So I wanted to start off this first segment, inshallah, by going over what the ideal Muslim marriage looks like. And I know that that's actually kind of like a bit of a challenge actually because that's kind of what everybody wants. That's what everyone seeks. It's one of the topics that I think is requested all the time. It's the most frequently requested topic that what would the ideal Muslim marriage look like. And I want to start us off by mentioning a couple of ayat of Quran because I think it's important to set the stage and to set the tone for the subject. First and foremost, I think one of the challenges is that we receive information. We receive our knowledge about marriage, about family life, about what this is supposed to look like from all over the place. From family members, from what we think we know from our religion, from friends, from social media. And this actually becomes problematic because it creates for us a lot of ideals that may not actually work together very well. So with that being said, I wanted to start us off with an ayat of the Quran where Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala mentions in Surah Al-Rum. So this is the same verse that is often recited at Nikah ceremonies. It is a commonly referenced verse because it describes very plainly and clearly what an ideal Muslim marriage would look like because it talks about balance. It talks about what both sides, both the husband and the wife, the bride and the groom can bring together in their relationship. And if that were to be maintained moving forward or for the duration of the marriage, you would have that perfect system, the perfect ecosystem for what would be a successful Muslim marriage. So Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta'ala mentions that from amongst his signs is that he has created you and your partner from yourselves. Meaning that from mankind, mankind has partners. And then he mentions the qualities of that relationship by saying that what is the quality of that relationship supposed to look like? What is the quality of that union supposed to have? The first of which is that a person should have tranquility and calm and be at peace with their partner. So setting the stage and setting the tone. I guess I should backtrack a little bit by saying, first and foremost, I'm a little groggy. I just got off like an extremely strange schedule. So I was awake since like three o'clock in the morning trying to get here and I just got here. So my mind is still processing and catching up. So I realized I started off without saying salam to everybody. So now I'm going to backtrack and start off by saying, Assalamu alaikum to everybody that's here. I'm welcoming all of you. Mashallah, sister Sana, welcome to everybody. I'm just processing things a little bit slowly right now. But this, I didn't even speak about the conference, the speakers. You guys have seen the Flyers, you've seen the other inshallah speakers throughout the day that will be here. It's going to be a very eventful inshallah program. Before I continue what I was about to say, I just remembered that every speaker after me is going to have a slightly different twist or angle to the way that they present this topic. And that's a good thing. There's nothing wrong with that. Actually, it's a very positive thing. And the reason for that and why we actually set the program up in this way is so that you can see different experts in their field speak about this issue, right? The marriage crisis, the struggles of young people getting married, remarriage. You know, this whole topic, you can see firsthand how different people have a different perspective on it. And the different experts that we have coming inshallah, how their expertise are going to contribute to our better, having a more holistic understanding of what's been going on and how we can combat the challenges that many people have today. So I want to just mention that because of the fact that the angle or the perspective that I'm taking when I start or as I start, it's going to be primarily from the religious spiritual point of view. So this is setting the foundational point. So my topic was the ideal Muslim marriage. It's ideal because we want to get to that point. I'm not saying we're there and I'm not saying that every marriage is going to be like that. But we have the precedent and we want to strive to that goal, to that end. And if we can't get there or if we don't understand how to get there, hopefully this program, this evening, this whole afternoon, will be giving us some tools to equip us with ways to get to that ideal Muslim marriage category. So coming back now to this point, this ayat of the Qur'an, I love it so much and I love to share this ayat because it feels so comprehensive. It's very clear. There's three steps, easier said than done. There's three steps, just three easy steps to have a happy successful Muslim marriage. The first is that you need to make sure that you can maintain Sukun. The category of Sukun is having that peace of mind, that tranquility, that comfort with one another and in each other. So it's not just this idea that one person is happy and the other person is miserable. That doesn't make a successful marriage. That's not the happy marriage that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is referring to. It's that the unity of both parties. That's number one. The second is, then he continues and he says, Then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the one who places in that marriage, which is love, that there has to be love in the marriage. There has to be that draw, that attraction, that attention to one another. There's love, and then there's mercy. The commentators and the tafsir mentioned different reasons for the order of this. Why love first, then mercy? As well as this word before that, which is that Allah is the one who places love in the marriage. Which if we're speaking from a spiritual point of view, this takes us back another level. Which is what? Which is the pleasing Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is first and foremost. Because in your obedience to your religion, you attain the love of Allah, which Allah then blesses your marriage by placing in that marriage love. By virtue of you being more obedient to your Creator, Allah places love and mercy in your marriage. Because Allah is the one who is doing the placing of love in that marriage. So he puts love in the marriage, and he puts mercy in the marriage. So love and mercy is another component of a successful marriage. You have to have love. This marriage should mean something. And the funny thing is we live in a world where our concept of marriage is like predominantly like for a lot of people who grew up in the west, it's what you see on TV. It's what you see in pop culture. It's what you follow on all these reality TV shows, which, you know, it's reality TV. It's not real, but for many people that's actually set in stone what they should be looking for in a marriage, which is obviously terrible and completely wrong. But the point is it's already been established that way. People are seeking love marriages. People are seeking Romeo and Juliet and, you know, Disney Channel style love. And the reality is, is that that's highly unattainable, very impractical and not realistic. It's a reason why it's on TV and not real life, right? So if you really want love in your marriage, right, then there's a system by which you can attain that in your life and realizing that your marriages should have love, right? And then mercy. This is such an important concept. Usually when people talk marriage, people are thinking of all the stuff that happens right when you get married. So the cluster of love and travel and attention and Instagram photos and thank yous and pictures and attention, that first moment where just everything is wonderful, right? That's not marriage. That's just like the beginning stages of it. And that's where all the love is at. Jalebeina kumma wedda. The love gets developed.  And I say, if you guys are into it, just go do it, whatever. You want to write your guys as initial in the sand at the beach. Go ahead and do that. You want to, you know, I don't know, make like those fake breakfasts that they show on TV all the time where there's like 50 things and, you know, nobody eats any of it.  You're married now. Go ahead and do it. Do whatever you want to do that's going to develop the love in the beginning. But then don't forget because once that slowly starts to fade, and I don't mean that the love starts to fade, but the novelty of the love starts to fade, now you're just pals with one another. You're really close with each other. You know everything about each other. That's where the rahma and the mercy kicks in. Because in the beginning of your marriage, right, like anybody who's been to my marriage seminars, you've heard me say this a dozen, dozens of times. In the beginning of the marriage at the wedding ceremony, anything that happens, you're just so happy. You don't mind, right?  Five years later, you try to do that, you know, and it's not going to have the same reaction. So recognizing that later on in the marriage, you have to remember that there's going to come a time where you need to incorporate the mercy aspect, the mercy aspect being what?  They're going to make mistakes that you've seen again and again, and they've seen your mistakes again and again. But what happens is that you use this quality of forgiving them and moving beyond what they've done or looking past their mistakes and realizing what this person has dedicated their life to me.  This person has done X, Y, and Z for me. Therefore, yes, my, you know, I don't know his income isn't as high as I wished it was, but I'm looking beyond that because he is an excellent husband and a caretaker and provides and is there for us. You know, he might say that, oh, my food one night I came home and I was so tired it wasn't ready, it wasn't warm. You know, I'm really, really exhausted. But then he looks beyond that. Yeah, but she also took care of the kids, four kids over the weekend for five days or whatever it was, or all day long I was gone at work and the kids were sick and all this stuff. So you say, you know what, it's not that big a deal. I have a microwave. It's there for a reason. I can just go take my food and I can warm it myself. There's no need for me to, you know, get upset about our cause of fight. That's the mercy aspect of it.  That you have Sukun, that you have tranquility, you have that calm, then you have the love, you have the love and the relationship that's the driving force that helps develop the marriage and then you have mercy. Why? Because then at a certain point of comfort now you're in a place of having to show mercy so that the marriage can continue. Because without that mercy, everyone is on edge. Then everyone's just constantly angry. Everyone's upset. You're at each other's throats every second of every waking moment. It's constant conflict. Look at those relationships that lack these qualities. When the marriage starts without love, it immediately jumps to becoming very vile and rigid and it becomes, I have like a rule of thumb, anytime you see in a relationship people start asking for their rights, it's already gone over the deep end. At that point you need immediate intervention.  I got groceries last week. Don't you know what my rates are? I'm so exhausted.  Automatically for me, that's like a red flag that this relationship needs immediate intervention. Why? Because then we've misused all of the application of these verses, which is you have to have love and then you need to have mercy. Again, I will say this is easier said than done. In practice, we're going to make mistakes. We are going to fail at this. Horribly, we're going to fail at this. But the most successful marriages, and there's a psychology professor who actually mentioned this. He said the most successful marriages are those that deal with their irreconcilable that learn to manage their irreconcilable differences. Meaning there will just be things in life that you will not agree upon. But a successful marriage is that marriage which can bring all of that together and understand that there are differences and still function and still be able to work together. In another Ayat of the Qur'an in Surat Al-A'raf, I believe Allah SWT says very similar that Allah SWT has created you from one body, one soul and from that soul he made your spouse and so that you may do what you may find comfort in that person. Meaning that our concept of marriage, our concept of a union has to have within it the qualities of compatibility. It has to have the qualities of love. It has to have these traits. Why I'm mentioning all this is not just because oh that's pretty obvious I already knew that. That's not the point. The point is that I'm going to mention what a Muslim marriage is not and I wanted to start by saying what a Muslim marriage is first just so that we can set the tone just so that we have that understanding and we have that awareness that what do we want to ensure our marriage looks like and we always have that precedent to go off of. This is where we want to be and now we can gauge where we actually are. So an ideal Muslim marriage like I mentioned it's ideal because we may not be there right now we may have made mistakes we have flaws every one of us have flaws but the goal isn't to identify our flaws and say hey look I'm not like this couple or I'm not like them every relationship and this was one of my own personal growing pains in this field of mental health in particular in this field of marriage and family therapy which was that in the beginning I had these very naive set of eyes that saw which was a blessing in disguise I suppose but I saw everyone as like happy campers and unless someone was like throwing a shopping cart at you at Walmart I thought everybody's relationship was happy you know I just thought everybody was successful everybody was happy everybody was just so good you know and then I remember I had a psychiatrist mentor once tell me he goes you know Jabra here's the thing you're going into this field you're so I don't know what the term for it is like rosy eyed or something but you're just seeing the world you're seeing the world so nicely and I don't want to break that for you or ruin that for you but once you sort of experience what a lot of people are going through you kind of realize like everybody has their own set of challenges or issues that they're working with and navigating and managing and that's just the reality of life so I say this to everyone not to make you depressed or sad or anything but just so that we don't end up maybe subconsciously comparing ourselves all the time and looking at other relationships and sitting there and reflecting and saying oh man look at them they're just set oh they're just doing perfectly fine or look at that couple they're like the ideal couple those are marriage goals you know the reality is everybody has their own struggles and that's why I wanted again just to reiterate for like the fourth time when we say ideal muscle marriage we're setting ourselves up to grow together that's the point of this that there are things that I can learn from this program from this day from this lecture series from all these really really honorable respected skilled experts in their fields whatever they're going to speak about there's something I can take from that and benefit from that and potentially implement into my life starting today that's kind of the point so continuing along these same lines the ideal muscle marriage is what is what I just described what it is not however right these are things that people tend to think a relationship is so you'll find that people oftentimes will engage in all sorts of different behaviors thinking that this is my way of pursuing marriage or pursuing a successful marriage right a muscle marriage is not engaging in any form of zinna before marriage right and again you know I almost feel like I have to apologize for mentioning things that are so obvious but the reason why it's important to mention this is because oftentimes it's not so clear actually and specifically in the time that we live in in the era that we live in with a lot of the things that are being shared online sometimes you know actually my wife is the culprit because she sends me all these things and she makes me watch she's like oh my god look at what this person is doing and look at this and I'm like you got to stop doing that because then I get all excited and I want to write a whole thing about it and I want to go give a lecture and say this is not right but it just stresses me out so it's not good to constantly receive all this information especially just before a conference like this I got like three different videos she's like oh watch this and I'm like no no my focus is not going to be on the program I got to focus on this so it's not Zina and it sounds silly to even say that but you have to realize we're talking about a Muslim marriage being a Muslim has criteria has certain rules and regulations that we abide by to be part of that fraternity to be a part of that sorority to be part of that community part of that community means abstaining from committing any type of Zina or fornication this is not a Muslim marriage it's very important to know that our marriages are started with what's known as the nikah or the aqt or the katben kitab that is what is a Muslim marriage why? because cohabitation dating all these things is not the Muslim marriage oftentimes I get this question from a younger population usually a high school college age but I have genuinely been surprised in at least the past three years or so how many people who are outside of those parameters have also been asking these type of questions what does that relationship look like and then the conversation goes well if I'm looking to get married what are the limitations what can I do what can I not do can you define for me halal dating the conversation that comes around that so it's all I'll get to that in just a moment so again a Muslim marriage an ideal successful happy Muslim marriage is not constantly sending pictures of yourself to the other person you're speaking to it's not sending snapchats and private photos and private messages having really intimate deep private heartfelt conversations in secret and in private these are not ideal Muslim marriages that's not how you want to start off a relationship in a best case scenario you're not doing anything like that in a best case scenario there's a whole system set up to prevent you from doing that that doesn't mean that you can't speak to someone that doesn't mean that you can't talk to someone or meet someone for the purposes of marriage but this specific methodology of getting to know someone or to talk to someone doesn't really fit within those guidelines primarily because it usually leads to other things and that's a very slippery slope it starts with a very simple conversation it starts with a very basic introduction leads to late night discussions you know pictures and photos and conversation styles that are probably not appropriate for what we would deem as an ideal Muslim union right it's not always what other people have and that's also quite important understanding a Muslim marriage as being what so and so has would be the wrong way to look at it you can find certain qualities that you like and that you value and that you appreciate and that you would want and that's important for you to understand what it is that you want in your relationship what you want in the future of your marriage or in the future of your relationship going forward but that's not how you should look at a Muslim marriage for the sake of just saying I want exactly what these people have and the reason for that is because oftentimes we set our standards on what my parents have or what my parents didn't have what my aunts had my friends had my relatives had for example people have certain definitions of marriage when they think of that word they immediately think of an incredibly traumatic experience that they remember that was a marriage that failed miserably and it ended terribly that's what a marriage is so therefore I don't want that so when they think marriage they think that scenario and that's not what it has to be all the time and so I know it also sounds kind of odd even saying that but it's important to hear that your marriage is not your parent's marriage your marriage is not your relative's marriage your marriage is not someone else's marriage why because it is what you make of it and if you decide to make it what other people experience domestic violence people experience a lot of adversity there was a person who actually came to me in premarital counseling once and said to me that my guidelines for marriage are quite simple and she said that it's I want to be taken care of emotionally and I don't want to be living basically paycheck to paycheck I don't want to be wondering if I should use this money for gas or groceries or like if I could buy a coffee I don't want to think like that and I asked to just inquire further where is that coming from where is the because it doesn't sound like something which is kind of inappropriate it seems very specific right it sounds like she's coming from a place in her own life in her own experience or that was very serious and she said very simply she said well I come from a lifestyle or a background where that was something that I did not have access to she said when we would have food we would get food from donation centers we would collect cans right this is how we had food growing up and we would not have new clothing we would have tattered clothing and I would always remember late at night my parents having a conversation specifically about so we have X amount of money left for this month should we buy the kids this thing or should we have dinner like this and she said that the older I got the sadder I became and the more heartbroken I became that this is the lifestyle that my parents had to go through to take care of us in our household she said now that I have a job and I'm kind of independent but I'm growing into the stage of marriage or into that next stage in my life I have a very simple request which is I just don't want to be in that position again so having certain experiences that you went through that other people went through that you don't want to go through that's totally fine but to say specifically I want exactly what so and so has or what so and so doesn't have sometimes we basically set ourselves up with expectations that are unrealistic and as a result of that we let ourselves down and that's really the point of this that our marriages are not exactly what other people went through it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be what you saw somewhere or what you heard elsewhere people sometimes try to do scare tactics and say oh you're too young to get married you're going to turn out like so and so it's a very common thing we hear people say or oh you're too old now you're going to turn out like so and so the opposite of that the other extreme end of that you're going in between that as well so oh you're focusing on your education too much oh you know I met with a young man not too long ago and he said to me he goes well I don't make $300,000 yet so if I'm not making $300,000 living in the Bay Area then I can't even how could you even ask me about marriage and I said okay well you're really narrowing your chances here of getting married if that's your expectation but that's up to you and in any case just to reiterate this point the point is that we are not the experiences that other people have gone through you have the ability to change that for yourself you don't need to limit yourself so when we talk about the ideal Muslim marriage you have that flexibility you have the ability to look at it and say here's what I want out of this relationship and here's what I don't want you can set those parameters for yourself from the onset from the get go and if you don't know what those parameters are there's another issue many people struggle with not knowing what am I supposed to look for what am I supposed to look out for what should I be using as a filter then that's when you consider doing a premarital course perhaps doing a consultation speaking to someone who could guide you in that direction because a lot of people are just excited to get married and I say this often people tend to have this idea of when they think of marriage they think of the wedding day actually so that can become incredibly problematic because that means you didn't think anywhere beyond that you didn't think about the fact that you're probably going to have to work on your character development you're probably going to have to work on the fact that you have certain really nasty traits about you that you don't know yet but that other person is going to pull it out for you and they're going to identify it then you're going to come face to face with this reality and then you're going to have one of two choices confront it and work on it and fight it and that's just the reality of what it's going to be like so if your expectations are when I think of wedding I think of that fantastic day of the wedding day then you are going to be sorely mistaken because then what happens with everything after that day literally the very next morning the very next day and your life begins with this total stranger that you now have to, you came from two different planets you're put together now and now you have to create a life together so however, again just to flip the script a little bit and go over a little bit about what Muslim marriages can be and I shared this section only because the amount of people that have said that my marriage is devoid of any type of quality is very disappointing and I think that's also because at the onset of marriage we were all just googly-eyed and excited and we had no expectation of what a marriage is and what that means and how to plan for it so hopefully sharing this and what the other speakers are going to speak about and share will allow us to kind of understand better what to expect moving forward or how we can pivot and make adjustments but what should a Muslim marriage have or include or incorporate one is communication it seems quite obvious again all of these things sound obvious actually it's kind of like you know when you're in school and you're listening in class everything the teacher is saying makes sense and then the moment you go home and you have to do the homework you're like I have never seen this in my life I don't even know anything it seems like that a lot of these concepts they seem very easy as we're saying it and as we're hearing it it's like relatively redundant some of you are thinking why did I come this early for this I already know all this stuff it's possible but in practice then it's kind of like having a you know like a toolbox full of tools you don't need to use them all the time but when the situation arises then you're prepared that's the best way to look at it so communication successful and happy Muslim marriages do have communication okay why I say this is because people say that oh my wife she doesn't talk to me my husband doesn't communicate he just like has this expectation in his head of what should happen and there's no way for me to know that how would I be able to pull that out of his head and know that this is what he needs he doesn't communicate, he doesn't talk about it and vice versa right this is not male-female specific it's just apply it across the board but the complaint is that they don't communicate oh she doesn't communicate she doesn't tell me what she needs he doesn't tell me what he wants and so we're always in conflict so to know we're always body surprised a Muslim marriage has communication in it right we can see from the life of the Prophet Aleyhi Salatu Wasalaam actually that in many many situations it's evident that he used to actually spend time dedicated time just to talk to his wife in one particular narration it mentions that once he was late night having a conversation with his wife and he was just outside and he was talking to her and two Sahaba they were walking by and they saw him talking to a woman so they immediately turned around and the Prophet Aleyhi Salatu Wasalaam called them back specifically and he says no no come here this is my wife I'm talking to there's not just anybody I'm not just out here having a conversation with a strange woman this is my wife and I'm having a chat with her and they said no no no messenger of Allah we had no thought like that he goes no even then he just wanted to be clear about it so in that moment that's a lesson for us right that he used to actually dedicate time just for the sake of talking to his wife and like that in many other scenarios the Prophet Aleyhi Salatu Wasalaam used to love we're going to get to that happiness for example to be happy in a marriage really it sounds even silly as I'm saying it like is it okay to be happy in my marriage is that an okay quality am I asking for too much no this is not like asking for a million dollar mad right this is like an okay thing to want right I think it's very fair but truly this is something that comes up again and again maybe I'm not meant to be happy we've heard that right I mean I'm sure somebody has heard that before maybe I'm not meant to be happy maybe it's not my nasiib that I should be happy no subhanAllah the reality is that's not the case that's not a good way of looking at it that's not how we should be looking at this situation every marriage has the right to be happy both husband and wife our responsibilities they may weigh heavy they may be a lot but that doesn't mean that we don't deserve to be happy we do right the Prophet Aleyhi Salam used to say often that I only enjoy my meals when my wife Aisha sitting next to me he would say that to her and that would make her happy and she would blush and she would become happy he would give her a nickname he would give her nicknames for each other and he used to call Aisha you know he used to have this nickname for her or he would call her again another nickname this was just a sign or a snippet of little little actions that would indicate that they were happy their marriage was happy it had happiness as a part of it it was part and parcel of their relationship it's not something you have to necessarily strive for like oh I unlocked happiness now five years into my marriage 15 years into my marriage now I've unlocked happiness it was misery and now I've gotten to the stage of happiness that's not how it's supposed to be so Muslim marriages can be they can have communication right that's not so shocking Muslim marriages can be happy right you're not supposed to be miserable all the time contrary to some strange belief that you know I'm just miserable that's what I guess that's marriage you know I'm just miserable like that no that's not the case that's not how things have to be and there are examples and again I know probably in the back of your mind you're thinking he's mentioning all stories and incidents from the life of the Prophet ﷺ directly how am I going to compete to that or how am I going to get to that point at any stage in my life again to reiterate the point is that we are setting the precedent for what is the ideal Muslim marriage and we all strive to try to get to that point to try to get a glimpse of that to try to get pieces of that to try to get close to that and that's not far-fetched that's not far-fetched at all especially if both people in their relationship understand these concepts they acknowledge them they say you know what yeah I agree I want to be there too I want to not argue with you for no reason why would I want to argue with you over you know what time you come back from work you get back at 5.30 okay that's the end of the conversation that's it you're clear you communicated I communicated I know what time dinner is going to be ready I know what time to be home that's my parameters the end of the conversation whereas you'd be surprised how many relationships just that conversation of what time are you going to be back from work is a literal fight every single day it's kind of shocking you would think like that's not that difficult right but it is for many people for some people and so again the point is just going back to the basics here the reality is that it's okay to have these qualities we have to strive for them if you don't have them and if they seem unrealistic that's not the case they are realistic we just need to strive towards those goals if we don't know how there are means by which we can get to that point one of which is you know you have counseling you have therapy sessions you have scholars you can consult you have consultation sessions you can go to you can speak to an elder you can speak to someone that you highly respect someone that has wisdom and experience in life right and also just because you know I'm part of wassila and the second wassila event doesn't always go to therapy you know I don't know if I'm going to get like terminated after this but like you know you don't always have to go to therapy you can always go to like an elder someone with experience you have a parent a grandparent a scholar there are other people that we can turn to the main thing is to make sure and to communicate right this was something that is I mean part of our tradition the sahaba would go to the prophet so whenever they didn't understand something they would ask for clarity if the men would ask the women would ask everybody would ask the problem is that we're not asking and then even if we knew the answer we're not implementing that's the challenge and it's hard because our ego doesn't want to give up and say yeah he was right oh man I don't want you to tell me that I just I want to stumble across it on my own but the moment my husband has to tell me or my wife identifies something for me I just don't like hearing it from you like you are the you are the problem like I don't want to hear it from you what you're saying may be right but I don't want to hear it from you so this is a matter of ego and the matter of having to work on that and resolving that right so continuing on sadness sadness is part of marriage sadness is part of relationships right these are common things these are things that happen all the time right how we identify sadness in the life of the prophet son I mean there's so many stories one story comes to mind in particular during the very famous battle the prophet had said to three of his very close companions right he said to three of his companions that when you go into this battle because keeping the literal flag like the flag that had the kalima on it was a morale boost for the rest of the army he had told the Sahaba Zaid ibn Haritha Abdullah ibn Arawa and another Sahabi I'm forgetting he had mentioned to them that keep the flag of Islam up at all times right he had said to them Jaffa ibn Abi Atalib he said that keep the flag up at all times and he gave them a specific order he says oh Zaid you keep the flag up first if you become Shahid in the battle then give it to Jaffa and Jaffa you keep the flag up for as long as you can and if you become Shahid then give it to Abdullah and this was their order and so the Prophet SAW as was his habit sat in the masjid while the battle was ongoing and making dua for them and Aisha ad-Dilawata Anha she's sitting in her room which is adjacent to the masjid and she sees like a messenger coming to relay news of battle updates to the Prophet SAW and so she sees this person coming in and she hears that he informs the Prophet SAW oh messenger of Allah you had given a directive to your companions in this particular order and you had said to them to keep the flag of Islam up no matter what and I regret to inform you that exactly in that order Zaid ibn Haritha Jaffa ibn Abi Atalib and Abdullah ibn Rawaha Shahid and Khalid ibn Walid was the last person to pick up the flag because he didn't want it to see it on the ground and through him we got victory meaning ultimately through that last stage and the Prophet SAW sat there and he was deeply deeply deeply sat in by that news why because these companions were some of the closest companions to him so why is this story important in this particular piece which is that Aisha is the narrator of this particular incident and she's the one saying I was in my room when I had heard of the messenger coming into the room into the masjid to speak to the Prophet and I was peeking through the door and I saw this unfold and I heard the situation and I saw on his face a serious sadness set in and I realized that I should leave him alone in the masjid where he will find comfort there where he wanted to be so this is sadness in a relationship look at the look at the unity between the Prophet SAW and Aisha that they knew what the other person needed the Prophet SAW received terrible news he's in the masjid but she as his wife knew that when he's overwhelmed he likes to be in the masjid left alone but without any words being exchanged she did exactly that and actually we even know of this situation because of her narration of having fulfilled that beautiful relationship of wife to husband of knowing what his needs were at that time and I let him be in that state so that he can get the comfort that he needs and then ultimately recover from it but this is a shared sadness so is it okay to be sad in a relationship if sadness happens sure it's totally fine it's common as a matter of fact when I had my first child my first daughter I remember it was so strange because I used to not really be an emotional person and then after having my daughter maybe a couple months into that that thing would make me sad and I remember I saw some like somewhere of like a cartoon of something and it immediately reminded me of my daughter and I called my wife and she called me and she was just crying and I'm crying and what are we crying over like a cartoon what is wrong with us and just like everything affected us but the main point the main takeaway from that is sometimes we are very rigid with our emotions with our belief systems that there are certain things that men don't cry or women don't show emotion in front of their wives there was another situation I got a ton of stories for you guys there was another situation once where an elder told me it was in Little Mabon we were sitting in Ertikov it's kind of intense story but this was an elder and he was in the villages and he actually said to me he himself was like 80 years old as he's telling me this story he says when I was 5 years old he is saying so 75 years ago he is saying that when I was 5 years old I remember we were going to a like a tribal meeting in the village in the mountains and all the tribal elders were gathered there in the tribal elders house so all the tribal elders were there in the main elders house and he said I was 5 years old and I came with my father and as I mentioned the point of this story is that some people have a very rigid emotional state that they feel like they have to be this way all the time I can never express emotion this is the mindset I can never be sad I can never be show joy otherwise it's a sign of weakness and my children will no longer value me and they will not want to spend time with me literally living a 50-60 year lifestyle like this this is not the ideal Muslim marriage just by the way so he mentions that I was 5 years old and I was at this elders house and I see all these tribal elders there and I'm sitting quietly in front of my father on the ground and the tribal elder himself had a son that was also 5 years old and he was just running around whereas my father had warned me that you have to sit still you do not move this is very disrespectful you're going to disrespect me, your family, your village if you move around so he's sitting there still but then he's noticing this other kid this is his own house but he's just running around acting like a 5-year-old acting like a 5-year-old and he said at that moment he tripped while the meeting was going on this kid tripped and he made like a silly noise or something like that but it was loud enough where it caught everyone's attention so the father he took the kid and he took him in the back and he beat him severely and everybody could hear it and the person narrating the story was telling me he said I started crying he's 5 years old at the time so I was just hearing it it was so intense that I felt like I was getting hit so he started crying and his father quickly covered him and things like that so just stay quiet and then when his wife the tribal elder who was beating his kid his wife came out and she was crying because his son was black and blue it was bad he said to her if you make a noise or even cry I'm going to do the same thing to you too so wait until tomorrow my guests are going to leave then you can cry like that is such a extreme these are all Muslim people right so this is such an extreme lifestyle and a mindset but keep in mind that many people grew up in households of the same level of rigidity and as a result spent their entire lives having to maintain that not necessarily because they want to but that's how they were trained for 40 years of their life 40-50 years of their life they had this you know like blinders on that they only can function this way thinking that literally here's my 5 year old son if I play with him it's a sign of weakness and he's going to I'm not going to be a man I'm not going to be a father so these are things that are not prophetic in essence they're not in line with our religious you know tradition famous stories include a person who saw the Prophet ﷺ kissing Hassan and Hussain on the head and showing affection and he says I have 10 sons and I haven't kissed a single one of them and the Prophet ﷺ said it's not my problem Allah took mercy out of your heart what's that got to do with me this is a problem for you actually this is not a blemish on me it's a major blemish on you so going back right these are all just anecdotes and stories to share to further this point that can a person show a sad expression can you express yourself of course you can but many women feel like they can't many women feel like I can't cry in front of my husband because he's going to say oh not this again or if a man cries because he's experiencing something very difficult then he is going to be put down and shamed for having emotions or expressing emotion another quality is the quality of being romantic is this something which is permitted in a Muslim marriage can a Muslim in their marriage have romantic qualities certainly you can within guidelines of the Sharia of course you can can you buy flowers for your wife and go on long walks on the beach and draw your initials in the sand and go on a plane ride and do all sorts of stuff absolutely you can you can do all those things you can do all of these things there's no problem with that again for some reason the idea that I can't be affectionate I can't sure someone had actually said to me this is all real stories which really just sometimes blow your mind I should write a book of just all these stories but there was a person who actually said to me my wife started crying because of something that had happened that was deeply emotional for her she started crying so I got mad at her and I yelled at her and I asked them why did you think to react like that why did that kick in as the your reaction to her being sad he said well my logic is that if I console her and I'm there for her and I'm present for her then she's going to begin to like me and become more gentle towards me and that's going to make me soft so I don't want to be like that and I said okay pal you know I've never heard that one before I don't think the army even implements stuff like that that's a weird one but he was serious and he was like was that wrong? I was like I think so I think that was not the right reaction you could have probably reacted a little bit different if you have this whole thing set up and see this is the problem when we have these culturally made stuff in our head or that's not even a culture that's like something he concocted he just thought that would be the right reaction and it's problematic because look how we ruin our marriages we ruin relationships by just doing things we think is the right way to do them and we didn't consult anybody we didn't run this by anybody we didn't check in with anybody we just decided like let me do that you know there are certain things you have some flexibility to kind of like make mistakes in marriages and other things are just kind of silly there are things that you should probably see counsel for before you do them other things include like having children like I want to have a child discuss that with your husband with your wife alhamdulillah you move forward with it other times people just have this idea like I just want to have children that will keep her busy and that way I can go do my own things this is probably an inappropriate way to go about creating progeny it's probably an inappropriate way for the creation of life your children were meaningless to you actually they were a means of distraction for you actually imagine what that thought would be like for that child if they ever grew up to know that I mean how belittling you know and the last thing I'll mention is romance and affection and just showing like I mentioned an example of this person who didn't show affection and console his wife can I console my wife, can I be there for her romantic on one hand the Prophet s.a.w. would always show signs of his love towards his wife when Khadija passed away the Prophet s.a.w. would visit her friends to show that that love is still there that she's not here but she's still here and when he would be with Aisha there were times where she expressed her jealousy because he would talk the Prophet s.a.w. would talk about Khadija and she would become jealous and say Allah has given you someone better than Khadija this is the kind of things that she used to say it was just because an emotional response but in other instances the Prophet s.a.w. would show for example like direct love or direct affection for Aisha by doing things as simple as if she drank from a cup he would find where she put her mouth and he would drink from that same area if she ate a piece of meat he would look for where she took a bite and eat from that same area that is affection they would have nicknames for one another all of these are signs of what? these are signs of love these are signs of an expression of love you don't need to just sit there and say I love you you do acts of service you do certain things to show your valuing the other person your love for the other person and when it comes to affection and being there emotionally to be emotionally present by getting mad at his wife when she needed emotional support but what are some examples the most common one the most famous one that comes to my mind is an incident of one of the wives of the Prophet s.a.w. they were on a caravan and they were riding and all the camels were moving but her camel for whatever reason was slower and kept stopping and she was at the end and she was sitting in her how-dudge the little home on top of the ride and so every time the caravan would go on her camel and her how-dudge they would stop slow down, stop, slow down and this made her sad and she would say that I'm slowing everybody down I'm becoming a burden upon everyone and I'm bothering everybody and it got her to the point of extreme disappointment that the Prophet s.a.w. had to literally stop the caravan and see what's happening why do we keep slowing down why do we keep slowing down so this situation was very shocking to some of the Sahaba because the Prophet s.a.w. came from the front of the caravan all the way to the end of the caravan he brought his wife out of the little room and he with his sleeve or I think it's with his shawl one of the narrations mentioned with the sleeve or with the shawl he wiped her tears away in front of everybody as they were watching now you have to understand in a society where that time expressing emotion as a man if we thought it was bad now I mean you have to understand that women were not even a good thing in society and for the Prophet s.a.w. who is Amir al-Mu'minin the leader of the believers he is the leader of the Muslim army he is the captain he is everything he is stopping to tend to an emotional need of his wife in front of everybody else that's there and he stops and he wipes her tears away and he's present for her emotionally and then he puts his knee up for her to climb back on top of the the little room on the camel so that she can be comfortable in her space so that the caravan can continue on and in front of everyone he showed his affection he showed his compassion to his wife and he was present for her and everyone saw that and he did not mind and just like that continued the caravan and they continued the journey so the takeaway from that is insha'Allah I'll wrap up here the takeaway from that is that there are expressions of joy expressions of sadness there are certain emotions that we can express we can be happy, we can be sad we can be romantic, we can be affectionate we can communicate these are all qualities that are completely normal and we should be looking to have them in our relationships if we don't, like I mentioned these examples were very difficult to imagine yourself in due to whatever circumstances but the reason it's called the ideal Muslim marriage again is that we strive to get to that point and we work towards that and insha'Allah that becomes our end goal and I welcome everyone to insha'Allah stay for the duration of this program today we have an excellent lineup for everyone and insha'Allah with that I'd like to actually call up the next speaker Jazaq Malaukhayran Jazaq Malaukhayran Shaikh I realized that I didn't actually give a proper introduction to me and who I am but my name is Sanaa Sabhani I am a clinical social worker and I founded the organization Waseela Connections and so what I do want to tell everybody is that I know a lot of these topics and things that we are talking about can be triggering, can be it can evoke some emotion and we are all going through something so what I do want to offer and extend is that if you have something that you are going through that you need to have a conversation after please do come find me I am open to answering any questions my mental health background the Waseela Connections we pride ourselves on the duality of a lot of our of the people that are part of this organization as we have both professional and experiential experience through our own personal struggles and our mental health professional background so as you heard Shaikh Jaber he is a marriage and family therapist and he is also a scholar so we appreciate that duality because it allows everyone to see both ends infused together my background as a clinical social worker I have been working in the community for 10 years and so if you are going through something and you need someone to talk to after this please don't hesitate to come remember confidence is something you know confidentiality is something that we hold very dearly so whatever you say it is a mantra and it will stay between us alright so without further ado I want to introduce brother Ali most of you guys know him as Baba Ali from Half-Ardine but you know we will say some names and welcome alright usually I am not sitting I did stand up comedy for 16 years and usually I am standing this is a sit down but it is not comedy this is alhamdulillah something more important than comedy as I said I did comedy for 16 years and alhamdulillah I did these shows all around the world about 400 of them audiences is the largest 40,000 people but I never really felt fulfillment so I will give you guys little background and why I am here and why I am part of the whole marriage scene of helping single Muslims find other half and that is what I actually found for fulfillment so myself about the age of 20 years old I became Muslim I was born into a Persian family that was extremely secular and they don't practice any type of religion whatsoever my grandfather was the one who brought the refrigerator and the automobile to Iran so he became what you would say almost like today is like billionaire status in fact there is multiple people within my family still right now multiple that are in the billionaire status but what happened was when we came my family used to go on vacation all around the world by the time I was 4 years old I have been to Europe to here I actually came to the United States and when we came here to Southern California I am Northern California when I came to California my family came on vacation and the revolution happened and we end up staying here as we stayed up here me have absolutely no idea what Islam is and my parents hiding it from me I grew up in a very tough situation going through a lot of challenges because there is no Islam to guide me and the reason that has hit it for me is because in Iran the extremely wealthy are as secular as possible and the people who are not wealthy are as religious as possible and there is that division between the two so not only did they not teach Islam to me but it was kind of hidden from me so to their shock I actually discovered Islam in Los Angeles and I became Muslim overnight and many of my friends also became Muslim overnight and that shocked my parents so much so that my father started hitting his head against the wall and my mother started screaming how did you find this religion and how did you find it in America of all places and at that time there was only one Masjid in our entire community today you have about six or seven within the same community but even at that time in the 90s it wasn't very popular average American didn't know what Islam was so for me to discover it it was very shocking to them and as I discovered this religion and I eventually started learning more and more I quickly learned as soon as I discovered the religion and I accepted it that what Islam teaches and what Muslims do are two different things and I say Alhamdulillah Allah show me Islam before He showed me the Muslims so when I eventually got to the age of like not age but getting to the time of looking to get married and like many of us have gone through or maybe going through right now I wasn't looking to get married I was just learning about Islam like brand new to Islam so I'm going to tell you guys my quick story of how my struggle started for marriage and say if it resembles some things that you may have gone through so I couldn't go through my family if I wanted to get married my parents are not religious whatsoever I couldn't go through my friends because they're all single like me and I couldn't go through my community because they had no programs like they have here in MCC MCC by the way let me just take a quick note here this is a free plug for MCC and they're not telling me to tell you guys this but I've been through all these mosques from all around the United States actually around different parts of the world and I've rarely seen a mosque like MCC that cares so much about the Muslims and cares so much about especially the single Muslims and trying to help them and my hat goes my hat goes off to them Hamdallah because they're amazing they're very unique so you are blessed to be part of this community not most communities do not have anything like this with that said when I was looking to eventually I came to a point in my life that I started learning more and more about Islam but I'm about a year, year and a half into Islam at this point I go to an Islamic conference with Isna before do you guys know what Isna stands for I'm single and available I didn't know that until I went to the conference I thought it was something to do with teaching I went there to learn to be at the bazaar and all this other stuff and what I quickly realized when I went there is a lot of people are looking to get married and I wasn't even looking to get married I was just like going there to meet friends and other things what happened was I was selling this one product at my booth and this one sister would keep coming back to the booth asking to buy the product but she couldn't buy it because she had Canadian dollars and she said I need to find a place to exchange the money so I can buy your product and the product was only like $5 it was nothing but she said can you hold one for me so I held one for her and she came back and forth and back and forth and eventually on the last day of the conference Ali, sorry I could not find anywhere that exchanges Canadian dollars to US dollars here at the conference just sell it to somebody else and so sister just take it she was like are you sure? she took it and she left as she took the product and walked away the brother who was standing next to me did this hey what was that? he said I was watching you and how you talk to every single person at this conference you didn't talk to anyone the way you talk to her you didn't look at anyone the way you looked at her there's something that was about her that caught your interest and I said look just because I gave her a free product no no no I'm watching and he said Ali I came to the conference with the intention of finding a wife my friend came to the conference with the intention of finding a wife I know you didn't come but what if that is your future wife if you don't go and speak to that sister for marriage you'll always ask yourself what if and I kind of froze because I wasn't even thinking about marriage I was really thinking about her for marriage and now I'm thinking myself what if so I'm like I don't know what to do this year is like 1990s something in the late 90s and I'm like what do I do what do I say so what I did is I asked him for a piece of paper and I got the piece of paper and I quickly wrote was writing something down and he's like what are you writing go she's leaving I said hold on let me think let me think I don't know what I'm doing I wrote a piece I wrote it down on a piece of paper and I'm okay I know what I'm going to do now so I'm walking around the conference and I'm trying to look for the sister who's wearing a white hijab and I quickly realized there's a lot of sisters wearing white hijab so I'm like oh that's not her and eventually I gave up and I started walking back towards the direction and as I'm walking back she's walking away and we see each other and I'm like Assalamu Alaikum and she walks right past me this is getting really awkward so I'm like how do I do this so as I turn right around in front of her I say Assalamu Alaikum sister this is Assalamu Alaikum hello not Assalamu Alaikum goodbye I wrote my contact information on this piece of paper I was wondering if you were single and if you're looking to get married if you're open to speaking to me just contact me if you're not open to it just throw the paper away but don't throw the paper away until I walk away because it'll hurt my feelings okay Assalamu Alaikum bye I just walked away I just gave her the paper and I walked away I walked left and right and left and right all the way until I walked back to the booth when I got back to the booth the brother was telling me he went and told all the brothers what I was doing now everybody's wondering I didn't think you were even looking to get married who is this sister what's going on what was on that piece of paper and as I start to explain this entire story to them they all start smiling and I'm like you guys are smiling and then suddenly I remember the guy specifically his name was Amber from Milwaukee he would do this I'm like why is he doing and I keep talking I'm a male brain so I'm not really thinking smart so I keep talking and talking and talking and until every single brother stops smiling and they just stare at me like this and then I realize something's wrong and I said is she behind me so now I'm thinking to myself this sister probably thinks I did this as a joke and this whole thing was a joke and I came back to tell the guys all ha ha ha ha she doesn't know what my intention was so I'm like what should I tell her but then on the back of my head I was thinking also I don't know how much she's heard and how much she hasn't heard so I turned around and I said As-salamu alaykum and she's like walaikum salam and every single brother like seven of them are behind the booth staring at us I'm staring at her and she's staring at me and for like this four seconds of awkward silence and she's like okay I just came back to let you know here's my dad's contact I said okay is that it she's like yeah what else would there be I'm like no nothing so I took that contact information contacted the father went down and met the father there's a whole story behind it and you think this part was crazy that's ten times more crazier but long story short I married that sister and what happened was two years later I was in a divorce situation with my sister I will never speak negative about her it was that I found someone and we just saw each other on the surface but we didn't have any type of deep compatibility and we didn't discover that until after we were married and after we were married we didn't like typical fights where husband and wife are like divorcing because they saw all these emotions and people yelling at each other and it's just like really really messy it wasn't like that I mean the stuff she would say and the stuff I was thinking of like one day she would say we should sell all our belongings and just be like nomads going from Europe to here to there I'm like that sounds good but not realistic and then her world was completely different than mine and I realized that we're going two different directions so did she and we say if we have children it doesn't get really really complicated so we decided mutually to all that emotions weren't there it still hurt me more than anything that hurt me in my life and after I experienced that I said I never want to go through this again I'm going to do everything I can so I never feel this pain again so I can only imagine people who had really bad experiences through marriage what they feel like probably ten times worse than that so you have this fear of ever getting married again you have this fear of ever wanting to make yourself vulnerable so you become into a painful situation so at that point instead of blaming her or the situation or all the stuff that happened I told myself what could I have done to make that marriage better what can I do to be a better husband if I get married again so what I started doing is I started studying these books about how men communicate, how women communicate how the differences between different types of personalities the different types of way people do things how people handle stress differently all these different layers I never even thought about I didn't even know it existed as I study and study and study I realized that I think I'm ready to get married and this time around I will fall into the same trap of looking just for surface I will see something deeper than that I will find compatibility so I decide to do the unthinkable in 2001 on the internet to look for a wife and say in 2001 in 2023 there's two different worlds guys in 2001 the internet is brand new I mean most people aren't using it for most things they just barely have the hotmail and email and yahooing everything there is no one's barely using it for anything like serious it's not like it is today so when you go and say I'm going to go find my wife or husband on the internet it was like really really weird but I can go through my parents I can go through the local messages I had to go online as I go online and I'm looking for my other half I was like which website works probably a question you guys probably ask yourself which one of these works I don't know which one works so I joined all of them but I don't want to talk to a bunch of sisters I just want to talk to one sister just one so what I did is I made a very very detailed profile exactly what you're going to get if you marry me these are the pluses and here's the negatives these are the things I'm expecting in a wife and these are things you should expect in a husband blah blah blah non-person response unfortunately I don't want to say unfortunately but I had a problem where 17 people responded now the problem was because I joined all these websites if I joined one website I probably would have 17 people responding but 17 people responded and right there I realized the websites were broken that something's wrong here that there's no way there's 17 people interested in me so either they're telling me what I want to hear or maybe one of them or two or actually being sincere and they're telling me the truth so I need to filter all these people out because I don't have the time or patience or the mental capacity to talk to 17 people I want to talk to one sister so what I did is I came up with a series of questions I didn't have right or wrong answers and I sent it to all 17 sisters only one of them answered it correctly the problem was I was hoping she lives in California but she lives in London it's like that's really far away but I'll also point out she lives in Paris but I don't know where my other where he created the other pair where he made the other half of me I assume that many of us assume we hope they're in Northern California we hope they're Pakistani or Indian or Arab or African American or whatever you assume and make these false assumptions sometimes where they live right now what their ethnicity is and what their age is and all these other things but you don't know that where is my pair? I love those best and I thought to myself let me go meet the sister and I did and I married her 22 years ago as soon as I met her well let me tell you what happened I had conversations back and forth with the sister and asking her questions that didn't have right or wrong answers and I did this for months for about three months as soon as all the questions have been asked and she sees me because it has to be mutual if there's chemistry I'll know in a few seconds because all the rest of the boxes have been checked so when I went to meet her I said I want to do everything in the Halal way we're going to meet in a public place and she sat on a park bench I stood up and it was really awkward and we were in a public park and there was this Halal gap so like social distancing before COVID and as soon as I met her she was the one and I can tell from the smile and her shyness she thinks I'm the one but we don't know what to do after this point because there's no manual of what you're supposed to do next so at that point I got nervous and I had a little handheld camera with me that I brought only to sight see because I said look if I want to go to London to meet the sister it may work out may not work out at the very least let me record a bunch of this footage to send to my friends I had this camera in my bag and I totally forgot and I put my hand in the bag and the camera was there and I took it out and I don't know what to do because I'm just using this as my safety blanket and she's like and this was completely unplanned she's like what's that for I said what if one day we get married and our kids ask us how did you guys meet this is the exact word I told her by the way she gets all super nervous and I started recording that footage from the moment that I met her literally 20 minutes after I met her today we got married which was 9 days later and I presented to her in a movie on DVD with all the things to her like a movie poster like legit real movies a 2 hour film and she got married 5 years after marriage and her response was ok I'll watch it later I tell my wife she's the most hardest person in the world to impress I've done so many things to my wife and she's like ok but humdala she brings me down to earth a lot so that 22 years of marriage have been a lot as my witness I still feel like I'm newly wed till today and I wanted to help others find their other half and that's why I came up into the marriage space of saying how can I give the people the tools they can to get married let me tell you guys some of the challenges we have as a person who was a divorcee not married but still experienced divorce as most of you guys have heard some of the statistics but some of them you may not know that the divorce rate here in the United States is about 50% like non-muslims muslims are not that far off by the way but what you don't know is that in California we're in the top 10 states in fact in California we're at 60% divorce rate we're higher than other states the second thing that you may or may not know is that a lot of these divorcees about 43% of them are dealing with children involved and these are children under the age of 18 this makes it quite challenging often times so it's not just ok in my situation it's a lot easier because I can separate but when there's children involved they don't divorce their father and they don't divorce their mother but they are always going to be connected and that always makes things a bit more complicated as well the other challenges we have is that overall in the United States 70% contrary to what most people believe because your experience may make you have one belief to it but I'm talking about in general what are most people experiencing 70% of all the divorces that are happening in the United States are considered no fault divorce this is where they have said no abuse from the male or female there was no drugs, there was no abandonment there was no alcohol it's just there's no fault and the number one answer that's come across is that we've grown apart and you guys are nodding because you guys heard this quite a bit and you guys experienced this because people have sort of expectations of what marriage life will be like and let me tell you where some of these expectations have been now put on steroids in our generation now that they didn't have in just one generation ago to get married this this phone when people wake up this is the first thing that most of us check this is what we do when we get bored this is what we do when we stand in line this is what we do all the time if you're in class, if you're at work wherever the situation is you're swiping swiping swiping swiping as you're swiping you are seeing things and sometimes our brains are not thinking while we're seeing things because when kids used to watch television they would say oh that's not real life and you can separate the two or those are actors and sometimes when you're a kid you can't separate it things that are so scary for you because it feels like it's so real but as you grow older you realize that this is all acting and this is our movies and behind the scenes you go to Universal Studios and blah blah blah but when you're watching things on social media these people look like me I don't see camera sets I don't see scripts they're very natural you're watching couples and they're like your friends and people you know in the community and look what they're doing today and look what they're going today and look at all the amazing experiences they're having today and then you look at your spouse and you're like what's wrong with us why aren't we doing these type of stuff so now people constantly comparing themselves to other people wondering why is their experience so different than mine and what you don't realize is that the girls that are putting this show on for you are probably having more problems than you are but they only show the best parts online they only show you the parts that they're not fighting in fact most of your friends who ended up getting divorced how many times would you all did you see it coming and how often did you say wow who got divorced why do we get shocked sometimes the reason why we get shocked is because when we see people from the outside we don't know what's happening behind closed doors we don't know this guy who's like so charming everyone in the community loves him how he treats his wife you have no idea she knows maybe her even her kids know but you don't know this person you don't know her you don't know him they know each other so when they get divorced it didn't just say overnight they're going to get divorced it's happening just built up and built up and built up and now we see it all happen and we get shocked and the reason we get shocked is because we don't see the negative side and so we don't compare the negative stuff that we experience we only experience oh they're having so much amazing positive experiences I'm not having those so maybe something's wrong with me maybe something's wrong with my marriage to let you guys know and just a reminder for us alhamdulillah one beautiful thing we have about islam is the prophet salam and we have his example and if he's the greatest man to ever walk on this planet and he has the highest level of jinnah guaranteed for him and he has experience of challenges with his own wife and wives at one point he said I'm going to leave everyone for like 30 days and this greatest man to ever walk on this planet that tells us that this different relationships that Allah has put for us the differences between males and differences between females and you put them together and that that's friction or sometimes conflict that can happen that is natural that if you guys are arguing with your husband or your wife it is normal it's like almost expecting to get to move to an area and having no bad weather ever even the most tropical most beautiful vacation spots they have tornadoes sometimes come hurricane sometimes come and at the time of the hurricane it feels like this is the worst experience ever this weather is not going to stop it's going to happen it's going to go on and go on and go on but the wiser people it's just temporary no matter how bad this feels right now the weather cannot just keep raining forever unless you live in London or Seattle but in general it doesn't like rain forever it's eventually going to take a break so if we make a decision about let's move when it's like going through a thunderstorm maybe we should just hold on a little bit wait till the thunderstorm clears out then make a decision when we are like cooler heads prevail inshallah so all of these different things I've learned is helping me to make better decisions now and that's why I come into like this type of event to share some of these things with you I write somewhere that intelligence is when you learn from your own mistakes but wisdom is when you learn from the mistakes of others let that sink in for a second many of us will go through an experience of divorce and the first thing you learn is now I know what I can't get married to right before that what was it it was so much easier to get married wasn't it before that our idea was these are all the things I want in a husband or these are all the things I want in a wife as long as this person has this I will get married inshallah now it's harder for us not necessarily just because society makes it harder for us but because we sometimes make it harder for us we have trauma or negative experiences from our ex and now we are judging the future person maybe you may have some certain things even though they haven't done anything to us yet we may have these negative emotions towards the opposite gender because we have experienced negative things from the opposite gender even though the person we're speaking to has done none of these negative things to us maybe our ex was stingy or mistreated us or did certain things or whatever and now we have these negative experiences and we have this healing that we haven't done to them which is unfair it would be unjust if someone did that to you and I think one of the struggles that we have to pass through is like giving up some of these things these negative feelings we have and it's hard I'm making it sound easy but it's not easy it's extremely hard that time when I went through the divorce it was one of the most toughest times in my life and I've experienced a lot of negative things in my life but that is something that it's hard to explain to people who haven't been through it it's like my friend he buried his child recently no matter how much I can say I can understand your pain or I can feel your pain I can't until you bury your own child you'll never feel that pain similarly when my friends have children I tell them I said you'll never know how much your parents actually loved you until you have your own child no matter how many times our parents told I love you even though we love our parents we can never love them the way they love us no matter how much I tell my friends we don't have children the way you start loving this being who just entered this world more than sometimes even your own parents why? it's because I'll also build this love inside of you it's hard to express the pain sometimes that we go through our challenges of divorce unless we're talking to people who went through the same thing as us and that's why I think we need people who have been through this to be part of the solution so I started a matrimonial website, Half-Ardine as the sister mentioned in an introduction back in 2010 with my partner Surfaz and when we started this we had different ways to go about this and we learned from certain things mistakes and one of the things sometimes I make decisions which make absolutely no financial sense whatsoever they actually have hit me financially negatively but I think it's the right thing to do and if I didn't go through these negative marriage experiences or divorce I probably would have not made those decisions because I would not know any better I'll give you one of the decisions I made was to remove the divorce status from your profiles you cannot tell who's divorced and who's not just like in this room I have no idea who's divorced and who's not nobody has a label that says oh I'm single I'm divorced I'm widowed unfortunately we have become accustomed to defining ourselves this way just because you went through a divorce doesn't mean you're a bad person but in this society today they say oh you're a divorcee that's your status add that to your profile and what they do the only reason by the way they ask you on the websites if you're divorced or not only one reason is to filter you out not them so give the ability to the other users to filter out I only want people who are single only so therefore you're paying for a website where no one can ever see you you're literally invisible but we don't really think about it from that perspective because we're not we're thinking from the user perspective the person who's using the website but if you think it from the administration perspective this is the reason they ask so I said I don't want people to filter divorcees out because it's not fair the experience doesn't make you a bad person let's say for example I'm on the street down here and I'm standing at a red light out of nowhere me standing at a red light a car hits me on paper I have been in an accident does that make me a bad driver it can make them a bad driver they just hit me from nowhere but we are both in an accident even though it doesn't show who's at fault so if you're in a divorce status nobody knows what your fault was you don't know what your story was a person whose every divorce is different there's times a divorce happens you have absolutely everything you can to make the marriage work but you get the exact same status as your ex how is that fair unfortunately it's not and this is sometimes I don't think the people who are running the show are paying attention to these things so I said I'm going to try to be a difference maker let me try to do things differently I don't want to label people by divorce let's just everyone's the same now does that mean that you know tell people that you went through divorce you do but I want them to get to know you first let them know you first and then if the divorce status is so important then figure that part out next you know what I mean so when we do like a typical matchmaking event and by the way we've done many in this room here when we do a typical matchmaking event typical organizations not us they say this is the range that we are accepting applications you have to be either between the ages of 22 to 40 so you go and apply for this thing and then you're like wait a second 22 to 40 I'm 41 I can't get in well sorry but what can I do nothing we have nothing for you what if you have nothing for me so you tell me there's no one in this world that wants to marry a 41 year old what are who's helping them nobody if you go to Istam, Mass, Ekna all these people look at this there's a hard cap I have a question who decided this hard cap who decided that now that I'm 41 that you're not worth getting married to like can I just meet the other 40 year olds that want to get married and just let us nope we don't even have a space for that you guys sorry so like this really bothers me really really bothered me the second thing is okay we have a divorced only event only divorcee so we only have this only what why so a person who's this before who's never been divorced before will never marry someone who's divorced that's not true my wife was never divorced she married a divorcee so and we've been happily married married for 22 years it doesn't define me again if I was if I have negative characteristics judge me by those things not because of something I experienced so then you go to these single events by the way what happens in all this type of stuff is I always wonder to myself are they really in the business of helping people get married or the business of being in business and that's where I find that even us divorce situation is a business I'll give you guys some examples from a non-muslim world how divorce makes a lot of money a lot of money aside from the stuff that you already probably know which is probably attorneys and other things of nature let's say sister from this side and brother from this side they get married well what happened well one of them will not need to live wherever they're living right now so that rental space will be up for grabs that apartment building or home will now be available to be sold and now they have a vacancy that wasn't there before but now let's multiply this by hundreds hundreds of sisters are married and hundreds of brothers they all get married until now we have hundreds of homes and apartments available for rent what does that do to the price the demand is not as high as the supply the price drops now reverse it everyone in this room imagine we're all married to each other and everyone in this room suddenly gets divorced now all the half of you will now need to find a place to live if all the people are trying to place to live that is going to make the price of rent jump up like skyrocket that's number one and when the price skyrockets gets what goes up also property tax so more property tax the houses are worth more more money out of your pocket your income tax oh you're single now fantastic we are going to tax you like crazy single status versus married status it's a big jump next I can keep going on and on and on but it just keeps adding up and I'm telling you that this entire business of keeping society keeping us divorced and they're not helping us get married I don't think it's just a coincidence there is no incentive and I'm not saying they're evil society I think it's just a financial business side of it there was a statistics that came out from CNN saying by the year 2030 45% of women will never have children and will never get married 45% you know who did that study Merrill Lynch it is not a social study and we're trying to figure out how we can stop no Merrill Lynch is a financial company who's looking for something called the she economy they're saying what can we sell women when they're all going to be divorced and they'll never be married in their life what can we sell them what can we make more money on and what should we invest in antidepressants alcohol makeup botox all those things close all the stuff that typical single people talking about non-muslims do that married people don't do married people are more like to save money married people are more like to be more stable less risky behavior less of this less of that so let's find out if we can get these people divorced let's see how much money we can make off of them and we as Muslims we have to stop listening to all this nonsense and a lot of this nonsense is coming through us through our phones remember I told you guys earlier that how the social media is so different than the movies because a movie you can press it off switch you're not watching movies 24 hours 7 days a week but social media we're on it all the time and when social media feeds you something and tells you for example oh you don't like women oh you're feminist or you're a red pill I'm not going to say you're right or wrong I'm just going to feed you whatever you've been watching I'm going to double down on it triple down quadruple down so all you get on your phone is this feed that's just overemphasizing the nonsense you already believe in if you hate men we'll make sure we show you every single video of every man who's done everything wrong to his wife if you hate women oh we have this pill called red pill for you every single man we'll show you how evil women are they're all here for take your money they're all this they're all evil and what happens is because you're constantly fed this information you forget for a moment that this is just your feed personalized the person who's sitting next to you is not getting this feed they're getting two different fees if you don't believe me make a separate account and start watching different types of videos and watch how your feed every single day changes with this feed here I have two accounts one for Baba Ali and one for half Fardin they're completely different they're feeding me what they want to feed me and this goes back to Fox News and MSNBC there was one time before any of that stuff by the way when the news was just there to inform you now they're like comfort food just feed you the nonsense so you think Muslims are terrorists here's every single video of negative people shouting Allah al-Aqbad and all this crazy stuff which like 99% of Muslims don't even act like this but that's if you're a Fox News watcher you may only see that aspect of it if you're growing up 10 years ago but if you're watching some other channel you don't think that way so now based on what channel you're watching I have to figure out what type of opinion you have about me and what type of social media you have on your feed will also tell you what you think about me but yeah so that was me I want to give you guys some information and hopefully if you found anything beneficial of anything I said keep me in your duos now I'm a much more of a solution oriented person so I'm gonna give you guys some I don't know how much time I have but I'm gonna give you guys some solutions of what you can do actually in your hands I'll just mention it just really quick so I put some notes for myself and I said what are some things because I thought to myself like look will they're gonna tell you oh you're this age nobody wants to marry you or you're divorced as nobody wants to marry you or you're this ethnicity nobody wants to marry you by the way all those negative things I was hearing when I was looking to get married all that stuff and I'm a convert too and I'm Persian nobody I don't know every other ethnicity there is but for whatever reason I don't know what happened to Persians they are not associated with religion whatsoever you see them at the college campus you see them at work they say weird stuff like say hi to God for me but they don't you don't see what the message is so for me to go to the message and look for like a Persian lady no way I don't care about ethnicity I don't see color I just want to find a good sister for marriage that's it my wife is from Kenya by the way she's not from my ethnic background she doesn't speak the same mother language as me we're completely different we don't have the same interests but alhamdulillah things work out so I thought to myself what can I give advice to people that they have actually control over that will make them attractive and as I'm telling you these things I want you to imagine a brother or a sister that you're speaking to for marriage and they have these attributes and tell me they don't suddenly become a little more attractive in your eyes alright here's the things I came up with that I said that makes people attractive 10 traits that make you more attractive number one someone who is content with whatever Allah has given you you're content you're grateful imagine a husband or wife with whatever situation they are in inshallah things will get better but whatever situation they are they're content having a husband or wife in that situation is 10 times easier than someone who's always always disgruntled number two someone who holds themselves accountable for where they are now and they don't blame others they take accountability so instead of just saying my ex, my ex, my ex look I'm not going to talk negative about my ex I'm going to rather look internally and say what could I have done to be a better person what could I do to be better if you have that mindset and you're talking to a brother and he says listen I'm not going to talk negative about my ex may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guide her or give her the best husband in the world but I realized that some of the things I would have done better would have been this, this and this and those are the things I've improved on and when he says something like that it's so much more attractive than if you're hearing him let me tell you how bad she was and like okay is he going to be talking about me like this you know so number three someone who is quick to forgive and late to anger being able to hold your tongue in times where there's especially when there's a lot of emotions and conflict going on that has a lot of value if you have a husband or wife a spouse that is able to do that is priceless and that will lead a lot of remove a lot of unnecessary arguments and disputes next, this is from the hadith of the prophet someone who is most beneficial to others there's many hadiths that are very similar one is the best of you who is best to his wives but one is specifically and this is my favorite hadith it's a very long hadith but it's my favorite of all the hadiths of the prophet it's one that's the beginning of it it's one that's the best of you is the one who's most beneficial to others and then if you have a husband or wife that has the mentality of being beneficial and you'll see people by the way in the local community those who are always beneficial to others when those people are missing they are truly missed it's like where is someone so everyone misses these people and you can be that person and again there's nothing that prevents us someone who doesn't compromise their deen even if they put them in an awkward situation all of us have been in that situation it's where being Muslim in this environment is very easy but sometimes being Muslim in a different environment is not so easy especially if you're the only Muslim I can tell you how many times I've been on a flight where I'm praying and people are talking to me I've been at the airport how many times all these random stuff happens and I'm the only Muslim in this area that's like I don't know if there's any Muslims in the airport or whatever but I'm praying so it happens but I don't care and the fact that they don't care that says a lot next one someone who has the life skills that will make him a good husband or wife this is something that's missing from our generation right now by the way a lot of people are like I want this this this this in a spouse okay what do you bring to the table what do you bring what life skills do you have that your spouse will find beneficial as a good husband or as a good wife so what can you do and people don't know so you have to develop these life skills and a lot of them by the way for both male and female learning how to cook will save you a lot of money guys a lot of money and that's a good skill to have our parents had it for some reason we don't have it someone who is humble and number 7 is only 10 of them someone who is humble has a humble personality even with the gifts that Allah has blessed them with if you're humble and you have no gifts that's easy to be humble but if you're humble and you've been gifted with beauty with wealth with social status with something and you're still humble not fake humble oh yeah I don't know how I do it so well it's so hard to be a millionaire no one's like that kind of stuff but truly humble that shows you that it's a very rare attribute to have and people who have it says a lot about their character number 8 someone who treats the least important person in their world with the same respect as those who are above them find the least most important person in your life person who for some reason a male's bathroom there's a person there just giving you a napkin and giving you a cologne and stuff like that no one even pays attention to this person or the janitor who's cleaning the place and no one's paying attention to this person treating that person with kindness and respect the same way you would treat if the president walked through that door a lot of times you'll see people treat people differently based on their status and what I can benefit from you and if you see someone treat even the least significant person with respect and with kindness it says a lot about their personality and by the way you will see all of these things that I'm referring to transform when you are disagreeing and arguing with your spouse because you'll see the level of discipline and kindness and their character because all of us no matter how perfect of a husband or wife you think you'll find you'll find somebody you are going to argue and fight with them in this world of difference we're almost done here number nine is someone who doesn't give up just because something is hard to do all of us will go through those challenges and sometimes things are really hard to do one thing that's hard to do is to get married go to these single events go on using websites go through your family tell your friends talk to people it doesn't work out talk to somebody else it doesn't work out talk to somebody else it doesn't work out man this is hard and that says a lot about you that shows you have resilience finally someone who has a discipline being able to resist things even if it gives them pleasure and what I mean by that is a lot of times it's hard for us to like for brothers is our challenges is lowering the gaze sometimes to see for the sisters their challenge is not as difficult for lowering the gaze but to be seen will be a different challenge Allah SWT has blessed them with beauty and so it's harder for like that challenges for brothers all the respect brothers we are not the beautiful creatures generally men are not like Yusuf's story Yusuf is so unique because there's like one Yusuf most men this is the thing that's interesting about sisters and brothers we didn't have too much time to go over this but maybe next time inshallah we'll see how the minds think so differently with the two genders the majority of sisters do not find the majority of brothers attractive I'm being honest with you guys I'll tell you something sisters that might surprise you the majority of brothers find the majority of sisters attractive it's different sisters if their sister is talking to her friend and their friends none of their friends find you attractive they'll make you a little bit less attractive but if all her friends find you attractive they find you a little bit more attractive for brothers it doesn't work like that whatsoever if all his friends don't find you attractive it will not make a difference if he finds you attractive or not if all his friends say she's very attractive it won't make you attractive if he's not attractive we're our brains think differently and Allah SWT there's wisdom in Allah making us different so we're not trying to force your husband to be like you or your wife to be like you accept the beautiful differences that Allah has made between us and if you do it will give you a lot less struggle with that and I think my time is done I have no idea are we done? okay yes okay so I want to make sure I don't go over my time I'm sorry I should be looking at my watch more often I apologize for any time I went over I'm sorry are your brothers sisters other than youngsters the natural innate features of every human being is that he or she loves to be in a situation that they can follow footsteps of those that they look up to hence younger siblings will look up to older siblings therefore we have children and youngsters that will look up to athletes you have people in every field that will always seek motivation they will seek a pathway through those who have come before them and have already tread the path they were the trailblazers of that path this is natural within us a human being is called insan which comes from the root letters of uns uns which means to seek compassion to seek a sense of love to seek relevance where a human being is seeking this throughout his life from every juncture of his life as a child as he grows older when he becomes a young adult when he becomes an adult and so on and so forth and in this journey or on this journey following those who he thinks or who she thinks will be able to allow them to be successful in their fields my dear friends the first question that we ask ourselves is who are we supposed to be following and what are the conditions that they must fulfill and they must have within themselves to be worthy of us seeing for worthy of us seeing them to be those that we can follow those that we can emulate those that we can bring into our lives in our children's lives and our family's lives one is to follow someone because they're an athlete so you also want to be an athlete we can accept that another is to follow someone because they are Allah has given them a mastery in a certain field of maybe a specific niche of work if it's management, if it's marketing, if it's IT we will also accept that the other is to implement someone's lifestyle into our life not based upon a niche but because we actually wish to earn into abide to approve those characteristics in our own lives so it's not a niche that we're following we're following that lifestyle we're following that mentality we're following that perspective we're following that pedagogy and methodology of living but your friends the condition that the Prophet gave us that if we wish to follow someone as all human beings need to do this is what Allah SWT speaks about following people and living our lives like other people who have already come before us Allah SWT says that these are people referring to the Prophet and the companions that lived a life in which Allah had guided them so as human beings we always seek to follow people he then says follow these people because they've already made it and for some he creates a template that if we wish to follow someone they must fit this criteria not in the niche of our life not in us being physicians or us being engineers or us being students in a certain skill set but in us being human beings and us being family members and us being husbands and wives and children and parents and us hoping to implement a lifestyle into our life and your friends if we think about it before the coming of the Prophet there was no community that was drowning in the ditches of depression and failure and crisis and chaos more so than the community that was present before the coming of our beloved the norm of that community was equivalent if not worse than the norms that we see today every vice that could have been thought of was not only present was popular in the community disrespecting the elders a lack of chastity a lack of loyalty burying their own daughters alive and when the Romans and the Persians would be told why don't you march upon the people of the Hijaz as you have conquered the rest of the world why ignore these people they would respond by saying these are people not worth ruling they're just not worth it they'll exhaust our resources and give us nothing in return we'd rather just ignore them how is it possible that in the span of 40 to 50 years the same people that the world saw not worthy of being ruled became the rulers of the world what changed it wasn't the literacy levels it wasn't the level of it wasn't the socio-economical abilities in the background it was changing it wasn't the lineage that was changing what changed is that they were given a system and a concept and a construct to follow which brought the best out of them which allowed them to be not only civil but conducive to the growth of the people around them they allowed themselves to be used to benefit people and this is what the problem says if you want to follow someone the person must have this condition if we wish to follow someone's lifestyle an online personality that becomes famous for this or that speaks about this topic speaks about relationships what some says if you want to follow someone not just listen but listening is also interesting the moment you give your ear to someone you've given your heart and brain to them because now they start planting seeds in your mind so even the people that we listen to we have to be wary of it so the problem says become a scholar become a scholar become a student of knowledge and if you are unable to become a student of knowledge become someone who loves the people of knowledge and he says if you cannot become someone who loves the people of knowledge be a person who listens to the people of knowledge meaning just listening is a part of the merit of this individual just listening creates a sense of benefit for this person this is why when the Quran is being recited we are told so even the people that we are listening to the people that we tune into the people that we choose to bring into our homes and our living rooms be it male or female that person is speaking from a lens that they have created because every system in this world every institution in this world every institution they redefine the definitions of words because those definitions benefit their missions those definitions benefit their systems those definitions benefit their vision similar to that was the coming of our Habib in Islam so Allah A.S. that the Prophet redefined the definitions of words what it meant to be a person what it meant to be even honorable and humiliated what it meant to be victorious or what it meant to be in loss that victory is not for a person who is applauded in this world victory is for a person who is applauded by the angels the moment they leave this world that the world may see people to be in a loss but that's not a loss for them because Allah is saying what I say that's a victory for them not for us but for them it's a victory was a victory for the Prophet he redefined the meaning of poverty when he would ask people what does poverty mean that would say that person has no money he would say no poverty is a person or is a person or impoverishes a person who comes on the day of judgment expecting that there is a lot of reward that is held for them but slowly but surely because they back bit they lie they slander all of their good deeds go to someone else similarly he redefined he redefined the meaning of masculinity he redefined the meaning of what relationships should look like prior to coming prior to the coming of our Habib what the relationships were like and after his teachings is a night and day difference it's a night and day difference because they followed the construct that he set in the lifestyle that he set where he was able to become the Qudwa the world model for all of those companions it wasn't some Allah in person who simply has a number of views that speaks about how you should treat your husband or wife but rather we turned towards those who have already left this world because they left with Iman we look at how Allah we look at how their endings work we look at how they lived their lives and for that purpose we have the Prophet we have Sahabas the person may say but they're not as relevant and the answer to that would be being irrelevant is a form of subjectivity of yours that's your subjectivity that they're not relevant because there's no way in the world that the Prophet Sunnah is not relevant today there is no way in the world that the Prophet Sahabas lives are not relevant today if they were not to be relevant they would not have been preserved it's the lens that we wear the lens of the world that have been given to us so the people that dictate how we treat the loved ones around us cannot be people who don't love us those people have to be individuals who also love us we would never take advice from someone on a day to day situation that doesn't know us that doesn't love us so how is it so that we allow people who are simply personalities in different places of this world to dictate how we treat people in al-qaim r.a. he says in order to take advice from someone they must possess at least three qualities three qualities the first one is that they have to be a nausah meaning that they have a sense of love for you they actually have genuine love for this person number two meaning that they don't have an incentive there's no angle for them that if you do this or do that there's no benefit or the construct that they stand for it's inflated no there's no benefit there's no incentive number two this person is they have experience in that field and number three the person has the person could be very well experienced the person may even love us but the fact of the matter is that if this person doesn't have the God consciousness of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in their life they will give us or they will advise us with solutions that will earn the displeasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so who do we follow? we follow a system which saved our societies 1440 years ago which was the coming of the Prophet what it meant to be a man from both scopes and what masculinity meant from both scopes and I'll share a few narrations to draw an image for us to understand what it meant to be this individual or this personality amongst these beautiful narrations where the Prophet taught us how to live like humans and by extension how to live like males and females and the whole idea of always thinking that our religion is irrelevant and that our concepts are strange because of the times that we live in it's also a push from Shaitan himself because when people start saying things like your systems are strange and what you abide by as a female or a male is strange or what you find to be relevant as a husband or wife is strange and we agree with him that's saying that what our Prophet gave us is strange or what our religion gave us was strange and the simple answer that I would ask for all of us to remember is we can only agree upon the definition of what strange is if we're able to agree upon what the meaning of normal is we live in a time where faster than the involvement of our industries technology everything around us that is evolving and changing faster than that there is a involvement a continuous morphing of concepts and things are normal that which was normal five years ago is not normal today and that which is normal today will not be normal in a few years because of how quickly the world is evolving or depreciating but the fact of the matter doesn't change that if they say that our system is strange we ask them by whose definition of what normal is we can only agree upon the fact that we're strange if we agree to your definition of what normal is in the reality of our time that every single person is a stranger to someone else's definition of what normal is every person is a stranger to this person's concept to this person's ism to this person's theology or methodology that's the reality of our life so if we rather be stranger to their systems and be normal in the systems of Allah SWT and the Prophet SAW so he gave us a system that will be relevant till the end of time because follow that system whosoever follows that system not a system that is only for prayer not a religion that came down to simply teach us how to fast or how to give zakat our religion was 20% of our religion is following the masjid 80% of it is found within the homes and our businesses and we choose to abide by the 20% hardly and the 80% becomes something that we say to the culture that it's a part of our culture to respond to our spouses like this it's a part of our culture to stand up for our parents it's a part of our culture not to make sure that we eat before our father eats that is not a culture thing that is a purely that's a concept that purely comes from our religion that teaches us etiquettes there is no culture that is worth standing for if that culture removes the construct of etiquettes to be kind to our parents or to our spouses or to our whoever our loved ones are because that just looks weird in our culture we say that's not a culture that we want to live by because etiquettes are something which is innate within human beings only our systems of our societies have stripped us of these normal etiquettes but nonetheless the Prophet Sallam taught us the most relevant concepts for the masjid for our homes, for our families the man who ran the kingdom in the domain of the Islamic empire the level of love he had for the people that were close to him we oftentimes find ourselves to be people who are kind to those who are strangers to us because there is a benefit for us when was the last time we were able to cultivate a relationship in which we were not the beneficiary the other person was a beneficiary when was the last time even in today's time even our handshakes are calculated that I will shake someone's hand because I can benefit from them I will meet this person because there is a benefit for me whereas Prophet Sallam taught us that the greatest level of character is when people interact with others to benefit them they are always looking to see how can I benefit this person not how can I take benefit from them in today's time in our relationships there is this seesaw where we are always trying to be equal we always want to make sure the benefit that we are receiving is justified the benefit that we are giving is justified by the benefits that we are receiving and every person husband and wife specifically because of the topic and the theme that we have we are always trying to figure out I am doing too much now but that person is doing too less she is doing too much this concept called ihsan it's called ihsan in the definition of ihsan in English is excellence or you could say the pursuit of perfection to make something as nearly perfect or excellent as you possibly can the definition of ihsan in our tradition for the beautiful hadith of Jibril A.S where he asked the Prophet what does ihsan mean all of you may have heard the hadith of the Prophet responding by saying and it's worship of Allah as if you can see him if you cannot see him then know that he can see you but dear friends, ihsan is the epitome of a person's worship that's the highest they can get they can't get higher than ihsan this definition of ihsan however is confined to areas of worship in ibadah this definition of ihsan has no presence in how we treat and deal with each other this definition of ihsan is how we pray how we recite Quran how we fast how we give charity do all of these deeds with this mentality so the question is what is ihsan when it comes to our responsible relationships our families, our children what is ihsan in that and this Imam Ghazali says ihsan for relationships is that a person that is a muhsan in a relationship will always give more than that which they were asked for they will always be giving more they will always be doing more they will always be doing more than what they're expected to do that's a muhsan they're not taking off boxes they're trying to grow a relationship so they're always doing more Yusuf A.S. in the Quran in Surah Yusuf in seven different areas Allah SWT identifies him to be a muhsan and the reason for that is because he's always doing more than what people ask him to do they ask him about can you tell us what this dream means that these seven cows that were fat were eaten by seven skinny cows he could have simply given them the dream interpretation but he goes ahead and gives them the solution that's a muhsan that a person who always does more than what they're expected to do and a person who always takes less they take less than what they deserve they deserve this much but they're okay with this not in the form of oppression not in the form of our rights being taken from us in the sense of just showing love to one another no relationship will continue progressing and growing if everyone only does what they're supposed to do no institution will grow if the people of that institution only come nine to five clock in and clock out meaning they only do what they're responsible to do that's what the expectation is institutions, corporations, businesses and families will grow because each person is fighting to do more than the other person that's what a muhsan is there's no such thing as muqafa don't be a person who's always trying to be equal who's always trying to just make sure that they're in the same scale as the person across the board from them rather he says be a person that that when someone does wrong to you you go back and do good to them these narrations that come about doing good to people are primarily found in the chapters of hadith that discuss the matters of the family the matters of the home not matters outside the home so bringing it back to how the Prophet dealt with these things this is the mentality the mentality was to be a muhsan the mentality was to always do more the mentality was to always be the hand that benefits not the hand that receives al-yad al-ulyya khirum min yad al-sufla the hand that is above is always going to be better than the hand that is below we live in a capitalistic society and to such an extent that we always want to be a consumer we always want to be a beneficiary so he sets the tone mentality is be a muhsan number two to always want to benefit people always try to benefit people it's the best of our ability and then I'll give a few stories when the Prophet shows this level of softness and in some stories where he shows the level of sternness as the man in his relationships and one narration that comes when the Prophet is in his home and I show the Allah and the Prophet get into a real argument the Prophet got into arguments the Prophet disagreed with his wives and his wives disagreed with him these were moments that took place in the best households and it takes place in all of the households that we see in our families it's a part of the relationship if we are good at what we do afterwards as the Prophet teaches us as the Prophet tells us it's interesting a sign of a person who has strong faith and a level of emotional intelligence and maturity is that their responses are not dictated by their emotions their responses are not dictated by their emotions their responses are dictated by their ethics and principles that regardless of what has happened to me today I come back home from work after a long day and I've been beaten I've been railed by my boss and this and that but when I get home how I respond to my spouse and my children will not be a spectrum that is paradic where the person doesn't even know what your response will look like they just don't know because their responses are always dictated by emotions a person has a good day they respond in a way that is kind, a person has a difficult day they respond in a way that is quite toxic this is a sign of a person who only allows their emotions to dictate their responses the Prophet deals with the most difficult things in his life but the Sahaba say that every time we saw him he was smiling he wasn't smiling because he was happy the Prophet lost he was having children in his own lifetime his smile was not a sign of his happiness his smile was consistently a sign of trying to make others happy trying to bring joy to the world he didn't allow his emotions to control his responses and his relationships there wasn't a spectrum people knew what to expect from him a good employee is an employee that every day when they come to work they expect from him you just know a good player is a player for basketball for example they are going to show up and give you this 2010 and 7 you know what to expect from them a good spouse is also a person that is not sporadic there is not a spectrum because their responses are based upon the values and principles of their deem everyone knows everyone knows the bare minimum of what to expect from them the Prophet is arguing with his wife even though he is the greatest human being the spouse is getting into debates one day a Sahaba was arguing with the spouse and he rushes to the house of Amir al-Mu'minin so he goes to Amir al-Mu'minin's house to complain to him that my wife is really giving me a hard time and as he gets through he is about to knock on the door it is an authentic narration narrated by many books of Hadith and as he is about to knock he hears on one of the Allah's spouse actually yelling at him oh my God I thought I was the one that was struggling this man is really struggling so he just steps back and as he is standing there Amir al-Mu'minin walks out of his home and he says what are you doing and by the way this is the flow of that relationship that he had with this community you can come anytime knock on my door don't try that at home with your Imam that is how it was over there so he says I mean we know nothing is not a big deal I mean like what can I even say it is like look I left my house because of this to come complain to you but I realize you are also struggling with the same struggle brother and Amir al-Mu'minin says no this is the least we could do this is the least to know how to control our thoughts to know how to control our emotions and he says he speaks about how there is always a high and a low meaning there is always moments where one person gets more upset then another person needs to remain silent and they help us in this and we help them in this and we play our different roles that Allah has given us because they said the demons are not the same regardless of what the world says to us their expectations and their responsibilities to some degree will always be a little different though there are many commonalities he says well we have it's okay it's not a big deal and this is there cannot be a more real man if someone came and drew a definition of what it meant to be a male and a man if they could draw someone it would be Amir al-Mu'minin this man no one could compete with him and this is what he's dealing with and where did he learn it from he learned it from our hadeeb why do people turn towards online personalities because we chose to stop reading our history we found it easier to watch a video than to read the lives of sahabas we ask our families and our children how many names of sahabas do we know and compared to how many online personalities do we know don't ask our children ask ourselves and then we say why are we following these people because we've given our mind we've given our body we've given our heart to these people so they suddenly they dictate and they control our decisions in comparison to if we were people learning about the lives of sahabas learning the life of our hadeeb how he dealt with different situations we would instantaneously turn back to his life in their lives and see what they would do the prophet of allah is having his argument in our book of Allah is walking outside the house and he hears it so you know it was a pretty loud argument and he knocks on the door and he walks in because ayah says his daughter there's no mahalam issue and he comes in and he says to his daughter hey you dare speak to my you dare speak to the prophet like this do you know who you're speaking to and he gets very upset like what's wrong with you right in our cultures if my son is wrong or my daughter is wrong no no it can't be it has to be the other person it can't be my daughter because you know maybe berdiya she's my daughter it can't be my son my son wasn't raised like this I mean we're all humans and everyone this is why Allah says be just even if it's against yourself and your family justice doesn't see people it sees the principle the principle of a personality is the concept of justice it doesn't matter who the person is it's about what they did and what they stood for the reason why we see a mirage of justice in this world today especially what's happening with ghaza is because people don't want to stand with the principle they want to stand with personalities they have a hard time standing with the people of ghaza not because of what's happening with them because of the fact that they see the personalities of the others that's what justice is for the people of this world but for us it doesn't matter who you are if what you did was wrong it's wrong and he speaks up to his daughter and as they're doing this she's still kind of having this back and forth the prophet they're having this back and forth it's so upset that he actually raises his hand but to kind of say hey man that's enough and as he raises his hand the person jumps in front of aisha of the Allah I know like he literally takes her and puts her behind her back and they say our prophet used to do certain things to his wives what Seela they read is beyond me what prophet they studied is really not what we can't understand because we've studied the prophet's lives and this is what we learned from his life that he would protect his wife from her father and his best friend this is the prophet's best friend and as he does this he says hey that's enough now you can leave you know what I love you men but you can get involved in my relationship like this you can leave now that's enough I appreciate what you did but that's enough and he leaves the room as he's still pacing he's still really upset he's pacing, he's walking and then he hears the prophet and aisha joking and laughing a few moments later because the prophet knew how to de-escalate a situation which we struggle with right and as he's walking and hears them laughing he knocks on the door and says guys can I come back inside he might allow to come back in and he says can I come back in and join in your laughter in your distress if you allow me to come in when you're upset let me come in in your fah and your happiness and the prophet let him come in and they just sat and enjoyed this was a the greatest man that the ummah has ever seen but at the same time he was a man of principles and rules that one day he brought a companion who was blind, Abdullah ibn Ummah Maktoum of the Allah into his house he was a blind companion he couldn't even see actually Allah is standing there and the prophet sees her and she's not covered her head and he sees her and says hey what are you doing here you shouldn't be standing here you should either move away or you should cover your head and she says ya Rasulullah the man is blind inna hua'ama what are you talking about you can't even see me which we will say what's the point everyone's doing it or there's no point this is happening anyways inna hua'ama the prophet is blind the prophet says well you're not blind you're not blind so that shows us that his personality wasn't subjugated by and his personality did not become an excuse to compromise his deem we allow our personalities to be such that their escape go for us why weren't you able to be more kind to your spouse i'm just naturally rough i'm just naturally very harsh so work on it wasn't Amrullah the Allah someone that was rough he worked on it and then someone asks us why don't you tell your family or your children about doing something in regards to our deen like wake up Rasulullah choose to go to this gathering and not go to that gathering i'm just too soft i can't do it i'm just too soft but you're not soft when you tell your son that he has to go to med school and tell your daughter that she has to go to this university is it your softness or is it your negligence or is it your priorities our personality can never be used as an excuse to compromise the deen of Allah swt as soft as the prophet was to his family members the principles of deen were always something that he made sure everyone knew of that i'm not going to compromise this so when it comes to my personal dealings i'm okay the struggle for us is when it comes to our personal dealings we're never ready to take an L so when it comes to religious matters we don't want to fight that battle anymore because we're always trying to win the battle of who's the bigger person in the house who's the person that has done more or less the prophet sallam is sitting in his house and as he's sitting there and Ashutana was the host and there were guests that came to the house for a da'wah and as these guests came to the house for a da'wah Ashutana was known not to be the best cook which is perfectly fine every person has their own traits and their own characteristics and their own skills that they have mastered so one of the other wives of the prophet sallam who was known to be a very good cook she actually brought food think of this she brought food to Aisha's house for the guests that came to her house now that's like when we were kids if we go to our neighbor's house to stop by and end up eating food there before coming home our mothers get really upset I was like you don't make me look like I'm not feeding you so imagine how she felt so what she did she got a little upset and she pretty much did one of these get this stuff out of my face meaning she hit she kind of tilted she hit the utensils in her hand and she dropped the food this is my house don't bring food into my house without my permission this is my place and when she did this the house is very small the house of the Aisha lana is where the prophet is resting it's a small place not a palace or a mansion and what she does is the prophet hears it and the sahabas are sitting there also hear it imagine if that