One of the greatest lectures of All-time - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

so this is a beautiful way to become mindful is to try to remember and to habituate ourselves to these things but also to do them with intention first of all uh what a what a joy to be uh back in these gatherings uh which we were really deprived of and now increasingly uh people saying that uh you know there was just a lot of Madness during that time but unpr unprecedented time so we thank Allah subhana wa ta'ala for the Gathering and mallah I know a lot of people um wanted to be here but because

it uh was so overwhelmingly uh just uh desirable that so many of you came out early and so inshallah people that are online that weren't able to be here in person we thank you for just your patience and inshallah one day we'll have a much larger Place gather but this is a blessed place it's a Sanctified place it was built for God at the height of the depression and it was given to us by Christians uh for us to worship our Lord Lord as we understand him alhamdulillah so mindfulness is a very interesting uh term

it's become very popular as Dr Aisha um said one of the things about mindfulness is it's actually a relatively recent word it goes back to the 16th century but it was almost entirely neglected until about uh 1965 and from then on you see this rise so if you look online you can see usage and you see this line it just goes nothing and then suddenly around the 1960s it starts to creep up and by 2019 it's it's gone way up and and there's so many things about mindfulness online everybody uh now has had some experience

if you live in America especially in California with this idea of mindfulness so you have now they have corporations that have mindfulness uh so they they have people come and they tell you how to be more mindful um but what what's really unusual to me is what is your mind full of because one of the most interesting things about the modern concept of mindfulness it's actually what we would call like you're doing remembrance of yourself so where does this term come from I got interested in just where did this all come from well it came

from Buddhism because the Buddha who I actually wrote an article uh in a book on Buddhism and Islam a lot of people don't know this but the afghanis were actually great Buddhists and Afghanistan was one of the major Buddhist centers in the uh the premodern world and they became Muslim very quickly uh in fact the great Shrine Keepers uh who are known as the bads barmac was not a family it was actually a clan that kept the Buddhist Shrine in Afghanistan so the bar baram were actually Buddhists that converted to Islam and then they actually

helped bring all of their administrative knowledge into uh the Abbasid Empire so I I I think it's very interesting that so many Buddhists became Muslim and I was struck by the fact that one of the Great um heresiology and ashari Scholars in a book I was reading he actually had the budus as a a section in Sex and what they call and uh which is uh religions and sex so he had the section on Buddha and he said if what the Buddhist say is true about this man he must be Al which really struck me

and so then I started researching all of what Muslims have said about Al and the parallels between Al and Buddhas Buddha are amazing so I wrote this article called Buddha in the Quran question mark and uh it was actually translated into Arabic by the ministry of aaf in Morocco because the minister was uh very uh struck by the argument because Al according to our tradition was actually a prince who escapes from the palace and goes on this journey in search of knowledge and then has it's not Revelation it's a type of Enlightenment uh that happens

so the Buddha talked about uh mindfulness and he actually has a very famous uh in the it's it's called Sati paana which is a lecture that he gave on mindfulness so then I wanted to know well what was the word that they translated from mindfulness and it's a p word which is the original language of Buddha and in fact Dr clear argues that in the what the earliest Buddhist manuscript which was called the dapada that the Buddha actually predicted the coming of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam so it's very interesting that the word is

called Sati so I looked up Sati Pali what what did it originally mean I want to know what it originally meant and it meant remembrance of the Sacred Scriptures so it actually literally means remembrance so it's VI so mindfulness that's been translated into English from Sati is really so then it becomes what are you doing of that's the question now we live in an age of immense distractions arguably this is the most distracted age in human history now what does distraction mean well according to the dictionary it means a state of being distracted this is

what drove people like Dar do crazy but the second meaning is mental distress or derangement mental distress or derangement thank you that helps mental distress or derangement Now isn't it interesting that we're living in one of the most mentally deranged times in human history where people no longer even know what they are they've forgotten God they think that this is all meaningless and they're completely distracted so what are they distracted from and who's distracting them one of the problems with distraction is if you're looking for it there's plenty of people that will help you find

it and so there are all these Merchants out there that are trying to advert turn your attention toward that's what advert means to turn towards so an advertisement is to entice you and to get your attention now social media was designed to keep you on it they don't call it surfing the web for nothing first of all a web what do you do with a web a spider knows what you do with a web you capture flies you liquidate their inerts and then you suck the life out of them and then there's just a shell

lying there on the web right what's a net like internet what's a net for a Net's for catching things right so now as somebody who actually surfed in my younger days one of the really interesting things about surfing is you're just trying to stay on the wave has you you're not controlling the wave the wave is controlling you you're just trying to stay afloat and so surfing the web you're just moving and it's taking you so distraction creates mental distress the third meaning in the dictionary is that which divides attention the word in in uh

English decide to decide something is comes from a word which means to cut off Deere why would decide mean to cut off because what you decide cuts off everything else once you've made your decision you're cutting off other things and you've made your decision and so people have to make decisions like where do you spend your time what do you give your time to now the word in Arabic for distraction is which means to pull somebody into to bring them into entertainment which in the dictionary is the pleasurable occupation of the mind so who's who's

occupying your mind now what you give your attention to will determine your reality what you give your attention to will determine your reality what does that mean it means that if you're always watching news about crime you're going to think that crime is far more prevalent than it actually is and you will be scared you'll be walking around thinking like Chicken Little that the sky is falling so what you give your attention to is going to determine your reality and what God is asking us is to give our attention to God now what is in

Arabic intention what is the attention well in English it has a lot of really interesting meanings one of them is courtesy like you say he was very attentive to me attentions are what a lover gives their beloved attention is also a word for devotion so your attention is your devotion it's what you're attending to it's what you're giving your time to so in Arabic one of the words for it is it's what you're concerned with it's your hum it's what preoccupies your mind it's what your mind is full of and so the prophet sallallah alaihi

wasallam said whoever makes his concerns in other words gives his attention to one thing Allah will take care of all of his other concerns what's that it's so we're living in a time where people's concerns are completely fragmented and so there's all this mental derangement because people are so distracted now IMI said and it's often attributed to the prophet s and it very very well may be because it is often said with he didn't say if they die they wake up no they come to attention is a is Nab is somebody who's who's smart intelligent

because he's focused he's G his attention to what's important and so in is what happens when people die the prophet sallallah alaihi wasallam said in one iteration die before you die in other words come to attention before you're brought to attention and inim it's consider yourselves already dead it has the same meaning in other words wake up now and this is what mindfulness is really about it's it's coming to one of the words for attention in Arabic is also it's to be awake and aware you're attentive you're aware your mind is present so already by

the 1880s n noted one thinks with one's watch in one's hand he complained even as one eats one's midday meal while reading in the latest news of the stock market this is distraction everything is done with the clock one of the most interesting things about time and one of my favorite writers Le Mumford said that when the modern mindset came to dominate this is what he wrote eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions in its place came the dictatorship of the clock I mean isn't that interesting people used to

think about eternity their lives were actually determined by their understanding of Eternity and one of the most common things about premodern peoples is they mention death a lot and one of the most notable qualities of modern people and postmodern people is they never talk about death why did the premodern people talk about death when I was in the throne room of the former Queen Elizabeth now the throne room of King Charles uh I was taken there by baroness Udin she's a Muslim in the house of Lord so they took me into the throne room I

was getting a tour of uh the Parliament and they have so they have this throne room and there was this massive clock given by the French King to the the British monarch that had the Grim Reaper on top of it that's what the clock had it had the Grim Reaper in other words the angel of death was on top of it with his Scythe that that takes the souls in all of if you look and Dr Yousef knows this because he's been working with sunds in all of the pre modern Sund dials it will say

things like carpedm many Latin phrases things like in one of these hours you will be seized people saw time as a reminder of their fi finitude as the reminder that they were finite beings in temporality modern people think they're going to live forever they don't think about death and one of the main reasons for this desire for distractability is because it preoccupies people from thinking about what is inevitable that they will die the prophet sallam said do much remembrance of the destroyer of delights death not in a morbid sense this is being unto death this

is embracing our mortality being aware of it every night did death meditation he would recite poems about death you know be prepared for death in it's coming and they used to sing this on a on a on a regular basis to think about death the prophet sallallah Alam was completely aware of the presence of death the Quran death permeates the Quran there's not a page that doesn't have the perfume of death scented on it in the Quran and this is not morbidity this is not some kind of morbid or morbidness it's not morbidness it's actually

to make you aware of the preciousness of the time that you have been given this is the preciousness of life itself it's a great gift from Allah subhah wa ta'ala and we waste it away with all of this insignificant concern there's one of the interesting things about the ancient Greeks is they were actually very concerned about distraction but what they saw was that it was an inner failure to use one's time on what one claim to Value the most their reason for treating distraction so seriously was straightforward and it's the reason we ought to do

so too what you pay attention will Define you it will Define you what you pay attention to will Define you senica wrote a a famous uh short book called The shortness of life he was a he was a great Roman philosopher and and and uh one of the notables from Rome and he talks about you know his fellow Romans pursuing political careers they didn't really care about holding elaborate Banquets they didn't really enjoy baking their bodies in the sun I mean it literally says that sunbathing something Europeans tend to do other peoples don't need to

and to be honest I suspect he probably was right but the crucial point isn't that it's wrong to choose to spend your time relaxing whether at the beach or on Buzz feed it's that the distracted person isn't really choosing at all I mean that's the key you're not choosing it's quite the opposite the word in Arabic is one of my favorite Arabic words it literally means if you look at it it comes from so is is a form in Arabic which is it's to internalize something so you're choosing the good that's what is but it's

either a real or an apparent good that's the difference and so distracted people are not choosing they're not choosing a real or even an apparent good they're surfing everything will pull their attention it's called the Noonday devil in in in the old Scholastic tradition sloth spiritual laziness people that don't want to uh to think about the inevitable one of the uh amazing and this what I wanted to uh to really talk about is one of our most important books and it really is it had an immense impact on IM Al gazali is a book known

as theah of IMI this was a foundational book in tasa and tasa is part and parcel with the religion of Islam you cannot take tasa out of the religion of Islam without derating it without uprooting it there are many different types of sufis there are many sufis that went astray just like there's F that went astray there's that went astray every science has its problems but the idea somehow that Tas like that mentioned in the wasn't from Islam nobody would have accepted that including and ABD wahab so in the of IMI he has a chapter

called time and he says that time for the people who have had realization these are the verifiers the people that have penetrated the the reality of this religion and they have confirmed that it is true and that if you practice it you will get the results in other words it's falsifiable this is Popper's argument for a true science is that it can be replicated so the are the people that replicate again and again the truths that were told in our tradition they falsify the religion they show you that over and over again we do these

things and we get the same results therefore it is a science it's not W it's not an illusion so he says that with the people of it is something that is it's not something tangible it's something like illusory time but it's associated with something that is actually substantial what he means by that is that for us we don't know if we're going to have the next minute so I can make my plans for tomorrow tomorrow will come for a lot of people but it's not going to come for everybody that's the quality that it's mut

and this is why was asked when will the human being find finally be still and he says he will never be still until he knows that the only time he has is the moment that he is in and this is why Allah says about the in other words they have no fear of the future and they don't grieve they have no grief about the past because they are they're here they're present they're mindful they're fully aware this is the difference between them and everybody else they are present so that is what he's telling us so

he says a man will say I'll come at the beginning of next month he doesn't really know that that he only hopes he'll he'll see him but the the the the the beginning of that next month will come it will come but you might not come with it and that is the nature of time and then he says I heard one of the great say that's exactly what I was saying earlier what you give your attention to is your reality this is exactly what said the time the moment because W can be moment it can

be time you know like it can it you this is Arabic language time is what you are in if you are in the dun your time is The Dun if you are in the afterlife your time is the afterlife if you are in Joy your time is joy and if you're in grief your time is grief and then he says he means by this that time is essentially what overwhelms the human being it's your experience that's what time is it's Human Experience and this is what the clock has taken away from us the clock is

qu this quantifiable thing time is not quantifiable in reality time Allah is time Allah is the the Scholastics and I think they took it from us the Scholastics called it nans God is the Eternal now if you look at in says it is the Eternal now it's the now that stands still God is time do not curse time because I am time I am time some of the interpret it as it's the it's what the Zaman is to the outward time is to the inward anyway he goes on it's a stunning um thing he he

talks about you know Imam Shafi he said I learned two things from the sufis time is a sword if you don't cut with it in other words if you're not attentive it will cut you down we don't kill time time kills us whenever you hear somebody say I'm going to go kill some time that is a person in complete whenever you hear somebody you know he said the fool gets up in the morning and says what am I going to do today and the wise man gets up and says what is God going to do

with me today so he said and then he said your ego is such that if you do not preoccupy it focus it on the good it will focus you on the on on the harmful on the evil on the bad Allah again said am time is a file it just wears you down doesn't obliterate you it wears you down till there's nothing left and this is why time is so important he ends this by saying every day passes it takes a part of me and it it's it it gives remorse to my heart in other

words for the time I wasted and then it continues on it continues on and then he says it's like the people of the fire whose skin is reborn and this is from the Quran it says every time the skin gets burnt Allah recreates it I mean this is we know about these propio spors now recept all the skin has these receptors that's why burn people that get burnt really deeply they they don't feel it once they've gone through the skin so the skin according to the Quran is recreated it's recreated so that the the uh

The receptors experience it and then he says the Dead one is not the one who uh dies and then finds Repose rather the dead is the dead among the living the intelligent one is the one who's mindful of his time he's giving the time it's due so he's either in the or in the depending on what time it is so these are very high meanings and Imam sided Z he says that don't uh he says people they should be looked at according to their station so what is asked of the the the the people who

are cont content with being common people we should all aspire to to rise up to be higher than our position and common people is not the street sweeper the street sweeper might be a a knower of God so common people in the western understanding are people that don't have degrees and haven't gone to college and haven't uh gotten phds and things like that very often those are the most common people they're the most common people so uh the the uh I wanted to uh now just talk a little bit about why we celebrate uh really

we should celebrate every day uh the birth of our Prophet s the fact that he came into the world we should be joyful and one of the things about Muslims is that wherever you go it's a Hallmark of the Muslims that they loved our Prophet saham this is a quality that you find all over the world even people bad Muslims often love the prophet sallam and I'll give you one example when I was in England there was a Kuwaiti man I shouldn't have said Quai but anyway I said it so uh may God Veil us

all um anyway there was a man from the Gulf who who was uh he was in a bar and he was drinking and uh and then the man asked him where he's from he said Kuwait he said oh that's Muslim isn't it he said yeah he said uh and then he said something about the prophet s well this Kuwaiti man broke his bottle and jabbed this man right and obviously you shouldn't do that and and really I mean but but the impulse is real the impulse is real there's people in you know somebody said to

me oh Muslims are always killing people over religion I said well I was in England at the time I said you guys kill people over football matches you know I mean and in fact there used to be a billboard that said if your religion's football worship was Skype sky sky it was like a football channel because there are people that that's their religion that's their attention is given to that they watch all the games they know all the names they have all the the stats they know who can Bend It Like Beckham right I mean

it's very interesting this is people giving their time and that's all we have is our time this is what God has given us this is a great gift that he's given us participation in being so the prophet he he was the most mindful of human beings and that's really what I after you know thinking about mindfulness and thinking about just how how so many people in the west are are looking at these religions like Buddhism and they've never considered Islam it's just fascinates me because our Prophet is so extraordinary and one of the most extraordinary

things about our Prophet Ali wasallam is his name because all over the world right now right now here we are in California right now there's people all over the world doing all over the world they're praising our prophet sallallah alaihi wasallam and his name is Muhammad that's not a name he got later his mother named him Muhammad and it was an unknown name to the Arabs but she was commanded to name him Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam so just in his name is a proof of who he is because he is the most praised human being

on the planet and the second I I arguably is Mary I mean Mary people all over the millions hundreds of millions of people all over the world praise Mary but I've never met any Christians that sit there saying you know oh God praise Jesus you know bless Jesus do I I've never seen that and I've actually the in Genesis it says God will bless the nation that blesses Abraham I asked the Evangelical friend of mine have you ever blessed Abraham and he said I can't think that I have and I said we bless him every

day at least five times a day and so by your own book it says we're a blessed Nation because we bless Abraham and of all people the prophet in aith said said that he was he was shown all all of these prophets and he said who they look like he actually told them which tribe they look like benua Moses looked like the people from benua uh jiel looked like he he said what the what they look like and then he said the one that looked most like Abraham is your companion what a beautiful not your

teacher not your not your your companion just our Prophet was the most humble of human beings he loved people he cared about people he was he was moderate in every single thing that it's amazing this is another proof of the Prophet Ali wasam his moderation he said my way is the middle way meaning the moderate way we made you a moderate Nation a people in the middle even geographically the bulk of Muslims are in the middle of the Earth they're not at the extremes they're in the middle of the Earth everything about him is moderation

the prophet Sall alaihi wasam they said about him said he he was of middle stature he was neither Too Tall nor was he short but nobody ever appeared taller than him but he wasn't tall or short he was middle he said he was of a moderate color inclining toward a reddish light brown he wasn't he was neither dark nor was he a pasty white like uh the Europeans you know the northern Europeans the Italians are closer to that color it's the most beautiful of colors alone I once asked when they described the prophet like the

full moon did they mean the Harvest Moon on the horizon with that uh that beautiful coloring that it has or the the real brilliant white and and he turned to the he turned to some of the students he said like look at the questions of the Romans he said for him Rome was you know so he said it was like the moon on the horizon and that's somebody who's an eyewitness and then he said he he had wavy hair it was neither straight nor was it kinky it was middle everything about him was middle sallallahu

alai wasallam the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam the other uh aspect about him and I want to because we were um we were talking about uh there's a uh from the the uh the Buddhist tradition there's a book on Chan Buddhism very interesting stories from the the Masters and uh one of the the the students asked the teacher do inanimate things teach and he said inan inanimate things teach he said why can't I hear it he said because you can't hear' and then he said who hears it and he said the Saints hear it and then

he said do you hear it he said no if I heard it you wouldn't hear my teaching and then he said can the common people ever he and he said if they could they wouldn't be common anymore and so an inanimate things how is it that all the sahab m Hadith heard the tree trunk moan because they were all Saints if they hadn't been Saints they couldn't have heard it when the Palm when the pebbles in his palm praised Allah not everybody heard it but Abu Bakr and Omar heard it these are makams so he

sallallahu alaihi wasallam heard things he heard trees greet him he heard mountains greet him he said is a mountain that loves me and I love him the doist say sages love mountains and mountains love sages these are these are teachings that are throughout because these these truths have been given to all people but we are the last inheritors and this is the gift of our Prophet s to us that we are from the last umah of mindfulness in an age of utter distraction this is his gift to us a path to becoming awakened not woke

it's bad grammar awakened the path to becoming awakened and grammar is in the Quran in Jenna you don't hear bad grammar that's one of the meanings of it also means anything just empty you don't hear empty speech that's the primary meaning the isar is no bad grammar the prophet alai wasam loved beautiful language he he enjoyed hearing the poets come to him and they would say things and he would tell in fact when when he was he said he said you're your your invective is harder on these these uh kufar than than our Spears he

said in and may the Holy Spirit give you Aid in doing that one of the sahaba who was known for uh just his humor one day was making all of the sahaba laugh and the prophet was there and he poked him in in his side like it's enough and the prophet had a beautiful sense of humor but humor should be like salt it shouldn't be the whole meal and so he poked him and he said o that hurt and the prophet said then take your take your Vengeance and he said you have a shirt under

and I don't so the prophet lifted up his shirt and exposed his like the hip and he he grabbed it and he kissed him he said that's all I wanted he was the most attentive to his guest and this is a Hallmark of all the every virtuous human that I've visited always the guest let him honor his guest if you believe in the Allah in the last day let him honor his guest so this is our Prophet sallallah Ali wasam now how do we how do we become mindful this is the question and one of

the the most important ways Allah says Allah subhana says remind them in other words call their mind to attentiveness to attention remind them because reminders benefit the Believers in other words they will become mindful by being reminded by being brought back to reality and so the prophet sallallah alaihi was one of his names is the one who reminds who brings you back to your mindfulness to your remembrance of Allah subhana waa so I had a teacher he was a beautiful teacher he was a sudin Ahmed Ahmed BWI and I read with him the M he

was a student of Muhammed so I had a direct connection to one of the greatest of the 20th century he was a mortanian brilliant mortanian scholar who when he went to Alazar and uh he wanted to teach in the Masid so all the azaris wanted to test him so when they came in they he said let's do and so the first one said I'm so and so he said IB man he said so and so he said I man he said so and so he said I man he said so and so he said IB

man he said that's far as I go back each one gave their all their lineage and he began by giving his lineage so when he finished he said and he went through all of them and when it came to him he said and none of them could repeat his his his lineage so they say you can teach Hadith so he studied with him he was a he was he was a Muti in the in the UAE in in the court when I was a student there but he wrote a little book which he designed it

so that if you did these you would be from the and when I told bbea that we had translated this book Dr Assad and I that um he said his father used to say whoever does these the they're called the monat the occasional supplications he said whoever does them on a regular basis will be written from the so this is a beautiful way to become mindful is to try to remember and to habituate ourselves to these things but also to do them with intention in other words not formulaic and not perfunctory not in some way

in which uh you you go on to automatic pilot where you actually stop and you you supplicate Allah subhana wa tala so um Sal said the prophet said never left the house except he said this is a perfect prayer and I know of no other religion that has these prayers I I don't know any other religion that has these prayers it's to me one of the proofs of our Prophet s alhi wasallam is that all of these prayers are so stunningly beautiful they're very difficult to translate because they're so comprehensive he said I was given

the comprehensive words he he says so much with so few words so when he went out he said oh Allah I seek Refuge that I should trip or be tripped that I should go astray or be led astray that I should oppress anyone or be oppressed or wrong anyone or be wronged that I should become angry or foolish or somebody should display their anger or foolishness on me against me that's a protective Dua as you go out when he went into the when he went to relieve himself he said because these are foul things like

emptying yourself even though nothing foul came from the prophet sallallah alaihi wasallam and the Earth swallowed up the prophet Sall alhi was when he came out he said you know your forgiveness and then he said what a perfect Dua praise be to the one who provided me the Delight of the food retained in me the the the the energy of the food and remove from me the harm of the food this these are perfect perfect prayers perfect prayers so all of these things that the prophet Sall alai wasam when he went to bed in another

which is he actually says that I have surrendered myself to you I have given my whole Affair to you and put my back to you in other words for protection and then he says I believe in in in you I believe in your prophet and and and and and and the prophet Sall Ali wasallam said that whoever says these things and then dies has died on F this is the real human being this is the F so he said go to sleep and not expect to get up in the morning sallallahu alaihi wasallam this is

attentiveness to time people die in their sleep we don't know we're living in a place earthquakes happen the the house could collapse when waking from sleep this I I slept in the tent of uh for uh the first few months that I was with him and then I actually asked because it it was it was very intense um he did th all the time he did in his sleep and I've have only seen a few people that do and their sleep there there was one man CID Ali in uh in mes who I was with

him and and and he was sleeping and snoring and doing prayer on the prophet sallam and he was fast asleep so I mean I saw that with my own eyes but used to say the prophet said my eye sleeps but my heart doesn't sleep so there's people that do thck so much that they even in their sleep they're doing in fact sahab used to have to put rocks when they went to the bathroom they would put rocks in their mouth to remind themselves not to say the name of Allah so every time the the got

up the very first thing he would do but then he would recite from Ali Iman which is in the Hadith he would recite the last uh from uh he would look up at the St the Stars the prophet used to and he would recite those verses that's coming into Consciousness when making W wo is Act of that many people are deprived of because they do it only for the prayer the prophet used to do W as an act of when you see when we first saw uh the the people inat the way they did Wu

did wo it was just amazing how how he did woodoo and uh and he would always uh when he completed this was the Dua on the completion of w was a beautiful Dua and that's you're you know a man can be in a cell like Tobias tubs could be in a cell and and and and he's he's ex he's in an expansive Place another person could be in a mansion and he's in a Cell because it's subjective it's all how you perceive reality this is one of my favorite duas it's just such a beautiful Dua

and then when he got on a camel which is taken from the Quran also always the because time for for premodern people was always related to Eternity this is why when you eat the the the the is always mentioned with the food is a uh a blessing that dissipates but submission to Allah is a blessing that goes on forever this is also when leaving the home this is this is when you come into the house coming into the home when heading to the Masid one of my favorite also and in and he had no Shadow

says he had no Shadow this is something that the Sal said he was always shaded by clouds but he had no Shadow sallallahu alaihi wasallam one of the proofs of his hairs are if you cast a light on them they don't they don't show shadow Make Me light God plac light in my heart light on my tongue light in my hearing light in my sight Place light behind me light before me Place light above me light below me oh God make me light grant me light when entering the mas and then mindfulness he entered with

his right foot first and made this Dua when leaving the Masid left foot because the is in the Masid the f is in the world the Bounty of the world when hearing the and then when when when you finish [Music] it we the prophet Salli wasam is our some most of these Reas have without the say but it's been the the of the Muslims to to say say our Prophet just out of to him I mean there's a position and and this is a position that's a totally valid position that it's also the adab to

uh to to to do it just as it came down and there are people that do that so both are correct but I've always found difficult not to say say Muhammad Allah says don't call him like you call other people you know one of the tragedies of the modern time is first name every everybody's on a first name named basis you know I hate these people they call you up hello Hamza I'm like it's Colonel Hamza to you yeah you know I mean what like why why why do people assume that they can just call

you by your first name people used to take a long time before you gave them your first name if you look at the Old English like Jane Austin they called people by their last name like Willoughby that's not his name his name was John Willoughby but they called him Willoughby because he was called by his last name and if it was an elder then they would call them sir or Mister we say Abu y you know Abu Muhammad him you you give K that's how the Arabs do it one of the things that I realized

when because I went to a Catholic School in high school and they they always called you by your last name this was you know early 70s so it hadn't changed yet to the degree they always called you by your last name so you know if you raise your hand they say Mr Hansen that's how they called you and my father went to the same school and what I realized later is that the whole purpose of that is that you don't just represent yourself you represent a family you have a family name that you shouldn't dishonor

your family name so we're in a time when it's just everybody's an individual they no longer have any sense of being part of a family or a community so it's it's one of the tragedies I think of this all this familiarity and then forgive me you know this oh God now is the arrival of your night the departure of your day and the sound of your callar so forgive me IM alari went on Dr to go to the bath or or sleep you know in the name of Allah the prophet wasam said if you're going

to be intimate then this is something to say uh to protect uh the the child very uh if you wake up from a fright you say this in sleep um there are many many of these I mean we have beautiful books Imam wrote a fantastic book imi's great book one it's one of the finest books in our tradition um there are many and many many scholars have written small books like this one that my teacher wrote um they want the Bara of teaching these things to people so it's why people write tajid books like I

used to really bother me tajid books like I see all these tajid books they're all the same they say the exact same thing they're all little books and they say the exact same thing and I would like why do people people keep writing tajid books like aren't there enough tajid book and then I realized it's actually a brilliant thing to do because anybody that learns how to read the Quran from that book the author of that book gets the reward of all their recitation so it's this is why sh always made their own a that's

I realized that because I like why they keep making new a because they want the reward of the people doing the that they put together it's one of the blessings of our religion so I totally have no problem anymore with I because I get it I want to do it like I'm going to write a book on T in oh Allah forgive my sin this is in prostration forgive my sins entirely the Lesser and the greater the first and the last the revealed and the concealed he also said you know uh there are many many

uh beautiful one of the things of the one of the meanings of it according to IM was to be focused on God in other words not to be distracted which I thought was really interesting you know this is between the the T and theam again between the uh uh and these are the what are called the my recommendation to all of you do the this is one of the the most important things that you do after your prayer is the these are the things that you say after the prayer they are different iterations but they're

they're they're very beautiful and they're extremely important uh there's a whole bunch of them so these are and we're we're actually going to this is going to be published this month and given to all the 12,000 strong people and then just made available but there are good books like this there's a beautiful one that white thread press did uh the the the precious pearls Reflections from the precious pearls it's a beautiful book that uh a really fine Sheikh from England did so there are many good books and the of Allah is uh without um limits

this is a very important Hadith given de dementia Alzheimer's all these things are so prevalent so Allah very I seek refuge in you from timidity and stinginess so fear Juan is like fear is related to fear because you're afraid to give out your money and in one it's so the is the one who wants to do something but they can't the kaslan is the one who is able to do it but doesn't want to do it so he sought Refuge from both these are really stunning in their meaning so these are and then the Dua

from anxiety there's slight difference but essentially the same meaning so again a beautiful comprehensive Dua to make the Quran the of your heart and one of the best ways that you can honor your Prophet Salli wasallam is to to read the Quran the prophet said the best of my um is Quran in prayer and then Quran outside of prayer this is the best that you can do if you're if you're not doing a Jew of Quran a day then and you're doing other things I would set aside those other things and focus on doing a

Jew a day every Muslim should do aam of Quran every month I mean this is Baseline um and if you if you it take about half an hour you could do 15 minutes in the morning 15 minutes in in the evening once you get accustomed to reading it at a relative Pace it's what do you say yeah you how how how fast can you do with h how yeah about 20 huh yeah so if you do you can do it in 20 minutes so 10 minutes in the morning 10 minutes this is not a lot

of your time it's you know and the book it's it's so neglected and the prophet complained of its neglect my people have have abandoned this Quran and one of the great blessings of Morocco and one of the things I love about that country is every Masjid 250,000 every year every month in in that's what the ministry of ala has um determined based on all the the the the Subhan Allah so this a beautiful Dua and then is very important he used to teachar for everything and this is something I'll tell you a true story Abdullah

Bin B was in Jordan and they were on their way it was very late at night and they were on their way to the airport and the driver fell asleep and crashed into a telephone pole he died uh the sh Abdullah broke his nose and there was blood everywhere and his son and this is a true story his son son told me this he was in the car and he his son started screaming because he was worried his dad was seriously injured he was actually it wasn't that bad of an injury but there because there

was so much blood he thought it was really serious he screamed and he said his his father took his arm squeezed it and said don't worry I did before this trip that's that's the power of this that's the power of the prophetic teaching is that you you you you are in the hub you're in that place where you're not perturbed by the world and things are going to get very serious on this planet we're we're entering into a new phase and people need to have strong Iman and they need to be connected to Allah subhana

they need to be connected I mean one of the things about E Stein that was so amazing she actually when when she fled to uh when she fled to uh after Crystal when they were persecuting the Jews she fled to uh they took her to Belgium and she was in a monastery there and uh she used to go out into the cold like she was preparing for something and this is eyewitness people that saw this she was taken to alitz when the Nazis invaded and they took even the converts to cathol Catholicism because she had

converted out of Judaism to Catholicism but she took her to awitch there were eyewitness accounts that she was comforting people in that situation and she only was there for one week they she was killed right away but the point is is that people of Eman can deal with this when they people don't know but in turke in uh in in Korea when they captured the Americans they captured Turks with them so they were actually imprisoned together and when they studied the Americans all fell apart and they actually started doing uh uh recordings for the Kore

for the Koreans like communist propaganda and they were very worried about this because they felt they were brainwashed it was all from the interrogation but the Turks didn't they didn't succumb to the interrogation and they wanted to understand why and what they found out was two things that the Turks did one they laughed a lot because they saw the ridiculous of what they were trying to do in the brainwashing so they just would watch these people telling them these things and they thought it was funny and I I know that that's from a type of

Iman where you kind of recognize the hilarity of this dun and the stupidity of human beings and I know it had to do with their upbringing as Muslims the other thing that they did they always appointed because they would take away the officers and the morale would break down with the Americans the Turks always appointed an Amir so they always even when if it was a private they would appoint somebody over them and he would keep them all together so these are really really important things to remember we need to be connected to Allah subhana

wa taala so there's so many things we could talk about who are we to talk about the messenger of Allah one of my favorite um poems is from the great uh the Great poet uh the great fak uh I who is to me one of the most extraordinary Scholars that our um produced he wrote a beautiful tap of Quran he was one of those polyas that just seemed to know everything um one of the beauties of his books and one of my teachers Muhammad MTAR was the son of the great Muer he was the one

that really um first introduced me to IB J in Medina when I was very young but one of the things that really he said was why his books were so powerful is because he wrote them for his son he wrote them for his son so he wanted his son to learn from these books and this is one of the reasons why the Sunnah if if your parent dies the Sunnah is for the son to pray over the parent not for the Sheikh or the Imam why because nobody will pray with the fervor that a son

will pray for his his parent so it's one of the secrets of our so uh he said I attempt to praise the chosen one but I'm thwarted I can't get to that that station that exalted height of praising him the prophet and then he says who can measure the ocean and the ocean is vast and who can enumerate the the the stones and the Stars even if my whole body became tongues even then I wouldn't be able to give the praise that I desired if all of creation got together to praise the prophet sallallahu alaihi

wasallam they would not achieve that due they would not achieve that due so I have refrained out of awe and adab and out of fear and magnifying that exalted station and sometimes silence is the best eloquence and sometimes speech gives faults for the fault Finders so having said that and knowing my own limitations I wrote a poem for the Prophet Muhammad the sun solemnly stated how can my light compare to his and the moon laughed be like me content to reveal another's light the North Star declared what guidance can I provide next to his and

all the stars exclaimed be like us who revolve around you and show show no Envy the sea shouted What secrets can I contain when compared to his wonders the clouds pleaded be like us exalted in the sky because we humbly draw our water from another and pour forth in gratitude and service the rose ruul remarked what beauty do I have next to his the mirror said be like me who can only reflect on others Beauty reason exclaimed what wisdom can I reveal next to his Revelation the tongue replied be still and let me quote him

gold complained what worth do I have next to his copper cried what in gratitude your Purity was his from the start be happy to be compared to him the dog barked he mentioned me the cat meowed he petted me the donkey braid he rode on me the horse n he called me an ocean the camel grunted I took him to safety the Frog croaked I was his favorite the spider stood tall on eight legs and stately stated I protected him once the cloud boasted I shaded him the tree declared he called me and I bowed

to him the the Palm trunk said well he hugged me the date gloated I was sweet for him milk exalted I nourished him water crowed I quenched his thirst the cabba shouted he circled me the yeny corner replied he touched me the Blackstone laughed and said he kissed me the Pebbles yelled we praised God in his Palm the mountains of Mecca called out he loved us Medina demurely whispered he chose me and Humanity cried NY NY me me and God said be like Ahmed and Ahmed said my community my community and God replied we will

grant you until you are content alhamdulillah