 And then he was a descendant of the cousin of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam who is Jafar ibn Abi al-Qalib, okay? So that's the first part of his bio. His mother, and this is for all the moms who are tuning in. I'm a mother, and I want you, and I wanted to again honor Imam al-Lud's biography, but also honor all the mothers because we sometimes don't give ourselves enough credit. But look at, you know, what we know of Imam al-Malud, that his mother, Maryam bids Muhammad Moulud ibn al-Nahi, was also very knowledgeable, and she was her son's first teacher, subhanAllah. Most of us are. Most of us are our children's very first teachers, right? But he actually memorized the Quran through his mother. So again, such a beautiful inspiration for all of us to reflect on as mothers and as children that the greatest school is often time our home and our teacher is the greatest teacher that we have. First teacher anyway is our mother, alhamdulillah. So he's a great scholar of his time, authored many, many books, over 70 books. And then, you know, he passed away in the year 1905. So not, you know, I mean, it's not that long ago, right? Alhamdulillah, but he did so much for our faith by providing this beautiful poem that examines the diseases of the heart. And we're going to talk about what that means in just a moment. So now that we know a little bit about Imam Moulud, let's talk about the next person that's really important to this because he brought this text, which is in classical Arabic, to the Western audience. He translated it from Arabic to English and then provided commentary, which is the basis, which is what we're going to talk about in this class. As we go day, you know, session by session, we're going to talk about the commentary that Sheikh Hamza Yusuf provided. So who is he? Well, we should all know him, especially if those of us in California and the Bay Area, because he is a Bay Area native, Masha'Allah. But he's also a global scholar known throughout every region of the world, Masha'Allah Tabarakullah. And he currently serves as president of the first accredited Muslim college in the US, which is Zaituna College, which is right here in Berkeley, California, a huge honor for those of us again in the Bay Area and in California in general. Alhamdulillah, Sheikh Hamza's, you know, we could say so many things about him and his acumen, but Masha'Allah, he holds traditional advanced degrees in Islamic law and theology, as well as a BA in religious studies from San Jose State University and a PhD from the UC Berkeley, the Graduate Theological Union, Alhamdulillah. He was ranked by the Muslim 500 as the 23rd most influential Muslim worldwide, huge honor, right? Of all the Muslims, billions of people in the world, Sheikh Hamza was ranked as the 23rd most influential, meaning that his teachings, Masha'Allah, have spread to so many people, Alhamdulillah. And most of those teachings are by way of books, articles that he's written, as well as classes that are available for people and lectures that he's made available online. And so the books that he's published right here in this bottom section include the Burda Purification of the Heart, which I just showed you, the Content of Character, another amazing book for parents, again, to look into, the Creed of Imam at Tahawi, and Agenda to Change our Condition, Walk on Water, and the Prayer of the Oppressed. Alhamdulillah, all incredible resources for us to have. So Alhamdulillah, please keep both of them in your du'as as we go through this class, because we would not be able to do this if it wasn't for their efforts. And it's so important to be in a state of gratitude to our teachers and to those who, again, give us access to the knowledge that enhances us and helps us on our spiritual journey, okay? So with that said, we're gonna jump into this topic because I wanna maximize the time that we have. We have about an hour, maybe a little bit more if I take some Q&As at the end, which I want to. But let's proceed, inshallah. Why do we need to purify the heart? This hadith, which Imam Noah we said is one of four or five hadith around which the entire religion of Islam is understood, is pretty critical to understanding why we have to do this process of purifying the heart. And we're gonna get into details again about what that means. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said that the Halal is clear and the Haram is clear and between them are matters unclear that are known to most people. Whoever is wary of these unclear matters has absolved his religion and honor and whoever indulges in them has indulged in the Haram. It is like a shepherd who herds his sheep too close to preserve sanctuary and they will eventually graze in it. Every king has a sanctuary and the sanctuary of Allah is what he has made Haram. There lies within the body a piece of flesh. If it is sound, the whole body is sound. And if it is corrupted, the whole body is corrupted. Verily, this piece is the heart. So what does this mean? The word sound, right? It's kind of like strange because we think of sound, we think of hearing, we think of something that we hear, but it actually has multiple meanings. In this case, it means that if it's healthy, okay? So if the heart is healthy and you can, we're talking specifically, we can interpret this hadith as the physical heart as well as the spiritual heart, right? And that's what our scholars have done that it applies to both. And it's true from a medical or physiological standpoint, if you have a healthy heart, then Alhamdulillah, everything in the body just seems to go smoothly. A lot of people, one of the number one killers is heart disease, right? A lot of people have sick hearts and I actually have a picture of a sick heart coming up. I just wanna put that out there in case anybody's a little squeamish. I'll give you an alert before I post it. But I want you to see what happens when our hearts become diseased and then try to understand that the same thing can happen to the spiritual heart, okay? So this is why we purify the heart. Now another really important thing to understand is that there are different types of hearts, okay? So what we mean by that is here, here are the eight types of hearts. And we're gonna go through the description of each one to understand that where people, different people throughout the world are, some people have different, they don't have a sound heart, they don't have a healthy spiritual heart or physical heart, but we're, again, speaking about the spiritual heart here. So these are, there's eight different types of hearts that we learn through hadith or learn through commentary or learn through ayes of the Quran and we're gonna now describe each one, okay? Here's the first one, the dead heart. In the Quran in chapter 50 verse 37, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that verily in this is a message for any that has a heart or who gives ear and earnestly witness the truth. So he's talking about the Quran itself, that for people who have a heart and obviously this does not apply to the physical heart because if you don't have a physical heart, you're not alive, right? We're specifically talking about the spiritual heart, that for those people who have a spiritual heart that's working, that's functioning and who actually listen and earnestly or sincerely are trying to learn the truth, the message of the Quran is gonna touch their hearts. So what the means or the opposite or what this ayah tells us is that there are people that their hearts aren't working, that somehow something's gone wrong, that the spiritual heart is dead, right? And these are the people who do not know Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala the way they should, they don't worship him the way he commands in the way that he likes and the way that pleases him. Instead of worshiping Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, they just do whatever they wanna do, it doesn't matter. It's like, oh, I wanna not pray because I'd rather go and have some ice cream or I'd rather go watch a movie or I wanna go on my bike and take a bike ride around the court. So whenever there's something that has to be done as a form of worship to Allah, they don't do it. And even though they know that this might cause Allah's displeasure and wrath, they still go and do whatever they want. So these types of people are what we would say there's something wrong with their actual spiritual heart in that it's not functioning and it's probably dead. Now, can it come back to life? Yes, that's the good news, Alhamdulillah. How they have to humble themselves, make Toba to Allah, and then they have to be willing to listen and take the message, right? Whatever, like to listen to the message of the Quran and to listen to the words of the Prophets, I said, I'm with sincerity. This is how this kind of a heart can come back to life. So the hardened heart, okay? Now I want you, again, I'm using this imagery because I want you guys to think about what happens to the spiritual heart, okay? When a person stops remembering Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala the way that they should, and they stop, you know, doing what they should be doing in terms of fulfilling their Ibadah, the heart starts to harden, okay? The spiritual heart. And so to prevent this from happening, the answer that what we should be doing is always being in a state of remembrance as much as possible, thanking Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala, feeling grateful for the blessing of existence, for all of the blessings that Allah's given us. Our families, for example, our parents, our homes, the food that we eat, the drink that we have, the drinks that we get to have, the clothes that we wear, all of the things that we have in life, our gifts that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala has showered on us, he's blessed us with. So we have to be in remembrance and gratitude to Allah. And when we do that enough, it prevents the heart from getting hardened, okay? So that's why saying Masha'Allah Alhamdulillah, Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is so important to have as a practice, astaghfirullah, right? A lot of things we could say, but as long as we're remembering Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. The third heart is the darkened heart. And if you notice in this picture, there's light, but it's not going through this heart. Why? Because this heart is darkened. And we talked about the dead heart, right? Those who basically are just into disobedience, they know that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is maybe upset with them, but they continue to follow their own desires. And those people, yes, their hearts can come alive through it being attentive and actually witnessing the truth. But the people who still remain in darkness, right? That maybe they've heard the truth. They hear the message and they're just not willing to accept it. That those people, they remain heedless. They just are, you know, they don't wanna do what they're supposed to do. Their hearts become darkened, right? And that darkness is because they are heedless, which means they're not fulfilling their obligations to Allah. And then what that does, it actually makes them suffer in many ways. They start to have problems with their life, in their life, they may have mental health problems or other spiritual problems like anxiety, depression, fear. They might start getting a lot of stuff. And that's, again, sorry. The reason for that is because a person who has peace in their heart, that they have peace and they have light in their heart because they're remembering Allah, so when you don't remember Allah, this is the consequences that it starts to darken, okay? So what about the difference? So what's the difference between a darkened heart and a blackened heart? Well, we know from the hadith, the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, verily when the servant commits a sin, a black mark appears upon the heart. So you wanna look exactly like this picture, okay? Every time we sin, every time we lie, every time we don't do our prayers on time or we do something that our parents told us not to do and we make our parents upset or we do something that, again, is forbidden in Islam, whatever that is. It's a sin and it creates a black mark upon our heart. Now, the hadith is hopeful because the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, if he abandons a sin, so if you say it, you recognize your mistake and then you seek forgiveness and you make your tauba, then alhamdulillah, the black spot gets removed. It's like it wasn't even there and it's polished again. But if you keep going back to the sin, then that sin or that darkness will increase and it just starts to take over the heart. It's like the whole heart starts to get spotted with these black spots and then it looks like something like this, right? And Allah swt has an ayah in the Quran also that talks about a covering, right? So this is what we mean, that when sins start to cover our hearts, it's because of what we've done. It's our own sins, right? And this is why it's so important to make astaghfirullah every day. The Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would make astaghfirullah every single day and he didn't even sin. But why is he teaching us to do that? Because he knows that we will fall into mistakes and sins but if we always go back to Allah, inshallah we'll be okay, okay? So the next heart is called the sealed heart, okay? And this is Allah swt says, thus does Allah seal the hearts of those who do not know. So there's the word in Arabic is tabaa, which means to stamp or seal. And Allah swt talks about how he seals the hearts of the disbelievers and those who transgress, those who go against Allah swt who are disobedient to Allah swt, Allah puts a seal on their heart. And so there are people out there who, again, they may hear the message of Islam but Allah's not guiding them because he's put a seal on their heart, okay? A locked heart. This is another heart and there's two more, okay? So the locked heart, this Allah swt says, do they not then earnestly seek to understand the Quran or are their hearts locked? So this is really interesting, right? Because there are people who they have the truth and Alhamdulillah, they're Muslim, they may have learned a lot of things, but for some reason they've put a lock on their own heart. And so this is the person is doing this to themself, right? And that prevents them from reciting the Quran, reading the Quran, learning about the Prophets and Allah swt is seeking knowledge, doing their prayers on time for whatever reason, they're just maybe, again, their nafs is too strong and they wanna just do what they wanna do, but these are people who put a lock on their own heart, okay? And Allah swt that is asking, you know, those people like think about what you're doing, right? That this is, you're the one that's putting that lock on your heart. And then we have the blind heart, okay? This is also important. There's a lot of people who are just blind. So Allah swt says here, do they not travel through the land so that their hearts may thus learn wisdom and their ears may thus learn to hear? Truly it is not their eyes that are blind but their hearts which are in their chests. So there are a lot of people who don't seem to see, you know, the importance of worshiping Allah swt of doing what they're supposed to be doing because they're forgetting, they're forgetting that they were created for a purpose. And so this is versus a challenge that says basically go out and look, right? Observe with your own eye how beautiful this world is. Look at the stars and the heavens and the universe and the sun and the moon. Look at the waterfalls and the mountains and all of the beautiful things in creation, the beautiful animals that Allah swt has created. Some of them can camouflage and change their color. Some of them, you know, can do so many incredible things. So think about all of these miracles in a way that we're witnessing when we look out into the world and reflect that who, how did this all come about? If you're blind, you're not seeing these things. So that's why it's very important to be in touch with nature and to try to always go out and maybe take a hike or go somewhere where that connects you back with nature, right? I know a lot of children, one of the things I love, I love many things about children but one of the things I love about children is that you have a natural love most children do of nature. You love to, you know, be out and about and, you know, whether it's, you know, just being outside and playing in your backyard or going on a hike, going mountain, I mean, to the mountains, going to the beach, you just like to be out and look at the creation of Allah swt. So that's why children are always in this beautiful state of joy and happiness because they're in awe. They love to see all of the great things that Allah swt has made and created, right? So your hearts are, masha'Allah, fully, you have great sight, right? A lot of other people we need to learn from you because you, masha'Allah, have this natural ability to see things that sometimes adults don't always see. Okay, so Alhamdulillah. So may Allah protect us again from all of these hearts and then the heart that we all want. This is the one, okay? So we covered seven so far. There's eight. This is the heart that Allah swt wants all of us to have and that we should all want to have. Allah swt says, the day on which neither wealth nor children will be of any benefit except for whoever brings to Allah a sound heart. What does he mean by that? He's saying that on that day, the most important thing that you can come to Allah swt with is you can't buy Allah swt's happiness with you. You can't bargain with Allah swt. The most important thing that you can do is make sure that your heart is shining, bright and healthy and sound. There's that word again, sound, right? Which really means healthy, vibrant, alive, right? And the Prophet SAW said, verily Allah does not look to your faces and your wealth but he looks to your spiritual heart and to your deeds. So this is again another reminder that Allah swt doesn't care how tall we are, how small we are, how much, what color our hair is, what color our eyes are or what other things that we have in terms of our physical appearance, none of that matters. He doesn't care about how much money we have, none of it. The most important thing that Allah swt that wants from us is a really sound, healthy, beautiful, sparkling, shiny spiritual heart. So how can we get that? Well, that's what we're doing. This is what the whole class is about. The whole class is to teach all of us how we can try to keep our hearts from getting diseased, okay? So this heart that I just described is qalbun salim, that word sound. In Arabic, it's salim. And here is an ayah again in the Quran from chapter 26, verse 89, that says, what? ila man atat allah bi qalbun salim. So the only one who will be saved is the one who comes before God with a heart devoted to him, right? A heart that's devoted to Allah swt. ilja arabbahu bi qalbun salim. Again, he came to his Lord with a devoted heart, right? Very important that our hearts are clean for Allah swt. So, ooh, oh, sorry, I forgot to give you guys the warning. Okay, if you can't look at things that are kind of, you know, with the human body, I'm gonna put a picture up, but I want you to see it. I hope that you guys are okay with looking at it. I know we have some kids that are 11, we have other teens that are much older. So I'm gonna put it out there and let your parents hopefully decide whether or not you can look at this. It's not too bad, but I think it's an important visual, okay? So how do we achieve a devoted heart, a clean heart? Well, look at this picture on the right. You see that healthy heart, right? That's what we all start off with. Every single person that's born, you know, healthy, all infants, we're given this beautiful, fresh piece of, you know, flesh in our body that just does what it's supposed to do really well. It pumps blood and it brings us, you know, full health throughout the rest of our body, right? But over time, because of things that we do, there's people who eat really bad food, but then there's other people who do things like drink alcohol, which is haram in Islam, right? Or they smoke cigarettes or they smoke other things or they do other, you know, type of just wrong things. Those things have an effect on their heart and it starts to do this, what we see in the damaged heart. It starts to cover the heart with disease, right? The heart is no longer working right. And that's why those people sometimes have a hard time breathing. They have a hard time, you know, doing anything, walking a few steps can, for some people, be really difficult and it's likely because their hearts have just been damaged for so many years and, you know, it just prevents them from living a normal, healthy life. So the spiritual heart is the same way. Over time, if you're not aware of the diseases of the heart, what can happen is it starts to take over the spiritual heart just the same way like the damage that you see in this physical heart, okay? So that's why it's so important that we first identify what the diseases are because if you go to a doctor, right, and you say, doctor, I'm experiencing some chest pains and I think my heart hurts, he or she will send you for, you know, some testing. They'll look into your heart and they'll then tell you, these are the changes that you need to make if you wanna get your heart to be healthy again. They'll tell you to stop eating this, stop doing this, exercise more. That's all advice to get your heart to be healthy again. But you have to first identify where the problems are. So for the spiritual heart, it's the same exact thing. You cannot fix the heart if you don't know what the diseases are that affect the heart. So that's what we are going to talk about in this class. So let's go ahead and look. Now there are 25 diseases of the heart, okay? This is a long list, but we're gonna go over all of them by the end of the class. And this is just the first 13, here's the rest. So I'm gonna go over each one of them and kind of give you, again, some commentary so that you understand what they all mean and how human beings can develop them. Like how can someone get a diseased spiritual heart? Well, we're gonna talk about that. So let's go ahead and jump into the very first five or six. We're likely because of time, we had to do an introduction. We might not get to all of these. I think we're probably only gonna be able to do the first three, but I still wanted you to see them. So let's just quickly look at this list. The first one that we're gonna talk about is called miserliness or stinginess, okay? Again, the English words are on the right column, the middle column has the Arabic words, and then the definition is in the right column. So the Arabic word for being stingy or miserly is bohol, okay? And this is, the definition is someone who is holding on to their wealth and not spending it when it's necessary, and they're being stingy or greedy. They don't wanna let go of their wealth for whatever reason, okay? So this is a disease of the heart for many reasons because, which we'll get to, okay? But if you can imagine, again, in Islam, the Prophet, when you study his life, you know one of the things that he was very well known for was how generous he was. He was always helping people. He helped everybody. He even helped animals. So his generosity wasn't just for his family or friends. He helped complete strangers. He helped people from all different backgrounds, and he even helped, as I said, animals. So to not be a helpful person or a generous person or a charitable person is to go against the way of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. That, right, in and of itself makes being stingy a very big problem, right? And again, we'll get into that in just a moment. The next disease of the heart is called wantonness, which is butter, and this is being way too exuberant, joyful, but that leads you to be reckless in your extravagance. And I know those are probably big words for some of you, I'll explain. What that means is that you may have given you a certain lifestyle, right? Maybe you have a lot of money. Like maybe during all these years you've gathered some money from family, from your grandparents, uncles, aunts, for your birthday, for Eid, and you have a lot of money, and then you take all that money and you just wanna spend it without really thinking about where would be best to spend. You're just like, you know what? I'm gonna go and buy 10 pounds of candy and then go and buy all these toys. And even though you have a lot of toys and you probably don't need all that candy, it's just because you have so much that you can do with all this money that you just let yourself go. Now for a child, that's to a certain degree okay, but when you have an adult that has that problem, it can really become a big issue, right? And I'm gonna, again, talk it more in detail once we get to that. The third disease that we're gonna cover for today is called hatred. And this is Burud in Arabic. And this is when you hate someone for really no reason, no justifiable reason. And it's definitely, it's not for the sake of Allah, because there's sometimes, you know, if you hate something, anything, it has to be for the sake of Allah. You can't just hate for no reason, right? And so we're gonna talk about how that disease can also really affect a person's overall spiritual state, okay? So those are the three that we're gonna cover today and then I'm gonna leave it open for some questions, hopefully. But let's go ahead and get to the first one. So miserliness, okay? This is, again, Bukhul in Arabic. So I want you to, at home, with your parents, if you're there, to repeat the words because you should know how they sound. Miserliness and Bukhul, okay? Ha, with a ha, Bukhul. Now what is that? Here we have reminders from the Quran and Hadith. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala said that those who are miserly and enjoying miserliness on other men and hide what Allah has bestowed upon them of His bounties. And we have prepared for the disbelievers a disgraceful torment. So Allah is warning us very clearly that if you're a miserly person and you hide, you're hoarding, to hoard something is where you basically are just collecting, right? You're gathering things for yourself, right? And I don't know how many of you are paying attention, but when this whole pandemic started, a lot of people were running to the stores to get what? Piles and piles of toilet paper, piles and piles of hand sanitizer. And there were specific people who got so much that they cleared out the stores. So all the local stores in their cities, they didn't even have any of these things available because one or two people took all of it for themselves. This is completely wrong in Islam. You can't do things like that because there were so many people who needed that stuff, right? They needed it to keep their families healthy and safe, but the amizer doesn't care about other people. They're selfish. They're only thinking about themselves and then they hoard things maybe even more than they need. There was actually, you know, even shows, I remember watching a few of them that go through people who have this disease of the heart and they go, you know, it's like a documentary kind of, which is where it's like a little news story where a camera crew will go into the house of a person and then kind of, you know, just show how they live. A lot of people have a disease called hoarding, okay? And hoarding is where you just can't help yourself. You just wanna gather as many things as possible. Some of these people, if you go into their homes, you know what happens? You can't even walk through the front door. You have to go through a window or a side door because the things that they have gathered or accumulated over time are so much that they go all the way to the roof of the house. So can you imagine? And some of these people, like, they have one specific thing. Like I remember watching one woman, you know what she loved to buy? She loved to buy dolls. So she would buy, she was like an older woman. So it's not like a little girl who just loves dolls. She liked to collect dolls. So what she did is she bought so many dolls that they were taking over every room of her house. So this is what happens with people who hoard, right? They just keep taking and taking and taking, not realizing this is wrong. You're not letting other people also have their share. And so it's a disease, right, of the heart. The Prophets of Islam also said, spend in charity and do not count it lest Allah count it against you. Do not hoard it, right? Do not be miserly, lest Allah withhold it from you. So this is a clear warning that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, if you are a hoarder, someone who hoards or miserly, that Allah will withhold things from you too, right? So you do that to other people, you're gonna have it done to you. This is really important to understand. Now, this is an interesting fact. Some of you may know this, some of you may not. Did you know that in Arabic, the Arabic language, the word from miserly or miserliness is compared to something really unpleasant that all human beings experience, even you, pretty much all of us, we have all at some point in our lives experiences because it's just natural thing, but it's not very pleasant, okay? And I'm gonna tell you what it is. So check this out. The miser ardently clings to what? His wealth, right? And he hoards it up. The word for cling in Arabic is masak, okay? Everybody say masak, okay? What is masak? This is derived from another Arabic word, which means constipation, O-M-G, right? I see your smiling faces or laughing faces. I knew this was gonna get you guys to giggle a little bit, but just think about it for just a second. That the person who is constipated is what? They are holding on to something that's actually harmful for them to hold on to because you need to go, right? When it's time to go, you need to go, but if you can't go because your body has a problem, what happens is it causes you problems, right? So miserly people are compared to a person who is in that state because they're clinging on to something that actually poisons them, right? What do we mean by that? When you have wealth, and Allah SWT has given you abundance of something, in Islam we have to give part of our wealth away, right? We give zakat, we give charity. Why? Because that zakat and sadaqah that we give cleans or purifies all of the other wealth that we have. So it's kind of like a detox, right? Because we don't know if all of the money that we have is halal, so we give it part of it away so that Allah cleanses the rest of it for us. But if you're a miser, what you do is you don't give sadaqah, you don't give zakat. You're holding on to your money for whatever reason. And so they compare you to a person who's in that constipated state. That's why it's something so odious, something so repulsive, right? We don't want to be misers, just like we don't ever wanna be in that physically very, very uncomfortable state, right? So remember that word, the word masak. Remember what it means, okay? So another also just for those of you who might, again, want a quicker definition, miser, a miser is someone who's also cheap, okay? So cheap people, stingy people, miserly. Those are all the words that you need to know to understand this disease of the heart. Now, how do you get rid of it, okay? So important because as we talk about the diseases, we also have to talk about the cures, right? We can't just identify the diseases without figuring out, well, how do I make sure I don't ever, ever, ever, ever become a miser? Well, let's look at what our scholars have told us. They've said, first number one thing is to remember death, okay? Remember that wealth is accumulated over time and a lot of people work hard. If you look at your parents, they work really hard every single day to give you the life that you have, right? They go to work early. They sometimes deal with really difficult people. They're not always in the best state, but why do they do it? Because they have to. They have to provide for their families. So when you accumulate wealth, it takes time, but also one of the things that we know about this world is that death can come at any time, right? And so you have to be grateful for what Allah gives you and use it in its appropriate time without thinking that you have time to spend because we don't know. We have no idea how much life we have in this world, right? We always have hope and we should always have the best hope with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. But remembrance of death will humble us to know, you know what, what am I holding onto this for? And then we also have to learn how to balance our spending because it's perfectly fine to spend your wealth if Allah's giving you wealth to spend it. You shouldn't, you know, hold onto it for no reason, but you also shouldn't waste it, okay? Wasting your wealth is just splurging, buying things for no reason, just kind of being careless, okay, about your wealth. We should not do that and we should learn how to spend it for the sake of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala. That's a balanced view, just doing both, right? And then this is a really important point. So I want you to pay attention, okay? The miser is considered the ultimate loser. Why? Because they don't use their wealth in this world because they're holding onto it, right? They don't wanna spend, they're holding onto their wealth and then in the next life, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala holds them to account, which means he's gonna ask them about it, right? He's gonna say, why didn't you use that wealth that I gave you to help the orphans or to help the refugees or to help the family that was struggling after their house went on fire, you know? Or to help this person or that person. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is gonna ask every single one of us where we got our wealth from and how we used it. So the miser is gonna be in a lot of trouble on the day of judgment, but then if you think about their life in this world, how sad because Allah's giving you all this wealth but you don't wanna spend it, that means you're not even enjoying your wealth. You're just holding onto it for no reason. So this is why the miser is considered again a double loser, okay? Important to know. May Allah protect us all from miserliness. So inshallah, say amin, okay? We have to make dua to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala that he cleans our hearts so that we don't ever get these diseases, right? So it's so important to make that dua. Yalla, please protect me from miserliness. I don't want to be ever in this category of people, right? And also another thing that the scholars say is that the miser is usually someone that nobody really likes, not even other miserly people. So kind of funny, but not really just the idea that they're so, you know, like disliked that even other people like them don't like them. So think about that. We never wanna be like that, right? So the next disease is wantonness, okay? This is called batar or batar in Arabic, okay? And what is this? This, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala again, verse, chapter eight, verse 46 to 47, he says, and do not be like those who leave their homes filled with excessive pride about their state, batara, right? Showing off before people and preventing others from the way of God. And God encompasses what they do. And then he also tells us, he reminds us, how many cities have we destroyed that exalted in their livelihood? Here are their homes now uninhabited after them, except for a few. What is that? He's warning us that there were people throughout history that had a lot of wealth and they were very, they're big show-offs. They like to show off and they had all this pride, but they didn't do anything really good with their wealth. They instead used it excessively. They spent on things they didn't need, right? And that is something that now the only thing that remains about them are the big homes that they used to go around and show off about because they themselves were destroyed. So Allah reminds us that this world is something that's not gonna last forever. And so don't think that, again, you just having the wealth that you have and spending it on whatever you want, that you're not gonna be asked about that, right? It's important that we know it's gonna end at a certain point and we're going to be held accountable. So let's look at this. Wanting is the definition, again, is being so full of oneself and proud of one's lifestyle and standard of living that it becomes difficult to show restraint and control one's desires, okay? So a person afflicted with this disease wants more and more and more of something even if they don't need it just because they can have it. So this is a form of greed, right? It's a form of greed to have this disease of the heart. And a lot of people, especially adults, what happens to them? And this is, by the way, happening everywhere. A lot of adults, they end up falling into debt. And what does that mean? If you fall into debt, it means that you are spending more than you have. And how do people do that? They usually go and get credit cards and get loans from other people. They borrow money from other people. And they do things that are just not right because they're trying to live a certain standard of living, like a lifestyle, so they'll buy really expensive cars. But guess what? It's not with their own money. They're borrowing money, whether from a bank or their father or their mother or their brother. So they basically can't control this desire to just spend, spend, spend. And it ends up harming them and their families because if you can't control that, then it's going to affect everybody. And a lot of people, they have, their families fall apart because they can't control this disease of the heart. So very serious disease. Now, how do we protect ourselves from it, right? Important to know that. The treatment is similar to what we're doing right now, okay? We are all experiencing hunger, right? When you deprive yourself, you go through that process of saying, I'm not gonna eat, I'm not gonna drink. What does it do? It just instantly reminds you, right? Of all the things that maybe you went a little overboard with, it humbles you. You start to appreciate what you have more. Because usually when you just keep wanting things, you lose the value of it. But once it's taken away, you remember the value of it, right? And so another important thing to, which relates to that picture that I showed you of the heart is that a lot of different religions, not just Islam, have what we call shared, like universal beliefs, that we share the same idea about things. And so among them is that too much food actually harms the spiritual heart, okay? And in fact, could kill it. So this is connected to wantonness because a lot of people who have wantonness are excessive in everything they do, not just spending on wealth and material things, but also on eating too much. And what happens is their spiritual heart becomes hard, hard-hearted, okay? That picture that I showed you of that heart that looks like a rock. That's what happens to people who eat too much or who drink too much or who do anything in excess, spend too much. If you don't have restraint, that's what's gonna happen to you. You're slowly basically killing your spiritual heart. And the interesting thing, the parallel, is that the same thing happens with the physical heart. When people eat really rich foods or eat too much of it, like if you're eating a lot of fried foods and sugar and just things that are not good for you, they're not healthy foods that would promote health but they're actually dangerous foods. What happens is your heart actually becomes hard-hearted with something called arteriosclerosis. And this means that the arteries in your heart are hardened. They start to get really, really hard, right? And so similarly, when you eat too much food, your spiritual heart starts to also become hard. So fasting is one of the ways to actually prevent yourself from getting this disease of the heart, inshallah. Another one is to also seriously reflect on death and the hereafter. And this includes the various scenes and states of death because death is a process, right? And then to think about the grave, walking on the syrat, right? So if your parents or your Islamic school teachers have ever taught you that there's a life after this life. We have different things that occur, right? We have the soul travels. The soul was somewhere with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Then it came to the womb of our mothers and then we're born into this world and then we're in the barzakh, which is the stage between this world and the next life. And then we have the next life. So it's important to know those steps because then it reminds you that you know what? You have to be better and you have to stop being too greedy and wanting too much and showing more control of yourself, right? And so then the last disease that we're gonna cover is burud. This is hatred, very important because it's so common. A lot of people, unfortunately, they have too much hate in their hearts. So let's look at what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and the prophesies that have taught us. First, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, oh you who believe, stand out firmly for Allah and be just witnesses, right? Witnesses who are just. They're people of justice. And let not the enmity and hatred of others make you avoid justice. Be just, that is nearer to piety and fear Allah. Verily, Allah is well acquainted with what you do. So Allah is telling us right away that if you are a hateful person, you're not gonna be justful, right? You're not gonna be a just person. So we need to know that what's closer to Allah and what's gonna please him more is being just. So we cannot let hatred take over our hearts. The prophesies that I've also said, by the one in whose hand is my soul, you will not enter paradise until you submit to Allah and you will not submit until you love one another. Spread peace and you will love one another. Beware of hatred for it is the razor. So he's using this word razor sharp thing, object, right? And he says now he clarifies, I do not say that it shaves hair, but rather it shaves away the religion. So hatred is something that will chip away at our faith at our hearts, at our spiritual hearts. We cannot let it enter our hearts, right? And so again, just to expand on this a little bit, one of the consequences of allowing this disease of the heart to grow is that it inevitably, it makes someone unjust. That if you let hatred enter your heart for people for no reason, oh, I don't like this person because I don't like the way they talk or I don't like the way they walk or why do they have to have this kind of shirt on? Sometimes people can get really silly, but they'll find really ridiculous reasons, right? To not like someone. And then they let that dislike turn into hatred. And you see this happening a lot, not just with adults, but sometimes even children, right? Children can bully and they can be really mean to each other for no real reason, but it's because again, they've allowed this to enter their heart. And so one of the things we have to understand is also how this takes effect. Well, what hateful people do is they tend to focus on one specific thing, right? So you focus on one thing you don't like about someone and then that fuels the hatred. It just starts to make you feel more and more bad towards them. And then what that does is you can't even see all their good qualities anymore. You don't see anything but that hatred. Now we have a word for this. This is called, and it's a little bit sophisticated, but I trust that you guys can learn this. It's called confirmation bias. This is when you think, have an idea of something and then you convince yourself of it and then that's all you ever see about a person or anything, then you just think that that's the truth for you. But the truth is it's not reality at all. You've convinced yourself of something and then you keep looking for that thing and then you think that that's all there is in that person. So that's why it's so wrong because we're very, you know, most people have goodness in them, right? Most people are good. It's just that maybe they had a bad day. Maybe if someone said something to you that it wasn't very nice, maybe they were just having a bad day and you have to be more forgiving instead of what getting straight to this feeling of hatred, right? Which is why making excuses for people which we're gonna get to soon, what that means is a way to remedy and to remove this disease from the heart, right? And so that point about again, that you can't be hateful and also be a fair person at the same time is important to remember. So how do we treat this disease of the heart? First and foremost, we have to acknowledge that one of the attributes of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is Al-Wadud, which is the loving one. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala is full of love, right? And there's so many beautiful hadith where he talks about his love and his mercy. One of my favorite hadith, I was just telling I think my kids yesterday or the day before was about how many parts of love Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala has, right? He has, he says that there's a hundred parts of his love, only one part of that love Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala has put on the earth. So that means that every type of love that you see, all the animals, all the forms of love between human beings, mother, child, sister, brother, uncle, grandmother, husband, wife, all that love is what only from that one tiny part of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala's love, the other 99 parts he is saving for us, the believers on the day of judgment. So love is such a big part of our deen and we have to be loving people, right? And we also have to remember that hate is the absence of love. So if you can have a hateful heart, then that means that there's a problem because in your heart, love is removed and we have to help put some more love into your heart, right? And so that's why we ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala always to protect us from this disease by giving us love in our life and increasing his love for us and Shala we can hopefully overcome it. We also want to be active, proactive, right? So if you ever have bad feelings towards someone, it could be a classmate, it could be anybody, a stranger, what you wanna do is stop and think about what's going on in your heart, listen to your thoughts or pay attention to what your thoughts are and then say, hmm, you know what? I don't really know everything about that person. Is it really fair of me to think all of these bad things about them? That's not right. I shouldn't do that. Astaghfirullah, Allah forgive me. You know, I wanna actually be better. So I'm gonna do something even more more than just say astaghfirullah, I'm gonna do something better which is what? To make dua for that person. So that's one of the ways that you can remove hatred from your heart is that you go the next step. You take it to the next extra step and you say, I'm gonna make dua by their name. So you actually, if you know their name, if it's a stranger, you don't know their name, that's okay. You could just say that person, right? Allah knows who they are. And you say, oh Allah, give that person guidance. Always that's the first thing you should ask, right? That they're guided because we want everybody to have guidance and we want everybody to know Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and for him to be pleased with them. And then you can make other da'as that you want for them, okay? So very important to do that and to do it with sincerity. And then to remember the hadith, right? Allah the prophet said, taught us that none of you has achieved faith until he loves for his brother or sister what he loves for himself. So this means that if you really want to be a good Muslim, you have to love other people the same way that you love yourself, right? And you should want for them what you want for yourself. This is how we become the best Muslims that we can become. And Imam Noah, by the way, said that this hadith is universal brotherhood, right? It's not just for your family if you have a brother in your family or your Muslim family, but it's for all humanity that we want all people to be better and to be in a better state. So that's how we, inshallah, grow in our love for other people and that love will remove the hatred from our hearts, inshallah. So I'm going to stop here, you guys because we are just a little bit over time or almost at the end.