, they get to fast too. And I'll tell you how, right? And then the last one is the fasting of the heart. Now this is, this is like the prophet peace and blessings be upon him and all the wonderful saintly beings. These are people who only in Ramadan, they never think of anything. You know what, one of you mentioned about thinking only about Allah. They only think about Allah in the last day. And nothing more. But that's very hard to do. You have to be so pure, your heart has to be so polished and so golden. But that's, so we're going to try to be like the middle group. We're not going to just fast from food and drink and watch TV all day and hang out and think and say any dumb thing and, and listen to stupid music. We're not going to do that. We're going to, we're going to try to do the fast of a special people, the salihim. So I want you all to begin, right? Now let's think of ways that your eyes can fast. Do you think your eyes are fasting if you're just watching hundreds of dumb cartoons all day long? Or what would be better to do with your eyes? Can anyone think what would be a more beautiful thing to do with your eyes? What could you look at that's beautiful? Listen to Quran. Yes. That's good for your ears. Your eyes, maybe you go outside and look at the trees and the flowers. You know, right? Something good for the eyes, maybe to, maybe to like watch something on TV, like that's on Ramadan, like something. Oh, that's good. You see, that's good. You could, that would be a good thing. And like with your mouth, should you be talking all the time or should you like read Quran or be quiet? What do you think is the better thing to do with your mouth? What if you are good idea? Would you be like arguing? Horrible. I have in comments. You what? I have in comments. What is your comment? I just can't wait until Ramadan. You want to fast, all right? You want to start fasting now? Yeah. You can. There are two days a week, some people fast. So why don't you try to fast part of a day and do all of these things in your fast? That would be fantastic. That would be great practice. All right. You can fast your eyes by looking at a beautiful water fountain. You know what? That is so beautiful. What you just said is so, I can't even tell you. Fast your eyes by looking at a waterfall. That makes me cry. That's so beautiful. Who said that? That's really great. What's your name? Abraham. I said that. Oh, Abraham said that. How lovely. Now if you were bragging or gossiping, wouldn't that be beneath your inner dignity to brag or gossip or argue in Ramadan? Wouldn't that be horrible? Horrible, right? Yeah, that would be horrible. Well, okay, there's something I've got to tell you. This is a terrible story. Yeah, this is a hadith. In the life of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, there were two ladies and they came up to him and they said, we are old and frail and weak. We would like your permission to break our fast in Ramadan. And he handed them a bowl and he said, you've already broken your fast. Take this bowl and throw up in it. And all these people were standing around looking and they went, and you know what came out? Pieces of flesh and blood because they had been gossiping. And you remember from the book of knowledge, if you talk a back bite behind someone's back, talk about somebody badly or behind their back. The Quran says it's the same as eating their dead flesh. So these women, and this is a true story, a true hadith of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. He told them to do that and everyone saw it. So certainly you wouldn't want to gossip during ever, ever anyway. But if you did it, if you gossiped and talked badly about someone during Ramadan, you broke your fast. You lost the day. So no one will do that. You would never do that, would you? I mean, you'd never do it anyway. All right. Oh, by the way, children, now let's see. And we come to the end. There are three levels. We've done the three levels of fasting. Okay. And okay, the next thing is, if you're hearing gossip, you wouldn't listen to that. Would you run away if somebody talks badly? Right. And also, with your feet and hands, don't do bad things because that will break your fast if you're trying the inner special way, if you're one of the special people. And actually, don't let your feet take you to terrible places. All right. Now, don't forget, when you break your fast, what do you break it with? Dates. Dates and water. That's right. Now, we also do tahari or whatever that was. Oh, that sounds delicious. I'd love to hear about this. We fill out dates with stuff like butter and stuff. Oh, yum. Okay. Well, let me tell you something. Now, I don't know how your Ramadan's have gone, but Imam al-Ghazali tells you, don't eat a huge amount of food. Don't make up all the food you've missed. Say you're having dinner. Have dinner. Don't make up lunch and breakfast. Don't pile it all in because we're trying to improve our souls and not just be all day long thinking about special treats and desserts. No, no. We're trying to stop thinking about all this worldly stuff. And the spirit of fasting, the spirit of when you're fast, is you want to be a little weak, right? You want to reduce your energy, right? It helps you feel more spiritual inside rather than the sort of a go-gettering attitude. And like, don't sleep all day. Some people sleep during that. Yeah. No, you don't want to do that because part of Ramadan, I would do that instead of doing PE class. Oh, that's good. And if you've had it, if you're in school, you need to rest. But there's some people who during Ramadan, they stay awake the whole night eating and having a good time. He does my PE teacher. Yeah. He makes us one of the hardest stretches. Oh, he does. Well, I'm very proud of you, you know. And also, you know, if you go to pray the Taraweeh prayer with your parents and you're feeling a little weak, you'll feel very spiritual. If you're all stuffed with food, you won't feel, you'll just feel heavy. And also, it's like if we're the night of power, you know, if you were there for the layletal kadr and you were stuffed with food, it says that if you're slightly empty, you might even be able to see the heavenly dominion on the layletal kadr. And Ghazali said something, have you ever seen a horse that hears the horse's face and they put a bag on it and it's eating out of a feeding bag. It's hanging down and it's got hay in it. Have any of you ever seen that, a feeding bag on a horse? No. Well, they haven't. I like horses and I've seen one before when I really want to go to a horse riding school and I went to one. Oh, well, you went to horse ride? Yeah, I think so. But I petted the horses there and I saw them. Don't you love horses? They're so beautiful. But I did not see a single horse eating it. Okay. Well, Ghazali said whoever places a feed bag between his heart and his breast will be bailed from deeper truths. He's saying that people who have eating, eating, eating, they've separated themselves from their heart. He said lots of food keeps us thinking about the world and you want to be light, you want to lighten yourself. And also don't forget when you break your fast, have your water and dates and very important, Ghazali says, when you're breaking your fast, this is something very important. Be in a state of fear and hope, hoping that your fast was good all day long and you didn't mess it up. And afraid, oh my goodness, even if you think you did a good job, you're afraid you might have messed up. If you don't want to think, I did a perfect fast. The thing is you'll want to be humble when you're breaking your fast, right? And then look at these children and he, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, recited a law's words. The Prophet placed his hands on his ears and his eyes and he said, hearing is a trust and sight is a trust. The children put their hands over their ears and their eyes, feeling these were precious gifts. Your sight and your hearing are trusts, so these are given to you by a law as a sacred trust. And so you don't want to mess them up or abuse them. You don't want to listen to bad stuff or see bad stuff. You'd never do that, would you? Right? Now, this is interesting. The goal of fasting, and this is very, we're at the end. This is very hard for you to understand, but I'm going to say it anyway. The goal of fasting is you're supposed to take on one of the qualities of a law. And that one is in fasting, he is the everlasting, independent, Samadhiya. Does God need anything or he needs nothing? Does God need anything or he doesn't need anything? Nothing. He has everything. He needs something like to listen to Quran. Well, he likes us to recite Quran. Those are his words. But a fasting person should imitate the angels as much as possible, because the angels don't want or need anything, anything at all. And they're the nearest to a law. So what we try to do is not be so needy, you know, be content with what we have. So children, what I'd like to say is, oh, you see here, here's this little girl, this inner practice, she's not eating lots and lots of food that increase the body's pleasure and strength. The spirit of fasting is to weaken the body's energy by taking less food. So look, she's not having tons and tons of stuff. Is she? Look at her. She's having a correct, simple, humble meal. So what I wanted to end by telling you all, here is Hajj Abdullah, right? I want you all to really think about your golden hearts. Every minute of the day, all of these ideas, keep them alive. Every minute there's a chance to polish it. Every second you have a way you can polish your heart. You can be smiling. You can give something. You can listen to the right thing. You can do the right thing. So the children, this is the end. Here's Hajj Abdullah. The children were deeply relieved to have been introduced to the inner meanings, the kernels inside the outer husks, the beautiful forms of their faith. Hajj Abdullah's last words were, oh youth, he's talking to you children. Oh youth, know that you are in charge of your own hearts. Children, parents, we're all in charge of our own hearts, right? And as he slowly disappeared between the trees, the little boy Abu Bakr said, now we know what to do and why. So children, parents, me, we've listened to Al Ghazali and we have all these wonderful things. We know what to do and we know why to do them. So let's start doing them bit by bit, all right? And next week, we're going to do, all right, we're, we all promise, we all promise. All right. Next week is, next week is the Hajj and it's really fun, some children going on the Hajj. And then afterward, we do the pilgrimage, the Hajj every year, the Muslims, you're going to find out next week. Oh, like, like we go to Umrah? Yes, exactly. You're right. That's the smaller pilgrimage. But you're gonna, you know what you're gonna learn? All the secrets of the Umrah next time. Isn't it like, it's an extension. The beginning of the Hajj is like Umrah. And then you go on to, to, to Mount Ara, uh, anyway, to, uh, you go out to the plain of Mount Ara, Ara fat, Ara fat. Yeah, what was I thinking? I forgot. Anyway, so we're going to do that. In the final final session, we're going to have a magical thing on all the things we believe. You know, what is in our heart, what we believe and it's going to be so much fun. So you know what? I've kept you up 17 minutes later than you're supposed to. And I know you all want to go to bed, but I want to go to bed. So I love you all and I thought your questions today were wonderful and your answers. And I just can't believe that you can be as young as you are. And you're so smart. Thank you. Yeah. Mashallah. As-salamu alaykum everyone. As-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum. As-salamu alaykum. Well, welcome this really wonderful family of brilliant young people. Your children are really smart. I remember last week you knew everything and we hope our friends from Indonesia are with us again. So now we're going to, of course, you children are too young to make the Hajj. Have any of you known anyone who went on Hajj or did Umrah, any grandparents or did you know of anybody, any of you? Yeah. You've known people? Well, it's a good thing to know about. Not only because you want to understand why they go to school, but it's such an important part of our religion, right? But I'll tell you something really special, everybody. The ideas you're learning in order to make the pilgrimage are also important for your life right now as it is. Do you know there are two journeys? One journey is the one we're on right now. You're grown. You all are going to school. You're growing up. You'll probably get married. You know, you'll have a life. You'll get grandchildren. Then you'll die. That's a life, one kind of a journey, right? But the Hajj is another kind of a journey, right? And it has ideas in it which we can use right now. But today, I mean, you know, this book you're looking at, you see the cover, The Mysteries of Pilgrimage for Young People. This book was really written for older kids, sort of 10 years old and older. And then we have in the back of it one for little kids. But it's all really, really profound stuff. And even though I think it's going to be a little over your head, can you listen to it anyway just to sort of know what's going on in general? Would that be all right? All right. So when your parents or people make the Hajj, this tells the inner meanings of it, this book. If they're going to make a regular pilgrimage, like your granny, she needs to buy a proper Hajj manual, which is adjusted for everything you need when you get there. So now, what the essential ideas, even though this book was written by Imam al-Dazali, oh, 900 years ago, yeah, 900 years ago, everything is still the same. And so, have you ever heard of our friend Hamza Youssef? He's a great scholar. Yes. He's great. Yes, I will next year. He wrote the introduction for this book, and he said, many things make journeys, right? Like, I mean, some journeys we do, we're just going on vacation, right? We're visiting our grandmother, but the Hajj journey is really important for all of you because it's the other part that's real in your life. But think of animals. Don't animals? Think of the monarch butterfly and think of salmon. They set off on journeys, the monarch flies from Mexico up to Canada, and its children know how to get all the way back to Mexico. The salmon come out of the ocean and they swim all the way back up rivers to get to the place where they came from, and nothing can deter them. They don't lose their concentration, right? But they prepare for this. You know, they eat better, they get fat in their system because they're making a long journey, right? And so, we can learn a lot from animals, right? We should be concentrated and we should prepare, right? So, what we're going to do as people though, we don't have like animal instincts how to get back to an ocean, but we have the instinct, we have the deeper knowledge to go out and try to become close to Allah and have knowledge of Him. And so, this Hajj journey is going to remind us of things we have forgotten. You know, when somebody dies, they say, Did you ever hear that? It says, Surely we belong to God and surely the return is to God. And so, that very important idea you learn in the Hajj, by the way. So, like, we keep doing this wrong here. So, you have to know children that, again, we all have a really unique golden heart, right? Does everybody remember that? Remember that you all have a golden heart, right? And so, you have to remember that your golden heart is the thing that you're supposed to take care of and you're learning how to do that from Imam Al-Ghazali, right? Now, in the story, the children are walking home from school, but today they're going to the magic garden. Do you see the door to the garden hidden behind the wisteria? Isn't it magical and beautiful? They're going to see Hajj Abdullah, right? And on their way there, they're talking about how much they've learned in their life, learning from Him, how they know, just like you, the inner things to do with your wudu, the inner things to do with your prayer, these are all things you've learned. You learned about zakat and fasting last week. These are all very special learnings. And so, anyway, the children are on their way to see Hajj Abdullah. And so, let me just say, in order to learn anything, we need guidance and we get this from the Quran, and we also get it from the prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, all right? So then, let me just go to the next picture, all right? Now, the children go to Hajj Abdullah and they speak to him. And he says to them, you know, the Hajj is an incredible chance for you to learn everything you need to know and how to practice. And the Hajj teaches you, it gives you a way to practice dying while you're alive in this world. Have you ever known something that didn't die? Don't flowers die? Do people die? When the sun goes, night comes on, yes, yes. Do animals go to heaven? They go to the next world, yes, everything, you know? And so, since everything is going to die, isn't it good that we find out a little bit more about dying? Don't you think you need to know? Yes. Who else has their hand up there? Yes. Yes? We watch a show called Wild Cratch and it's about animals. Oh, it's about animals? Oh, how lovely. Animals are so beautiful, right? And so, since everything... I have a question. Yes? Well, I heard once, like, it's that moose or something, that all animals straight away go to heaven. Well, why wouldn't they? You know? Allah knows, Allah knows, you know? But I think so. So, anyway, so they're sitting with Hajj Abdullah and they go to see him. That's what they tell him. They're in the magic garden and little the fox is listening to him and a spider comes down and they say, oh, Hajj Abdullah, very exciting news. Two of us, Bilal and Leila, we're getting to go on the Hajj with our grandmother and our mother and father. And Hajj Abdullah said, well, that's really interesting that you're going to be doing this because this gives me a chance to teach you about the Hajj. And I just want you to know something, children. This may be one of the last few times you see me. I haven't been very well. So the children started crying and they said, what? You're dying? What's happening? We don't want to lose you. And he said, what did we learn in the very first time from the Book of Knowledge? One, we have two... There are two kinds of learning. One is the special learning how to polish the heart and we're learning to polish our heart because there are two worlds getting ready for the next world. In this life we're in has lots of difficulties. Remember that, kids? And these difficulties are chances to polish your heart. But, you know, in the end, when you go to the next world, you're finally at peace, finally in content and you have everything. So the children were really sad to think that Hajj Abdullah might die. And he'd given his life to polishing his heart. Why shouldn't he be allowed to go to the next world, go to paradise? So anyway, the children said, oh, they would love to know all about the Hajj. And they said, you know... Oh, let me see this. Yeah. They would love to learn about the pilgrimage. They did know it involved wearing special clothes, visiting the Kaaba, spending an entire day on the plane of Arafat and asking for God's forgiveness in the company of Muslims from every community the world over, right? So, Hajj Abdullah said that on his second Hajj, so we have to ask everybody, children, what is behind all these rights going to all these places? What do they mean and why are they so important? Would you like to find that out today? With lots of fun pictures? We're going to learn that today. So Hajj Abdullah, when he made his second Hajj, he used Al Ghazali's book. And so he's going to tell us why it's so important to go to Mecca and Medina. Have you ever wondered why is it so important? And then, like, why is Hajj considered the special worship, right? One of a lifetime. It's a seal or it's a crown for your other things, for prayer and purification, for zakat and for fasting. This is the crown of all these other ways. So anyway, keep doing that. So here are the two little children imagining themselves going to the Kaaba. This is Balala and Layla imagining themselves sitting there. Can you all imagine what it would be like sitting there? Well, you should know there's some hadith, The Prophet, Peace and Blessings be upon him, said, If you perform the Hajj and you don't say any low, stupid talk, right, and your actions are good, and when you return, you return as pure as on the day when you were born. And he also said that a Hajj that is accepted by Allah, is better than all the world what it contains and everything in the world and is rewarded by heaven. And by the way, Ghazali mentions, when you go on the Hajj children, you will be God's guest and you can ask him for whatever you like. Now, if you have guests that come to your house, would you tell them no if they asked for something? No, so you would be God being God's guest. So by the way, some people ride on donkeys to reach Mecca and the angels run out and greet them, but some people walk there and the angels run out and hug them and embrace them. Why do you think they would embrace the ones who are walking? Yes. They're trying to get more of Allah's blessing. Yes, because they're making more of an effort, aren't they? They're not just sitting, riding, they're actually walking. And so also when the pilgrims get to Mecca, even if you're just sitting there, see the children are gazing, that Allah gives special portions of His mercy 20% to those who are just sitting looking at the Kaaba and another 40 for those who are praying and another 60 of those who are walking around the Kaaba, making Tawaf, right? Now you see, here's the black stone. Do you see the black stone? It's put in a silver casing and it's put in the corner of the Kaaba. And I don't know whether you knew or not, but it fell from heaven and the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him and others helped to place it in the corner of the Kaaba. All right? Now, there was a companion, Radi Allahu Anhu, named Omar. And you know what he said? He said to the stone, he said, I know you are just a stone with no harm or benefit and I only kiss you because the Prophet kissed you. And then the companion Ali, Radi Allahu Anhu came and said, oh, I'm going to tell you a story. All right, children, get ready for an amazing story. All right? In the very, very beginning, did you know Allah created Adam? He was the first Prophet. And from Adam, all of us were inside of Adam before we even came to be. All humanity that would ever come to be were inside of Adam. And Allah said to Adam, Adam, am I not your Lord, your Lord? And Adam said, yes, of course you are. And God said, I ask you this because on the day of reckoning, the day of last judgment, I don't want you to say you never heard of this, you know, you never heard that I was your Lord. So Adam and Allah, there was a contract written, an agreement. Do you know where this contract is between Allah and Adam? It's inside of the black stone. It's inside of it. Can you imagine that? So this is an amazing thing. So when you go to walk around the Kaaba, you start at the corner with the black stone. And the very first thing you say, you say in the direction of the black stone, if you can't get near, if you can get near, you would kiss it. But if you're way back, you just hold up your hand like this and you again say, oh God, I do this walking around the Kaaba, right? Believing in you, affirming the truth of your book and fulfilling your love. So you are remembering the contract that is made in your name. It's inside of there. Wouldn't you all agree to this contract if Allah said, am I not your Lord? Would you all say yes? Of course you would. So then just to let you know that if you're in Mecca when you get to go, if you fast for one day or do charity or some goodness, do you know it's worth 100,000 fasts anywhere else in the world. So you could go to Mecca and you could fast one day and it's like 100,000 fastings or acts of charity. And the value of prayer and good deeds are multiplied as well, you know? So, see this little girl with her pure heart, do you all have golden hearts like this? You do. Can you feel it? When you're praying next time, remember exactly, yes you can feel it. This is who you really are. This is the real you inside, right? And so, you know, this little girl said, I would love to live in Mecca. But you know what they told her? No, it would be nice, but you might start taking Mecca for granted. It's much better that you're yearning to go back, that you're dying to go back, you know? It's the house of Allah, right? And whoever visits it, visits God. So you should be yearning to visit God. Not just think, oh, I live in Mecca. I live here. You might get bored, right? You wouldn't want to do that. So you yearn to be near to Allah, right? So then here's a story. See the little boy standing? You see the big curtain hanging down, everyone? That's called the kiswah. It's a beautiful covering. And they change it every year during the Hajj. They put up the fresh one. And this beautiful kiswah covers the Kaaba. Listen to the story. One night I was passing. Let me put my glasses on. One night I was praying in the hijra. This is this little semi-circular area where Saddam Ismail is buried. When I heard a voice between the Kaaba and the curtain, and the curtain, and the Kaaba said, to God I complain, then to you, oh Gabriel, of what comes from those who make circuits around me engrossed in chatter and vain prattle. If they don't cease, I will quake with such a quaking like an earthquake that every stone in me will go back to the mountains in which it came. So the children heard this story. And they thought, they said, oh, we have to be careful when we're walking around the Kaaba. We can't just do any dumb talk. But you know, making Tawaf around the Kaaba, walking around it is prayer. But you don't talk to people when you're making prayer, do you? But when you're walking around the Kaaba, you can ask your mother and father questions when you go. You can talk to each other, but you wouldn't do stupid talk, would you? You would never do that, would you? So anyway, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, right? He, when he used to face the Kaaba, he would say, you are the best place on God's earth. Now, also by the way, this is the city of Jerusalem. This is the, do you see this is the Harama Sharif near the Mosque of Al-Aqsa. This is the dome of the rock. If you quote to Medina or to Jerusalem, if you do prayers and special acts of charity and good deeds, those also get, they're worth many, many, many more of them. So I hope you get to visit these three people, these three places when you get older. So now here's the Kaaba. Here's everybody walking around it, right? So one of the things, yes? Okay, I'll continue. The first picture before this one with the Kaaba. Yes. Right there. You've been there? You've been to Jerusalem? Yes. Mashallah. How lovely. I've been there too. Isn't it wonderful? I'm so glad you got to go there. It's so beautiful, so beautiful. I've been there. You've been there. And here is the Kaaba. Now, by the way, making this Hajj pilgrimage, it's a duty for every, every Muslim if you can afford to go and if you have good enough health, you want to go because it's so, so important. And you all are going to discover why it's so important. But if you can't go, maybe you're too ill, maybe you could have someone do it for you. Maybe a daughter or a son who finished their pilgrimage already, they can go and do it for you because it's a debt. It's something you owe to a law, right? It's a debt like any other, any other. Let's just read what it says here. The one who dies without having paid zakat or performing the pilgrimage will be among those who ask to be returned to the world. Imagine you're dead and you say, Allah, let me go back. I have to go back because it's from the Quran. And when, until death comes to one of them, he says, Lord, send me back that I might do righteousness in that which I left behind. Wouldn't you hate to be dead and wish you could come back to life to do your pilgrimage or pay your zakat? You wouldn't want to do that, would you? So you're all going to be very careful and try to make the Hajj when you can. All right. Now the family, there's a family that you're going to make the Hajj with today. We're about to go on Hajj together, right? And here's the family. There's the grandmother, the mother and father and two of the children. And they're sitting at home and they're, they're planning, they're planning their, their, their Hajj. That evening, Laila Balal, Zaynab and Abdullah were thrilled to share with their family some of what they've been learning about their upcoming Hajj. Balal said, I am so glad we've been watching and correcting our characters. It seems to me that the very things we shouldn't be doing in the pilgrimage, we shouldn't be doing in our life at home anyway. So you all are going to learn this, right? Now, one of the things you want to do is you want to have a good intention. Do you think if you're going on the Hajj, you should be doing it to do good business and make money or to go because you love Allah? What should you be doing it for? What's the intention? Yes. Yes. To go because you love Allah. That's right. That's right. And so also you want to take extra money with you so you can be generous. Wouldn't it be horrible to be on the Hajj and you saw people in need and you were stingy and didn't have extra to give? So you want to take extra to give, you know? Even you children, when you're walking around town or in your lives, you could keep extra change in your pockets in case you saw children like the Zakat story that needed something. So also, just like having good intention in your life, also another thing you need to have on the Hajj is pure speech without a lot of arguing. How are you all doing with arguing? Are you doing better with arguing? Because we've been talking about it. You are. All right. Because wouldn't it be horrible to go on the pilgrimage and argue? Well, it's horrible to argue at home. Do you like to hear people arguing? No. No. So of course. Now another thing. Yes. I even tried to stop making them argue, but they still argued and then I tried as hard and then that worked. Oh, bless your heart that you tried. Bless your heart. What a great blessing you had for trying that. Right. And another thing you're not supposed to do on the Hajj is hurt other people. And if somebody hurts you or bumps you or says, you just bear it patiently. Like shouldn't you do that at school if somebody says something mean? Shouldn't you just be patient and bear it? Yes. But what if they do it by accident? Oh, well then it's just an accident. Nobody cares. Right. Now, Imam al-Ghazali says a sign that your pilgrimage has been accepted is when you come back, when you come back home, you stop doing and saying bad things. Right. And instead of being with your friends that are really naughty and say, let's do this bad thing. Let's turn over this. Let's break this. Let's do this horrible thing. You have better friends. And instead of spending all your time when you come back, just going to the movies and being entertained, you try to do something higher with your time. Join groups, maybe people who are praying or doing Vick. So you have to remember something, children. When you make your Hajj, it's a kind of dying. But what are you dying? If you come back and you don't do the same horrible things you were doing before, you're not the same person, are you? You're a better person. That old person is dead and gone. So you want to die off some of the things you don't really think you should be doing. So, you know, let's continue. Now, here is Hajj Abdullah. Right. Yes. Why does it cost so much to go? Well, you know, planes cost a lot and then you get there and you have to have tents waiting for you. Like all travel costs a lot. You know, it's too bad it costs a lot. It used to be in the ancient days, people would walk from Africa, come by camel. They would do the long walking Hajj. Right. But I mean, unfortunately, now Hajj Abdullah was sitting in his garden surrounded by animals. And he's like very, very peaceful. Right. You see how peaceful he is. Right. And he said, you know, you have to do, he said, listen to this. He said, no, that there are, there is no way to approach a law except by dying off one's lower desires and qualities. Right. And instead living, and instead of living with excess, you know, you know, and instead of living with excess, having too much stuff, choose to live with what you, what are really, what is our necessities. When you go on the Hajj, can you take a lot of luggage with you? No. You take a nap sack, you take a few changes of clothes and you're gone for weeks and you're, you can live with all that, right? You just change clothes, you wash clothes. So shouldn't we in this life live with fewer things? Is it good to have so much excess? Maybe our excess toys and clothes we should give to orphans, right? So it's very important, right? That we're very taking good care of our hearts. You see the little girl here, she's drawing her heart. The young people thought about their own hearts. Were they being polished enough? I hope you all are drawing your hearts and putting dots of the things you want to polish away. The children wondered why grown-ups didn't draw and assess their own hearts. They found it very helpful to write down a visible list found inside of their own hearts, things which they needed clearing away. It helped them to remember their true nature, the fitra, their luminous gold and self. How did older people manage to fix themselves up if they didn't make a checklist for their jihad al-Nas or struggle with their lower selves? And what about understanding? You all want to have understanding. You don't want to just be told to do things. You want to understand it, don't you? Yeah. People need understanding. Now I just might interest you to know that other faith traditions have different forms of retreats. There can be monks and nuns and they go into monasteries. They go for short periods. They do long retreats. They may live there. But in the past, the hajj al-Ghazali says is our form of retreat in our religion. It's very concentrated, right? It's aimed at dying off all your attachments to the lower things of this world, right? And learning to experience that you can live with less. So our kind of retreat is making the hajj, right? And the hajj also teaches you to surrender, to just submit and do what you're supposed to. And that's what the word Islam means, peace, submission, surrender, right? Because part of your pilgrimage are things like things that maybe you can't understand. You can understand if you're fasting that how that helps helps your religion. You can understand the cat giving charity. But if you're asked to throw stones at a pillar, a run between two small hillocks, what you're doing, you're learning just to submit to what Allah asked. Like if a king told you, do this. If you were the servant of a king, would you say, why do I have to do it? Or would you just do it? What would you do? If a king told you, I want you to do this, would you do what he asked? Or would you say, okay, I'm not going to do it unless you explain it to me. So you see, yeah. It's a way of practicing being obedient, right? You should be nice to this girl she's making duet. Now, before you go on the Hajj, everyone, you have to take responsibility. If you're going, what happens if you die and you don't come back. You could be in an accident. Something could happen to you. So you have to leave everything in order. You have to make sure the people, the family you're leaving behind who depend on you that they're well taken care of. that you're doing it for God, right, and by the way, if you discover you're doing it for a low intention, like look what this girl says, be sure it's not to show off or be well thought of. Maybe somebody's making the Hajj because they want people to think, oh, they're really great, they're making the Hajj. The little girl says, it would be terrible to set out to visit the king, yani Allah, for some other reason, like desiring to be seen or to be famous. So look at your hearts carefully, and children, this applies to you right now. If you notice, you have a bad intention for something. Maybe you're not really wanting to help mummy. Really, it's just for people to think you're really good. What you can do if you discover your intention is not that great, you can replace it. You can think, I'm going to replace it with a better intention. Isn't that wonderful that you can do that? That you can replace your intention? So also you have to put everything. Yes, it is, isn't it? So one of the things you want now, this applies to all of you in your lives. Okay, get ready for this. You have to put things in order. If you were in a bad mood with your mummy before you traveled, wouldn't you apologize and fix that up? If you had done things that you are sorry for, wouldn't you apologize? If you owed somebody money, if you'd borrowed someone's bicycle, wouldn't you return them and put everything in good order? Wouldn't you do that? You would. Right. So Ghazali said, listen to this image, you won't believe this image. You can take and hang around your neck a bag, a sack, and put all the things in it that you haven't done, that weigh you down. For example, if you have been mean to someone and you didn't apologize, it's hanging around your neck weighing you down. You know how you feel bad about something until you put it right? If you've been mean to your brother or something, it's heavy around your neck. Imam al-Ghazali said, everything like that that's hanging around your neck, it's crying out to you, the bag of heavy things you want to fix. And it's saying, are you headed to the house of Allah, to the king of kings, having neglected some of the things he's asked you at home? Aren't you ashamed? Don't you want to fix your wrongs and ask for his forgiveness? Now, you have to do this if you're making the Hajj, but shouldn't you all do this every day in your life? You should, right? And also Ghazali tells us you should turn your heart wholly and completely in the direction of Allah, right? When you're traveling. Otherwise, maybe if you're not thinking about Allah the whole time, you might as well not spare yourself the hardship and the exhaustion if you're just going to go and make Hajj and be thinking about everything else. So children, I want you to imagine you're going on Hajj. We're about to do it together, all right? And if you had to leave, I want you all to write a little will, what you would leave behind, what would happen to your toys and your things, because you might be leaving all of your friends and never see them again. So be sure you leave everything in beautiful working order, right? Because the Hajj is going to help you practice for your final journey when you do die. So the Hajj is a chance to ask for forgiveness, to put things in order, to get used to living with less, and also the best thing you can take with you on the Hajj is a golden heart. So children, don't you realize all these things that people have to do for the Hajj journey are the same kinds of things you have to do for your journey right now in your everyday lives, in your families, and at school? So then the children are leaving. They're going to be leaving the next day for the Hajj, and just as they're leaving Hajj Abdullah, look what flew into the garden. What is it, everyone? It's a white peacock. Do you see it? In some traditions, the peacock is the symbol of paradise, of jinnah. So sometimes in nature there are signs, I guess. Maybe this was a special sign, because they would not be seeing Hajj Abdullah again, right? So the next day, they're getting ready to go on the Hajj. Children, are you all ready to go on the Hajj now? We're all going together. We're going to have this journey so you can pay attention and you'll have a good idea, because you're going to see pictures of it and learn some very interesting things about it, all right? So the first thing is, you see, everybody is dressed in ikhram. Do you know what ikhram is? It's for men, it's wearing a piece of cloth around the waist and a piece of cloth over the shoulders. The woman can wear a dress. It's all right, right? And so this cloth that the men wear, ikhram, right? It's a wichu in a special state. And you know what it looks like, ikhram? The same cloth they wrap you in when you die to put you in the grave. So even the clothes the men are wearing on the pilgrimage remind them that they're trying to die off all the lower things in their life. They're going to have a week or so where they're only thinking about Allah and asking forgiveness and trying to get their hearts back in order. So children, if you were going to go and meet Allah, would you wear blue jeans? Would you wear a party dress? Or would you prefer to dress in something that shows you are empty of everything but him? Would you wear ikhram or would you wear blue jeans? Which would you do? Right, of course, of course. Yeah, so anyway, the children that the family is making certain prayers and do as and then they get in the car to leave. And you know what Layla says to her parents? Oh my God, she said, I am so glad I apologize to my friend Rukhaya because I was mean to her. And now if I hadn't done that, I'd be carrying that like a sack around my neck, a heavy sack saying, where are you headed? With never having apologized. So children, we also we always want to ask ourselves every day, did we apologize for what we've done? You know, we have to be very careful. All right. Okay, the family is packed lightly. Do you see that? And the and the main thing is their hearts have a good, clean feeling. And so they're setting out and they're going to the plane and here is Bilal, he's sitting on the plane seat. Okay, pretend you've gotten to the plane, everybody, you're sitting on the plane, right? And then, okay, you're on the plane. And then the plane flies over a place, which is called the me cat. It's a place where you actually enter the state of the wrong, where there are things you can no longer do. And at that moment, you know, you see, he's making an intention, everyone set straight up in their seats and repeated, I make the intention of entering Ihram, a special clothing, special state, for the sake of accomplishing the pilgrimage. But I could feel the intention deep in his heart. And then everyone gets to say the Talbiyah. Have you ever heard people saying the Talbiyah? Here it is. Do you see it right here? Here I am at your service, oh God. Here I am. Here I am. You have no partners. To you alone is all praise and all blessing. And to you is the sovereignty, the dominion. You have no partner. And you say this, you say this all the time, whenever you're moving forward, whenever you're with other people. But do you know what you're doing here? This is quite amazing. What you're saying here, you're answering the call of Abraham, Saydena Ibrahim. Do you know that Abraham and his son Ishmael built the Kaaba? Do you remember that? They built it. Abraham lived around 4,000 years ago. And when they finished building this beautiful sanctuary where people were, God said, proclaim that people come here to this sanctuary to worship me. And Abraham basically was thinking, I'm out here in the middle of the desert. If I call, you know, who will hear? Well, Allah was saying, you call and I will bring. So when you're making, when you're saying this statement to tell Bia, who's you're answering Abraham, he called 4,000 years ago and you're answering him now. Isn't that amazing to answer over 4,000 years? And not only that, you are also answering. You know, one day there's going to be a trumpet blast. And that calls everybody back, people who died all the way back to be alive to the resurrection together. So this, tell Bia, you're saying you're, you're responding to the trumpet blast and also to Abraham. So you see here, the grandmother is telling him, look, the loud, you know, this, if Ram, you're wearing, you see this cloth, you're wearing like a burial shroud. You're going to be wearing this and to laugh and making the sigh and going to Mina. And also when we go to Arafat, you see here, the mount of Arafat, it's sunrise. Do you all see Arafat here? All right. So anyway, the next thing, let's get going. We've reached Saudi Arabia by plane and here are pilgrims from all over the world. You see all the luggage they have, these boxes of things they have, you know, they've got tons of luggage somewhat even bring food. And you see the buses in the background. You see the buses, children, right? And there's some cars. Well, Ghazali points out, you don't want to show off with your transport, right? You can take a bus or a van. You don't have to have a fancy, fancy car. And then he says something. Here they are in the bus. Do you see they're in their bus with the luggage on the top? You're leaving Jeddah and you're headed to Mecca. Now children, we're on the journey. We're going toward the house of Allah, the beta law. Now on the way there, the grandmother tells them something very, very important. She said, this vehicle, a vehicle is something that transports you. Here in this case, it's a bus, right? She said, but really, this bus is to remind you of another vehicle. When you die, they put you on a flat board. It's called a beer, B-I-E-R. And that beer is taking you to the Kaaba. So it's like you hope to be visiting Allah, dead to your own life, dead to your own thinking. You want to make it like you're on your beer. You're dead and you've left everything behind and you're going to Allah with an empty golden heart, right? So now, are you ready to go? Are you ready to reach Mecca now? All right, here we go. Oh my goodness, everyone gasped when they saw the tall minarets of the Masjid Al-Haram come into view. Okay children, we're just reaching the front door of the Kaaba, right? So we're going to go in now and be his guests. We're going to be the guests of Allah with our hearts open. Is everybody's heart open right now? All right, all our hearts are open, right? Imagine kids. Now, you want to have a good state of being and soon you're going to even be able to touch the Kaaba, touch it itself. This building built by Abraham 4,000 years ago with his son Ishmael. And so in you go, here we are, right? Now, grandmother was worried. She said to the children, you know, you have to be a little bit worried here, right? That maybe you're not worthy to be so near to Allah. But on the other hand, you can have hope because Allah is so generous. You know, so you say the Shahada and come on in. So the children come in. Oh my goodness. They first set their eyes for the first time on the Kaaba and Layla and Bilal were dazzled by its grandeur and beauty. It stood majestically before them like the silent center of the universe around which all else seemed to turn. It was as though their golden hearts recognized it. Had always known it. They were home at last. Layla's eyes filled with tears. She was overcome by the splendor she beheld and the peace in her heart, right? So remember that Tawaf is prayer. So as you make it, let your heart be filled with fear and hope and reverence and love. Now, this is something children. This is very exciting, which you're about to hear. You see, in making and going around the Kaaba, right, making Tawaf, you are circumambulating. You are going with the angels. Did you know that? Right. And by the way, this walking around the Kaaba that you're going to be doing, don't suppose that the aim of making the circumambulation is for your physical body just to be walking around it. The aim, the purpose of Tawaf is of your heart, the Tawaf of your heart, by remembering God and His house. The Kaaba, do you see the Kaaba right here? You're seeing it with your eyes, everybody, right? Are you seeing it with your visual eyes, with your physical body? But it's a symbol in this world for a presence that your eyes can't even, your eyes can't even see, right? The Kaaba exists, the real Kaaba exists in the Alaba Malakut, a realm of dominion. Listen to this. The Kaaba is mentioned in the Quran as the Betel Mamur or the much frequented house and has been thought to correspond to the Kaaba above the one you can see with your eyes. And the angels are going around it just as we are about to do. And since we are far from being angels, children, we are asked to imitate them. We've been promised that he who imitates a folk becomes one of them. So we're going to pretend we're angels, everybody, all right? We're going to imitate the angels who are above the Kaaba in a world you can't see. The angels are going around the throne, right? The throne of God. Okay, are you all ready, children? You are all being angels right now, all right? So now the next thing, oh, I'm going to go a little bit further. You're going to begin at the Black Stone, all right? We're going to, the seven times walk, we start at the Black Stone and remember what we're going to do. We're going to put up our hand, reach out and say Bismillah, Allahu Akbar, Bismillah, Allahu Akbar. In the name of God, God is the most great. We are remembering what is inside of the Black Stone. We're remembering that we made a contract with God, that he is our Lord. Remember that, all right? So then we renew our pact, our contract with God. And this is very, very serious, all right? Now, see this little girl? You know the Kaaba has a curtain on it. It's called the Kiswah. It's a beautiful covering. You know what you can do, kids? You can go up and cling to it. And you can cling and hang on to it. You know, if you want something from your mother, have you ever clung onto her skirt or the hem and just beg her for something and you cling until she gives it to you? Has that ever happened? Oh, mom, you've got to do it. Please, I beg you, let me get the new doll. Let me get whatever. Mom, please, please let me, whatever it is. And you cling and beg. So this is what you can do with the Kiswah. You can go, cling on to the Kiswah and beg a lot, beg a lot to help you. All right? Now the Black Stone. The prophet said the Black Stone is the right hand of God on earth, with it he shakes hands with his creatures, just as a man shakes hands with his brother. Now, you start moving. You've started at the Black Stone. You're moving along and you're just passing the first corner. It's called the Iraqi corner, right? As Balal looked up, the Kaaba seemed immense. It was amazing walking with people whose faces showed they came from all over the world. He couldn't believe he was finally taking part in what he had only seen in picture books. Right now, children, if you haven't been, you've just seen pictures like this. But guess what? Before you know it, you're going to be here too walking around and you're going to know exactly what to do. And there are all kinds of prayers, you say, when you're walking around the Kaaba. And then you come around the Shammi corner and you reach this corner. It's called the Yemeni corner, right? And it's hard to get near the corners because there's so many people. But at least their father was able to bring them close enough to the Kaaba itself so they could touch the Yemeni corner. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, not only touched it, as he made to Wath, but he placed his cheek on it. So if you can, everybody, place your cheek. Yes, you have a question there. What is your question? When you touch the Blackstone, do you touch it once you walk around the Kaaba once or seven times? Well, you know, I'll just be quite honest. There's so many people there that you can't get close enough. Maybe sometime if you wetted Fajr or Dawn or some middle of the night, but the ideal would be to touch it. But since you can't do the ideal, that's why we just put our hands out like this and say, Bismillah, Allahu Akbar. It's the same thing. And you go like this. You see? So you can touch it. That's a very good question. Thank you for asking it. All right? And then as you see here at this corner, children, all right, now you're going to move to the right. Okay, we're moving to the right, to the Blackstone again. And you're going to hear a prayer. All these pilgrims are saying, they're saying, oh God, our Lord, give us goodness in this world and goodness in the next, and save us by your mercy from punishments, right? So you're going to learn that prayer. People are saying it in Arabic, but after you've gone around a few times, you always hear people. And finally, you get to feel comfortable. You always know you're going to be hearing it, right? So then this is, okay, you pass the Blackstone again and right there next to the door, it's called the Babel Multazim. This special door, if you can reach up and touch it, they pretend you all are doing it, children, you're reaching up. And anything you ask Allah, he will answer your prayers. And when you get up close, you're touching it. And you can hear all these people from different countries, they're all trying to touch it too. And you can hear people crying and sobbing. What do you think people are asking for? What kinds of things they've come from Timbuktu and from Japan and Afghanistan. They finally made it and they're touching the door and they're asking from the bottom of their heart. He always said Timbuktu. What? Timbuktu? Anyway, it doesn't matter. But you see here is Bilal, he's, he's reaching up and he's asking, what kind of thing would any of you ask for? If you finally were there and you could have anything you wanted, what would you ask for everybody? Jannah. What? Jannah. Jannah. You're the smart one. You're the girl. That's exactly what you should ask for. Coronavirus going away. Yeah, you're really good, by the way. You're really smart. Okay. So then when you finish the seven Tawafs, this is called the Makam Ibrahim. Under it is a footprint of our prophet, Sayyidina Ibrahim. When he was lifting some of the stones onto the Kaaba, he made a footprint and they have it covered very beautifully. You go over to that place, to the Makam Ibrahim, and you do, you do two rakhaz and you do two surahs that you all know. You all know Kulhu Allahu Ahad, don't you? Right. And you all know Kulya Ayuhul Kaffirun. Do you know that one? You say those are the two surahs that you say. You know those. You already know those. That's it. Those are the two you say when you're standing where Abraham was. See all the pilgrims standing here? You'll be standing with them. Imagine you're standing there. Right now, you're doing two rakhaz of prayer and you're saying those two surahs. All right. And then you know what? You couldn't go have a drink of Zem Zem water, right? You're going to have Zem Zem water. It used to be when I made my first Hajj, the fountain was right near the Kaaba, but because there's so many people going around, they could have fallen and gotten hurt. So now they have pipes and they bring it outside and they have wonderful barrels of water here and they supply pepper cups. So you can go and get a drink of water at this point. All right. Now you see the mother and the two little boys here. Pretend you're with them. All right. Now we are going to do the sigh. Now this is the special running between the two hillocks like little mountains of Safa and Marwa. And do you know why we do this, everybody? Well, you need to know the full story. Before I remember the green light was there and my dad told me to run. Yes, you can get to do that. That's up ahead here. You can't quite see it in the picture, right? But anyway, you now should know the story of why you do this. Okay. Remember when Saddna Ibrahim, Alay salam, brought his wife, beautiful Hajjur, and they came, they came to this area which became Mecca. They left Palestine, right? And they came here and he told her, you know, I have to be going and I'll come back. And she said, you do everything that you are asked to do. I trust in Allah, whatever he asks us to do. But then her little baby Ishmael was thirsty. So she ran from one hillock to the other looking to see if there were any people coming that could help her find water. And at the seventh time she didn't find anything and she was really worried about the baby. But she trusted Allah and you know what happened when she trusted Allah? Suddenly a beautiful spring of water, Zem Zem, came out of the ground and it's still bubbling. It's still bubbling there. This is 4,000 years. You can still taste the same water and the well keeps giving and giving and giving, right? And so you see it's very important to always trust Allah, right? Not doubt or not be afraid. So now is the family. Now the family are leaving the sigh and as they're leaving, they're very careful to give charity to everyone who reaches out. Remember in the book of Zakat last week, how if someone reaches out, you don't disappoint. It's very important because we have so many blessings. So we have to share them. What we have is on loan to us and it's a trust. So remember as the family was leaving and they're now leaving, they're going to go out. They're going out to the tent city of Minna. Look at the tents out there. Do you see it? Pretend you're arriving. You're going in the afternoon or evening. Look at all the tent city and this is where you're going to sleep. You're going to sleep here because next day tomorrow is the day of Arafat. And that day is what Hajj really is. So you see, do you see how beautiful it is out there, everyone? And by the way, by the way, you see the people walking. Everybody's walking all the way there. It's not far from Mecca all the way out to Minna. It's about five miles. It's an easy walk. I've done it myself. It's nothing. Okay. Now some people may take cars or fancy cars, but the problem is maybe they're doing it to show off or feel better than other people. So even if you're a rich person and you might feel a bit of pride because you have a fancy car, would it be better for you to walk and get rid of your pride? Would it be children? Much better to walk because you're trying to polish your heart with the Hajj. Remember, the whole idea is you're polishing off everything so you can come back new like the day you were born. Right? So anyway, let's see what's the next. So anyway, here it says here, it says the walk from Mecca to Minna was a challenge, but a wonderful experience. The family enjoyed being in the company of pilgrims from the world over. Of course, all men were dressed alike, but their faces were from everywhere, Africa, China, Indonesia, all sorts of other places. Now when they got to their tents, okay, the family got to their tents. Let's see what happened. Okay. They decided to go out for a walk and guess what, children? Imagine this. You're in your tent and you're going to go out with your family and you're walking and you come to a bunch of tents where the people from Mauritania are there and you can smell the cooking of Mauritania. You pass through the Muslims who come from Canada and we don't know what they're cooking, right? But suddenly, Layla here, Layla noticed an older lady maybe from the Far East who seemed all alone and in need. Immediately she offered her some of the sandwiches they had with them. Layla whispered to her mother, Haji Abdullah told us that pilgrims should carry enough extra long so they can be generous. Imagine being stingy here. He explained giving charity from one's provisions on the road to pilgrimage is spending for the sake of Allah. So here is Layla and she's giving some of the sandwiches. She's sharing them, right? Now, by the way, this day before Erafat, this nice, the day before day of Erafat, it's called the Yom Terawiya. And this was the night, everybody, that Sayyidina Ibrahim alayhi salam had a vision. Now, you all probably have heard this story, but if not, you need to know it. Abraham had this vision where Allah, a vision said, you should sacrifice your beloved son. You should take his life. And Ibrahim thought, this must be from the devil. What a horrible thought. But the same dream came the next night. And then he knew, Arafat, just say he knew in Arabic as Arafat. And that's the day of Arafat. He knew that this was from Allah and he trusted God and he was willing to do anything that God asked. So he said to his son Ishmael, you know what he said? Oh my goodness. What do you think about this? I'm being commanded to take a knife and sacrifice you, right? Sacrifice, sacrifice to make sacred. And his son said, do as you were commanded, my father, right? Inshallah, you will find that I am patient, right? And since both Ishmael and his father both surrendered, they had a command from Allah and they did, and they said, we are ready to do it. You know what? Since they both surrendered, they submitted their wills to Allah. Then Allah said, Oh Ibrahim, right? You have already fulfilled the mission, the vision. So now they didn't, he didn't have to do that. That's why we sacrifice a lamb because at that moment a lamb was put in place of Ishmael, all right? So by the way, so that they start walking home here to back to their tents and they pass people, look at people from many different countries. The man on the left is from America. And his name is Warath Adin, and this next man is from Venezuela, and then the little girl is from Germany. You see all the different countries that come, all the different families? So the next day, right, is the day of Arafat, the day, you know what people do on this day? They spend the whole day asking God's forgiveness, right? And so Ibn Abbas said, I saw the prophet making supplications, right? Standing on Arafat with his hand on his heart, like a poor man asking for food. Imagine if our prophet peace and blessings be upon him. We're begging Allah. Shouldn't you be doing that too? So Bilal was a bit worried, you know. He was worried that maybe his hajj wouldn't be acceptable to God, but it said, when you're at Arafat, when you're a president at Arafat, you shouldn't think, it would be terrible to think that your hajj wouldn't be, that your hajj wouldn't be accepted and that God wouldn't forgive you. So don't ever think that. So then the next, that evening, people spend everybody, the whole day, children, thousands of pilgrims, as far as your eye can see. Your presenter there right now. You're all there. Okay. You're standing there. You're in your beautiful clothing. You're standing with pilgrims as far and everyone is asking Allah's forgiveness and it's utterly beautiful. And then the sun starts to set and you know what you're going to do next? You're going to start walking up this little hill to Muzdalifah to collect pebbles. So you're going to be walking up the hill, right? If you look back over the whole valley, you know what it's going to look like seeing people as far as your eye can see. It's going to look like a preview of the Yomul-kiyama, the last judgment when we're all brought back to stand together before Allah. It'll look just this, it'll look like this. So you know what? You were actually in your religion doing this Hajj, going to Mount, going to the plain of Arafat, you were actually getting a preview of what it's going to look like at the end of time. Can you imagine getting a preview, getting an idea of what's ahead at the end of, end of everyone's lives? So anyway, you start up the hill and you hear thousands of voices saying the Talbiyah, right? And oh, you know, even I was walking up the hill and a little woman went by and on top of her head, she had a box with a chicken in it and pots and pans hanging. She had some tattoos. She was African and she looked at me and she said, come on, come on sister. And I got to the top of the hill and there were some Nigerians and they opened their umbrella and you know what was inside? Cookies and tea and they said, please have some. And so after half the night has passed, you stay awake or you can sleep a little bit, then you collect pebbles. Do you see these people collecting the pebbles? You collect 70 little tiny pebbles. You only need seven on the first time, right? You'll be using over the next few days, right? So then, you know, at dawn, you're going to walk back toward Minna, right? You're going to say the Talbiyah that you know and yes, question? How many days? You know, why do you need them? The pebbles? Yeah. You're going to find out right now. Excellent question. Yeah. So now the pebbles, the sun has come up and you go to, it's called the Jamarat. There are three columns and these represent like Shaitan and you are going to throw your stones against them and you're going to, when you throw a stone, you're going to be saying no to every doubt you ever had. It's, you're like thinking about Abraham. He said no to his temptations, didn't he? He must have had the temptation. I don't want to kill my son, but he overcame his doubt. So you're, if you have any doubts, you're saying no to your doubts, no to wrong dealings. So you throw these and you do, you'll go several times to do it. And so then after you've thrown the stones, you don't say the Talbiyah anymore. A lamb is sacrificed because a lamb was substituted for Ishmael. And don't you all, at the Eid, don't you all have lamb to eat? Right. Yes. So that's what you're celebrating this moment that's going on here in the, out in the desert of Saudi Arabia, right? And of course you buy an animal of good quality and the meat is given to the poor because remember that your, your generosity purifies you. And then look what, look what goes on with boys. The next thing the boys do is they get their head shaved. How would you like that boys? Yep. You get your head shaved. With women they just cut a little piece of hair back here, right? And after you've done this, right, it says, the time had arrived to leave the state of Ihram. Father and son easily found a barber who was shaving the heads of men and boys who were reciting, Oh God, for every hair shaved off, affirmed for me a good deed and removed from me a bad one and raised my standing if you would agree. Okay. Now they head back, they head back into Mecca. They go walk back into Mecca to do what's called the Tawafalif Fada. Yes, question. Yes. How many days are you supposed to like camp or stay there in the tent? You see, you've spent the night before the day of Arifat, and then you will, you will spend three more nights there, you know, and you'll throw the rest of your pebbles. Yes. Is that I thought you're not supposed to cut your hair, you're supposed to cut your hair and immediately throw it, put it somewhere like in the bin because I thought gins could, could, could blow bad deeds on it. And so maybe I don't, I don't know about this. I'm, what I'm teaching you all here is just what is from Imam al-Ghazali, but it could be these, we'll have to ask someone about that. All right. That's a good question. We should ask it, right? So now the family goes back to the Kaaba, see the little boy his head is shaved, there's his mom, right? They go back and they do the Tawafalif Fada, and this completes the Hajj, right? And the mother says, we are lucky to be worn and dusty as we return to visit his house. It's a brilliant reminder of who we really are. Oh, look everyone and see the Kaaba through the columns. Now the Prophet, peace and blessings, be upon him. He loved people to be humble and barefoot and all disheveled like this. The hair all messed up because it showed that they were trying to be empty of everything. They weren't thinking, oh, I have to look good. I have to be dressed up. I have to be perfect clothing. It showed, right, that we are trying to empty everything from ourselves, except our golden hearts are innate good. Okay. So then after doing Tawaf, we go back to the place of Ibrahim and do two more of those rakhas with those verses that you know, with those suras you know, and then again, you can drink some Zem Zem. Here's the little German girl. Just think of how ancient the source of this water is. I can almost taste these sentries going all the way back in time. So when you all go and taste the Zem Zem, pretend you're tasting it right now. Imagine tasting water. It started from a well 4,000 or more years ago. All right? So then at this point, you go to the Babel Miltazem and you make your final duaz and then you go back out to the camp and you spend three more days in your tents and you throw the rest of the pebbles, everybody. Yes. And then you go back again to the Kaaba. I'll ask your answer, your question right now. And then you do the Tawaf of farewell and then you go to Medina. Yes. What is your question? Yes. Is that a question that I have to leave? Oh, you have to leave. We only have two minutes more doing Medina. Can you just stay for Medina for two minutes? We'll go really quick. Okay. We finished the Hajj, everybody. You've all been on the Hajj today. Mabruk. You've experienced the Hajj. You've imagined it. And now the next thing is we go to Medina. Oh, you can see people from all over the world carrying their children. And if you get tired, your dad will carry you. All right. Now they have arrived in Medina. Father Hamza reminded the family, imagine that we are standing on the very ground on which the Prophet and his companions walked. Imagine the humble reverence that he carried in his heart and the immense knowledge of God and that they are remembered together. We are nearing the house where he, salallahu alaihi wasalam, lived. See the green dome? That's over where his house was. And now he is buried there. Take each step with dignity and awe. Bilal was filled with joy. And by the way, you know, I'm going to tell you all something. There's a hadith by the Prophet, salallahu alaihi wasalam. He said, to visit me after my death is like visiting me in my life. So when you go to visit him here, it's as though he alive. He was alive. If you all were going to be standing before him and he could hear you, what would you say to him? Somebody say what they would say to the Prophet? Yes. Go ahead. If you were standing in front of him right now and you could speak to him, what would you say? Yes. I see your hand up. Go ahead. I wish we could take him to the dome and just see him. Oh, that's so lovely. That's so lovely. Because guess what, kids? Let's pretend you're in Medina right now and you're going to say something to him, whatever you say he can hear. Can you imagine that? And more than that, do you know how when we say, give our salams to the Prophet all the time? Right? Guess what? Allah is saying his salams continuously to the Prophet. So when we say ours, we're joining Allah. Can you imagine joining Allah salams being part of that? What an honor, right? So remember, you're standing on the ground of where our religion and all of its laws were established. This is exactly where you'll be standing. And then the next thing you do, right? You go, visiting the tomb is the same of visiting him. So you be quiet and you have dignity and your manners and you're full of respect, all right? So here is Bilal. He's standing in front of the tomb, all right? Father and son entered the mosque, which today encloses the garden, the Prophet's garden, Al-Rawda, next to the Prophet's house, peace and blessings be upon him. On entering, they first made two rakhaz of bowing next to the pulpit to the mimbar. And then they went to the nearby enclosure. Are you all with me right now? You're standing right here with me, right? And this is where the Prophet's body is buried. His noble being is in the ground, right in front of you, right? And then the father said to Bilal, he said, know that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is aware of your presence. Okay, children, pretend you're all here. We're all here right now. Know that he is aware of your presence and your greetings are conveyed to him by angels. Imagine he's lying before you. Even if you're in faraway lands, he's aware of the salams you're sending him, even if you're in California or Indonesia. There's a hadith that says, he who blesses me once, God blesses 10 times. Also, by the way, you see where what you're looking at this grill work, you know, there are two other people buried here. The companions Abu Bakr and the companion Omar, they are who helped establish the Dean. They're buried here too. So you would be greeting them as well. And then you go back to the Rauda, to the inner garden, right? And you can do some more prayers and more supplications. Isn't Medina beautiful? Look at how beautiful it is. Now, this is what we're finishing up right now. So our little friend here can leave. There are other things that are good to do while you're there. Important visits. Here is al-Bakia. This is the graveyard. And the graves of the companion Osman, radi Allahu Anhu is here. As well as, did you know the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him, had a little baby son named Ibrahim who died? He's buried here too, right? And also, you would visit the Kuba mosque, which is very, very beautiful. And some of the wells, they're wells that the Prophet drank out of and washed in. You would visit the wells. And then you've finished Medina and you're headed home. So you're headed back. Balal said, a sign our great journey has been accepted is if we pull back from so many worldly concerns and renew our efforts to be ready for the next world. Father Hamza completed Balal's words with all gazales. After having met the house, this is the house of God right here in front of you. After having met the house of Allah, now you return and you make ready to meet the Lord of the house. So when you die, that is your great hope that you will meet the Lord of your house, right? And look, look what, look about Medina. We will come to, the grandmother said, we will come to know this dear granddaughter from our hearts and deeds. If we find on our return, our hearts turning away from this world of delusions, inclining toward closeness to Allah, exalted and find our conduct, how we act, more complying with the sacred law, then we can have confidence that Allah has accepted our Hajj. And now children, Layla, a little girl who made the Hajj, she wrote in her diary. And this is the end of our presentation. She wrote in her diary. Why was it so overwhelming for me? Be imagine you, all of you imagine standing right here. And so Layla is saying, why is this so overwhelming? When on our normal daily life in your homes right now, can you get a glimpse of the underlying awesome story of humankind? Because you know what happened at the Black Stone? You were at the beginning where Adam is asked by Allah, am I not your Lord? And so you have the contract with Adam, the first man right there in that Black Stone. And then when you go to the plane of Arafat, you're, you're having a preview of the very end of time when time is all over and everybody is gathered together when the trumpet blasts. So she said, imagine that I have been standing with every race on earth and I've had seen the Black Stones. And then we end by saying, Layla said, even though, now kids, this is, this is the end, pretend you're there. Even though you're full of crowds, see how many people are there, imagine you're there right now. Even though you've got a huge crowd, Layla said, you know, I found the experience very natural. She said, very natural. And I experienced my golden heart. I wasn't separated from other people. I was with the whole. Do you see here, if you were there with everybody, wouldn't you, would you feel separated or would you feel that you are, you are whole, right? So what you have done here is Ghazali has introduced you to the mysteries of the pilgrimage, right? And it will change the way you look at your life. And then the book also has a manual and then there's a children's book here, a children's book with lots of activities where the grandfather tells, talks to the little children. This is included in the bigger book. And then a bird comes and shows them his big chest because he's no longer alive and they read his letters to them and they do artworks. They make mosaics from pieces of color paper. They make lists of the bad heart and the good heart. The bad heart says being lazy, being rude, being grumpy, right? And then they also learn about the three keys that open the doors, that bring them closer to meeting the king. They remember the story about their boat turning over with all their stuff and their golden heart going on and on. They remember that you have to dress well, that your clothing makes you play the part. If you're dressed slobbly, you feel slobby. And they learn again, they practice weighing their good deeds and their bad deeds. And they love the thought of going on the hodge with their grandfather and being carried by their father on the side. And look at the tents they got to stay in with thousands of pilgrims, the simple tent they spent the day before Erafat. And this little girl will end with her. She said, look into your heart luggage and pull out your third golden key. If you remember, this key is called trusting God, which means everybody, kids, pay attention to happily say yes to everything that the king, meaning a law, everything he asks you to be, ask of you because of your love for him, right? And then the children, this is on the day of the Eid, the children are having fun. And look at all the activities, like you can paint pebbles, you can imagine gazing, you can make cabas out of paper. The prophet said to visit me after my death is like visiting me during my life. So yes, we really went to visit the prophet himself. So children, oh yes, okay, I'll ask, it's over, I finished. Yes, you wanted to leave, didn't you? Yeah, can I tell you two things? Yes, you certainly, yes. The first thing is, I know something about that, the black stone on judgment day, a lot of nature can't alive like it, then given there enough, it has a tongue and then it stops. Sarah, thank you so much, Sarah. You're so bright and so wonderful to contribute, you know, bless your heart. I mean, I know that this was hard for all of you, but children, today you got to go on the hodge. Did you imagine yourself in all of those places? Did you imagine it? Good, good. Well, I hope you had a blessed hodge, a preview of hodge. Yes, Sarah, another question? Yes. I also started doing this. What did you say? I also started doing, I also started doing this. Oh, you're doing the would do right now? I just did it today. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you, Sarah. That's just so wonderful. And you did it, when you were washing your hands, you thought when you rinsed your mouth, you were also asking a lot to help you say the right things, weren't you? You'll never do your would do differently. It'll feel thin and not happening. I'm so, I'm so grateful, Sarah, for that. I'm so pleased. Anybody else doing their would do better? Anybody praying better, doing their would do better? I have a question. Yes? So, so if your good deeds are made higher, if you do them in Mecca, does that mean, does that mean your bad deeds are lower than me? Then when you do them in Mecca or higher? Well, it's what, Jibril, what the Ghazali is reminding us of is that when you're in Mecca and Medina, one of the important reasons for going there is your prayers and your good deeds are just multiplied. You get more of them. If you fast one day, it's worth 10,000 days or something like that. So, I mean, it's the these ideas are to show you how important our blessed cities of Mecca and Medina are. Thank you, Jibril, for that. Any other questions or comments? I have in comments. All right. I learned to act all myself. Who is speaking? Raise your hand so I can see you. Who is speaking? Is it Jibril or who is talking right now? Abdu'l Basit. Abdu'l Basit. Yes, Abdu'l Basit. Say it. Now, what did you like to say, my dear? I learned to act all myself. You did? Yep. Oh, that's wonderful. That's wonderful. Mashallah. You're so beautiful. Thank you for making that comment. That's wonderful. Thank you, Abdu'l Basit. Yes, Sarah, you want to say something more? I was just joking. Oh, that's wonderful. Oh, that's wonderful. Yes. And I see other hands raised. Yes. So, I think by now you all are very tired. Oh, my goodness, we went an hour and a half. I feel so sad. You know, it was supposed to be an hour and now you must be very tired. Well, guess what, children? I love you so much and next week we're going to do the Book of Belief and then you're going to find out who and what and where is a law, right? And the things we believe. Yes. One more question here. Go ahead. No. Good night. I'm sorry I kept you so late, but it's so lovely being with you and you all are such good children. Can I tell you something? Yes, yes, yes, Nazan. Wait, can I tell you something here? Yes, go ahead and say. So, Nazanid, yes, yes. It was really nice having you read the book to us about the well in Islam. Oh, I'm so glad. Thank you. What I'm hoping is that, you know, this was a big and wonderful book with hundreds of wonderful fun stories. I've only given you a few highlights, everybody. I really would love it if you'll now get to read the real book and do the activities and make and play the games that go on with it and do the workbooks because you will have fun doing all the activities. Really fun things. All right, children. Can I tell you something? Yes. So, this is a wild catch. So. Oh, that's Zahra. That's your Yusuf, right? Or is that Zahra? Wow. Oh, this looks lovely. What a lovely book. So, it's like a lot of animals. Oh, I love that book. We love animals. Thank you so much. Well, I'm tired now and I'm going to go to bed. You all are three hours earlier than me. I'm 1030 at night. So, I'm going to give you, say, Asalaamu Alaikum and sleep well. And you know, from the Wudu story, if you do Wudu before you go to sleep, you have a golden heart when you're sleeping at night. It's really special. Asalaamu Alaikum, everyone. Bye. Bye, dear. Asalaamu Alaikum. Asalaamu Alaikum. Asalaamu Alaikum. Asalaam, everybody. Dear children and your families and our friends in Indonesia, what we're going to do is something very special tonight. Do you see the picture of Imam al-Ghazali here? Well, I sent to all of your all's parents email this link to this whole book and it's a flip book on the children's Ghazali interactive website in the library part and things to do. So, you can go and look at this beautiful book because I thought we just do a quick review not of this golden book but of his life because this relates to what we're going to be talking about tonight. Just a minute. Oh, that's gotten pushed down over here. Push that up over here. All right, do you see this man here, children? The father of Imam al-Ghazali was a very poor weaver. This is nearly a thousand years ago and he died while Imam al-Ghazali was a very small boy. But what mattered to him most of all was children's education. So, he set his two boys to this wonderful teacher, Imam al-Jawaini. Do you see him up here? And he was an amazing teacher, one of the most special. And he began to teach the two boys very much. And then one day al-Ghazali, he was a small boy, he was up out in the desert and this caravan was going by to see the caravan below. And thieves came and they stole everything from the people. And there was Ghazali holding his papers behind his back, his school papers. And the thieves said, give us that. And Ghazali said, oh, please, please don't take my bundle. If you take away my bundle, you know, I will lose everything. And then they said, well, of what use are these pages? He said, if you destroy my notes of my lessons, I work so hard to record everything I've been taught. And the thief said, you mean, you know, everything you know can be taken away from you just like that. And at that moment, Imam al-Ghazali realized that what you really know, your true knowledge, has to become part of you, the way you live and the way you act. So from this scary event, it has changed his whole life. And then he got hired. Here he is. Do you see him teaching right here? He's teaching at the Nizamiya school in Baghdad. And he was a very famous professor. And you see all these other people come to his lessons. You see how proud he is. He was so smart. He spoke many languages. He won every argument. He knew everyone. He dazzled everyone with his brilliance. And then he continued to give his lessons. And you see below, he was very puffed up. We've talked about not being proud or puffed up, right? And then he started thinking, oh my goodness, maybe I'm a hypocrite. Maybe I'm telling other people to do what I don't do myself. And then he got scared. He suddenly realized, he thought, I'm on a crumbling bank. You know, I'm telling people to be good and I'm not good myself. And then he worried, oh, I have to do something to be true to myself up, up and away, if not now, when. But you know what? He was too afraid to leave his job where he was so proud because he thought, I have a wife and two daughters. And this is a wonder and I'm respected and loved by everybody. And then the next day, he went in to teach and he opened his mouth and no words came out because Allah loved him so much, he took away his voice so he couldn't teach anymore. He was embarrassed and confused. And the doctors all came and they said, oh, his body isn't sick, right? Nothing's wrong with his body, right? But his heart needs to leave the life he is in. He's trapped. He needs to go in search to be near to Allah. So he made arrangements. There's his wife and two daughters. He said, I'll be back. I'll visit you. But I'm going on a long pilgrimage. I'm going out to find the truth. So then he traveled a great distance and he went to Damascus and he got a job in a mosque sweeping. This great scholar became a janitor. And he started learning what it was to be humble and empty. And many times he was tempted to talk to people in the mosque and show them how smart, but he didn't do it. And then later on, he went to Jerusalem and to Mecca. And finally he came home to his family and he wrote this wonderful 40 volume book called the Ahyat al-Muddin, The Revival of Religious Sciences. And that is, we're studying right now today book two of this great book. You've studied book one, The Book of Knowledge. You've done three, four, five, six and seven. But now we're going back to two. Now a friend of mine, her name is, she's an Egyptian named Farida. And she made this cartoon. What is the meaning of life? And this is in the workbook of workbook one. You must ask yourselves children, what is the meaning of life? The city, some people live in a city. Oh, she said it makes me forget. To breathe, it seems undegradable, unchangeable. I eat my way out of it, but nothing seems to fill the void inside of me. Sometimes the voice echoes from within telling me, look for meaning. But that I'm not just a zombie, a walking creature. My life in four steps. I sleep, eat, work and watch TV. I'm like a hamster on a wheel. A puppet pulled on a string. I don't mind living this way. Only if I could only stop asking myself these questions. Why was I born? Why am I here? Why am I going to die? Beats me. Is it for money? Is it for fame? Love? Do I get to take it all with me when I die? Where do we go after we die? Gasp! Let's ask Imam Al Ghazali. So this book, the book of belief written by Imam Al Ghazali, this is the children's version, will tell you many different answers. I have to tell you all, Ghazali used many imaginary tales and beautiful stories and metaphors to illustrate really deep concepts and ideas. Remember we talked about the ant and the pen? That story tries to help us explain, while God knows and plans everything that will happen to us. Well in this book, the Imam uses the image of small plants which grow in our hearts into magnificent trees to illustrate how doing beautiful deeds will nourish our inner growth and later produce beautiful fruits. His metaphor for polishing the heart makes it easy for us to imagine the process of self-observation and self-correction. In this book, he is going to explain to you children very deep concepts about this life and the life, the next life. So we decided that the Imam would make an imaginary visit to the children to answer their questions. Even though he died 900 years ago, as you know, his teachings, his teachings are coming to us right this minute. They're timeless. They're not stuck 900 years ago. So in the following story, the children pretended to came back to them through a magic door from the next world to answer their questions. Real church learning children and truth aren't bound by time and space. So we're very blessed to still have the help of Imam al-Dazali with us right this minute in learning how to polish our golden hearts. The children have been playing outside. Their mother called them in for prayer. They made would do very carefully like you all are doing now. And they prayed in the special place they prayed in in their home. And all of a sudden they finished their prayers and they were feeling very peaceful. They didn't feel like running back out to play. And all of a sudden one of the children saw a magic door open and light coming through. They could see a kind-faced and beautiful man descending into the room as he stepped down under the carpet. The special door closed and completely vanished. Peace and blessings be upon you children. I am Imam al-Dazali. I have been noticing that you are very good young people and also that you have many questions. So I have come to visit you. So these are the questions that are going to be answered by Imam al-Dazali. No matter what century people live in, many people like all of us have the same questions about what life means. Why we are born, what we must be doing during our stay in this world. Children don't you all don't you wonder about these things? Why were you born and what we're supposed to do? Yeah you do don't you? Yeah. So these children exclaimed, oh Imam al-Dazali, we're so grateful for this help. We were worried that we couldn't understand deep matters, what really matters. Now our very first question, our very third, oh I'm going back, our very first question dear Imam al-Dazali is we often hear our family saying, saying la ilaha illallah. That means there is no God except Allah. But what we want to ask you is who and what and where is God? Now if there are any mothers and fathers here, if your child said to you, mommy or daddy, who and what and where is God, how would you as a parent answer them? In fact it's hard for any of us to answer that question, but Imam al-Dazali makes it very simple. So now children you're going to hear the answer to these amazing questions, all right. And then you know just remember that the reason it's impossible to explain who God is is because words aren't able to do it, right. But our special hearts can understand even though our thoughts and minds can't grasp all that's real and true, but our hearts can. There is nothing like Allah. He has been here forever before anything came to be and before all these things he chose to create. Look at the picture here, look at all the things Allah brought into this world. Everything you know about can come to an end, can't it? Like the horse there, the stream there, the tree there, like a bat flower or a bird, but not a loss upon Allah. He's aware of all that goes on. He knows even what a tiny busy little aunt is doing. I have a lot of questions. Oh, I'm glad I'm glad you do. We'll go through the story and then you can ask your questions. Like how did Allah even come in the world? Was he like already, already there? Yes, he made the world. He's before the world. The world is one little thing he's brought into being. The universe. Even there was like always, always there? Yes, always there forever. He's outside of, he has no beginning and no end beyond time. He created he created time. Ah, I don't know. Well, we'll, we'll keep going here. All right. So then the little girl Mah said, um, she said he seems like a powerful person creating all these things. The Imam said indeed he does because we think about him in ways that make him seem human. We say he is the generous. He is the all powerful. He is the beautiful. But let me tell you what he is not. All right. This is what he is not everybody. He is not a person. He doesn't have a body the way we do. He is not like anything you could ever see and nothing at all is like him. Now we refer to him as he, we say Allah, he did this, he did that, but Allah is not a he or a she and then the little boy of Bella said, but where is God? Allah's upon a what to Allah was even here before he made time and space. He was before time and space. The world and the universe we live in are in time and space. And there is outer space where spaceships travel to the moon. You experience time and the changing with the changing of day and night and different seasons. You grow up in time, you're little now and you become bigger. But God made time. He doesn't grow or change. Allah is always and forever. Now the Imam explained and then the children asked how, but how close is God to us? He is beyond the earth and heavens and there are many of these. His knowledge and presence are everywhere at the same time. He is a throne like a king, but not any kind of a throne you could think of. He is above the throne and the heavens. But guess what? He's above the throne and the heavens, but he is still near to you than your own carotid artery. Not your jugular vein, which is here. The carotid artery is right here. Everybody put their finger right here on the side of their chest and press hard. Now you can feel your heart beating because what's happening is from your heart, oxygen is being pumped up to your brain, right? And that's what you're feeling right there. If the heart wasn't bringing oxygen to your brain, you know you wouldn't live. So Allah is closer to you than that point you're feeling. You all got to have your fingers on your neck right here, pressing hard. Allah is closer to you than that, right? But this nearness God speaks of is not like any kind of nearness you all know. It's beyond what we can know. It's completely different. For example, we're sitting near each other. Oh, and your eyelid, put your finger on your eyelid. You see how near your eyelid is to your eye, right? You can understand nearness, but Allah's nearness is completely different and beyond anything we can know with our minds that think, right? And then a little Abdullah said, so there are different limits to what we can understand with our brains. Indeed said the Imam to know God, one has to open one's heart to special knowledge that seems to go beyond our understanding. Now you see this now once upon a time in China, right? A man came to a great sage and he said to this sage, which is a wise man, a sage, he said, Oh wise man, I want you to show me God. And the wise man said, how can I light a candle to show you the sun? In other words, our minds are like little candles, right? Can a little candle show the light of the sun? No, because our minds, our reasoning is very small and it can't do that. So you have to remember that your reasons, your reasoning can't understand everything, right? Only, only our special spiritual hearts, the ones you all are polishing, only these can be open to real knowledge. What we can come to know about God and his qualities is through his names, who all have heard the 99 names, right? Like the merciful, the perfect, the all powerful, and the name Al-Malik, the king, but he rules all the worlds, even the ones we've seen. Yeah, the worlds, even where the angels are and the Quran mentions, right? The face and hand of God, but these aren't like ours. They're just examples to help us understand. He created everything and he knows everything. But you know what, children? He is lovingly given you who he loves so much, exactly what each of you need to be near him. And it's different for each one of you. That's why you should never envy what somebody else has. I wish I had this. I wish I lived where they did. I wish I had their kind of car. You never want to do that because Allah has given each one of you exactly what you need in order the kinds of trials and blessings that you need to draw close to him. So little Yusuf exclaimed, oh, now I see what's going on. We don't have to worry ever because God has put everything in perfect order for us. As long as we try to do what God asks us to do and do the right thing toward others every day in our lives, then we will be doing what God wants us to do. We'll be fine if we keep trying to be good. He is always with us, caring for us. No need to worry. We can trust the law. Zaynab remembered, what you are explaining to us, dear Imam, reminds us of your own life story we children will never forget how one day when you were teaching, Allah s.w.t took your voice right out of the middle of your lesson and no words were coming out. Now what is this? You see children, this was because Allah wanted Imam al-Ghazali to go on the long trip and to discover being near to him through being humble, right? And so he took away his voice. You could say, oh, that was a terrible thing that happened to him. Well, remember when we did the story of the boy and the horse, when we did the book of knowledge, maybe good, maybe bad. So then Omar added, but if that scary trial Imam al-Ghazali had not happened to you, you wouldn't have gone on your long journey, which ended with your writing, your wonderful books just for us. That story reminds us that we don't have to be afraid or worry that God is always near and protects us in many special and different ways. And usually kids without us even noticing every minute he's protecting us and giving us what we need. And you know what? We don't even notice it. We're just so busy, you know? Thank you children said Imam al-Ghazali. You were right. We need to be at ease because God is managing everything. Even if it doesn't seem that way, he's giving us the best possible care and love at every single second. Suddenly one of the children noticed a black ant creeping on the black marble floor and exclaimed, I bet God doesn't know about this tiny ant. The Imam said, oh, but he does. He is even aware of a tiny atom, a seed blowing in the wind or a speck of floating dust moving in the air. He knows all secrets and even my dear children, your innermost thoughts and what your hearts are feeling. He is always here with you. Nothing can happen that he has not already decided whatever Allah wishes to happen in this world and in the world of the angels will happen exactly as he chooses. Now, now we hear about often that God hears and sees and speaks. So Omar said, can God see us now and hear everything we are saying? Yes Omar, he does this without having eyes or ears. Remember, he can see a black ant crawling on a black rock in the darkest part of night without eyes and it doesn't matter how far away a sound is. He can hear it, even if it's on the other side of the world, children. God isn't like us in any way. Glory be to God. And when he speaks, he does so without a tongue or lips. He has sent books to us through messengers, prophets like Moses and Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him, peace and blessings be upon all of them. Moses could hear a speech without there being a letter or spoken sound. Maha said, but we can use our tongues to recite and say the verses of the Quran, can't we? And we can even memorize God's words in our hearts too. Isn't that amazing? Imagine children that we can say God's words. This must be the highest and most important thing people can do. The Imam went on. Well said Maha, God doesn't need to do anything but he's able to create everything and so he did. We wouldn't be here unless he had brought us all into being. God also made the heavens, the earths, the angels, the animals. You know what he did, children? He said be and it was. Well, all of you say with me. Everyone say it. Be and it is. All right. And everything came into being. Otherwise it wouldn't exist. So God is very wise and just. If I say you are wise, I mean you usually understand things very deeply. If you're a wise person, a wise grandfather, it means you usually know the best thing to do in every situation if you're wise. When we say a law is just, we mean he is always fair, right? But sometimes we might not be able to understand his fairness. This is because his justice is not like ours. We may think something that has happened to someone isn't fair. Maybe someone in our family is very ill. Maybe people died in an earthquake but a law knows everything about each of our lives and which blessings and which trials are most needed to bring about the highest invest in our hearts. So if something that hasn't happened, if something that has happened doesn't seem fair to you kids, you just need to trust God's wisdom over all things. Just trust. Yes. If I'm ever sad that I'm learning something and I want to do something else, I just think that I'm the chosen one that Allah chose me to learn about me in this blessing so then I get happy. You are so wonderful. You're so bright and beautiful. I just love getting to know you. This is such a pleasure. So Bilal said, of course, if Allah made each thing and each one of us in a perfect way, everybody, and then we don't think what happens is fair, that's not very smart of us. Is it? No, said Hadija. Our minds and brains are very tiny. Remember like the candle, right? How could we know what Allah has planned to do with each of our lives and to help each of our golden hearts? But look at our beautiful world. Whatever he makes has a special beauty. Look at the elephant. Look at the goose swimming. Look at that beautiful lion and those sheep, right? Everything has a special purpose. And if we can't understand why things happen, we can certainly trust our Lord and maker, right? What an amazing universe he is designed. Oh, the children all said so true. And look how kind God is to us and to all that he created. Look how he forgives all the people who somehow forgot him and forget him and end up doing wrong. And the Imam Ghazali said, and also children who went on, Allah gives special wondrous rewards that we don't even deserve for simply doing what he has asked of us. He has asked us to pray and fast. And of course, he has asked us to polish the dust off our shining hearts, right? I have noticed that you children have already begun polishing the dust off your hearts. Isn't that true children? You're all doing it, aren't you? Yes, they cried out. We have been polishing our hearts. After reading your book of knowledge, we decided to draw hearts and then place colored dots on them, which represent the different kind of dust we each need to polish away. Qassem explained, yesterday I was able to rub off some of my arguing and complaining dots. And yesterday I erased my dot for not sharing. I feel much better. We don't want these dots which come from our low selfish, not real selves to hurt our real shining selves, our golden hearts. And then Abdullah said, but Imam, how do we know what God wants us to do? When we know and understand so little, how do we know, how do we know this? Ah, explained Imam al-Dazali. That's exactly why Allah sent prophets like Abraham, Noah and Moses to us who brought his ideas and words to us. God's messengers have told us how God wants us to behave and what he forbids us from doing because it's bad for us and makes our hearts dirty and ugly. These wonderful prophets and messengers have told all the people from the beginning of time what is true. These prophets have brought us special messages from God. Our Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him brought us the Quran. Maha replied, yesterday you explained what it means when we say, La ilaha illallah. There is no God but God. And you talked about who God is. Right. Thank you Maha. But did you know that your faith is not complete without saying and understanding the second half of the shahada? This is the statement, a statement of what we believe to be true, the shahada. Muhammadur Rasulullah. You see it right here in calligraphy children. Muhammad is the messenger of God. And the children said we say these words a lot but we don't actually know their deeper real meaning. Oh, there are many, many levels of meaning hidden in these words. Here are some of the inter-special beautiful things which you are really saying when you say Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. All right. Here's some of the things. He came not just to us but to the peoples in all the world as well as to the jinn who live in another very different dimension. Each time a law sends another message or revelation to the people of the world. He confirms or states once again all that is true. As hundreds of years go by people may forget some of his message and become a bit confused. So over time he kindly repeats to humankind his perfect teaching and this comes to people all over the world in their own languages and in ways they can best understand. Allah doesn't leave anyone out. The Quran says we have sent to people at all times religion in their language. Qasem added oh Imam this is even true in our own daily lives something is explained to us and it's clear and then after a while we need it repeated. Allah's final and most recent message is now kept safely as the Quran. So you can see why we love the Prophet Muhammad peace and blessings be upon him. He was completely pure like a child and even though he couldn't read or write the words of Allah came through the archangel Gabriel to him. You see here we're seeing an image of the wings of Gabriel and that is the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him. He's in the little cave of here little cave in the Mount of Herah outside of Mecca and so the angel began the Quran and brought it to his he received the Quran on his heart that's children why your hearts are so important. So Gabriel came to him and then the Prophet memorized the passages just as they were revealed directly to his heart and these words were recorded written down as the Quran and have continued to be memorized since that time. The Arabic language itself has many levels of inner meaning each root may have like kataba and he wrote each of those three letters and those roots have meaning upon meaning and as you grow older you will learn all of these deep meanings. So the second half of the shahada in it we are reminded that when we say Muhammadur Rasulullah that we believe what our Prophet has transmitted to us about this life we are in now and the next life that comes after we die. Now here's some scales but Allah is so very merciful that the scales which he made to weigh our good and bad doings for deeds are very kind to scales on the one side where the page is listing our good deeds are placed Allah has already added a lot of extra good deeds. This side of the scale is shining but the darker pan which receives the list of naughty doings has purposely been made lighter by Allah who is so wise and just and he's the most kind and the most merciful. He has already removed a lot of silly bad deeds from that pan right. The Imam continued to explain children Alis and carefully we're now talking about what happens when you die. So after we die we've just been buried two special beings named Munkar and Nakir they will ask each one of you these questions. Who is your Lord? What is your religion and who is your prophet? Miriam exclaimed well we already know what that those answers don't we? Allah is our Lord, Islam is our religion and our prophet is named Muhammad. The children said is that all which the Imam nodded. Yes that's all you will be asked. Imam al-Ghazali added and what happens in this life if you do something very bad or wrong? Ahmad spoke up in order to make sure we don't keep on doing bad things our parents or teacher may punish us. This gives us a little time to think about how bad our behavior was and to change our ways. So children who are all listening in and the ones who may say this later as a recording this is your homework assignment. I want you all to get make a little scales you get two little cardboard boxes you see like this and hang them on a hanger and then one box it's called the naughty the naughty doings that you don't want to do and then the good deeds and then you can collect little stones little little pale light colored stones you can put in the good deed one and then you can find sort of darker pebbles or something like that maybe M&Ms and you can put those in the other one right and then you will see you will discover that your good deeds actually are weighing more than your bad you're going to feel good about this so I want every one of you to do this it's just like coloring the dots on your hearts right what you've been drawing and doing this and doing your dots on your heart these are just reminding you to find more and more ways to polish your hearts and make them shiny right the dirty stones that we pile on our toy scales will be like the dots for being angry or lazy or selfish right but good manners are like good deeds if you have good manners if you're polite if you say hello and salamu alaykum and stand up but then adult comes into the room you know that that having good manners what that really means is putting the other person first ahead of you it's so easy to do you know helping mother is putting her before playing putting her first so what you do when you have good manners is you're putting the other person first letting someone play with your toys is also good manners and so after you answer the questions of munkar and nakir all right they've asked you and they've asked you those questions guess what happens next everyone there's a thin bridge the hero is like a hair or a thin blade and you're gonna have to cross it and see just falling to the hell well they're just but only the worst people fall I wouldn't worry about it right you're trying you're trying to reach your home the next world that's waiting for you so don't worry you know only the people who don't believe in a law and who do really terrible really horrible deeds right so don't worry about it all right I don't want any of you worried the important thing is you have a wonderful marvelous time polishing your hearts now you've got to cross the bridge you're across the bridge and then you'll come to an immense watering basin it's called called al-hawd al-marud and this is the pool of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and you come to this great pool this little girl is lying there thinking about it right and this is the place where those who believe in God and his messengers get to have a drink of this very special water that's whiter than milk and sweeter than honey and once you drink from this you will never be thirsty again you'll always be completely satisfied and guess what's around this pool right it's so large this pool everybody and I want you to remember this this is what you're learning it would take an entire month at least 30 days to cross this to cross this pool but around it are little tiny drinking cups and these little jugs that are all the way around the edge right there are as many stars as there are in the heavens and then you get to drink from one of these little jugs and you know where this water comes from from one of the rivers from the garden of paradise called al-kawthar which means abundance it will never end I'm sure you all have heard the the surat al-kawthar in the atanakal kawthar I bet some of you already have memorized that one so children at a time right at a time when when um your account is finally taken you know you're his sab the addition is taken and all your good and bad doings are added up those who who have gone who have already become near to Allah will go directly to the garden of paradise Muslims will be asked what they did how their prayers were talk about their fasting their kindness and the way they treated others we must always feel when we also have to feel by the way in our hearts sure about the excellence of our prophet's companions the prophet's companions abu bakr othman umar and ali radi allah on him so aghazali tells you now remember he we've been talking about your golden heart in this particular story in the book of book in the book of belief book of talhi ghazali tells us that that uh learn that the ideas that we are learning the good ideas that you're learning are like little seeds planted right here you see right here in your heart I want everyone put your hands everyone put your hands right on top of your hearts right now and I want everyone just to imagine inside there's a beautiful golden seed gleaming inside of you can you all feel it it's in there all right because you all are children you're very close to the fitra you know so you have golden seed in there and when god made each one of you he placed this inside of you and he also play made it possible for you all to understand what is possible and impossible and is and give you an inclination a leaning toward loving faith that's why you can't stand lying or cheating right it really hurts when you see people being unfair and not telling the truth why is this this is because your hearts know what is true it might be very hard to understand what the truth is but god has already put the knowledge inside of you and so you recognize what is true can't you all tell the difference between what is true and right and then what is false and wrong throughout your whole life knowledge is like a seed in your heart and you must strive to help it grow into a magnificent tree of knowledge now to help to help these golden seeds of true ideas grow inside of your hearts what can you do seeds need to be watered right and they need sunshine and they need to be cared for so the little boy Omar said oh i see what you're seeing about the meaning of watering the seeds in our hearts what we are learning what you and our parents and teachers are teaching us is like watering these shining special seeds the idea is you are being taught children everything you're learning from your teachers and going to school and your parents and from Imam al-Ghazali's books all of these are watering your special seeds these these ideas you know will help you become stronger and as you grow as the seeds grow yes go ahead please i'd love your comment i just wanted i just wanted to tell you um uh that i home school oh that's wonderful i'm so glad you home school that's really good yeah kindergarten oh that's wonderful aren't you aren't you lucky aren't you really you're so blessed really you're fortunate that your parents can make that possible for you you know in fourth grade oh my goodness oh that's wonderful you're that was zahra right yeah my brother home schools too oh thank you zahra for telling us this that's really wonderful so i'm sure all the wonderful things you're learning these are like watering the golden seeds the ideas that are in your heart are becoming stronger and growing because you they're getting all kinds of support and sunshine from all the teaching you're getting at home that's really wonderful so um um think of it this way the first things you are learning are like planting seeds in your heart so how can you water them so they get very very strong okay some of the ways you can water them is do your prayers at regular times you can study the Quran and hadith you can sit with beautiful elders with your grandparents and lovely people in your community who are at peace with themselves and with the loss upon a watt to Allah and you can try and be peaceful like them look at them and see if you couldn't start to imitate them remember in the last book we were told in the book of um hajj that when you're circumambulating the Kaaba you you're you're following along with the angels who are in the next world the the alamo malakut you're circumambulating with them imitating them and and then gazali said we become like who we imitate so if you see beautiful people who are kind and very noble imitate them right so all of these kinds of things are going to help to water your seeds until they grow and become stronger and stronger and turn into a goodly tree the Quran speaks Quran verse surah 14 a goodly tree whose roots are firm and branches are in heaven this is what your knowledge is like like a beautiful tree so look if if the tree look at here's this little boy right he's got a little plant growing he said uh these good ideas growing in this boy's heart are becoming a great tree you could color this it's in your workbook by the way that you have this comes with your uh with book two it's the workbook you can add fruit all the good that comes from your good ideas right so if the tree began growing from a seed right which god which god gave us a seed of true ideas and if we listen care and with love to what our teachers and parents say now everyone listen to what your teachers and parents are telling you right if you listen to them in that way the tree will be watered when you listen to your parents and your family and to your imam it will it will water your little plant and it will grow from what it learns and one day look look how big your tree will become big big big and beautiful from your beautiful ideas and if you live your life with these beautiful ideas that you're learning you'll be able to do really good things you know coming from a strong tree see look here's here's the little boy and you can see that little plant is going to become a great tree and look at him as a grown-up person see what a beautiful noble person he'd become because he kept nourishing the ideas the good ideas and trying to do them everything he was taught so we people can be strong like strong beautiful trees and when we do good things these not only help other people right doing things for other you know good doing good but it helps polish our own hearts at the same time so you see the fruits that come from good learning and good doing are not just helping us to have good lives but they're also helping us get ready for the next beautiful world where we will all be going together right and then what the children said but how do we even begin to help our little trees grow we are only children when we are little here's some things you can do children when we are little we can memorize verses from the Quran and things our beloved prophet peace and blessings be upon him said some of the hadith while we are small it's easy to memorize it's hard for someone my age but you all it's easy to learn things by heart this is the perfect time for you to learn these beautiful passages and plant them in your heart ready to grow you may not understand all the words yet or what they mean but later you will but what you need to do is get these beautiful Quranic passages memorized in your heart remember these are the words the sainah Gabriel the angel Gabriel said you'll be you'll be reciting those very words in your heart angelic right the little boy Balal said I have been I have been given a life and this is my own garden to take care of my teachers and my parents are giving me seeds to plant in the middle of my garden and also they're giving me advice about how to keep my garden weeded and watered Imam al Ghazali speaks about weeding you've seen weeds outside the weeds get around your plants and flowers and they kill them off they strangle them right and then the boy Ahmed said the weeds smother little plants and try to kill them so children we must watch carefully out for thoughtless doings which are like bad deeds be on alert watch all the time if you start doing something silly and ridiculous and naughty realize it's like a weed it's a weed trying to strangle your beautiful little good growing plants and Imam al Ghazali said your life children is a gift that God gives to you now children suppose you gave your very best friend a nice gift and that friend threw it on the floor and just crushed it and stepped on it how would you feel if that happened children wouldn't that be terrible if you gave your friend something and they just threw it on the ground and stepped on it so so imagine a law has given you this beautiful life and all these possibilities right so you don't want you don't want to waste your lives that these your lives have been given to you by God so you don't want to waste them these are your lives and you don't want to throw them away you want to use them for what they have been intended a law wants you all to return to him pure and happy as you are right now and to enjoy beautiful beautiful lives we're just at the end here so just ending right now so I want want to wind up so Imam al Ghazali reminds you everybody he says children don't waste your time by getting into a lot of arguments about religion sometimes parents and people and scholars they argue over they go on and on arguing about different points right they discuss endlessly and they argue right and sometimes they get full of pride and then they start disliking other people for different ideas Imam al Ghazali says and he wrote these books not for children by the way he wrote these for people our age and scholars he was telling them not to do it but you're finding out now about these ideas so you won't do them either what you won't all right so he says focus on what you are learning and on doing good right and on being kind and thoughtful don't be angry or upset be happy be the happy people full of shining light that you already are and he said sometimes it might happen you know it might happen that someone has misunderstood something in religion right and your parents very kindly very sweetly and calmly will tell them what is correct you know yeah not not in a mean way you know and in that way they are able to help a person who might be full of doubt always use gentle words right don't feel proud right when you're if you really want to be helpful be gentle and not proud the Quran our holy book is filled with good reasons that can help people understand all right let's here's an example there have been some people who who have not believed that we will have a next life after we die all right children I'm sure you will run into many kids who say I don't believe that there's a next life I don't believe there's a next world after we die this is all there is there people who actually think like that but you know what the Quran says it's explained it explains that that God who created everyone in the first place right can bring them back he can bring them back to life again that means if a lot created people in this world and he brought us into this world then certainly he can bring you into the next world too I mean that would be easy that's pretty clear said Yusuf it makes sense that if God made us and brought us into this world right why wouldn't it be easy for him then to bring us into the next world the one which comes after the Garden of Paradise and added maha excitedly we learn from your book of knowledge that we have a false lower self or ego the nafs alamara it only thinks about itself and not others this is where the black dots come from right this lower part of us is selfish and greedy and wants to show off to others how good we are this low false it's not who we really are this low false self also forgets who we really are our real beautiful selves the real selves that are completely happy that low self which pretends to be who we really are has to be right and win out all the time it's very embarrassing seeing people like that who always have to win out and are you know not nice children you have to stay aware of your three selves right right to stay as of your three selves so whatever happens in your life you will be able to turn that into something that will help you in many ways and make you peaceful and happy just watch your three selves the lower self that's not you the nafs alamara the selfish means separated egoic self and then your nafs alawama says oh no that's the wrong thing to do and the nafs alamut to my inna is your real self just when you see yourself getting upset or being silly just look and say oh that's not that's the lower the lower self so akhmat explained oh my goodness and we know it's not easy to do this to be our real true selves it's very hard look at the story of imam al ghazali we saw how hard it was for you imam al ghazali you noticed when you were a very famous teacher that you were proud and enjoyed being famous and smart and then Allah kindly took away your voice so you couldn't teach anymore and he let you become a humble janitor you see in the picture here children there he is sweeping a humble janitor Allah honored him by taking him from being rich and famous and powerful he was honored by bringing him to this beautiful state where he was humble instead of full of himself right so once you you get so children once you get empty of all of your stuck up ideas you can become pure and full of light and then you will you'll be able to understand about the deep and very important meanings of every detail of our religion at the end all the little children in the story they said oh imam al ghazali bless you and thank god that you have been able to go through every tiny detail of our religion and explain the beautiful meanings for us the real and true inner meanings that so many people no longer know or understand praise Allah you have made us love our prayers and want to understand all that god has asked of us you are giving us step by step away full of meaning to love god and our faith and that ends the book of belief and isn't that beautiful the children are thanking imam al ghazali and we're thanking him too right now it's no different we're not children pretending we see him we are who we are and we can thank him because he is always present in his teachings and all the wonderful things he is helping us with so I just wanted to say you know I imagine I finished this in exactly an hour like I was supposed to but I would love any of you to have any comments or questions or anything at all it's been a pleasure to teach you these um six evenings I want to tell you though to have gone through six hour classes with you and given you what took eight years to do I it's really been too condensed and I feel very bad but now you've had an overview of the ideas and you can slowly read the books do the workbook pages do the activities have fun and really learn everything that you've been presented with for your very own hearts so I give you many many flams any any questions um why does a host keep wanting me to unmute why does what why does the host host keep I don't know now I can't even hear you oh because I was on mute why does the host keep wanting me to unmute I don't know is this the last session yes this is it we're saying goodbye but I'll come out and visit you again in the in California can I come out to the muslim community center again and see you all and we can sit around and do some art projects play some games should we do that yeah when there's no coronavirus yeah that's right that would be when the coronavirus is gone yeah yeah and Aisha I want you to keep helping uh uh brother Munir because I have a question yes yes yes yes scene yes what are weeds that you talked about they were bad deeds right well yeah everybody does some bad deeds don't we even if we're proud we're proud or mean or we don't share those are the kinds of things we're talking about thank you you're welcome yesine anymore something you can all do if you go on the children's interactive gizali children's dot org website if you go to things to do you'll find a section where children have sent in videos I wish you all would make videos of doing the wrong thing and then doing it right but one little boy out of lego's made a little lego car going along wait I can get rid of I can stop sharing here oh yeah oh here I am yeah so he made a little toy car and it's going along like this he's going and it hits a lego tree and he's dead and then you made out of lego's a little gray a little grave and then he has the two beings coming to question him who is your lord what is your religion it was really funny I hope you all will go online sometime and on the website and there's a what it starts with a beautiful heart walking along and it's got a brush and then jealousy jumps out and it brushes off jealousy and then you can go and read the books like the the flip book that I hope you read of the mamal gizali's life there are other books and there are many things you can do and I would love it if you all became part of the community and made little videos like some of the hilarious videos you all will see and you can send in one little girl from Pakistan she's from sial cut pakistan and she has pets white peacocks and she had a beautiful silver dress and she had her dolls go to a doll luncheon she brought them in a doll car and then when they left they talked badly about the hostess they said oh her food was horrible she didn't look very pretty and then they thought what did we do we were backbiting so they turned around and they went all the way back and they went to her and they said we are sorry forgive us we we apologize for saying something wrong behind your back but some of them are really some of them are really funny there's the one of the two girls that are are playing around and they they're doing cartwheels and one of them falls in and breaks the mother's vase and they said oh mother is going to be so angry so upset and then mother is coming and mother walks in and said who broke my vase and they said oh little Ahmed there the little baby boy on the on the couch he went no no and then the girls thought what did we do so they go into the mother and they say mother we lied we're sorry we broke it we will try to fix it but we want to tell you we we apologize and the mother loved them very much for being honest and asking forgiveness but you could make films like this and you go and see what kids have said and you're just gonna laugh you're gonna really laugh so I hope you all will do that like little plays with my friends yes you can take an iphone and make little videos go and look at a lot of them and you'll get ideas what you can do they're really funny I hope you do that yeah and I hope you get a chance to go through all the different workbooks and fill in the blanks and and have your mother go through the activities and maybe for each chapter come up with some really fun activities you can do you know one of the great activities is I think we talked about this last time is that um good thoughts and bad thoughts remember we talked about the good thoughts that that the angels have in your mind and if you have bad thoughts it's like barking dogs scaring me scaring the angels away that if you have a good thought you're supposed to act on it right away don't wait there's what's we see like the lower things coming and say maybe you have the good thought I'll go and help mommy now and then the thoughts say oh go and watch tv instead if you can catch if you have a good thought quickly do it because the bad thoughts from the lower self are trying to ruin everything for you so really watch look at your good thoughts in the second you have one like go and do it well I've loved being with you but this isn't the end this is just the beginning um let's just check in you know maybe next year we'll get together you all are older and you can tell me what you've learned from your work and I all everybody please write to me please send videos be in touch anytime anybody else any mom or dad maybe I could try making videos I would love it if you did you promise me you'll do that that would be so beautiful inshallah I I have some Minecraft characters I could do could you do that oh that would be wonderful that's wonderful it's Jabriel your name is Jabriel isn't it yeah I love that name isn't that a beautiful name it's beautiful the name of an archangel I mean isn't that wonderful what's on your t-shirt what's on your shirt uh a monster truck oh what a monster truck I thought you said that yeah look at that a monster truck oh my goodness thank goodness well let's see uh uh Zahra would you like to say something I think my video will be funny because I'm kind of a funny person anyway oh I can't wait I can't wait that'll be great and what about Hayan are you there maybe not well should we call it a night she'll she'll she'll I go off and finally go to sleep it's been wonderful being with you all and you're just a real family to me so I'm sending you love and so many salams thank you for teaching thank you thank you so much thank you so much thank you and I love you all thank you for taking the time out of your day to do this for us oh thank you what a nice thing to say thank you thanks I come well I like him so bye bye