Repentance- Disconnected from Allah

Repentance: Disconnected from Allah

Opening Acknowledgments

Before I get started, I would like to thank the city of Baltimore, a city which has been fractured by continued acts of injustice. We ask Allah to heal the city and heal this country. Secondly, the Muslim community here who are hosting us, ISB, Imam Mikael and other great Imams, Imam Safirah, may Allah bless them, sister Asma and others.

And then of course, ICNA, who I've had a relationship with as a young, very young person as well as Young Muslims, putting on this incredible conference. And then finally, you for coming, spending really perhaps for us here in the East Coast almost like the first real warm weekend. And then the last thing is the glasses or not, because I'm going through a midlife crisis or something.

It's because there's really bright lights and I have a problem with my right eye that happened in Egypt when I was reading, you know, the lights in Egypt aren't quite as bright as in America. So my right eye actually went bad, alhamdulillah. So the bright from your noor and then the spiritual as well as tangible light creates a problem.

The Four Main Topics

I really want to talk to you about four things and I don't plan to use the entire 30 minutes. I think it's going to be very difficult upon all of us and I'm very excited to hear Ustadh Abdur Rahman Murphy. I just want to hit on really four things quickly.

Number one is the importance of time. The second thing is that there are really eight situations that all of us are going to find ourselves in light of time and the importance of time. The third is one of the most difficult times is a time where you don't find teachers.

You know, there's a great book called Hidayatul Sariq, Ila Tariq In Lam Yajid Al Rafiq, right? One of the great scholars, he wrote a book, what do you do in the times where you don't find a teacher? And not a teacher of knowledge, a teacher who can give you irshad, who can guide your heart, who can help you build SQ, spiritual capacity and spiritual intelligence. And then the last thing I'll talk about as I was sitting, I composed this poem in my mind in Arabic really for this. It's a lecture I'm working on as well on really four or five qualities that you have to have in a time when there are really no spiritual guides.

And it's very difficult. One of the things I hear from people in DC because I'm in DC like three days a month is like, why don't you teach? So I'd like to touch on that quickly. So time, eight situations that we have to find ourselves in according to our ulama.

Number three, one of the most difficult tests for all of us, what the scholars called Ayamul Thaqt, Thaqtul Hidayah, Thaqtul Murabiyyin, a time where you don't find people that can really teach you where the knowledge has become for entertainment. And it's lost its core focus as mentioned in the Quran.

Allah says in the third chapter that you should be people of God, you should be connected because you study the Quran and you reflect on it. There's a different qira'ah

وَبِمَا كُنتُمْ تُدَرِّسُونَ This is from the sab'ah, which means and also you actively engage in teaching the message, the Quran.

The Importance of Time in the Quran

So we'll start with time, you know, we know things are important because of how the Quran talks about them.

وَالشَّمْسِ وَضُحَاهَا وَالْقَمَرِ إِذَا تَلَاهَا وَالنَّهَارِ إِذَا جَلَّاهَا وَاللَّيْلِ .And one of the things that the Quran does is it swears by things

And so on and so forth. وَالتِّينِ وَالزَّيْتُونِ وَطُورِ سِينِينَ )Quran 95:1-2( وَالْفَجْرِ )Quran 89:1) All these are oaths, and really the emotion, and this is not to domesticate transcendence at all, but really the emotion found in these oaths is like if you play basketball and someone fouls you, or if you, I don't know, you found something really nice at a shopping center or something, and you tell someone and they're like, stop lying, you're like, I put that on my mama. Like we say this in slang, I don't think Muslims say that. But that emotion behind, like you fouled me, I put that on my mama, right? That emotion is found in these قسم in the Quran.

وَالضُّحَى يَعْنِي أُقْسِمُ بِالضُّحَى I put it on ضُحَى That's really the feeling of it. And Ibn Qayyim, a great scholar, he actually wrote an entire book about this, it's a really beautiful book about what are really the wisdoms behind swearing, because there's always like a reason why you swear on something.

And often in the Quran, we find that certain particulars are sweared on. For example, types of food are sweared on, but eating is not sweared on. So the scholar said something really awesome that it's very rare in the Quran to find the particulars of something as well as its universal concept sweared on. And if that happens, that means this thing is really important.

You should pay a massive amount of attention to it. And that's why the Prophet Allah swears on the Prophet in his entirety, when he says لَعَمْرُكَ )Quran 15:72) I swear by you, everything about you ملسو هيلع هللا بلص. But time is one of the few things where aspects of time are the recipients of an oath وَالْفَجْرُ وَاللَّيْلُ وَالنَّهَارُ the day, the night, the morning.

But then the last part of the Quran, time in its entirety is sweared on وَالْعَصْرِ )Quran 103:1) And in fact, the last part of the Quran and in Ramadan, I'll be having a snaps here on my Snapchat where we'll go through what are the themes of the parts of Quran and the theme of the 30th part of the Quran is transitions and how you engage in time. You came from an alaq, and before you were alaq, you were ma'indafiq, and then you became an alaq, and then you are innaka kadihun ila rabbik, and then you are headed to your Lord. And the 30th part of the Quran doesn't start with the dunya, it starts with the akhira to remind you to get your principles right.

The Prophet's Teaching on Time

So Allah swears by time, and the Prophet ملسو هيلع هللا بلص said, نِعْمَتَانِ مَغْبُونٌ فِيهِمَا كَثِيرٌ مِنَ النَّاسِ )Sahih Bukhari 6412) I don't want to speak a lot of Arabic, I apologize. But the Prophet said there are two blessings most people lost out on, one of them is time. Now our scholars were really fascinated by time, because for them, time, as one of my teachers Sheikh Ali Saleh, he's a blind man in Egypt, I read with him for three years subhanAllah, and he was blind.

And he used to correct books and he couldn't see, I said, how did you correct, he said, I memorized those books when I was a kid, I said, who taught you, he said, my mom, she was illiterate. I said, how did she, he said, she memorized them when she was a child, she heard people read them. But Sheikh Ali, he used to say to us that time is really the instrument by which we understand the qada of Allah, although Allah is beyond time of course.

I am above time, لَا تَأْخُذُهُ سِنَةٌ وَلَا نَوْمٌ )Quran 2:255) I control all things. But our scholars said there's really eight situations that you're going to find yourself in. You should write these down, man.

The Eight Situations of Life

Because it's true. I put it to a test. So one of my teachers, he wrote a poem about it, you know, Azharis, we're big into the language, we like poetry, we like rap music.

So in his mixtape he said ثَمَانِيَةٌ تَجْرِي عَلَى نَاسٍ كُلِّهِمْ Eight things have to affect every human being. وَلَا بُدَّ لِلْإِنسَانِ أَن يَلْقَى ثَمَانِيَةً And every human being has to find themselves in one of the following eight situations. سُرُورٌ وَحُزْنٌ وَاجْتِمَاعٌ وَفُرْقَةٌ وَعُسْرٌ وَيُسْرٌ وَسَقَمْ وَالْعَافِيَةُ And he said these are the eight situations that you have to experience in your life, whether you're at ICNA or you're somewhere else.

What are they? Happiness and sadness. Number two is we're either like now, we're going to come together and congregate, we're going to be separated. The Prophet said يَجْتَمِعُونَ عَلَى حُبِّ اللَّهِ وَيَتَفَرَّقُونَ عَلَى حُبِّ الله They gather on the love of Allah and they separate on the love of Allah ملسو هيلع هللا بلص The next two are ease and hardship.

And the last are health and sickness. Now when we make tawbah, it's very important to remember these eight because I'm going to tie them back into that concept of repentance which is the subject I was given. But before I jump into that, there is a situation that exists which is really permanent nowadays which a large number of Muslims whether young or old, whether on Snapchat or Facebook, ask about.

The Challenge of Finding Teachers

And that is, I can't find a teacher. I can't find a Shaykh. I can't find a guide.

Because it's not the same as watching YouTube videos, right? It's not the same as, you know, net Shaykh. That's important. But only a person who has never sat with a teacher will say that sitting with a teacher has no value.

In Egypt, I lived in Egypt for seven and a half years. I did my iftah in Egypt as well. And actually it was during my iftah studies that my iman was the lowest ever in my life.

Like who would imagine? Like it's a dream come true. I'm a convert from America, right? In Azhar, in Egypt, right? They say Egypt is bustan al ulama. You know, the gardens of the scholars, the garden of the scholars is Egypt.

So you're amped to be in Egypt. But then like, why is my iman so low? I'm learning all these masail and all this stuff is happening. So I went to one of my teachers, Shaykh Usama, he's a scholar of hadith from Asyut.

The Importance of Pursuing Knowledge Actively

And I was bothering him. You got to bother teachers, by the way. It's nothing wrong with that.

If you're bothering them for the right reasons, to study, to learn. Mujahid said, a shy student can't acquire knowledge. A passive student can't acquire knowledge.

And if you're a girl and you're thinking, I have to be passive because I'm a girl, do not let people play gender politics with your spiritual progression. I don't really need that, but thanks. And I wasn't saying that just to get, you know, the girls to clap, because I know how gender works.

But I went to him and I said, you know, like, my iman is down. This is someone who, you know, I was blessed to study with for a while. The Sunan of At-Tirmidhi, we read with him.

The Muwatta of Malik, we read with him. Al-Fiqh of Suyuti, we read with him. The Muqaddimah of Abu Amr ibn Salah, we read with him.

Like, this is one of our teachers. So I felt shy to say what I had to say to him. And he said to me, ask.

I said, Shaykh, like, I really appreciate all I'm learning, man. Like, I want you to know, like, I'm very thankful.

You know, they say about the Sunan At-Tirmidhi, man kana fee baytihi Sunan At-Tirmidhi, fa ka'anna nabiyyan fee baytihi.

You know, whoever has the Sunan of Imam At-Tirmidhi in their home, it's like the Prophet resides with them. So I had to be very careful. And my Arabic is not perfect, right? So I don't want to say the wrong thing to him.

Seeking Spiritual Guidance

And he said, I know what your problem is. He said, you're looking for someone to guide your heart. You're looking for someone to build you.

He said, what kind of teachers do you have in Egypt? I'm talking about Imam Siraj, you know. Imam Siraj is like this person, every Friday you'll hear him and you feel like you're growing as a man. Dr. Omar Abd al-Kafi, who has a great new book out now.

Someone who, like, really looks after you. Sheikh Sarasawi, someone who, like, helps you think about your life. Sheikh Hamza.

You know, these kind of people who have tremendous effect on us as younger folks at that time. Dr. Ingrid Mattson. Amina McLeod. Imam W.D. Muhammad. These are the kind of people that really impacted me and my growth. And he said, you know, these type of people are rare.

These are the Rawahil. You know, the Prophet said, these are like the camels, like one in a hundred, you'll find them. So I said, then what do you do? Like, what do you do in a time when you can't find, like, sincere people, man, who don't slander you and act like they're your friends, or hit you in the back with a knife, which is their tongue.

Or people that you can trust, who will get your back, even when you fall, they won't abandon you. You know, what do you do in a time where even the Muslims are treacherous? And he said, what you need is someone that can guide your heart, and there's very few left. So he said, you should think about reading the stories of the righteous, the people of old, and be with them as though they're alive.

And I thought about this, and I forgot about it, and then recently, large numbers of young people hit me up, and they're like, I can't find anyone to really guide me. I get a lot of information, but I'm not moved.

Four Essential Qualities for the Spiritual Seeker

So I thought about this, and I read a beautiful statement of a scholar, Sidi Ahmed Zarruq. And then I put this poem together as I was sitting over there. For you, I put in the Arabic, forgive me, it's just how I'm trained.

It says, لِلسَّالِكِ لَا بُدَّ أَرْبَعَةُ Four things that every seeker has to have. بِلا زِيَادَةٍ وَلَا نُقْصَانٍ يَا فَتَاةُ Don't increase and don't decrease them. عِلْمٌ وَتَوْبَةٌ وَاسْتِقَامَةٌ ثُمَّ صَبْرٌ You have to have knowledge. Imam Al-Shafi'i said الْعِلْمُ مُرَاجَعَةٌ Imam Al-Shafi'i said, I always need knowledge. My teacher, Sheikh Ahmed Diaye from Senegal, I lived with him for 10 years.

I served him. I used to bring his water to him to use the restroom, man. I used to clean his kitchen.

I used to wash his clothes. I complained, I was like, man, I'm tired of serving you. He said, but this is where you're gonna find the knowledge.

I was like, I'm finding dirty clothes. But his father was 96 years old. We were traveling together in those days.

We had what's called the majalis system because we didn't have YouTube. So we used to travel in America to stay with scholars in their homes. And West African teachers, you live with him for like 10 years.

supplications you can find in the sunnah, but I'll make it quick for you. Number one is just raise your hands in the most authentic way you can.

Express your hope to God that He will forgive you in any language. Just express to Him like, Yo, I screwed up, man. Like, forgive me.

I've jacked things up really badly, but I'm going to try to do it right. It's really the sincerity. And it's that simple.

Summary and Conclusion

So I'm done, but I just want to review what I talked about. The importance of time. Eight situations that we find ourselves in and those eight situations demand one of two things, thankfulness or tawbah.

Then I talked about a time when there is no teacher. What do you do? That's now. Now, where you find someone, I'm not talking about these great teachers here on stage.

I'm talking about where you live, like sitting with an imam every day or a sheikh and getting that guidance, getting that spiritual nourishment. It's difficult. So what do you do? We talked about it.

Knowledge, repentance, being upright, istiqamah, and patience. We talked about tawbah. Tawbah means to turn, atub, actually physically turn.

So it means to turn from evil to good. We talked about why people fail to take advantage of that. And then we said it's easy.

Just raise our hands and ask Allah to forgive us. BarakAllahu feekum. May Allah bless you guys.

As-salamu alaykum.