Episodes

  • Reflect on the Qur’an

    Reflect on the Qur’an
    Jan 14 2026
    Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the honourable, the most noble and the most exalted. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions, and a lot of peace and blessings. My brothers and sisters, Allah used words which mean people who think, people who can see. Allah said, Do they not reflect on the Quran? Do they not do tadaabur on the Quran? Allah did not say, Do they not read the Quran? Allah said, Do they not reflect on the Quran? Or is it that their hearts are locked? Qala Qulubihim Aqfaluhah. Qufal. On the hearts. So I remind myself and you that the purpose of dhikr, the purpose of reading the Quran, is to reflect on it, is to think about it, and to implement it in our lives. We read the Quran for Sawaab, we read the Quran for Barakah, we read the Quran because we read the Quran out of habit. Sanzal, that's good to read. I mean, that's not the purpose. The purpose is to reflect on the Quran. That's why Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la asked this question, Afalaa yata dabbaroonul Qur'an. See, if you think about it, our lives and our interactions are made of words. We say things to each other. And whatever we say to each other has some effect. Right? If I look at you and say, Mashallah, beautiful dress, you are looking very handsome. It has some effect. Right? To the extent that if I say something to you, which is patently and clearly false, like what happens when you get angry with somebody, and may Allah save us from such anger, but we use bad language, or you curse somebody. Right? Even at the mildest level, I don't want to sit here and, you know, share with you our very choice Hyderabadi words of, you know, describing each other. But even at the mildest level, if we say to somebody, Aap ghadhe hai, everybody adab se baal, Aap ghadhe hai, tu ghadha hai nahi baal, Aap ghadhe hai. So does it have an effect on you? If somebody says to you, Aap ghadhe hai, kuch pe asar hota hai ki nahi hota? Although you are not a donkey, right? Why does it have an effect? If you have a donkey's head, then you are not a donkey. If you have a photo, you can see if it is a donkey or me. Suppose somebody says you are a donkey, does it have an effect on you? Why? You are not a donkey. And the man is, in case of mistaken identity, maybe he never saw a donkey in his life, or we don't know. We don't know why. The point I am making is that even a word which is clearly false, which is complete nonsense, even that has an effect on us. I know it is wrong. Still it has an effect. But the Kitab of Allah, the Kalam of Allah, which is Haqq, what effect does it have? We need to ask ourselves. I am not saying it doesn't have an effect on you. I am saying I have to ask, you have to ask yourself. What effect does the Quran-ul-Karim have on me? And if it does not have an effect, then I must ask myself this question, that when even a bad word, even a curse word, even foul language, even that has an effect, then how is it that the most beautiful of Kalam, there is nothing that is superior to the Quran-ul-Karim, has no effect? Allah SWT promoted some things. Allah SWT told us, Go towards, سارعوا إلى مغفرة من ربكم Allah said, run and race with each other, with each other compete. In what? إلى مغفرة من ربكم Towards the forgiveness of Allah SWT. Allah is telling us, do it. حكم from Allah SWT. Are we doing it? Allah SWT said, Be with, كونوا مع الصادقين Allah said, be with the people of truth. Let's look at our own friend circles. Who are they? Are they people of truth? Allah SWT said, The sign of a good friend is that when you meet him, he reminds you of Allah SWT. When you speak, or when he speaks to you, you remember the Akhirah. And you learn something from him. Something beneficial, whatever it is. This is the criterion of friendship. So look at our friends. Do they fit here? When you look at the friend, or you talk to the friend, when you are with the friend, are you remembering Allah SWT? Or he is taking you away from? How do we even describe each other? Sir, he is a person worth 3,000 crores. Especially the goats. He is a goat worth 10,000. Is there any difference? He is a person worth so many crores. Allah SWT says, So what value does knowledge have? What value does character have? Does it have any value? If Rasool Allah came here in this Majlis, if any of the Sahaba came here in this Majlis, they were worth 3,000 crores. What was the net worth of Naudhubillah of Nabi SAW? Or net worth of Abu Bakr Siddique? Or net worth of, net worth of Bilal bin Rabah, or net worth of Abdel Rahman? What was it? See, what shall we do? We respect them or we say, no, this is not right. These are our standards. Now, when these are our standards, these are the standards that are going into these children. Because of our ...
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  • Adhaan and Iqama

    Adhaan and Iqama
    Jan 12 2026
    Auto-generated transcript:Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wa salatu wa salamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen. Muhammadur Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbih. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. My brothers and sisters, Alhamdulillah. We worship Allah and we worship only Allah. And that is the essence of the Uhid, the essence of Islam. And we do that in the way of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. If anyone invents a different way of Salah, that way is rejected. It is not accepted by Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The only way of Salah that Allah accepts is the way Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam prayed. The same thing applies to everything which is connected with Salah. For example, the only way of preparing yourself for Salah with Udu is the way that Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam did Udu. We cannot do Udu in our own way. For example, you cannot say, well, I will wash my feet first and after that I will wash my face. I am washing my face, I am washing my feet. What does it matter if the order is reversed? It matters if Udu would be invalid. Because the order, Tarteem, is part, is the Rukur of the Udu. It's part of the Udu. If you do the Tarteem, if you keep the order of the Udu, if you change it, the Udu is invalid. You have to repeat it. So also, with regard to the Adhaan and Iqama, Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam told us, he said that even if you are alone on a hillside, there is nobody there. At the time of Salah, he said, call the Adhaan and then make the Iqama and make Salah. He might say, there is nobody here. If I call, who will come? That's not the point. This is the way in which we pray. We call the Adhaan, then we call the Iqama, then we start the Salah. Whether you are alone, whether people are there with you, not with you, doesn't matter. So how is this Adhaan to be done and how is the Iqama to be done? Salah, of course, we know. Again, same rule. It is to be done the way that Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam taught us. We know the Hadith regarding the Adhaan. The Sahabi heard, in his dream he saw, and he heard the words of the Adhaan. He came to Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he said, Ya Rasulullah, this is the dream I had, that I saw these two people and these two people were Malaika. And this is how they were advising about the Adhaan. And these are the words. And then Sayyidina Omar also came at the same time and he said, Ya Rasulullah, I saw the same dream, the same words. And Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said, yes, this is the way, do it. And then he said, call Sayyidina Bilal bin Rabaa Radiyallahu Anhu. And he said, ask him to call the Adhaan because he has a powerful voice. Even though the people who saw the dream were somebody else, other people, Sayyidina Bilal didn't see the dream. But Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam asked Sayyidina Bilal Radiyallahu Anhu to call the Adhaan. Now, I'm saying this because it's very important to do it correctly. Okay. Because Arabic is not our language. And so when we call the Adhaan, same thing applies in Salah or in recitation of Quran. We have to actually learn the Tajweed. Tajweed is the method of pronunciation. Because same thing, if you mispronounce it, the worst case scenario, it can completely change the meaning of what you are saying. If that happens in Salah, it can make your Salah invalid. If you are the Imam and you make that mistake, it makes everybody Salah invalid. If the same thing happens in Adhaan or if it happens in Iqamah, again it will not make your Salah invalid, but it makes the Adhaan bad and the Iqamah bad. So, since Arabic is not our language, we must, even for the Arabs, we have to learn Tajweed. Tajweed is, just because you are Arab, it doesn't mean that you know automatically how to pronounce people. I have seen. Or Arabs also making lots of mistakes with regard to Tajweed. That's why Tajweed has to be learned. So, let me go through the Adhaan and Iqamah very quickly. Because Alhamdulillah, many of you, you call the Adhaan, you call the Iqamah, you like to do that. And there is great khair in this. Prophet ﷺ said, race with each other to call the Adhaan. Because it's a matter of very great benefit to call the Adhaan, to call the Iqamah. And we ask Allah to give us the benefit. But we need to do it correctly. You are doing something of benefit and you do it wrongly, then it, you know, invalidates that. So, do it correctly. Now, I am going to focus on the mistakes that we, meaning people of Urdu speaking people, mistakes we make. I won't talk about the mistakes the Arabs make because there are no Arabs here. The mistakes that we make are of two kinds. One is, we mispronounce because in Urdu, we have the same alphabet, the same letters. But the talafuz, the pronunciation of the letters, there is a difference in Urdu and Arabic. In Arabic, every single letter has a different pronunciation. No two letters ...
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  • Never despair

    Never despair
    Jan 12 2026
    https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=TFTthtR4_90 Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wassalatu wassalamu ala ashrafil anbiya wal mursaleen. Muhammadun Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. Tasliman kathiran kathira. I'm about to... I'm about to finish this. I'm sitting here at the back of this lovely little lake in Narsapur. And it's a pretty chilly morning. So we have this lovely fire going. And we're contemplating on the khudrat of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The lake at this moment, the water is like a sheet of glass. There is a teal that is circling. And at some point, I guess, it will land on the water. But just now, it's flying somewhere else. There are a couple of... red-bottled lapwings, which are sounding their alarm call. The teal is coming right overhead. It's checking out the ground to see if it is safe to land. Very, very beautiful scene. There are... Fish have started feeding. So you see the little circle as they break the surface of the water. Absolutely, fabulous scene. I remind myself of you, that this is the khudrat of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in one small little corner of the globe. What must be this khudrat? And we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to make us among those who will be entered into Jannah. When we enter Jannah. Because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala called this dunya. Dunya. the lowest thing. A name which is deserving of the dunya, the lowest thing. Whereas Jannah, Allah SWT said that this is something which no eye has seen and no mind can comprehend the beauty and magnificence of it. So how beautiful and magnificent that should be. We ask Allah SWT to make us among those who will inherit that, inshallah. I remind myself and you about a very important thing, which is the we live today in a world which is full of turmoil. And it's almost like, to say that is like putting it mildly because this turmoil is there, it's seems to be ever increasing and every day there's a new piece of action that happens. And it all seems to be a question of who has the biggest stick. In Urdu there is a proverb of Mahavira which says, Jiski laati uski bhaiys. The buffalo belongs to the man with the stick. I remember the quote of the Roman general Pompey, when he was campaigning in Greece and some of the people of the town, they met him and trying to pacify him, trying to tell him not to invade the town and so on. And they quoted to him different laws which were accepted at the time. And Pompey just replied with one word, one line. He said, don't talk laws to us, we have swords. He said, don't talk laws to us, we have swords. And that is where we seem to be today in this world. Because on the face of it, it seems as if all that we learnt, whether in Islam or elsewhere, about justice, about compassion, about kindness, about what is fair, what is not fair, all that seems to have been trashed. And the only thing that seems to be used and extolled and praised is the power of the gun. How powerful is my military? In that situation, one of the things that we find when we sit in our gatherings and so on, is a sense of helplessness. Where people feel that, you know, after all, what can we do? And what can we do is not asked as a question, what can we do is mentioned as if to say that we cannot do anything. And there's a sense of helplessness, we can't do anything, we just have to bear what is happening. So how do we deal with this and how do we see this from an Islamic sense? My submission to you is this. If you want to think about a sense of helplessness, ask yourself, what must have been the sense of helplessness of a little boy who was probably five or six years old, who was thrown into a well by his own brothers, and he's at the bottom of this well, and those who had sworn to protect him and to take care of him, were the ones who had actually thrown him into that well. What must have been the sense of helplessness of this boy when he is apparently rescued, and then he realizes that the rescue was only to sell him in the market as a slave? What must have been the sense of helplessness of this boy when he is apparently rescued, and then he realizes that he is actually being rescued? What must have been the sense of helplessness of this young man several years later when he was wrongfully accused, and even though his innocence was proven beyond doubt, he was still thrown into prison? What must have been the sense of helplessness of the man who stood, on the mountain of Safa, and called out and said, Wa Subaha? And when the people came, and he said to them, that if you do not leave this worship of your creations, worship of idols, worship of things which cannot do anything to you, no harm, no benefit, and if you do not worship Allah , you will face, disaster. And instead of listening to him at least, people walked away, people opposed him, people abused him, and he did not have a single supporter in the ...
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  • Sabr and Salah

    Sabr and Salah
    Jan 11 2026
    Auto-generated transcript:We mentioned the Ayat of Allah SWT where he said, Allah SWT said, After that Ayat Allah SWT said, Allah SWT said, O you who believe, take the help. Take istiaanah. Take the help of sabr and salah. Inna Allaha ma'a sabirin. Verily Allah is with those who have sabr. Now the question is, what is sabr? The usual understanding that we seem to have of sabr is to do nothing. Sabr karo. Tu kya kano? Kuch nahi kano. Whatever is happening, just bear it in silence. Now this is a completely false and totally wrong interpretation and meaning of the word sabr. They'll give you two dalayl. One from the Quran and one from the Sunnah. The dalayl of the Quran is, in several places, Allah mentioned the mujahideen. He mentioned those who are fighting in wars. Fighting the enemies of Islam. Soldiers on the battlefield. In the front line. Allah SWT called them, He didn't call them mujahideen. Allah SWT called them sabireen. He said sabireen. And Allah said, if there are a hundred, Allah will give them. victory over a thousand. If there are a hundred, Allah will give them victory over two hundred. And so on. Allah called them sabireen. Now a soldier who is fighting in a battle. There is no one who is more engaged, who is struggling more than that soldier. He is literally fighting for his life. He has invested everything in that action. Nothing is left behind. Especially if you look at hand to hand combat. In medieval times. It's complete investment. Total commitment. Even for a second, a blink of an eye, if he loses concentration, if his attention is diverted, he is dead. Literally his life is at stake. He is not sitting like, nowadays in some bunker playing computer games. No. That kind of person engaged in that kind of activity, with that kind of commitment and total investment, Allah SWT is saying, this is a sabir. He is doing sabir. Second Dalit from the Sunnah. Rasulullah SAW, in Bahraini, he is saying, this is a sabir. He is doing sabir. He is doing sabir. Rasulullah SAW, in Badr, they were in Madinah, when they got information, that Abu Sufyan, is coming with his caravan. And this caravan has, the, the original, capital of the caravan, most of it was, the possessions of the Muhajirin, which the, people of the, the Masjid-e-Mishri, now Pankah had usurped and stolen. They took that and Abu Sufyan, had traded with that and he was coming back with the, result of that. So this caravan, really consisted of things which, came out of the possessions of the, Muhajirin. So Rasulullah SAW decided to, capture that caravan. So he was in Masjid-e-Nabawi Sharif, and he took out the caravan, and he was going, and he announced, he said, whoever is ready, come with me. So the people who went with him, the 300 and something, they were not, going for a battle. They were not prepared to go for a battle. If they were, if that had been announced, that we are going to go and there is going to be a battle, then they would have prepared, they would have had their armor, and they would have had their weapons, and so on and so forth. So they were ready to do something. So you get up and go, whatever you have, you have. So when they reached, or before they reached Badr, they got information to say that, Abu Sufyan has, changed his direction, because he got, his intelligence was very good. So he got news that, the people of Muhammad SAW, are leaving Madinah, and they are going to attack the caravan. So he changed his route, and he took a different route. So he was not going to be at Badr. On top of that, he sent a man, to Makkah, and he went on a fast camel, and when he reached the, when he reached Makkah, right at the Haram, near the Kaaba, which was the center of the town, he slashed the nose of the camel, so it was bleeding. He unsaddle the camel, and he took it to the caravan. And he said, he took the saddle, and put it upside down, and he started screaming, and yelling, and he said, oh you are finished, and your caravan is gone, and everything is looted, and all your goods are gone, and you are losers, and all kinds of things. He said, what happened? He said, he got the people together, and he came to Badr, with an army, and this was, they were going for war. This is not the same thing, like saying, let us go right now. They prepared. They had weapons, they had material, and so on. And 11 to 13 hundred of them, they were 12. And when the army was close to Badr, he got information that, the whole situation has completely changed. We were going to capture a caravan, the caravan would have had some few guards, it was not an army. But on the other hand, now we are going, if we go to Badr, then we are going to face an actual army. So he made mashwarah. He asked, he called all the people together, he went with him, there was some Ansar, there was some Maha Jiroor. He called them together, and he said, what do you advise me to do? I would like to go, and since we have set out, we don't want to turn back. But what is your ...
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  • Dhikr is reciprocal

    Dhikr is reciprocal
    Jan 10 2026
    Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions. Peace be upon him and upon his family. Huma Baadu, my brothers and sisters, we were talking yesterday about how do you get close to Allah. The purpose of life is to get close to Allah. And we get close to Allah through knowledge. Allah showed us how to get close to Him. Allah said, Allah said, Be grateful to me and do not be ungrateful. Make my shukr. And do not make kufr. Do not make kufran ni'mat. Do not be ungrateful for what I have given you. This shows us that it is a conditional statement. You will see in the Quran, Allah SWT mentioned many of His blessings, many things He will give. Jannah and Maghfirat and this and that. But every single thing is conditional upon something. Allah SWT did not say, don't do anything, I will still give you. Everything is conditional. Do this, you get this. Do this, you do it. Now what you get is multiples and multiples of what you do. So this is not related. Allah is not saying you have to work very hard to get a little benefit. No. You have to do the opposite. You have to do a little bit, get a huge benefit. But you have to do that little bit. . Our problem today in life is we don't want to do anything. On top of that, we want to do the opposite. We want to disobey Allah SWT and still we want a situation where if we raise our hands, the armies of angels will descend to defend us. It doesn't work like that. Sorry. So, Allah SWT, conditional statement. You make my zikr, I will make your zikr. You remember me, I remember you. . Allah SWT says, when my slave remembers me inside himself, in his heart, I remember him within myself in a way that suits my majesty and grace. When my slave remembers me in company, like we are sitting here, Alhamdulillah, Allah says, I remember him in a company superior to his. Because this is, Allah is remembering us. On his arsh. And who is around the arsh? The mukarrabin of the malaika. Right? And Nabi SAW said, when Allah SWT says, I remember you, Allah will remember you, specifically mention you by name. Allah SWT says, Zafar Ansari, Muzaffar Beg, Haviz Abbasi, and all of you. . Specific by name. Now the thing is, we need to, we all know this. I mean, this hadith I have read and heard and repeated a million times. May Allah SWT give me the ihsas, the feeling, the reality of the hadith in my heart. We need to reflect on what does it mean that my Rabb Jalla Jalaluhu is mentioning me on his arsh. What does it do to me here? What's in my heart? Ta'ala Allahu al-Amsal. Allah SWT is beyond any misal. We don't give a misal of Allah SWT, but just think about this. If you get a phone call here from a friend, somebody who says, and he remembers that he is somebody who mentioned someone else who is, you know, some prime minister, some president, somebody, some big chap, may not even need to be that big. You know, maybe your local MLA is enough for us. And he says, I had gone to this party and he was asking, where is so and so? What will you feel? Oh, this man remembered me. This man remembered me. Allah SWT is saying, I will remember you. I will remember you. Do you have a sense of that? So the remembrance being close to Allah SWT means you are somebody who Allah remembers. You are somebody who Allah SWT mentions. That's the sign of closest to Allah SWT. How will that happen? When we remember Allah. Conditional statement, you remember me, I remember you. Then Allah said, Make shukr. Be grateful to me. Do not be ungrateful. One of the, one of my favorite scholars, Ulama Muhammad Mutawalli Ash-Sharawi, Rahmatul Ali. He was a great scholar from Al-Azhar, from Egypt. He says, whenever you lose something, whatever it is, maybe you lose your wallet. Maybe you lose a business. Maybe you lose a job. Maybe you lose some aspect of health. May Allah protect us from all of these things. Maybe you lose a job. Maybe you lose a near, dear one. He says, don't think only about what you lost. Consciously think about what you still have. And you will find that what you still have is always more than what you lost. Ajiv. For example, may Allah protect us from all this. Somebody might say, so and so lost his life. He lost his eyesight. May Allah protect us from all this. He lost his life. He lost his life. May Allah protect us from all this. May Allah protect us from all this. So, eyesight loss is not a simple thing. It's a very, very major thing. It's so major that Allah said, if I take away the eyesight of my slave and he does not complain, and he says, Allah says, what else can I give him except Jannah? You lose your eyesight, which is in this world. At some level it will go, if you live long enough, it deteriorates anyway. But in exchange of that, you...
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  • Awareness of Allah ⁠ﷻ

    Awareness of Allah ⁠ﷻ
    Jan 9 2026
    Auto-generated transcript:As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu. Wa alaykum as-salamu alaykum. Bismillah wa alhamdulillah. Amdan kathiran tayyiban mubarakan fihi. Amdan yaliqu bi jalali wajhihi wa bi yadhim sultani. Wa sallallahu ala khairi khalqihi Muhammadin as-sadiq al-amin. Al-mab'uthi rahmatan lil'alamin. Wa ala alihi al-tayyibin al-tahirin. Wa ala ashabihi al-ghurri al-mayamin. Wa man tabiahum bi ihsanin ila yawm al-deen. Allahumma kthubna minhum. Ameen. Qarallahu subhanahu wa ta'ala. Ya ayyuhu alladhina amanu taqallaha haqqa taqati. Wa la tamutunna illa wa antum muslimun. We begin by praising Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala who is deserving of all praise. No matter how much we praise Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, it is not enough. Ahmad salallahu alayhi wa sallam, the one who praised Allah more than anyone else, said, Ya Allah, I cannot praise you as you deserve. You are only praised as you have praised yourself. And we send peace and blessings on the basis of the diam. best of his creation, khairu khalki, our beloved, our habib, our maula, Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and his noble family and his ahlul bayt. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to open our hearts to that which is useful for us in our relationship with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, that helps us to come closer to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in this dunya before we are presented to him in the akhirah. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reminds us, actually commands us to have taqwa and we are reminded of this ayah every Juma. Ittaqullah, have taqwa of Allah, haqqa tuqati, what Allah deserves, what is deserved. What he is deserving. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is commanding us to be in a state of taqwa throughout our lives and to die in that state because if you are in a state of taqwa, you are going to die in a state of loving submission, Islam. وَلَا تَمُوتُنَّ إِلَّا وَأَنْتُمْ مُسْلِمُونَ Having submitted completely to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. That we submit without questions, without whether it's easy, whether it is difficult, whether we are living in a non-Muslim country or we are living in the haram. Under all circumstances, to have taqwa of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. To be aware of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, to be conscious of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala at all times. Aware. That Allah watches me at all times. إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلَيْكُمْ رَقِيبًا Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, and certainly Allah over you is Ar-Raqeeb, one of the names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Ever watchful. Allah not only sees the external actions, but Allah sees what thoughts come to my mind. What I entertain, what I plan, what my aspirations are, what my goals are, what my likes and dislikes are, what moves me to action, what makes me feel lazy. Be aware, Allah says, be aware that Allah knows. So we must live our lives at all times with this awareness. What I'm thinking, what my goals in life are, what my likes and dislikes are, the choices I make in my life, all of that is an open book to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, even though the one sitting in front of me doesn't know what's inside me. It's open to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So live in that state, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says. So whether it is in times of difficulty. Or in times of ease. Duniya is darul bala. You are going to be challenged. That is normal circumstances. This is not jannah. So if you face difficulties, and difficulties come in different forms. It could be health challenges. It could be family challenges. It can be economic challenges. It can be social challenges. Living in a different kind of environment. All difficulties are from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to test each one of us. What is our true worth? Because everyone claims to have Iman. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that the Arab, the Bedouin said that we have believed. Aamannah. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that we have believed. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam tells them. No. Iman has not even entered your heart. All you can claim is that we have accepted Islam. That we have accepted Islam. So the internal states are known only to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And ultimately where is that? As he said. inside the heart. But that then controls us to our학교 beementhang. This state. My book. Honestly, my book is only from Salman Abdullah Zahra. Now there is an older, my book is more newer, recent. my thought processes, what I'm thinking, what I'm planning, what my goals in life are, likes and dislikes. All of that has to be within that envelope of taqwa and awareness of Allah. Keeping that in mind, in the last day or two, we have witnessed what Allah has written in the universe. Allah says, إِنَّ فِي خَلْقِ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَاخْتِلَافِ اللَّيْلِ وَالنَّهَارِ لَآيَاتٍ لِأُولِي الْأَلْبَابِ Allah says...
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  • My gift

    My gift
    Jan 8 2026
    Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds. Peace and blessings be upon the most noble of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions. Peace be upon him, and upon many, many. My brothers and sisters, yesterday, one of my students, a revert from the U.S., Abdul Karim, he sent me a request, and very interesting way in which he worded it. He said to me, Sheikh, I want you to give me a gift. And the gift is, give me one piece of advice, which will be good for my whole life. So, Alhamdulillah, anytime I get questions like this, I remind myself that this is, he's not asking me because I'm a great Sheikh. This is Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala's way of helping me to focus on my own priorities in life. So, Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, causes somebody to ask a question. The beneficiary of that is me, Alhamdulillah. So, I said to him, and I'm saying to you, and I'm saying to myself, before everyone else, the one piece of advice I give myself, and to whoever wants to listen, is the only thing we need to do in our entire life, is to build our connection with Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. That's it. Nothing more is required. Build your connection with Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. He's one of our great sheikhs, Rahmatullah Ali, Sheikh Muhammad Saeed Ramadan al-Buti. He says, his father, his name was Mulla Ramadan. He said that when I was 12 or 13, he said, my father called me, sat me down, and he said to me, that if I knew, that you could get close to Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, by sweeping the streets, I would have made you a street sweeper. If I knew, that the way to get close to Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, is to sweep the streets, I would have made you a street sweeper. He said, but I know that the way to get close to Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, is through ilm. Is through? Is through ilm. Learning about and learning Islam. So he says, therefore, my advice to you is as follows. He said, because closeness to Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, is only through ilm. There is no closeness to Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, through jahalat. This bida, that bida, following this one, that one, through ilm. And the ilm of this deen is the kitab of Allah, as explained and as taught by Muhammad Rasulullah, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. So he says, closeness to Allah, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, is only through ilm. Only through knowledge. But don't study, he's talking about the, why do you study, the niya of it. He said, do not study to get a certificate or a title or a degree. Don't study so that you will be called Maulana or Sheikh or Mufti or this one or that one. Or you, because you have this degree from this jamiyah and that jamiyah. He said, don't study to get a certificate or a title or a degree. If you do that, if you study for that reason, then you are a customer buying a qualification. You are not a student. You are not a talib ul ilm. You are a customer buying a commodity. Degree. Second thing he says is, do not make the ilm of Islam a means of livelihood. He says, don't teach and take money. Do not make the knowledge, the ilm of Islam a means of livelihood. Because if you do that, the nur will leave the pages and only the words will remain. And the third thing he said is, learn and practice the deen only to get close to Allah . And if you do that, he said, then he will give you from his treasures in ways that only he knows. And only he knows the wisdom of that. So, learn the deen only to get close to Allah . Not for the degree and this and that. Do not make that a means of livelihood. Don't take money for it. And third thing is, practice it only to please Allah . So, the first piece of advice to myself and anyone else is, always, always, always, be conscious of your niya. Continuously check the niya. As our teachers always told us, the niya is like, imagine that you are somebody who has gone into a big market, into a fair. Right now, Hyderabad and Dumaish is going on. Supposing you are in that crowd. And you have this, your wallet in your pocket. Where will you keep your hand? On the pocket. Because you don't know, at any moment, there will be somebody who picks your pocket. So, you went in there with your resources. But then when you actually go to a shop to buy something, you know, it's gone. And that is the state of the niya. We, Alhamdulillah, we come to the masjid. MashaAllah, you stand for salah. This is, may Allah accept it from us. But then the shaitan comes and he hijacks your niya. So, I advise myself and you, focus on the niya. And focus only on one thing. How to get close to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. And it's no mystery. Right? And don't imagine that, how to get close to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, I have to have this, some funny practice I have to do, on, you know, 7pm on Thursdays. No. There is no mystery in Islam. Please understand this very, very clearly. ...
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  • Future – 4 stages – #5

    Future – 4 stages – #5
    Jan 7 2026
    Auto-generated transcript:Alhamdulillah Which means, as we discussed, Allah SWT said, Every living soul will taste death. Every living soul will taste death. And only on the Day of Judgment will you see, will you receive your full reward. And the one who is freed from the hellfire and entered into Jannah, only that person is successful. And the life of this world is nothing but deception. So we looked at the first three of these things in the last few days. Today we look at the last one. Omalhayatudunya, illa mata'ul quroor. Again, the bayan of the Quran, Allah SWT is emphasizing through the grammar. When we say mal, we say wa ma'al. That's how the two are connected. Nothing but. Allah is saying this dunya, this life of this dunya is nothing but deception. So what is the deception? What is the deception? Now, maybe some of you will say, now with AI and all the fake videos and all that. This is all superficial. This is all, this is not deception. We know it is deception. See, for a deception to be successful, you must believe it. If you are seeing something fake, you know it's fake. Where is the deception? There is no deception. For something to be deception, you must believe that it's true. Right? Then only it is, otherwise where is it? You can see it is false. You know, you are saying it's false. There is no deception. To give you an example, I was many, many years ago, I was in California, in San Francisco. I was, went there to teach a course and reached there one evening. The course was next morning. The whole evening was free. And there was a, right opposite my hotel, in the Marriott, right opposite the Marriott, there was a huge theatre, which was a 3D theatre. So, I decided to go see that movie. So, it was something about sharks. So, they give you those 3D glasses, goggles, and you sit there and the, it was two or three, there was one part about sharks, there was another one about the, you know, the, you know, the sharks. There was another one about the, about the universe and so on. So, you sit in the special chairs and the chairs also kind of move to, you know, give you a, an experience of reality. And really, without, without any, this is like maybe almost 30, 35 years ago. To this day, I remember it. It was so powerful. And I can tell you that through that whole movie, it was literally, in the sharks movie, it was like the shark was going to come out of the screen and, you know, swallow me or something. That real. And if at that time, if you had, you know, attached sensors to my body, you would have seen how my blood pressure and electrical impulses in the brain and everything else, how they would have been working. Right? And at that time, if you asked me, do you remember why you are here? Why did you come to San Francisco? What is going to happen tomorrow morning? Nothing. All of that is gone. I am in the movie. I am literally in the sea with the shark. But that is deception. That is the deception. Because I'm not in the, I'm not in with the shark. I'm not, I'm not in the movie. I'm not in the movie. I'm not in the movie. I'm not in the movie. I'm not in the shark. I'm not in any danger. I'm not in the sea. But I believe I am. Right? And you don't need to go into a 3D theatre to, to, to feel all this. Movies are a good thing to understand something which are much more important than the movie. But any movie you see, if it's a sad scene, you are affected. You feel sad. Right? You might even cry. If it's a happy scene, you will feel happy. But you know yourself that what is happening on the screen is all acting. If somebody is dying, he's not dying. If somebody is, some, someone's heart is broken, it's not broken. If somebody is, you know, in some sort of situation or desperation, they're not. It's all acting. We know this. But we are completely hooked into that. So if you are crying in the movies, why are you crying? Are you stupid? I mean, why, why are you crying? Because that's a thing happening there. It's not happening there. It's a, it's a, it's an action. You know, it's a, it's a script of a, of a movie. It's play acting. Why are you crying? But we get so involved. So the deception of this world, which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has created, is not Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney Disney ...
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