we're in the blessed month of sha'ban
and on the doors of ramadan
and one of the great blessings of this
faith that we adhere to is that we were
given the
sacred month of ramadan to restore
to replenish to renew our faith and to
most importantly reconnect with the book
of allah which is
something that people should be doing
throughout the year but many of us
fail to do so and the quran is in
essence
the nourishment that provided this ummah
so i wanted to look at a few
text messages that relate to this allah
says in the quran
yes
fasting has been prescribed for you and
other in other words made obligatory
for you just as it was prescribed on the
peoples before you
in order that you might learn taqwa
the very first command in the quran is
to attack to have taqwa
of allah and in taqwa is one of the
central and foundational
meanings of our faith
it's it's a difficult word to translate
but it's related to protection wikia
and the idea is that one wards off harm
in fact the word in arabic for believer
mutman means to
to actually make oneself safe so iman is
means to make safe and bellahi through
god to make one
one safe through god because if you're
with god then nothing can harm you
and anything that harms you is from
god and by god and and because of the
other of allah and so
in essence taqwa is warding off harm
it's entering into
a assem it's entering into
a a surrender to allah because
allah has given us a free will but he
wants us
with that will to give up our will to
align with his will
and and this this is the paradox of
faith
and this is why the disbeliever is
somebody who wants to assert his own
will
and while we do have will and we do
things in life we choose
things allah has given us all these
choices but he's also given us hadood
and so willfully entering into a
surrender a submission to allah
is to enter into this deen and that in
essence is the way of warding
off the the the consequences
of being in a state of disobedience so
the the month of fasting is is a month
in which allah gives us ample
opportunity to really
align ourselves with this idea of being
in a state of taqwa because taqwa is to
guard yourself
from all those things that are harmful
to you so you have five degrees
according to our scholars even
giusel kelby mentions them in his tapsir
the five degrees of taqwa
the first one is just taqwa kufar to to
really
be guard oneself against kufar and this
is why every believer is a
muttaqi who enters into islam even if
he's disobedient
in his islam he still has taqwa of kufar
and so
in that way he's a muttaqi and which is
very important because hudalin the
quran is guidance for the people of
taqwa and so
just being a believer means you're a
muttaqi because you have
of shirk but then you the of kuffar
and shirk then you have taqwa just being
concerned about
major guarding oneself against major
wrongs and then you have chakras
guarding oneself against the lesser
wrongs and then
being concerned about too much luxury in
life just
having too much of the muba hats because
it's all going to be a reckoning on the
day of judgment
and even though it's permissible if
you're paying your zakat and doing all
these things
nonetheless being extravagant is not
something
he doesn't love the extravagant ones and
he calls them
the accepting ones the brothers of the
demons
so ramadan is this extraordinary
opportunity for us to
return to the book of allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala and this is why
allah reminds us again in al-baqarah
shahrukh ramadan
[Music]
this is the month that the quran itself
was revealed
according to our tradition
with guidance for humanity
and clarifications of that guidance one
for
and a criterion it gives you a criterion
by which you judge
from ensembl
so whoever sees the moon meaning whoever
either sees it or has strong evidence
that it's been cited
then let them fast it and so the fasting
is an obligation from allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala
so what's really important in this month
is to reconnect with the book of allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala the prophet
sallallahu alaihi
wasallam said
yes
the hearts oxidize just as
iron oxidizes when
it is subject to water
ya rasulullah how do we
polish that rust
by remembering death and by reciting the
quran
so remembrance of death is one of the
spiritual practices of a believer
is to in fact really we should be
remembering it in
in every prayer so at least five times a
day one of the things that
some of the set up said was uh
when they would enter into their prayer
you know
pray as if it's your last prayer so
going into the prayer with the idea
that's
your last prayer when you say goodbye to
your family
not assuming that you're going to see
them at the at the end of the day when
you come home
or you may not come home so just
living life with this sense of the
just that life itself is something
precarious and that we could lose it at
any time
and so remembering much of death
so remembering death doing this
reflection
on death and on the just the fact that
life is temporal
and that we're only here for a short
time in fact the quran when it talks
about the days of ramadan it uses what's
known as
which is the the plural of paucity
a yemen you know a few days
so this this idea of ramadan
the beginning of ramallah is like the
beginning of one's life and the end of
ramadan
is is is a metaphor for the end of life
and then the eid is the afterlife
when we we feast on the efforts that we
did here
so it's just important to keep that in
mind the the fact that this
hadith which relates
um in the iman and it's also it's in the
kansas
in the mishkan but this hadith is is an
important
hadith in in in connecting
the remembrance of death with the
restoration of quran
one of the essays that is in the
study of quran that i actually wrote on
the
death in the quran and when i was
originally asked to do that
it forced me to really read the quran
with
the idea of death in mind and what
really struck me was that
the the fragrance of death is on every
single page of the quran
and those chapters that were meant to
recite on a regular basis
they're all death meditations from
beginning to end if you read them from
that perspective you'll clearly see
that they're death meditations and so
the quran
is in essence really a death meditation
and this is not in some morbid sense
it's not the idea that we we simply
become
morose and and and and just
uh filled with angst about life it's
actually
to heighten the experience of life and
the preciousness of life
and the extraordinary opportunities that
we have
i have a little cartoon that reminds me
somebody did this cartoon where it
showed the grim reaper
coming to a man he's at his typewriter
and and the man says to him
thank god for deadlines and you know
that's a humorous idea but but a
deadline
you know the when you have a deadline
you work harder
and so the idea of having a deadline
meaning the end of your life which you
don't know when it will come
one would think that from that knowledge
we would simply be
more apt to act in the present
as long photo says in his famous poem
act now in the living present
because this is it and and our hearts
like muffled drums are beating funeral
marches to the grave
this is this is this is the reality of
it our our heart beat each heart we have
only a certain amount that are allotted
for us
we have a certain amount of breasts that
are allotted for us we have
approximately 20 000 days
in an average lifespan 20 000 days it's
not a lot if you have 20
000 dollars and start just handing them
out one by one they'll be gone very
quickly it's not a lot of money
and 20 000 days is not a lot of time and
it seems that the righteous people are
people that really
understand the preciousness of time but
ramadan is a precious time and so even
though we've squandered much of the year
let's not squander this extraordinary
month that we've
been given that even has a day that's
like a thousand months
i mean it's so extraordinary that allah
has put that much barakah
in this so so tirawatar quran is really
important and so my advice to myself and
all of you it's something
that i do every ramadan is really
disengage from
a lot of things that keep us occupied
during the months so i would
really really recommend that everybody
turn off
their media
just don't listen to it you don't you
can get by without
knowing what's going on because what's
really going on is in the quran
and this is why thoreau's famous remark
about not reading
the times but reading the eternities
the times was like today we have the new
york times the times was a newspaper in
massachusetts so he was saying read the
eternities
read those things at last don't because
you can take a newspaper from 10 years
ago and i guarantee you you won't know
if nobody tells you the date
you won't know by and large
that it's any different from today it's
all the same stuff this is dunya
it's just it repeats itself over and
over again the scandals come
the scandals go a politician rises a
politician falls
there's a war somewhere a lot of people
die
this is dunya it's been going on for
millennia
and and and the the quran is reminding
us
of the eternal truths not of these
temporal truths
and so it's really important for us to
to really use this time to do as much
reflection on the book of allah as we
can
there's a hadith
relate from aisha
that says the
that recitation of the quran in the
prayer is better than recitation of the
quran outside of the prayer
and so taraweeh is a really good
opportunity
to to recite the quran in prayer which
is better than
reciting the quran outside of the prayer
but then he said sallallahu isaam or is
reported to have said
that quran of the
minute that
reading the quran is better than takbir
and tasviya in other words doing other
forms of dikkar
because it's the best of all dikkars and
it doesn't negate la illah
is the there's doesn't negate that
hadith because
from the quran so you're actually when
you when you say
you're actually reciting from the quran
so so the
the quran is is is the best type of
vikar
that we can do and coupled with prayer
is
the very best and i once asked
about and he said it was a good book
but he said but the quran is better
so reading the quran and getting back to
the quran is really something
very important for this community
there's another beautiful
hadith that imam muslim relates
read the quran or recite the quran
because it will come on the day of
judgment as an intercessor
for those who who were its companions
so al-shabab quran are the people that
are always with the quran
that recite it all of the time and imam
al-bayhachi relates a hadith from
anas from the prophet sallallahu isaam
that said no we
know what
illumine your houses your
your domiciles with prayer and
recitation of quran
there's hadith indicate not to make your
house a graveyard a house if you recite
a baccarat
in in your home shaytaan will not even
think about entering that house for
three days
so the quran is is a protection
one of uh my uh favorite
uh traditions is about the uh
the the statement uh samurai
uh and an individual is
it and even though some have said that
it's weak it's also
it's it's uh has other
narrations and even tamiya said it's
but its meaning is certainly absolutely
sound
which is
better every
host of a banquet loves that his banquet
is attended
and then it said
the banquet of god is the quran
so don't miss out don't don't not
show up to the banquet this is god's
banquet
and it's beautiful because dubai which
there's al-bama
over the dal is also related to me
which is the mad deb is the place where
you learn to discipline
uh your your you learn discipline and so
again we get back to taqwa
and disciplining the soul and so it's
really important
during this time to to work on
disciplining yourself
try not to overeat one of the things
about the body the prophet salallahu
said
that it's enough for the son of adam to
have just
small morsels that uh that keep
the back straight but if you have to
then a third for food a third for air
third for water
but but that's that's if you have to the
the
the the origin is the match which is how
the prophet isaiah lived and one of the
things we know now in physiology
is that you do need a certain amount of
food to
sustain your health and you shouldn't do
anything that will harm that
but one of the things that we found most
people do overeat
and that the when the the less you eat
before you get to that point uh beyond
which is dangerous
your body actually gets better
physiologically at using
the the caloric energy that's given
through the food and so the body
actually
becomes better and more efficient but
when we over
eat we fall into all these health and
that's why sumo tosaho
is a hadith that's related in a lot of
the books
fast and become well so there's actually
now we know all this about intermittent
fasting
now everybody talks about intermittent
fasting
and but we we have always had this
because our bodies are actually
designed to spend periods of time
without food
and and and it's a it's a healthy thing
it's a good thing
so not overeating and then also just
guarding the tongue back biting which is
such a problem
stay and people don't realize but your
comments on
on on the internet can there are also
forms of backbiting
and uh and just it's it's very sad that
that so many people don't realize that
putting it on there is like
permanently like anybody who reads it
after that if it's a negative remark
especially if there's obscenities and
unfortunately i mean i think most of
these people are trolls and
they're not actually muslims they just
use muslim names because i couldn't
imagine
any muslims speaking so foully i mean i
just
at least not a practicing muslim because
the prophet saw isaac
said that the believer is
is not foul and one of the signs of the
latter days
is that the
obscenities will become commonplace and
and he and he also said
which because an obscenity usually
occurs spontaneity is through
spontaneity somebody
just spontaneously says something out of
anger but tafash is actually to do it
effectively as as an effect that that
and and now people say it like they're
nothing it's as if these words no longer
have me i mean when i was young
you never heard in public spaces the
type of foul language that you hear now
just
commonplace amongst people it's a very
bad sign and toimbi
marks it as one of the hallmarks of a
civilization on its way out
and which i know there's a lot of people
that
think they'll be happy when they see the
collapse of
this civilization but the truth is they
have no idea
what's coming people have no idea
what what social order is and and when
things break down what happens
and if it's going to happen i mean
there's nothing that can stop it these
are things that allah subhanahu wata'ala
decrees and and when they happened
and they can't bring it forward and they
can't delay it but we should do
everything
to to to want to maintain
social order public order because of the
blessings of living in a time of
of of peace wherever you are and if if
there isn't peace you should be doing
everything you can to work
toward peace because it's it's it's
horrible especially for
uh women and children and and elderly
people
i mean young people unfortunately
there's a kind of excitement that goes
with war and this is one of the things
that
dorothy sayers mentions in her book
prisons we choose to live in where she
talks about
nobody ever wants to talk about the
attraction that young people have to war
young men in particular and and until we
deal with that we'll never deal with
with um with preventing wars and this is
why
uh the jahadi arabs were very well aware
of that
in the in the uh
lines of imminence about war being
seductive to every young
ignoramus are actually mentioned they
were
lines of poetry but the sahaba
considered them worthy of repeating
during times of fitnah
so just hopefully having a safe and
peaceful time
uh and using this time of ramadan it's a
it's a great time of blessing
so may allah subhanahu wa inshallah make
your ramadan a ramadan of virtue
and of um solace and of
family and and blessings inshallah and
and also supplication is very important
during this time
uh supplicating for our community for
ummah
our globe is obviously going through a
lot
and many many places there's incredible
difficulty and hardship and those of us
who are blessed to be in places where
we're not experiencing a lot of things
that other people are experiencing it's
a time to really
magnify those blessings and and avoid
complaining
i mean people will complain about the
fact that the samosa wasn't
cooked uh properly or something like
that and really
stupid things to to complain about we
should just
really try to avoid complaining as much
as possible
and then and then also trying to unite
people because
you know i've been thinking a lot just
about uh
you know conflict theory and there there
are real forces out there that are
trying to to
really create a lot of conflict in our
societies all around the world because
there are committed ideologues
enthusiasts that actually believe
that conflict is a good thing until
the great revolution comes and until
the great egalitarian societies created
through some kind of utopian dream
and this is a real problem because these
people
work towards creating confrontation be
between the
young and the old between the male and
the female between the
the different various ethnicities and
races these are all demonic forces
working in the world
and our tradition is a tradition that
brings people together
our tradition is a tradition that makes
brothers and sisters
of different groups and if people say
that the muslims
themselves don't live up to that it
doesn't matter that's their business
it's not our business it's their
business our business is to do it
ourselves
for us to live up to the truth of this
faith and and to live according to the
principles that the prophet sam gave us
because that's the religion what people
do is what they do
and whether it's in accordance with the
religion or not
is determined by whether they're
following our prophetic tradition or not
that that's how it's determined uh and
and
otherwise uh it's it's just a
free-for-all
so those muslims that are dishonoring
islam
or or are
are themselves wrongdoers and sinners
and people of
of arrogance or whatever sinfulness that
they're expressing
those are all in spite of their faith
they're not because of their faith and
so that's where we have to get back to
is recognizing
what does our faith say not what do
muslims do what does our faith say and
then
each one of us as an individual has to
align with that truth
and that's what this month is all about
it's about realigning ourselves
vertically
with the heavens and and inshallah we we
have
29 or 30 days to do that and and
hopefully we'll
be able to retain as much of that as
possible throughout the rest of the year
until we have inshallah life allah gives
us another opportunity we
none of us know so may allah bless all
of your ramadans
and inshallah may it be a ramadan of t
the polishing of your hearts insha'allah