Building Legacy Through Sincerity
By AbdelRahman Murphy | 2026-01-19T10:23:34.193528+00:00 | Topic: Contemporary Issues
Building Legacy Through Sincerity
Speaker: Abdelrahman Murphy
Event: Dar Al-Hijrah Youth Conference 2018
Opening
I'm not going to lie, I'm tired. But not because it's late, it's because I have a son who's 20 months old and he doesn't understand what bedtime means.
So last night, if you follow me on Instagram, first of all, I have to apologize for you following me on Instagram. Sometimes I confuse it for my diary. But you might have seen that last night at 11pm he was in a diaper jumping up and down yelling wah wah wah wah wah.
I assure you that's not strange, that's very normal for him. But I do want to say briefly that I've never been to like a gathering where everyone else, well I'm sure I actually have, but I've never been so convinced that the community would just have benefited more had I not been there. And more time had been given to the people who spoke and performed and informed before me.
And I'm so certain and so convinced that this is the case tonight and so I feel embarrassed. But you know, I will do my part and listen to what I've been asked to do. But I want to give a round of applause for everybody who's been a part of this tonight.
I mean, from the beginning to the end, I was completely blown away by our sister Rehmaz Abdul Qadir. I was just blown away. In fact, I've got to get your contacts. We're going to invite you to Dallas, inshallah, to do some stuff with us, inshallah. Shaykha Aisha has always been a huge role model for me since I've met her and gotten to know about her and her work and her personality. She's just, she's just magnetic.
Like, literally, when she spoke, I listened to a lecture of hers once and time just flew by. You know, there's times when you listen to me, for example, it feels like, you know, 30 minutes was actually four hours. You know, it's like, I'm like math class.
I'm like the math class of khatibs. You just keep looking at the clock, like, when is this going to end? And then you just hear amazing, brother Faraz, inshallah, just killed it with his comedy. And I'm a really funny person, like, I'm really funny.
And so, I find it really difficult to admit when other people are funny, but you're funny, dude, like, you're really funny. And so, inshallah, may Allah give you tawfiq. And brother Naeem is like a brother to me, inshallah.
You know, he's someone that I've known for a while. We don't see each other as often as I wish we could, but whenever we do, it's like we've never split. Alhamdulillah, he just killed it. He had me in tears with the poem about his mom, because I think that that's pretty much how it feels, alhamdulillah.
Main Body: The Crisis of Our Era
I've been asked here tonight to talk a little bit to you about something that's very important. And I think that one of the things that we have to admit before we talk about what I'm going to talk about tonight is that there's a lot about us that we don't know, meaning that we are the closest to who we are in terms of this worldly life.
I think I know a lot about me, I think I can be honest, I think that I can be authentic and I can tell you the secrets about myself and what I think and what I really feel. But in reality, we have taken on so much and we have been a part of so much of that which surrounds us that we don't even realize sometimes that the environment has shaped who we are. And one of the things that has shaped who we are is this belief that I feel like, because a lot of people here are college students and young professionals and high schoolers, and if you're not in those three categories, then you are at heart, mashallah, age is just a number, don't worry about it, right? You're young hearted, mashallah.
One of the things that I feel like is going to be the crisis of our era is that we have been sold this idea that our actions don't matter. That we have been told, don't vote, it won't matter. We've been told, go ahead and do it, it's only one time.
We've been told, it's just an accident. It was just a mistake, I didn't mean it. All these statements reflect this idea that when I do something, it doesn't live beyond that moment.
And this is something that stands diametrically opposed to the example of the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم). We know, we're told, we're taught, we've been nurtured and mentored to understand something that everything that we do on this earth, it lives on. The goodness of your good deeds, they carry forward.
And the difficulty of sometimes our mistakes, if we don't regret and repent for them, if we carry them with arrogance or neglect or hubris, then those sins can sometimes weigh us down. And this is something that we have to believe if we're going to believe that we are people who make legacy.
Because the person who makes legacy in their heart of hearts is a sincere person. And they believe that the future is going to be dependent upon the work that they are doing today.
The Example of Hajj
You know, Sister Emma, you went to Hajj this year? Hajj, it's amazing that you said that because I was thinking about this theme tonight. Hajj is something that is an example of what legacy looks like.
Hajj is an example of what happens when somebody does something for the right reasons. You know, we've all done something for the right reasons. Have any of you ever done something, a good deed that was so pure that you even surprised yourself? Like, you're like, I didn't know I had this good in me.
Right? I just gave the last samosa away? Like, what? Like, I just gave, you know, like some people, SubhanAllah, like, you'll be sitting at a gathering and there's only one donut left. And before you even have, before your nafs even has the time to convince you that that's your donut, you hand it to somebody else. Like Suhoor and Ramadan.
Like, everyone's hungry, everyone's rushing against the clock to eat, right? And then instead of getting your plate, you hop behind the table and start handing it out to other people. And then as you're doing it, you're like, who am I? What have I become? Is this what happens when Shaytan leaves me alone for a month? Like, I can do this? Those are the moments where you show yourself what legacy looks like because you weren't thinking about anything else besides Allah when you did that. And when you look at the example of Hajj, the story of Hajj, there's one story from this year that just shook me so much.
But Hajj is like the least glamorous thing that you can do in your life. It is so not Instagram friendly in that way. Like your Instagram aesthetic will be destroyed if you post everything about Hajj.
You're like, check out this water bottle. I made wudu from it today. And then after making wudu, I took it to the bathroom with me. Don't ask. Right? Like, you like check out this little box of chicken they gave us. I'm not sure if it's good anymore, but I'm hungry.
So bismillah, here we go. Right? Like, if you don't hear from me, send out a church party. There's all these different things.
If you took pictures of them, they are the most raw, like just real pictures, you know, people who are sleeping on the side of the road, people who don't have a tent in Mina, people who don't eat, they're eating scraps of what you're eating. So as you're throwing away, and there's a little bit of rice and a little bit, there's people who are waiting at the garbage cans because they don't have money and they don't have food. And they ask, are you done? And you with humility and shame say yes, because there's still some food left in there.
They take it from you like they just won the lottery. Hajj is so real, dude. And that's why the people who went on Hajj, at Hajj Malik Shabazz, that's why it like, it like transforms people.
Because you go there and for a second, you're able to unplug from all of this. For a couple weeks, you're able to disconnect from all of the facade and all of the, you need more, more, more, iPhone X, iPhone Max, iPhone, you're able to just disconnect for a second. And you go and you see life for what it is.
The Experience in Mina
So I went on Hajj, I've been on Hajj now for a few times, and we take a group. This year, we took 250 people. How did I get out alive? God. God is real. I know that for a fact, 250 people. And during that experience, you meet a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life.
And one of the most beautiful things about Hajj, one of the most beautiful things about Umrah or Hajj is that everyone dresses the same. And one of the ways in which we tell each other apart, like one of the ways in which we measure one another sort of subconsciously before we even realize that we're being judgmental, we look at what we're wearing. So I walk into a masjid like this, and people automatically assume that I'm what? Turkish.
Very good. No. What do they assume? They assume that I'm some sort of like religious figure. Why? Because I'm wearing this, my beard is this, and I'm wearing this long jacket, right? And they look maybe at somebody else who doesn't look like this, and they assume. So we make all these really interesting assumptions about people by what they're wearing. But Hajj completely destroys that chance.
Because for those few days, everyone's wearing the same thing. Everyone's wearing, the men are wearing two white towels, the women are generally just wearing, you know, some sort of abaya or shalwar kamis, and that's it. And you cannot tell, you absolutely cannot tell a person's economic status or their career or anything about them really, beyond what they tell you.
And you know what's crazy about Hajj? No one talks about where they're working because no one wants to talk about work because they're tired of work. So you get together and everyone's together and we all just sort of forget about money for a few days. We forget about judging one another.
What kind of car do you drive? I mean, no one brings like, you know, there's that one jerk who brings like his Tesla key. It's like, why'd you bring that? You didn't drive here. Like, you could have just left. He's like, it's a toy. It's actually a key, but it's a car. It's like, okay, no one cares.
Right? No, no, just joking. No one does that. So we're sitting in Minna.
And for those of you who want to know about Minna, Minna is basically you live in a tent for three days, three or four days. And it's not very luxurious relative to what we're used to. So we start in Mecca. We're at the Fairmont. You're in that giant clock. And then, you know, you, you, you live in that experience, the bathrooms that are nicer than your bedrooms here in America, yada, yada, it's, you know, breakfast buffet for days.
It's really, you know, absurd actually in some ways. And then you go to Minna and everyone's bubbles popped and we're all sleeping in not even what's, what's half of a twin bed. Because that's what you sleep on.
Right? If you've been on Hajj, you start laughing. Like, you know, we know like half of a, half of a queen bed might be like a full or like a regular and then half of a full is a twin. What's half of a twin? I have no idea.
But you're basically sleeping on what a lot of us imagine like to be like the sidewalk, like a very thin piece of land and you're sleeping across and next to and everybody. I played footsie with many people. Don't tell my wife.
Right? There were men. Don't worry. And so just a lot of touching happening and you just kind of wake up and you just hope for the best.
Right? And it's not comfortable. It's not comfortable for your body. You know, I'm a very tall person. And so for me, it's very uncomfortable. I have back issues. I have knee issues.
I'm just like a, I'm falling apart. I'm 30 as well for us. So I'm just falling apart now.
Right? My wife's like, you're not that old. I'm like, no, I enjoy gardening and when chicken goes on sale, I get excited. I'm very old.
Right? So I, you would wake up sore, tired, exhausted, but subhanAllah, there was something about your soul that was just rejuvenated. There was something about your heart that just felt right. And on the last day of Mina, you know, on the first day of Mina, everyone starts complaining because we're still coming from like the dunya immersion.
We're in the Fairmont, we're in the Hyatt, we're in here. So you're still like, you have this residue, right? Remember what I told you? Things affect you. So even though we're in Mecca, we're still kind of in this very luxurious hotel.
So the first day in the camp, we're like, what is this? I have to share a bathroom with how many people? There's a line of like 47 people, you have to get food out of a table and you have to eat it quickly.
Otherwise it'll go bad because the heat is just so, and everyone's complaining. But by the third day or the fourth day of that day, in that camp in Mina, I kid you not, wallahi, everyone is crying when we have to leave.
I was sitting there, we're doing our departure speeches with our tent and we had 150 people in a tent and everyone's crying. They're silent, just bawling their eyes out because we have to depart. And my friend Sheikh Hasib, he says on the microphone, he's crying, we're all crying.
He says, you're sad, right? Like you never thought you'd want to leave this tent. You never thought you'd want to stay in this tent, did you? You never thought that you would actually want to be here. And he goes, but you know why you want to be here? Because in this tent, in this environment, wearing what you're wearing, dusty, disheveled, sweaty, tired, you realize that nothing from this world will give you the happiness in your heart that you've been looking for.
Because while you're in this state, you've achieved this closeness to Allah that you've been looking for forever. One brother, the Tesla guy, he came to me and said, with tears in his eyes afterwards, he goes, you know, I'm not telling you this to brag, but I have a lot of money. He just said that, he goes, I have a lot of money.
I looked at him and he goes, I have like a lot of money. I go, yes, go ahead. And he literally says to me, and I don't know if that has ever come close to what I've felt here these past three days.
Sincerity and Legacy
So when we talk about leaving a legacy, the first thing we have to understand is that the legacy that we hope to leave, we ourselves may never ever experience the pleasure of that legacy.
You know, one of my teachers used to say that sincerity, when a person has Ikhlas, when a person does things for the right reasons, it's when they're planting a tree that they themselves will never sit under the shade of. You'll never eat the fruit from it. You're planting it because you know that it's the right thing to do and that it will make Allah happy with you and that future generations down the line, they will be the ones who will sit under the shade of the tree and they will think to themselves and thank Allah for the person who took the time out in sincerity to do what they are benefiting from.
So one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is, have I ever done anything with that level of sincerity before? Or does it need to be shared on my social media? Do I need to experience it? You know, I used to share a lot on social media. I used to share when I was like reading, preparing for a khutbah or a lecture, I would like take a picture of the book and like my cup of coffee and I'll like get, I'll like place everything properly and then I'd write like, wow, khutbah prep, look at me, you know, like mashallah. And one of my teachers, Sheikh Hassan from Knoxville, he actually told me, he's like, what are you doing? He's like, you're literally taking your sincerity and you're throwing it in the garbage can.
Do you ever do anything without sharing it? Do you ever do something and you actually, as Omar said, you work hard to hide your good deeds like you do with your sins? Like, I don't want people to know.
The Story of Abu Bakr
You know, there's a famous story of Abu Bakr (رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ - radi allahu anhu) where he, when he was the khalifa, he used to actually leave the masjid on certain days very quickly after fajr. He would just leave, like dip, like very quickly.
So, you know, obviously after salah, what does everybody do? Everyone sits, checks their phone. No, not back then, right? Everybody sits, they make their adhkar, they kind of, you know, make their dua, they wait, especially after fajr, they'd wait till ishraq and they'd pray their duha. So Abu Bakr (رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ - radi allahu anhu) he used to just like dip.
He used to just like run. So one day, Omar thought it was very strange and Omar said, I wonder what he's doing. So he actually kind of like followed him and he tried to like hide and like trace him a little bit.
And so he one day followed him and he noticed that Abu Bakr was going to the outskirt of a town of the city of Medina, probably on the outside, and he basically saw him enter this person's house. He said, what's this person doing? What's Abu Bakr doing? I didn't know he had like a vacation home on the outside of Medina and Koba. So he went and he waited and it was like a long time.
The narration says it was like a long time. And then Abu Bakr goes out and he leaves and he heads back towards Medina. So Omar (رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ - radi allahu anhu) being, you know, the person who's very curious about what's going on, he went to the door and he knocked on it.
And a person, a little old woman opened the door. And he noticed immediately when he looked at her that she was blind. She was someone who couldn't see.
And she said, yes. And he said, ya ummi, my mother, which is a term of respect for any elderly woman, says, ya ummi, my mother, he goes, can I ask you, do you know what's happening in your house? Like, do you know what's going on? And she said, yeah. And he said, well, what's happening in your house? What just happened in your house? And she said, there's a person who comes from the city once in a while and he helps me with all the chores that I have, all the things that I need to do.
And Umar al-Khattab said, a person? She said, yeah, a person. And he said, do you know that person's name? She said, no, he won't tell me. And when he heard this, he started to cry.
He said, you're making it very difficult for us, Abu Bakr. We can't keep up with you. You're so good. How on earth are we going to compete with you? Like you're going to be in Jannah first place and we're going to be like, how? Because Abu Bakr was not concerned about people praising or thanking or looking up to him. He was not concerned about those things. He was concerned about answering this question.
Can I be sincere for Allah without anybody knowing? Can I hide this good deed? Am I worried about this deed living beyond me? Because sincerity is what gives deeds life. And so the first thing that you have to
ask yourself tonight, and this is going to be very difficult because this is not a group activity. We're very used to group activities.
A lot of us maybe even in school hated them, right? But individually tonight before you go to sleep, I want you to look at your phone. I want you to look at your pad of paper with a pen, and I want you to write down the things you did today for Allah that weren't for anybody else. Did you give sadaqa to somebody? Did you smile at somebody? Did you pay for the person's coffee behind you at Starbucks and then make toba for going to Starbucks, right? I own a coffee shop in Dallas.
Everyone's like, it's like Starbucks. I'm like, leave, get out, right? You're not allowed here anymore. Did you do something? Did you pay it forward? Did you, did you like call your mother and tell her that you love her and not tweet happy Mother's Day to your mom who's not on Twitter, right? Like are these the kinds of things that we do and we talk about these things subhanAllah very openly, but how many of us kept them secret between us and Allah? And again, the motivation about why you want to keep them secret is so that it lives beyond you.
It carries forward. People will eventually benefit from it because of your sincerity. So on this trip of hajj, this person comes to me and says this to me, and I tell him that, yeah, this is the result of a person.
When you are able to break away from all these things that distract us, you're able to taste what Allah wants us to taste. And Ibn Atta'illah, he actually says this beautifully in a poem. He says, how can a person make their journey to God on the straight path? How can they make their journey to God? And they're shackled by their desires.
Bad Deeds and Their Legacy
So the next step that we have to understand when it comes to legacy is that just like our good deeds live beyond us, our bad deeds also can become attached to us. I have a scar on my hand. You guys can't see it.
It's really small, but like Brother Faraz, I'm a wuss. So it still reminds me of the pain. You know where I got the scar from? I got the scar in Egypt, sorry for all my Egyptians here, climbing out of a swimming pool because they thought that having sharp edges was a good idea.
So when I was climbing out of a swimming pool, I remember I was lifting myself out of the pool. And I was just meshing a lot when I was young, just like a 10-year-old jacked kid like David Hasselhoff. No, I'm joking.
I was really fat. And so I was almost like a whale kind of getting out. And so as I pushed myself out, the edge cut my hand.
And you know like when water mixes with blood, it like dilutes really quickly. So it looked like I got like stabbed and shot like at the same time. And there was just blood dripping all down my arm.
And someone looked at me like, oh my God. And I was like, ah. And they thought it was just like a murder scene.
So I'm climbing out and my hand was cut pretty bad. You know what's probably for like a week or two, I couldn't even like do this. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't move it because the wound would keep reopening. And Alhamdulillah, that was like 20 years ago. Now, if I touch it, if I scratch it, if I do anything, I can't feel it anymore.
The pain is gone. But you know what's crazy? When I look at it, I can feel the pain. Like when I look at the scar, not when I touch it, when I look at it, when I remember the moment, I can feel it.
The brain is a crazy thing. You can remember the emotions and the sensations. It's almost like, do you guys remember the best meal you've ever had? Think of the best meal you've ever had.
The best bite of food you've ever eaten in your life. If you think hard enough, you can actually begin to what? You can actually begin to kind of taste it. The mind and the way your senses work are incredible.
And you know what happens with sin, unfortunately, is that when we get sold, when Shaitan or our nafs sells us into doing this sin, we tell ourselves that we'll just ask for repentance afterwards. And you know what? Allah is so forgiving. It's amazing.
He's even more forgiving than we are to ourselves. Like we ask Allah to forgive us and he forgives us, but sometimes we don't forgive ourselves. And the way that that works is that we live with the residue of this sin on us.
And that legacy is left within us. So some of us are hoping to become change makers in society, but we can't even be change makers in ourselves. We're hoping to like revolt against the systemic oppressive systems that are holding us down, but we can't revolt out of bed for Fajr.
And there's like a deep problem there, right? And so when it comes to understanding legacy, the first part is what? Ibrahim's legacy of doing khair. The second legacy is what? Conquering yourself and making sure that you're not a slave as Ibn Ata'illah said, (وَهُوَ مُكَبّلٌ بِشَهَوَاتِهِ - wa huwa mukabbelun bi shahawatihi) Like they're wearing shackles and they look at the shackles, it's desire. It's just desire that's captured them, right?
Following the Prophet's Legacy
And the last part that I'll share is when a person understands all of these pieces that come together, they understand their route that has been given to them is the route of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam). The legacy that we follow, the path that we have to move along, it's not our responsibility to carve it.
And that's a huge blessing. That's a huge blessing. Allah actually says in Surah Hujurat, if this entire world was left up to you and you had to decide the path, the straight path versus not straight path, He said, you would hate it.
You would absolutely hate it. He said, that's why Allah has sent the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم - salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam) to be amongst you so that you have a role model. Somebody that can teach you right from wrong.
Someone that can tell you that this is the legacy that you have to follow and build. And I want everyone to understand something. Are you guys tired of Islamophobia? Anyone? No, you're cool with it? We can keep it going for a while? No, okay.
You guys are like, the other day I was in Trader Joe's. It was just, I was laughing during it. It was spot on, spot on Trader Joe's.
I was in Trader Joe's with my wife and someone said to my wife, like this is Dallas, Texas. We're in South Lake, which is like make America great again country. Like we wear kufis, they wear the MAGA hats.
And I was there and one guy just looks at my wife and says like, go back to Islam, all right? And I'm not joking. And sometimes like, sometimes like you're just so tired. Like you have a 20 month old and you're just like, I don't even want to acknowledge this that happened.
And you know, my wife is really funny. So she was like, oh, it's a really good reminder. I should return back to my faith.
And like, you know, she has a good sense of humor. So she's able to like just roll with it. And I was like, I was like really quickly gonna become like the macho husband man who like destroyed.
I don't think he thought we were married because she's Bengali and I'm white. So I think he was like, yeah, this white guy's gonna join me, right? And like start telling, and I was like, who are you talking to, dude? And he was like, oh, oh. And I was like, yeah.
But it's actually remarkable. SubhanAllah, I forgot where I was going with that story. But oh yeah.
Conquering Hearts Through Character
So the, where was I going with that story? Oh, so subhanAllah, it's actually really remarkable that when you live in a society and you have to conquer these things like Islamophobia, sometimes you try to develop a roadmap on your own and it becomes tiring. Anyone in political activism here? Anyone like socially active? Anyone consider themselves like a social justice activist here? You should. We should all be kind of raising our hands a little bit.
You know what? It gets kind of tiring when you're trying to come up with a roadmap by yourself. But when you know enough about your prophet, subhanAllah, and you know how he handled situations, you can conquer people's hearts and their minds are irrelevant. You know the reason why we keep losing some battles? My dad's sister is literally, she holds fundraisers for Paul Ryan in her house.
My dad's sister is like a GOP Sahabia, right? She's like, she's basically a companion of Donald Trump. Okay. I wish I was joking.
I really wish I was. And it's interesting because subhanAllah, when we had this dialogue over the past few years, politically, it always was never a logical thing. And I realized very quickly that even though she has these thoughts about Muslims, when she came over to my house and my mom would cook for her, and my mom, mashAllah, is a good cook.
You can tell by my size. She's a very good cook. That my aunt, who was very much like Muslim man, except this one, because she's an amazing cook.
And my mom would go above and beyond serving. It's her husband's sister. So she was like cutting the roast.
My mom makes ridiculous spread. Like multiple animals were her in the production of this meal. And so she like, well, cut the roast and like cut off a slight, like the chicken leg and this, and like this and all that kind of stuff.
And my aunt, who so deeply, logically hates Muslims and Islam, could not help but have an emotional love for this faith because of what it did. The hospitality, the warmth, the compassion. You can't deny those.
You cannot. You know, even Abu Sufyan, when the Quraysh were making fun of him, (رَضِيَ اللهُ عَنْهُ) this is before he was Muslim. They were making fun of him because the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) was gonna marry into his family.
He said, I know, and this is as they were planning his murder, the Quraysh, Abu Sufyan, who was a part of that crew, said, I don't know anyone better to marry than Muhammad. This is before he was a believer. Our goal and our legacy in this country is going to be winning the hearts of people, winning their hearts, serving them, making sure that they know that if I need help, what did Khadija describe the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) as? What did she say? She said what?
From the Hadith describing the Prophet's character:
You're somebody who literally takes account for those people who have become invisible to society. So when we talk about legacy, realize that your Prophet has given you something. You've inherited this legacy.
You're not responsible for putting it together on your own. You may have to make sure that you follow this example. You do good sincerely.
You wipe yourself away from all the mistakes that you make. Sincerely repent to Allah. And last but not least, as you look up to your role model, your messenger, our mothers of the believers, his companions, and you understand that they've laid this path out for you.
Are you gonna be courageous enough to follow it? Are you gonna have the courage to go against your desires and follow what the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) asked of us? Are you gonna have the courage
that when somebody says a horrible word to you, you give them beautiful words back? When someone looks at you with a frown, you look back at them with a smile?
There was a student at Qalam today, he said that yesterday was Jummah, he was driving, he was wearing a thobe. And somebody looked at him from the other car and gave him the middle finger, right? And they weren't saying like, La ilaha illallah, like Tawheed, right? But middle finger.
And he said that, he said that, you know, for a moment, I was like negotiating like, what should I do? You know, Muslims have Izzah, we should get up and fight, right? He was gonna take his thobe off and fight.
And he said, and I realized that that was coming from my nafs. And so I looked back at him and I just told him, I love you, my brother.
And the guy just looked at him like, how? You've defeated me, right? And he said, the guy actually cracked a little bit of a smile and then caught himself and drove away. People have goodness. This legacy of being peacemakers and winners of hearts, it's given to us by our messenger.
The Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ) taught us perfectly how to deal with these situations. It doesn't mean that we don't have honor. It doesn't mean that we don't have strength.
But what it means is that our strength sometimes comes in our compassion, in our ability to conquer ourselves and our anger.
Closing Dua
We ask Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) to grant us the ability to carry this legacy. We ask Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) to give us the ability to be the person that we look up to and not to be somebody who's selfish and insincere, but someone who thinks beyond themselves.
We ask Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَتَعَالَى) to give us the ability to have the character of the Prophet (صَلَّى اللهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ). And we ask Allah to never make people pushed away from Islam because of us. My biggest fear, you know, people accept Islam converts.
What happens when someone converts to Islam? My dad told me, my dad accepted Islam. He was a convert a long time ago. He said that, you know, you convert to Islam and you're basically stuck after Jummah till Asr with hugs.
You know, like everyone just hugs you. And it's a sign of love in the community. Like you convert to Islam and you're gonna get hugged for six hours, right? And one of my teachers beautifully said something very powerful.
He said, you know, we get very excited when someone comes to Islam and we should. We should, if someone, it's a big deal. It's a big deal when someone accepts Islam.
And he said, the hugs are beautiful. He said, but how many people on the way home from that Shahada do we push away from Islam because of our character? Or how many people on the way to the Masjid
that day do we cut off and push away from Islam because of our character? And character does not require a lot of knowledge. It does not require a lot of fiq.
It doesn't require a lot of study. It just requires following the example of someone who is perfect with it. That's it.
We ask Allah to grant us that, inshallah. Ameen, you know, Bilal, I mean, Barakallahu feekum. Thank you, everybody.
I appreciate all of you for accepting me with my deficiency. Make sure that you understand there's a lot of things. Number one, you have a beautiful gem here, Muhammad Kibriya.
You know, or do they say, garki murki dal baraba, right? All right. You shouldn't laugh. It's a serious, no, it's actually pretty funny.
So, I mean, I'm like white. So I'm saying it. I get why you're laughing.
But I grew up in Chicago. So I grew up very close to the Desi community. I'm also married to a Bengali. My wife is from Bangladesh, alhamdulillah. So, mashallah, there's a large height difference between us. Alhamdulillah.
But garki murki dal baraba basically translates to the chicken that you get at home is basically equivalent to lentils. Meaning that, like, you take things for granted when it's close to you. And I know a billion masjids and more that would want Muhammad Kibriya to be the youth director.
Like, I know a billion masjids. And I know a trillion masjids that would want Sheikh Aisha leading their communities, okay? So, I'm putting you on watch right now. Treat them well.
Take care of them. Attend their programs. Support them.
Ask how you can help them. If their families or their kids get sick, cook for them, right? Make sure that they never, ever, ever, ever, ever think that they're not being loved here. Show them love all the time.
All the time. Also, I want to thank all of the mentors, all of the community, all the volunteers, especially the ones who are mentoring the youngins. You're gonna see what this legacy means.
You know the planting the tree that you never get to sit under the shade of? You're gonna see what that feels like in, like, 20 years, inshallah. Trust me on that, inshallah, okay? Believe that. And the Rise Youth Group.
The Rise Up. Rising Souls, sorry. Rising Souls, mashallah.
I want to thank you guys as well for always showing out and being supportive. We ask Allah to accept from us this humble effort. Ameen, ya rabbal alameen.