Rising to the Occasion of Ramadan

Rising to the Occasion of Ramadan

Opening

Opening Praise and Prayer

Quranic Reference: Quran 7:43

Alhamdulillah, we praise Allah for the blessing of Islam, and it is sufficient as a blessing.

We ask Allah that He'll make us people who realize the greatness of this blessing that He's given us, and make us grateful for it, and make us live and die in appreciation of it, inshallah ta'ala. I only spoke because my older brother and my teacher Imam Suhaib asked me to. I think back, you know, 13 or so years ago before I was Muslim, and I wasn't following all matters of the message, if you could put it that way.

So alhamdulillah that Allah gave us halal all matters. Alhamdulillah that Allah gave us halal all matters, and we can sit with one another, and remember Him, subhanahu wa ta'ala, and draw near to Him, subhanahu wa ta'ala, increase in knowledge, and increase in closeness to Him, inshallah. So we pray that Allah gives us taufeeq.

Understanding the True Meaning of Ramadan

The Imam asked me to speak about how we should be receiving Ramadan. What should be our state in welcoming this beloved and magnificent guest, and how we should draw maximum benefit from it. And I was reminded of a story.

One of my students, I asked him once, kind of like how we were in a little group doing ta'aaruf, getting to know one another a minute ago. And I asked a student of mine, I said, he might be here. If he is, don't raise your hand, because I don't want to bust you out.

But I said, I said, what is Ramadan? You know, what is Ramadan all about? And he said, Ramadan is a month where you wake up really early, and you eat a whole bunch of food, and then you don't eat all day

long, and then the sun goes down, and you eat a bunch of food again. That was the definition of Ramadan. And Alhamdulillah, that's a big deal.

It's a big deal if we can do that, and we shouldn't belittle that. That's a big deal. They say the average American comes into contact with food 16 times a day.

16 times a day. So that's a big deal. You can go all day long and not eat and not drink, and avoid the other things that are prohibited in Ramadan.

That's a big deal. But one of the ways for us to maximize our benefit in welcoming Ramadan, and in benefiting from it, and inshallah, attaining the maximum goal in it, is for us to realize that Ramadan is even more than that. It's more than that. It's more than just the food, and the performance, and the food chat, and the biryani, and the whatever else we're eating, right? It's more than that.

Ramadan as a School of Self-Knowledge

And I think one of the ways for us, if you look at a practical way to think about Ramadan, is think of it like a school. You're coming into the first week of school right now. And you're coming in bewildered.

Some of us are challenged with some of our bad habits. Some of us are coming face-to-face with enemy number one. We're realizing that it wasn't Shaytan that made us do it.

We're realizing that it has a lot to do with ourselves. So we're coming face-to-face with ourselves. And that's what Ramadan is about.

It's like a school where you get to come to know yourself. And in the first week, you're kind of like a geeky little freshman, right? You're like, you don't, you don't, you know, you're just kind of trying to get acquainted. By the middle of Ramadan, you've actually started to become acquainted, and you start thinking things like, man, I'm going to fast the whole rest of the year.

I'm going to fast every Monday and Thursday. I'm going to fast the three white days. I'm going to, so, and then Ramadan comes around, you ain't fasted anything.

But you start getting acquainted, right? And you start getting excited. Then by the end of Ramadan, you actually prepare yourself for graduation. You prepare yourself to graduate from the madrasah of Ramadan.

And this is why the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wa sallam, what did he say? He said, the end of Ramadan is, it's freedom from the hellfire. By the end of the month, we should have, we should have come to a state to where we're actually fitting, and we're actually pleasing to Allah in a way that inshallah we're deserving of being saved from the hellfire. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala save us and you from the hellfire.

Two Ways to Maximize Benefit from Ramadan

So we need to maximize benefit, and that's one of the ways to do it. And the way to do that, practically speaking, is for us to renew our connection with Allah, two ways, I would suggest.

First: Reconnecting with the Quran

First, by reconnecting with the Quran.

Reconnecting yourself with the book of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Because a lot of people, what they're out there looking for, they're looking for instruction. They're looking for leadership.

That's why they're imitating this person or that person, because they're looking for a way and a methodology to live their life by. Allah ta'ala gave us a blessing when He revealed the Quran to Sayyidina Muhammad salallahu alaihi wa sallam, that we could never thank Allah enough for. We can never thank Allah enough for.

And again, as we're coming into Ramadan, you know, like I was listening to Sheikh Jibreel tonight. One of my friends said, you know, because people like to go to tarawih where they recite really quickly, and they get done really quick. And he said, yeah, I like to go to MCA, but Sheikh Jibreel, he reads really slow.

Man, if you realize, man, if you sat there and listened to that man recite the Quran, wallahi, you wish it never ended. Wallahi, you wish it never ended. You wish tarawih was 40 rakats.

Because it's like you go into this space, and I remember being a little knucklehead, brand new Muslim four years ago at MCA. Knees all hurt, we're talking about these Muslims, they're all nasal, shaking it, sweating and stuff, and I couldn't understand anything. I couldn't understand anything they were saying.

But now, after Allah graced me to know a little tiny, tiny bit of Arabic, you see, subhanAllah, man, the Quran is an ocean, man. It's an ocean. And wallahi, when you start to swim in that ocean, you never want to go to shore.

You never want the waves to crash on the shore. You want to just keep swimming. So reconnect yourself with the Quran, little by little, like the brother said, little by little.

You know, we're not all going to become Sheikh al-Islam by the end of Ramadan. We're not all going to become super Muslim, or super Muslim by the end of Ramadan. But we might be people who are consistent in our salah from here on out.

We might be people who committed ourselves to stop looking at the haram. Out in society and on the internet. Because there's haram on the internet, too.

We might be people who, some of us, you know, excuse me, JazakAllah khair. Some of us, you know, we like to pretend like Muslims don't have any problems. There's Muslims with substance abuse problems.

There's Muslims who are struggling with the basics still. We don't talk about that a lot of times, but there are. And what is one of the things you can benefit from Ramadan? Man, if you didn't eat or drink all day long, you could definitely beat some substance abuse.

You could definitely get over some weed or some drink or whatever it is someone's struggling with. And there are people amongst our community that are struggling with that. So reconnect yourself with the Quran.

Second: Reconnecting with the Community

And the second thing is reconnect yourself with the community. Man, wallahi, man, wallahi. As I was walking through the masjid tonight, I was like, man, I love Muslims, man.

I love, I can't understand why there's people that all they want to do is criticize Muslims. All they want to do is Muslim-bash. All they want to do is gang-bang in the name of Islam.

Claim they're set, as it were. That's all you find people, and Imam Suhaib knows well about this, because he calls them out. People who spend their entire life on the internet gang-banging in the name of Islam.

Claiming they're set. Man, you should be grateful that Allah even made you from the community of Sayyidina Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم). That's why Imam Malik said, the easiest way to tell a person to bid'ah is someone who calls himself other than a Muslim. When they asked Malcolm, they said, do you consider yourself a militant? You know what he said? I consider myself Malcolm.

And when someone asks you, what are you? You know, are you Sufi? Are you Salafi? Man, I'm Muslim, man. That's not why I converted to Islam. Wallahi, I didn't convert to Islam to gang-bang.

The Brotherhood of Islam

I converted to Islam because what did Allah say?

"The believers are but brothers."

Because the believers are brothers. We're a fraternity.

And wallahi, if we realize the power of that, we'd get over all this pettiness, man. All of this nonsense. And we could rise to the occasion to be the light for humanity that we're supposed to be.

How many more Suhaib webs are sitting out there waiting for you to make da'wah to them? How many more Suhaib webs are sitting out there waiting for you to tell them about Islam? How many more people are out there waiting for you to guide them to the light of Islam? May Allah give us success.

Advice for the Youth

So my advice to myself and to you is to seriously reconnect yourself with the Quran and reconnect yourself with the community. And the youth, we have to demand, we have to demand our place in the community.

Don't wait for the uncles and aunties to hand it out. If they want to hand it out, may Allah bless them. If they don't, we're going to demand it.

We're going to demand that our struggle and our cause as young Muslims, I hope I can still fit in that category. Okay, you all have to demand that your struggle and your cause as young Muslims is at the heart of the discourse of the Muslim community. Don't let our generation get swept under the rug.

Don't let the issues that our generation suffers from get swept under the rug. We have to demand our place. And wallahi, man, as I walk around here, some of y'all don't know, I knew you when you were little kids, man.

I remember when you were that little kid running around the masjid screaming. And we're like, who's that little chucky, little knucklehead running around the masjid? Man, would you put chucky in babysitting? Huh? I remember that. Now you're all grown adult Muslims, man.

Closing Prayers

We pray that Allah preserve our iman. And we pray that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allows us to receive Ramadan with ta'zheem. To receive Ramadan with the heart magnifying the greatness of this madrasah that Allah allowed us to come into.

We pray that Allah bless this masjid and bless the masjid and bless Imam Suhaib. And that Allah preserve and protect him and preserve and protect all of you, y'all alhamdulillah. May Allah make you the best generation Islam has ever seen.

The Prophet said my ummah's like the rain. My ummah's like the rain. You don't know what's better of it, the first of it or the last of it.

(Sahih at-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2869)

May Allah make you from the best generation Islam has ever seen. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala show us the truth as truth and allow us to follow it and show us falsehood as falsehood and allow us to stay away from it. I only spoke to the Imam.

Final Dua and Closing